Empty graves trouble

[Azule son of Abendago]

So my party is in the second part of the second book. Going into the necropolis. I kind of messed up. I let the cleric have a spell that breaks the story line. Corpse compass. This spell as I read it. lets them use a part of an undead to find its maker. My dilemma is do I let them skip straight to the end of part 2, or do I/Can I reason away to make the spell fail. Anybody else encounter this problem how did you handle it? How would you handle it?

[Meraki]

Do you mean carrion compass? That's the only one I'm finding.

You could rule that the ka pulse is a weird effect that doesn't fall under the normal conditions of the spell. That would still give the players some information (that this is being blocked by something, which is unusual), but wouldn't skip them right to the end.

Also: "If the undead creature to which the organ belonged is destroyed, the spell ends and the organ falls to the ground." So you can't do it after destroying the creature; you have to keep the creature around to do it. Which the Pharasmins would probably frown on, if the party is interacting with them.

[drsparnum]

By RAW, I think there is no RAW because there are no formal rules defining the ka pulse.

By RAI, I think the spell should allow the players to find the necromancer.

However, that will largely ruin the middle of this adventure so you need to do something. My players really enjoyed this section of the adventure path so don't think of it as nerfing the party, you are making sure they don't miss a fun part of the adventure path.

I think you could rule that the source of the animation is the ka pulse, which emanated across Wati, and so rather than the spell directing the PCs to the necromancer it directs the PCs to the resting place of each undead at the time the ka pulse hit. So it is fairly useless. Or, you could say the necromancer was in a different building from the Sepulcher and have the spell guide the PCs to the room where he triggered the ka pulse, but he is not in that room anymore.

If your players complain, I think you can tell them out of game they had a good plan but you wanted to make sure they did not miss this part.

[Azule son of Abendago]

Thank you

[Brawldennis]

The mask actually is impossible to find with divination magic and gives a permanent nondetection to it's wearer. The nondetection is at caster level 17, which makes it impossible for the player to make the DC of the CL check.

[Azule son of Abendago]

Yeah I read that part to late. I was able to rail road them to the Ajin Ra Baqa encounter to get it back on track before the entered the necropolis.