My group started the SoLS last night and have been through the audience with Manzorian. They asked questions regarding Dragotha, rakshasa overlords, and Katashka. My question is this: what should they know now about the Age of Worms after having spoken with the archmage? I'm concerned I've left something out. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Manzorian's understanding of the Age of Worms appears to be helpful to a point. He seems to be more familiar with the prophecies of the Age of Worms than the key players. His knowledge (on pgs 65-66, issue 130) doesn't seem to include Dragotha--or any other movers or shakers, other than Balakarde--but he probably possesses faint knowledge about them.
If, for some reason, your PCs already know about Dragotha--or others--Manzorian shouldn't play dumb. I'd make sure to portray him as helpful to the PCs cause, but limited in his 3rd-party capacity. I'd check ahead in the adventure path, to see what kind of information Manzorian might have to offer. He, and the others he works with, will make similar discoveries after the PCs return from the Spire of Long Shadows, with respect to the knowledge the adventure reveals.
But, I'd keep my cards close to my chest with revelations like Dragotha, et al. One of the nice things about the AP is that around the end of the campaign, there's practically a major revelation in every adventure. Blowing them early might be overwhelming to the players early on, and boring later.
I imagine you ran SoLS a long time ago, but I have to say instead of worrying if you've given your players enough information from Manzorian, I'd worry that you give them too much.
When I ran SoLS (not too long ago) I had almost no prep time due to life stuff, and I ran it more or less as written.
I really felt afterwards that Manzorian knows too much in his speech at the beginning, and that the players don't really learn anything from going to the Spire that they didn't already know. Every vision revelation left all of us feeling that we knew that already, and that we'd only really learned some minor, unimportant detail. Most notably, it really felt like the "revelation" that Kyuss was once human was a non-starter, as Manzorian had revealed that fact in his speech (it also really felt like that was supposed to be THE major revelation of the adventure, except for Manzorian already knowing that) Consequently it all felt like a bit of a waste of time for the PCs (treasure and XP notwithstanding). The only possible exception was learning of the Harbinger's existence, and my PCs instantly twigged to the fact that he was the End Boss of the chapter, so to speak.
If I had it to do over again, I'd make it so that Manzorian knows next to nothing about the place, other than that it exists and Balakarde went there, and let anything and everything else come out in the visions the players receive.