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The advice here has been priceless. Kudos to this forum and thank you to everyone.
I am going to spend some time within the story getting the characters move involved in the story. The Paladin needs humility and a spanking from his God to make sure he stays on the straight and narrow. I LOVE the idea of putting in an NPC Paladin to "show him how its done".
The focus of the short run to get them to level 3 is going to involve a few things (most ideas were presented here)
1. The Paladin pissed off the King of Spiders, there will be retribution
2. The Queen must have heard of the PCs bungling by now, Faceless men might be deployed
3. The Ghost of the Harrowed Deck's owner can definitely come to them in dreams
4.Find character hooks to make it more personal
5. Perhaps Gaidren Lamm is not dead, perhaps the old man they killed was not him at all.

So any feedback on some of the hooks I plan to use?

First of all ...

... Are the Players disinterrested?
or

... Are the Characters disinterrested?

If it is the players, you have a bigger problem.

-----
Side Question: is it the player of the Paladin that is the problem, or is he/she otherwise fine? (Hopefully it is only that the player is just the type of person who should never play a Pally.)

To answer both, I plan to find another suitable adventure to bring them from 2nd to 3rd level. I like the idea of trying to find something to tie them to the story. Personally I was thinking of having Lamm not dead, but in fact he is a soul stealer that takes the souls of his young slaves. They killed his human skin, but not the creature. Perhaps this creature can be associated with the Arconas?

I had a long post that was eaten. Wonderful.

I tied my PCs back stories in with the game itself to give them incentive to play along.

EDIT: I also get the feeling they all are disgruntled at the paladin and his player, maybe. Why is that? Are they an all-evil group, or something? Remind them that they don't have to hang out with him if they don't want to-- the other PCs can tell the paladin goodbye. I don't hang out with people I don't like, and neither should they.

The Paladin is a whole other issue. The character is a bully, the toughest in the group that really pushes the envelope between being a Paladin or a Blackguard. The other PCs were ready to let him be gutted by the King of Spiders. Because of the Paladin I have had to fudge rolls and stats in order for him to not just walk through each encounter.

The unity issue really has to do with the backgrouds set by the AP. They were all geared to kill of Lamm. Now that he is dead, the characters are wondering WTF, why am I even with these losers. I personally wanted to drop this adventure path, but I am keeping it going for one player who really wants to see this through.

I am thinking of having a talk with the players and allowing them to bring in other PCs who are a bit more invested in the overall plot.
The players still want to play, the characters are not happy with the Paladin, and are being driven away due to the lack of loyalty to each other.

So tonight I wrapped up the second to the last encounter.
The party when thugging their way through Eels Ends, pissed off the King of Spiders and barely escaped alive after besting one of his thugs at kniveses.
The story so far has been pretty rail roading, and although the groups paladin needs to be taken down a level, I thought things were going smashing.

Tonight I asked for feedback...

I was told by the players that they had no buy in. The person who they were brought together to kill (Gaidren Lamm) was not only dead, but not even a challenge.
The one reason they came together is dead. I have been trying to make the NPCs colorful and bring them into the story, but none of this seems to be working. Tonight I was told that most characters do not even know why they are still adventuring together. Most of them have no trust in the others, and they all hate the paladin.

I really want to continue on the adventure path, but I am losing the interest of the players to adventure together. I need to do a side adventure before continuing as the books suggests characters be third level before going on to the last adventure bit.

Have any GMs ran into this issue when running this (or any other) adventure path? Can anyone suggest a sub plot or a good module to help fix the party issues before this leg of the adventure closes out?

Like i said I don't want to wimp out on the path now, but if I have disinterested players I do not have a game.

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