TL;DR: My group almost came to a TPK on Monday, with one character escaping alive by the skin of her teeth, literally at 0 hp. I feel like I made a fight they couldn't win, and for that reason I kind of want to retcon back to when the tide turned against them, but at the same time that feels cheap, and they may well have deserved it. What do?
During our run of the Glassworks/Catacombs of Wrath sequence, Tsuto successfully kidnapped Ameiko. After clearing out the Catacombs, my group hired a boat to take them to Thistletop. Within the Thistle Tunnels they were overwhelmed, and when everything was looking grim, the sorcerer successfully bluffed Gogmurt into thinking they were reinforcements requested by Nualia. So Gogmurt led them to Ripnugget's throne room, where the bluff quickly fell apart, and battle erupted, this time ending in defeat.
My thought was that Nualia would want to keep them alive for any information they had, before offering them all on a pyre in the courtyard. Unfortunately for her, Tsuto was suspecting that she was going to offer up Ameiko with the party, and engineered an escape plan for them to save his sister. After being stripped of their items, they were thrown in the jail, which was already occupied by a sick Daviren Hosk (long story...) and Ameiko. That night, Tsuto gave the party a key to the jail cells and collapsed a portion of the throne room before making an independent escape, and in the ensuing chaos, the party escaped with Orik as a hostage, cutting the rope bridge behind them.
After gaining knowledge of the complex from Orik, the party came back the next evening, with a boat and a grappling hook, choosing to enter through the tentamort cave. Quickly defeating Lyrie, we ended a session at the secret door to the second lower level, with the complex unaware of the party's presence.
Next session is where I feel like we really went off-track. I thought they would go down the secret stairs they had just found and kick Nualia's ass at full resources. Instead, the party thought it was vitally important that they get back their cold iron weapons, which were stored in the goblin armory, adjunct to the king's throne room, despite the fact they had already bought replacement normal weapons while they were in town.
The plan became this; the halfling would disguise herself as a goblin, and go to Ripnugget, claiming that it was Bruthazmus who had orchestrated the recent pickle theft. Ripnugget would then be taken downstairs and fight Bruthazmus in anger of the theft, then the party would kill whoever was left standing.
Well, as Ripnugget and Bruthazmus came face to face, the halfling backed out of the situation. So when Bruthazmus demanded to see who had accused him, they quickly found the accuser missing. It took all of two moments for a nearby door to be opened, revealing the party squished into the short hall leading into the jail, face-to-face with Ripnugget.
Without time to really plan any of this out, I had the wives scatter to begin alerting the complex. After the party's last attempt, I thought that Nualia would be willing to oversee this matter herself, without thinking of the CR of the encounter. This all culminated with Bruthazmus and 2 goblin commandos in the jail; 2 yeth hounds, 2 wives, Nualia, and Ripnugget at the entrance to the Lamashtu temple; and the party between them on the altar. Everyone was taken to negatives, except the halfling, who went to 0, and played dead.
At the last moment, as everyone was bound to the pyre, a harrow card given to the party by Mvashti slipped from the halfling's pocket, blinding her captors. She slipped her bonds and escaped through the tentamort cave, back to the party's boat. As she sailed away, she could see the plume of smoke rising over the goblin fort, illuminated by flames in the courtyard.
Currently, my plan is to run the raid on Sandpoint next week, with a new party. Malfeshnekor will attack with a Fiendish Nualia, Ripnugget, Bruthazmus, and a contingent of goblins. If the new party wins, we continue the campaign as written.
Or, if they lose, describe to them the destruction of the town, and how they somehow continue to see after their deaths. Sandpoint becomes a ghost town, days, weeks, months pass, when they notice that the northern sky is growing dark. The perspective shifts, they're flying at a ridiculous speed north, over the Storval Plateau, and into the Kodar Mountains. Suddenly, a flash of light shines down from one of the tallest peaks, and the whole mountainside begins to shake, and Mhar awakens, ending the world and turning everything in sight to blackness. But after what feels like an eternity, a small light comes into view. A butterfly, made of stars. It looks tiny at first, but as it flies towards them, it grows larger and larger, until the light surrounds them on all sides. They find themselves back in the shrine under Thistletop, but this time we run the encounter more "as written," with Nualia preferring to stay in the basement and let the goblins do her dirty work.
Does that sound like too much of an ass-pull? I have everyone's characters, I have the exact battle state when things turned sour, and I think if Nualia hadn't been there, it wouldn't have been a loss.
OMG I wrote a novel. ;_;