I was thinking the same thing.
All I can think it that it mentions that the tunnels lead to other Kopru enclaves, so the Kopru threat is still there. And the only place the shadow pearls can be enhanced is in the aboleth city, probably due to something about the location.
Therefore, to stop the Kopru, you need to revitalize the aboleth by flooding the city.
That is my understanding. Maybe James can step in and make a comment about your concerns.
The way I understand it, the flooding is supposed to be a distraction to allow the party to invade 'Morga without having to fight the entire population of the kopru city. I haven't quite conned to where the party figures that out, though, but maybe somebody mentions it as an option in a section I wasn't paying attention to.
I foresee the possibility of my group attacking the city, getting repelled by the residents, and then having to come up with the flooding plan to serve as a distraction.
Creative Director
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If you don't destroy Tlaloc's Tear, your party encounters dozens of koprus, kopru behemoths, nagas, and troglodytes at Holashner's Ziggurat. If they can take on this small army of aberrations, more power to them. But if they destroy the tear, it throws this army into chaos and they only have to cope with a relatively small number of them.
Leaving Tlaloc's Tear intact is the best solution, if the party still manages to destroy the Bilewretch (and as a distant second, the Brain Collector), but remember that the dozens of kopru around the Ziggurat don't wait passively in their numbered location for the PCs to wander by. Any attack on any of the kopru around the Ziggurat will start a pitched battle with all of them at once, and it'll take some serious powergaming to take them all out in a single strike, even if the PCs take advantage of kopru movement rates. Remember that there are an indeterminately large number of kopru in neighboring encampments, so the kopru around the Ziggurat can get as many reinforcements and as many consumable magical items as they need, if the PCs attempt some attrition strategy.
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I also do not see the advantage of destroying Tlaloc's Tear. I think it would be a lot simpler to kill the small army of aberrations and the sleeping aboleths. Also talk to a tribe of aquatic elves or aventi into defending the waters surrounding the island.
I am not exactly how you would you go about destroying the living city of the aboleths.
So how would?
I'm not sure if the module addressed this, but couldn't the PCs conceivably kill the sleeping aboleths? After doing that, talk to some tribes of aventi/aquatic elves/merpeople/tritons/whatever about making sure they don't come back and then destroy the Tear.
That might take too much time though, honestly. From what I remember of the module, the party is kinda constrained time wise.
My group attempted the ziggurat first (despite my too-subtle attempts to get them to go after the Tear); they managed to get inside, but by the time they wanted to leave, I had the place under siege by the entire city. If the cleric hadn't had a plane shift spell prepared, the PCs would all be dead now.
They ended up deciding to sneak back in later and try to finish off the Tear as well, because they were so rankled by the fact that they were forced to flee.
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Creative Director
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There's certainly more than one way to disrupt the shadow pearl production in Golismorga. Destroying Tlaloc's Tear to distract the kopru and then slipping in to the ziggurat to kill the now mostly-ungarded bilewretch is the least-dangerous method. It's probably not stated clearly enough in the adventure, but if the PCs attempt to take on the Ziggurat before distractig the koprus, they'd better be invisible and silent, otherwise they'll face what basically amounts to an EL 19 encounter or thereabouts, with 16 CR 10 flying koprus, 38 dominate person attempts, 10 spellcasting nagas, and an army of troglodytes. D&D doesn't handle big combats like this well at all, so the adventure is built in such a way that this battle isn't the best way to get things done.
As for the aboleths, you can certainly kill the sleeping aboleths you encounter along the way, but there's dozens, if not hundreds more hidden throughout the caverns that aren't covered in the adventure. Seeking them out and destroying them is beyond the scope of "The Lightless Depths" but is an interesting expansion to the adventure. Of course, this does nothing to address the aboleths who'll arrive in the city from their deeper underwater realms within a few days of the flooding.
Keep in mind as well that aboleths are tougher monsters than koprus, and "trading" them as the main enemies of the adventure (which is effectively what you're doing if you flood the city and come back later to pick up the pieces) isn't particularly the most sound tactic. There's not really any allied aquatic races in the region. You've pretty much got aboleths and koprus and ixitxachitls, really; they've not left any "good guy" races like merfolk or tritons or aquatic elves around to make friends with. If the PCs flood the city and don't kill the bilewretch, it's probably enough to disrupt the shadow pearl operation for a few months or even a year, which should be enough time to finish the campaign in any event.
