The Long Ropes: A Giant's Funeral

The Hook

Six days ago, King Ymrek Stormkeel — 'the Last Thunder,' the storm giant who broke the Frostmaw Armada and made peace hold along three coastlines for forty years — was found cold in his chair, an untouched cup of mead in his hand. Storm giant law demands his body be borne on foot from his hold at Skytoll to the ancestral burial ground at the Cinderthrone, six days' walk across three kingdoms, and that six mortal 'small folk' — representatives of the little races he protected — carry the ceremonial mourning cords tied to his bier the entire way. It is a colossal honor, a colossal inconvenience, and (whisper it) a colossal insurance policy: no giant clan will risk war while smallfolk witnesses walk the road. The party has been chosen. Refusal is not really an option — not if they want the goodwill of every giant from here to the Cinderthrone, and not with the gold, the letters of passage, and the boon promised by whichever heir takes the throne. They take up the ropes. They do not yet know that King Ymrek's heart is still, faintly, beating.

🎭 The rest of this tale is the Dungeon Master's secret. You'll live it at the table.