Where can the players sell the Griffon Eggs in Princes of the Apocalypse?

Question

I've been playing Princes of the Apocalypse lately, and... (spoiler about the adventure)

On p. 41 of the adventure, in the Sighing Valley, the players encounter a griffon roost with mating griffons that have a nest with two eggs, which are described as worth up to 2,000 gp each. Since the book provides the gold value, I assume the egg is supposed to be sold (with some spoiling probability).

Where can the players sell it? It doesn't seem like Red Larch has anywhere with the infrastructure to incubate it, or any other close city.

On the other hand, travelling back to Waterdeep or Neverwinter takes more than a week, increasing considerably the probability of spoiling the egg (about 52% for a week travel).

So, can the players sell it in any closer town? Should they go back to a big city? Or aren't the eggs even supposed to be sold?

I'm asking this as a player for this adventure, but I'm also interested in the answer as a DM, since I might run the adventure in the future.

Answer 1

It is entirely up to the DM

The DMG (Chapter 7) is silent on converting non-monetary treasure into cash and vice-versa while it does talk about not normally being able to do this for magic items.

Some DMs are happy to treat non-cash treasure as completely negotiable - you order an ale in a tavern, plonk down your griffon egg and get change in a mixture of coin, gemstones and a nice statue of the local goddess of love.

Other DMs will insist that only certain sizes of settlements will have the financial resources to trade in griffon eggs.

Still others will use the whole thing to create a quest where the player's must seek out a cloud giant who just happens to be in the market.

Anyway, who says you need to incubate griffon eggs - the damn things are like cockroaches, you can't kill them with 17 tons of poison. Or not.