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So I've decided to start in media res exactly one encounter before Serpents of Scuttlecove.

You are adventurers and mercenaries in the employ of one Lavinia Vanderboren. In your time with her as your patron, you have helped her reclaim her family's wealth and holdings, find her brother Vanthus, and even avenge her parents' death (by killing said brother).

Your most recent escapades have seen you facing off with a group of pirates known as the Crimson Fleet. Vanthus had fallen in with them, and was leading an assault against a the colony of Farshore on the Isle of Dread (which is actually not that bad of a place, once you cleared out the demon fog, but semantics).

The Fleet seems to have had two secret weapons, however. Firstly, it has somehow allied itself with demonic forces. Vanthus had even been turned into a half-fiend by the time you killed him.

Secondly, they are using something they call a Shadow Pearl. When bloodied and shattered, these pearls release waves of destruction and corruption. You've seen the results of two up close, one of which nearly decimated Farshore, but for you being there to send it far away into the middle of the ocean where it would do less harm.

You've located the source of these pearls, however, in a cavern deep beneath the Isle of Dread (ok, maybe the name is deserved after all). At Lavinia's urging, you have gone to remove the source of them. And that is where we find you today.

Cut to party entering area 49 from City of Broken Idols, the Shrine of the Shadow Pearls.

Here they will find the ledger, the tooth, and proof of Demogorgon's involvement, all in one fell swoop.

When they get back to town, they will discover their base of operations destroyed and their patron missing. From there, it's as per the adventure as written.

Thanks a lot, guys. Placing the tooth in Scuttlecove will be easy, and beyond that it seems like it's mostly a case of setting up motivation. Awesome.

I'm working on a thorough readthrough of the early adventures right now, so with your suggestions I should be able to come up with something to tie the group in.

That said, if you have any more tips, warnings of pitfalls to watch out for, whatever, please keep them coming. I really appreciate it.

If you're looking at starting at 15th level then that's Scuttlecove + jaunting round the planes -- so normally the party would be looking for Lavinia and wondering what's going on with all these Shadow Pearls.

The easiest way to get yourself up to speed is probably to read the various Savage Tidings articles + the adventure introductions & synponses at the start of each chapter. Plus read the threads on here about some of the problems with some of the later parts of the story.

That should be enough for you to cobble together a coherent background & motivation for the party -- I'd probably suggest starting in media res with the party hearing that some trusted ally (a replacement for Lavinia) has vanished in Scuttlecove while investigating the Shadow Pearls.

Maybe have a small introductory adventure in which the Lavinia-replacement asks the party to recover one of these mysterious pearls while she goes on ahead to Scuttlecove on the trail of the others. Perhaps have it that the Lavinia-replacement has done levels 1-14 of STAP and has now called in help when she realises she's out of her depth.

The last few chapters have, IIRC, a few call-backs to earlier chapters but none that are too essential so long as the party realises that the Shadow Pearls aren't merely dodgy magical items, that this is *BAD* and needs stopping ASAP -- give them a little motivation, and so long as they're your bog standard Big Damn Heroes that's enough for them to charge headlong into the lower planes!

Great stuff. Definitely starting in media res. Probably just using Lavinia as is, as an ally and patron who sent them out on their last mission. They'll get home and find her manor destroyed like the adventure says.

Any tips on how to showcase the Pearls? Does the party find out their true nature much before Scuttlecove? It didn't seem like things became clear until that point.

The tooth of ahazu from part 3 and the Nimbus Bow from part 7 is the only thing I think you might need.

Good to know. Just when do those come back in?

My group is revisiting 3.5 to do some high-level play, and I've decided to run them through levels 15-20 of Savage Tide.

Any advice? Anything I need to watch out for that will cause major issues if they missed it earlier? How intimately familiar do I (or the PCs) have to be with the early adventures?

They're fully willing to have some "adventure backstory" where their characters actually did the stuff in the prior adventures (despite not playing through it), so I'm fully able to give them things they might have missed. I'll be giving them the boat, for instance.

But are there other super-important items? NPCs or locations they need to intimately know (beyond a quick overview of allies and enemies)?

Thanks!