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In room E17, it is said that Chafkhem is "quickened while within the circle but can use the additional action only to Sustain a Spell".

I was wondering what was the designer's intent here? The only combat-oriented spell in his repertoire that seems sustainable is Hideous Laugther. Seems meh compared to his other options. Did I miss something?

My party is on the verge of crossing the Spectral Seal which I believe is the choke point between books 1 and 2 of the trilogy.

Feel free to comment, criticize or suggest changes. I expect to run it next week, and I'll keep you posted with the results.

Small follow-up in case some GM has a similar need. I decided the Morlock Engineers in B22 used their extra 24h to prepare for the encounter with the PCs. Namely, they were able to setup 2 trip-wires in B21 that upon trigger drop a pair of handcrafted openwork portculis made out of the old bedframes found in B8. Their idea was to trap some of the PCs in the corridor long enough to push out the ballista from B22, and start showering them through the portculis bars.

The portculis themselves are not very solid, and more intended as a way to slow down the PCs, not trap them indefinetly. I halved the stats of a wood portculis (Page 515 of Core Rulebook) to account for the rushed nature of the trap and the poor quality of the base materials.

For the ballista stats I used (https://2e.aonprd.com/SiegeWeapons.aspx?ID=2) although I debuffed it to 4d10 dmg because it was rushed out of scrap parts. Be aware it needs 2 to crew so both Morlock Engineers need to operate it.

How it went in my game? I'd say pretty fun. First, our Ranger spotted the trap easily coming from the north, and the Fighter decided he'd trigger it intentionally, carefully staying outside the trapped zone it would delimitate. The Morlocks, hearing the trap activate, went on to push their pre-loaded Ballista from B22 to B21, and started aiming and firing through the portculis. Our brave Cleric decided to stand his ground, taking cover behind a tower shield and attracking aggro, while the rest of the party went on to surprise the Morlocks from behind, going all the way around B33, B35, B15, B14 and B8 which they'd already explored. However, this gave enough time for the Morlocks to slowly reload (2 load actions needed, so one each), aim and shoot again. Despite greater cover, the second bolt took the Cleric down, just as our fastest moving PC got to witness the situation coming from B8. One PC ended up circling back to stabilize the Cleric, while the rest of the party surprised the Morlocks from behind, clearly outranking them in melee combat.

All in all, it felt different and refreshing from your typical "open the door, kill the monsters" type of encounter which seems the norm in this adventure path. Don't expect the Morlocks to be able to fire more than 1 or 2 bolts though, and that's fine. Dealing 4d10 damage can possibly take down a single squishy Level 3 PC. Two bolts could take down the beefest.

From a storytelling aspect, I think the modified encounter did deliver. PCs got to detect and partially outsmart the bad guy's plan, then complications happen (ballista shows up and downs a PC: huge downbeat), and finally the PCs reverse the odds coming from behind and disband the ballista crew (upbeat).

Hope this can help someone!

Now that I think about it, there's the remnants of a purple worm in B35 that begs to come back an undead through the tunnel in C32, causing great turmoil in Otari!

Also keep in mind that if the heroes rescue the living anchor in area D9, this effectively neuters the Gauntlight beam for the time being. There's also 2 Scalathraxes available there for beaming, if you don't mind the repetitiveness of the 1st encounter. As the PCs level up the Scalathraxes may not represent a meaningful threat anymore. Maybe as an extra minion?

I was pondering the same myself as I've been tracking days since the graveyard encounter and let's just say my players tend to take a lot of downtime in town. Which is fine, but I wish the book was more detailed as to how we can as a GM convey some sense of urgency. Like you I've made the Gauntlight a little brighter every night fortelling some bad stuff about to happen.

In case my players reach day 30 before Chapter 5 (which adds it's own element of time pressure with Dorianna's curse), I plan the beam to strike Otari again.
Here's what I've imagined so far for such an encounter:

In the spirit of the 1st graveyard encounter, I want lots of undead minions rising from dead bodies. That's why I chose the Ruins of the Thirsty Alpaca as the beam's target. 400 years ago Otari was invaded by Stonescale Kobolds whom made a huge network of caves and tunnels under town. When Otari got liberated, the bodies of the defeated Kobolds were piled up in the tunnels, in the fashion of Paris' Catacombs IRL. What I like of this idea is it could potentially endanger some NPCs like Tamily Tanderveil (her fishery is somewhat connected to the underground tunnels, see description of area C2). Also the Osprey Club thieves are know users of the tunnels, so I imagine Crook's Nook basement somewhat connected. Maybe more but that's the gist.

The 2nd element needed is some sort of big baddy beemed into the ground like the Scalathrax. For this I'm still unsure, but my initial idea was to have some unfinished business the PCs left behind bite them back. In area C27 there was a Lurker in the Light that tries to dimension door into bright light if he drops below 20hp. Unfortunately for him, the torch in C26 had been looted and thus I imagined his only hope was to teleport close to the ribbon of light in C15. The poor Lurker got too close and got zapped like a moth. The players think it's dead because they've found burnt pieces of the Lurkers' wings. Maybe it's not dead and just got absorbed by the beam to be used as a beefed up (fleshwarped or undead) version of the Lurker?

That's my thinking so far. Unfinished business in your campaing may differ, but I'm sure there's something to latch on with a bit of imagination. I'm also curious what others thoughts are.

My players (level 2 party of four) steamrolled past the regular Morlocks and the Morlock Scavengers, exhausting most of their spell slots and triggering a level-up to level 3.

Despite their knowledge of the disappearance of FOUR Osprey Club employees, and witnessing a SINGLE sacrificed corpse in B14, they decided to head back to Otari midway through the chapter for a 24h downtime. I'm usually a lenient GM when it comes to letting my players take as much rest/downtime as they wish without too many hassles or random encounters, unless there is an explicit time pressure element within the adventure. In this specific case, I think a little 'punishment' would be justified. Knowingly turning back when 3 Otari citizen lives are on the line, for selfish considerations like selling stuff and levelling up, doesn't hit me as 'heroic' behavior.

The Morlock Engineers encounter was initially marked as Severe 2. Now that they'll be coming back as Level 3 party, any advice on how to spice up the encounter (e.g. crank it up to Severe 3)? My first thought was that the Morlock Engineers would use that extra 24h to fix their ballista and operate it from a distance in the B21 corridor. Would that be over- or under-powered? How to prevent martial characters from rushing, rendering the ballista useless in melee (remember they steamrolled the previous Morlocks)? Also, I'm not sure how to evaluate how much extra XP the ballista would grant the encounter? (my extra budget is 40 xp).

Any other suggestions?