Did Nualia or any of her henchfolk escape? Perhaps one of them made it back to the Skinsaw Cult/Xanesha in Magnimar and asked for the power to avenge the defeat at Thistletop. That character could easily take the place of the Skinsaw Man — they’d have ample motive to stalk the PCs and plot an intricate, creepy, and bloody revenge against them.
Hell, if it’s a surviving henchbeing, perhaps Aldern Foxglove is an innocent dupe in all of this who realised what’s really going on and offers his help to the party to make up for his unwitting part in it! (This version of Aldern might still be quite happily married to a still-alive Iesha... or Xanesha could have mind-controlled him into murdering Iesha to use her death as leverage, and he’s shaken off her control enough to turn that in motive to kill Xanesha in revenge.)
(Or this Aldern could still be a murderer of his own volition, but Xanesha took mind-control of him later and sent him out to set the party up for his mistress....)
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Or, roll with it. Maybe Aldern feels the PC he was obsessed with just...blew him off. Change the phrasing on the notes to reflect that. He'd rant about how his obsession ignored all he could do for them, like he wasn't even worth their notice - just like these victims.
'You could have saved them if only...'
Of course, you could always go the classic route and just replace him with an NPC they know and respect.
I'd go with what Spiral_Ninja said. Switching out Aldern to a different character requires a fair bit of work, and probably means dropping some of the interesting story of Foxglove Manor.
You can use this as an opportunity to remind the party of the importance of NPCs. They exist and have feelings too. Ignoring them can wind up hurting you later.
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I dunno, I think it'll just have less effect if they don't remember a thing about him.
I guess here's the real choice: Do you want to have to make changes to Foxglove Manor to fit, but have a villain who might leave a real impact? Or do you want to have a "Who was that guy?" villain, but keep the Foxglove Manor lore intact?
Another option is to do both. Foxglove is the big bad (or an ally of the big bad), but there's also an undead NPC friend running around doing fun stalker stuff.
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Did they save Aldern during the goblin raid? That's all it needs for him to become obsessed with one of them. I think the boar hunt isn't necessary.
Did your PCs rescue Aldern at the start? If not, then his twin seeks revenge.
Or, since the plot implies he was already infected he rises (with help from the Skinsaw cult, perhaps) seeking vengeance on those so called heroes who let him die.
Hell, the fact that the Players probably forgot all about him makes it even sadder... And kinda funny, too.
Personally, I kinda like the idea of Ameiko being the killer. I always thought she was a bit too likeable. ;D
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Well you could run some side stuff before you fully enter Chapter Two which would give you time to introduce Aldern to the party.
Pretty much anything out of the back of Dark Waters Rising makes for good "between chapters" fodder.
Let them run amok out at Shank's Wood or the Paupers' Graves. Aldern could easily get into trouble and need rescuing.
You don't have to follow the official timeline. Heck you could even play around with Iesha still being alive for a bit -- maybe the two of them visit Sandpoint and need rescuing. Maybe one of the party members single-handedly rescues Iesha. That would certainly set Aldern "off". He is all polite and smiles and then takes her back to Misgivings and confronts her about her feelings for "her rescuer".
Just some ideas.
CJ
Well you could run some side stuff before you fully enter Chapter Two which would give you time to introduce Aldern to the party.
Pretty much anything out of the back of Dark Waters Rising makes for good "between chapters" fodder.
Let them run amok out at Shank's Wood or the Paupers' Graves. Aldern could easily get into trouble and need rescuing.
You don't have to follow the official timeline. Heck you could even play around with Iesha still being alive for a bit -- maybe the two of them visit Sandpoint and need rescuing. Maybe one of the party members single-handedly rescues Iesha. That would certainly set Aldern "off". He is all polite and smiles and then takes her back to Misgivings and confronts her about her feelings for "her rescuer".
Just some ideas.
CJ
This is good.
In the game I'm playing in, the GM had us help out a dryad whose wood was being turned into a brackish swamp by a young black dragon (this fitted into one of the other PC's backstory about black dragons).
Rescuing Aldern (and Iesha?) from such an encounter, then doing the other side-quests that thelesuit suggests, would bring the whole thing back on track. It's also an ideal time to fit in some downtime if you either have a crafter or are using the campaign rules and the party is taking Thistletop as the home base.
PS Boar hunt? We ended up fighting an owlbear, at first level!
It sounds like you just finished at Thistletop. Do the players have anything they need to do in Sandpoint? Add spells to spellbooks, buy or upgrade gear? other NPC interactions? They could meet Aldern during this time. If you wanted to preserve the implied timing around Aldern getting infected and going to Magnimar, etc. you could insert some other distraction for them - Choppers Isle or Hemlock suggests they join in an effort to kill off or seriously bloody the nose of the Mosswood goblins - he wants to send a message to the local goblins - don't ever come to Sandpoint again. These options require more work on your part.
You could also just omit Aldern's obsession. No notes for the pc's would be left at any of the crime scenes, turn any of the obsession haunts at Misgivings into universal haunts and so forth. You'd likely have to change Grayst's monologue at the Sanitorium but otherwise the adventure does not critically hang on the obsession. Hemlock still has incentive to engage the players into the investigation. Indeed without the notes appearing as a blatant attempt to frame them, the presence of the Sihedron may make him MORE suspicious of them.
In this version Aldern is simply serving Xanesha or perhaps his obsession is Sandpoint itself - he hates the town for abandoning him, refusing to help him rebuild and forcing him into the clutches of the Seven. So he leaves notes not for the players but for the mayor or the head of the carpenters guild or addressed to no one, just hate filled spew.
That probably should have been in a spoiler tag. Sorry.
PS Boar hunt? We ended up fighting an owlbear, at first level!
Wait WHAT
PS Boar hunt? We ended up fighting an owlbear, at first level!Wait WHAT
** spoiler omitted **
Heh, it was entirely the fault of the player of our synthesist summoner boasting about being able to take on an owlbear. The GM just smiled and said 'OK'.
He ended up on about 6 hit points, including his eidolon, after receiving a full-round of angry owlbear in the face. And then the mysterious stranger (soon to be a paladin) finished it off with a bullet. Meanwhile 2 of us managed to stabilise...
We stopped making remarks about what we thought we could 'take on' after that.
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Just add in a new encounter with Aldern. Takes five minutes. If the PC's ignore him he is obsessed with their ignoring him. If they help him out in any way then just go with everything as written.
