Laski's page

So my PCs have defeated Viorian and managed to escape with her loot barely alive. They didn't take many precautions when looting her, so one of the PCs took Chellan, and we ended the last session when he realised the sword could talk to him.
My idea was to make the sword really intelligent (consistently with its stats), so it made a lot of sense that it wouldn't immediately reveal its allegiance. After all, it clearly knows that their new owner is an enemy of Karzoug.
I decided that the sword would play friendly at first, perhaps giving some small hints (as suggesting the character to loot the jewels from the walls or something), and reveal its true nature closer to the end.
Has anyone went that way? Do you have any advice for this roleplay, or funny situations that may happen? There's no much insight about Chellan's personality in the books, and in the journals I've found the PCs discarded it without much interaction.

One of the PCs (Troegan, paladin of Iomedae) gave the killing blow to Athroxis and thus received the Mark of Wrath. As the PCs hadn't cleared the Halls entirely, I ruled that the surviving warriors (I said they were around 12) didn't attack the PCs when they saw the mark. After some roleplaying and a "challenger" (promptly defeated by the paladin), the warriors accepted Troegan as their new leader.
The PCs announced Karzoug's imminent return, and seeing the wrathful reaction (after all, the warriors were taught to hate that name) the PCs decided to take them outside Runeforge and use them in the upcoming "war against Karzoug".
As I understood from their background, the warriors were trained for this moment from their very birth, so it made a lot of sense for them to accept eagerly (and it seemed like fun for the development of the story). So now I have a dozen of 8th-level NPCs following the party to Xin-Shalast (much more than what the Leadership feat would provide).

- How can I reward the PCs for this (imho good) idea without making the challenges of the sixth book trivial? I'd like the PCs to think that the warriors are being useful in some way.

- Do you have any ideas for funny moments / challenges they must face to make all this work? I already told them that the warriors don't even know how to get their own food.

Thanks in advance

Hi! RotR (Anniversary Edition) GM here. I'm looking for a way to scale encounters easily and apply buffs (or debuffs) to NPCs, and considering buying HeroLab for that. The question is: will it be suitable for my use case?

Specifically, I'd like to:

- Import RotR NPCs (without having to create them myself).
- Apply buffs and debuffs to them, seeing the results in real time.
- Modify them (perhaps adding a level or two).

All three steps are needed, because without one I could just be using another thing to do the work (e.g. PCGen if I have to implement them). Have anyone here used HeroLab for this? What do you think?

Thanks in advance