A little advice on this little pickle that I've DM'ed myself into would be fantastic.
The Setup: The characters (lizard-folk ranger 17, aasimar sentinel 17 and half-elf rogue 7/wizard 5/arcane trickster 6) had made it to the chambers of The Thirteen after successfully aiding in the evacuation of Cauldron. They were on cruise-control until they ran into a group of flamewarder guards while battling with Freija Doorgan. Things spiralled out of hand for the trio quickly as more haraknin joined the fray along with Ti'rok Coalfire. It was a real messy fight and the arcane trickster was the first to fall to Freija's Prismatic Spray and then regrouping with the haraknin force and the giant. It was nip and tuck right to the bitter end, but superior numbers got to them and it was a TPK.
The Problem: Of course, as we know, the gate opens with the failure of the PC's and we have Carceri-on-Greyhawk with fiends flooding through the gate, etc... The trouble is, as final as that seems, the characters aren't really dead and the campaign didn't just come crashing to a halt. Earlier, while on Occipitus, the trio had simultaneously acquired the Sign of the Smoking Eye as they all selflessly sacraficed themselves to the flames in a display of comraderie that I could not ignore at the time. I had the powers of good reward that act and they all gained the template, thereby gaining the "lie-in-state" boon of being able to reconstitute after death. So now I have three players who desperately want to get back to Cauldron to get back to the fight and shut that gate down, slay as many fiends as possible, and take it to the Cagewrights.
The "How would you do it?" part: I'm interested to hear how some of the other DM's of the AP would handle this, bearing in mind that none of you would have had the lack of foresight to dole out the template to three seperate individuals at once in an act of DM kindness/let's keep the campaign rolling.
How many demodands come through at once? There's vague hints that a decent sized group was gathered near where the gate was going to open (Asylum). How many come through after the initial opening?
How do the Cagewrights handle the opening of the gate? Do they teleport up to Cauldron to start interacting with the horde or do they hang back to see what happens? Do they then move into Carceri through the gate to free Adimarchus?
At this moment, I'm not sure how I'm going to handle things but I have a small respite of a week or so as the characters have decided that taking out Hookface once and for all should be their first matter of business, before they begin the mind-boggling work of trying to close a gate and stop a demodand horde. I think it was more tangible for them to consider this first instead of trying to tackle the near impossible of not even knowing where to start, and to be honest, I'm a little grateful that they were overwhelmed, as I'm overwhelmed some at the options myself.
Thanks in advance.