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So how do the PCs get the city, the Starstone, and the citizens' souls back to where they're supposed to be?

My party has a Cleric, so I was planning to allow her to cast Miracle to restore the city (at some Monkey-paw cost).

Alternatively, there could be a ritual of some sort (the entire City has been planeshifted with them--scholars of the many magical academies could research this).

Something could be done to tie the powers of the Cane of the Maelstrom and the Radiant Spark, possibly. Especially since Duskfathom is in the plane of Axis (diametrically opposed to the Maelstrom--perhaps the Cane REALLY wants to get out of here and can be jury-rigged to bring the City back).

I haven't fully fleshed it out, but plan to give it more thought, since my players have just started book 6.

Love this post so much. My group is still in book 5, but looking ahead to 6 i agree that olansa looks a little anemic.

The plan to steal Absalom itself after the title if Primarch sounds great. I'll also be taking the idea of having her lean much harder into being a Rogue than a standard divine caster (they already have seen that twice with the Infector).

Definitely keeping my eye on this thread for other ideas y'all have!

Awesome stuff!

In addition to the investigations that Naurgul posted, I've been trying to steer away from the AP's liberal use of "Some NPC comes and tells you where to go next" (literally every single point where the Agents could do some police work, the book just has someone appear and tell them where to go next).

We're currently finishing up Book 3 and I've been making heavy use of The Alexandrian's 3-clue-rule and Revelation lists.

Before each session I try to make a revelation list of what the PCs need to discover/learn. For each of those revelations, I come up with 3 clues that I can sprinkle into the game. Even if my players end up going to a completely different location than where the book assumes they will go, it usually isn't too hard to drop some of those clues to get them back onto the trail of the badguys.

Another thing I do is keep track of what the Twilight Four are trying to do. If the Agents interfere, what will the other members of the Four do? If they chase a red herring and don't arrive in time to stop the evil plan, what will happen?

With regard to the Bureaucratic conflict, I plan to give them such a moment with the End of Book 4/start of Book 5. Depending on how my players confront the injustice of being wrongfully arrested and the improper arrest of Wynsal, they may choose to turn in their badges and operate on their own, or maybe even try to root out the corruption in the force. Whatever ends up happening, I think it'll be a great turning point in the adventure.

Great idea for the skinner! Wish I'd thought of it !

And yeah I had Wynsal be the kind of guy who knew he was walking into a trap, but couldn't let a friend in peril alone. He walked in there fully geared and expecting assassins, and found the body of his best friend instead. As he gripped him crying, the agents come in and the trap gets triggered.

He's surprised, depressed and appalled, but also rightfully angry and willing to go to political war on this.

Ooh this is great for Wynsal. I much prefer that Wynsal has an idea of what's going on, but is still in a position of being surprised (by the death of his assistant and the allegations toward him).

One of my players took the Political Scion background and more or less established his family as the "Kennedy family" of Absalom. I plan to replace Wynsal's aide with my Player's uncle, to make the stakes more personal (hopefully this will be enough of a paradigm shift to make their eventual prison break session less tonally jarring).

Well the party isn't really quiet just some are better at it than others so want allow each person to take the lead, give them each a chance to experience a room to themselves. RP is usually done quickly 5 mins tops so we wouldn't get bogged down by the affair.

But yes the teleportation bit of a gimmick, maybe something else ill have a ponder.

Thanks thou

That's incredible. My group of 3 players enjoy RP so much that we spent an entire session at the House of Planes. It turned from a quirky themed bar experience to a conga line snaking its way through the nine realms.

The whole idea of downtime is sort of weird in the context of this AP because the adventure seems to happen while the PCs are doing their “day job.” If they're taking downtime are they also taking a leave of absence from the Edgewatch? If not, are they still spending “8 hours” a day on Watch duty PLUS doing downtime activities? It’s just sort of awkward.

It could just be "downtime" consisting of uneventful days patrolling.

Perhaps not every single day has skeletons popping up out of the ground and goblins tossing jars of oil at each other.

I'm just stretching out the festival to be the better part of a year. It's the first one that has occurred in 200 years, so I think it wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

If we can already accept a season-long festival, extending it to >6 months isn't too bad.

That the act of the displacement of numerous people living in the precipice district possibly was done by the main villain only softens the sting marginally, it's the retcon that the place was a unlivable hellhole filled with monsters and undead that killed all who enter to "oh no there was plenty of poor people living here just fine, until we kicked them all out that is".

Maybe it wasn't a retcon so much as it was the public perception vs. the unappetizing truth.

It is easy to believe that in the real world there are gorgeous little white picket fence suburbs that are free of homeless people, but the truth that people don't like to acknowledge is that the police often relocate any vagrants to designated skid row regions.

If the uncomfortable reality rings too close to home, there's no reason one couldn't omit it from the game. As you said, this point only shows up in the Adventure Toolbox section that is meant to flesh out the Radiant Festival and give potential hooks for ideas and side stories.

Heck, this sounds like a great side story/addition to really add punch to start disconnecting the players from the Edgewatch.

The title is "Devil at the Dreaming Palace" not "Devil Who Owns Dreaming Palace."

Maybe all you gotta do is paint him up like a potential victim at his own residence, not the villain?

Yeah, this is what I'm trying to do. I moved the "Skeleton guards attack" basic encounter during the "First day of patrol" chapter to be adjacent to the Dreaming Palace.

I had Hendrick panic as the skeletons rise from the construction area, acting like a helpless business owner who accidentally purchased a sacred burial ground. Hopefully this seeds the idea that the Dreaming Palace will eventually be the location of a big fight, but lead the PCs to think that he's just an unfortunate idiot.

My players really bit the hook that the skeletons rising were the result of dark energy, so they feel like something is afoot. When the big reveal happens, it'll make sense that the evil energy from the horrors inside is giving life to nearby corpses.