So if I am reading you correctly, James, destroying Tlaloc's Tear is a bad idea in the long run. Theres no effective way to find all the sleeping aboleths and kill them.
This part seems correct, so far as the aboleth threat goes.
But making repeated hit and runs against the kopru, divide and conquer style, is definitely an option
This one, not so much. If the PCs hit and cause casualties before retreating, the kopru will send out messengers to nearby kopru cities to request reinforcement. Since Golismorga is a major holy site for them and the Bilewretch is a key part of their demon-god's active plot, they'll get these reinforcements. Consequently, as long as the PCs seem to be a greater threat to them than the aboleth, they'll concentrate their resources on defending against the PCs, and that means the reinforcements will be posted to the Ziggurat rather than elsewhere.
It is possible to skip the Tear, but the PCs will need to finish off the Bilewretch before kopru reinforcements arrive. The distance these reinforcements must travel is not given in the module, but I doubt it is more than a couple days of travel away. Since the PCs can recover spells only once per day, they only have a few forays to work with before it is too late.
for success in the short terma and long term, thereby keeping Tlaloc's tear intact and keeping golimorga from being flooded, yes?
I question that leaving the Tear is any more a long-term success than allowing the Aboleth to reclaim their city. Remember, the Neh-thalggu Scion in Tlaloc's Crater has seized control of the Tear and "given a few more short decades, it will have determined the method of awakening the ancient artifact to rend time and space again."
Pretty much all accounts agree that an incursion from the Far Realms can be even worse than the Savage Tide itself, which is at least evil from the correct reality. The CR 26 monstrosity the Neh-thalggu will be by that point is only slightly weaker than Demogorgon himself is expected to be at the end of this adventure path, and that Neh-thalggu will not be the only thing that can pass back and forth through the rift.
Furthermore, the Neh-thalggu's dangerous plan will be enacted radically faster than whatever the aboleth will come up with. And even if that particular Neh-thalggu is destroyed, there are others around that could continue its work. So really, the Tear needs to be destroyed or permanently captured anyway.
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Creative Director
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Destroying the tear does also prevent the brain collector from turning into a CR 26 menace, so that's certainly a good side effect of destroying it.
As for restoring Golismorga to aboleth control... that's actually not a bad outcome at all. Aboleths are immortal, and the scale on which they do things is even more alien than, say, dragons or elves. To an aboleth city, waiting for humanity to evolve into something less dangerous is a distinct option. In other words, by the time the aboleths of a newly flooded Golismorga decide to move against the surface dwellers of the Isle of Dread, there's a good chance that every PC involved with the flooding of the city has died of old age.
Or maybe not; dealing with an aboleth incursion from below is certainly a cool idea for a campaign, and having the genesis of a campaign rise out of the actions of PCs in a previous campaign is certainly a cool idea.
Orf as the heroes scheme looks like now.. clear out everything, leave the tear for now.
Kill all aboleth they can find... or more likely store for further research and experiments.. (they should be good material for liquid pain, right? :D )
Hike out into the tunnels and seal them with tens of thousands of stonewalls.. making sure there is no water seeping in after the tear is destroyed. -> whack the tear.
Oh and constructing a "wizards tower", down there. One that essentially grants a bunch of spells at will to its maker while inside it.. and at a cost while outside.
And being both inside and outside at the same time, courtesy of the mechanics of the lich template.
..oh and definitely, definitely, going to the island from below ;)
My PCs made a deal with the aboleth trapped in the flooded temple: they return the city to the aboleth, and the aboleth of Golismorga promise not to act against the surface dwellers until each of the PCs' races dies out. After all, it'll probably only take a few hundred thousand years.
I had an Olman PC in my game, so I had her receive visions from the Tear, that the spirits inside were tired and wanted to return to their afterlife. With a solidly made wisdom check, she was able to, through the spirits, get an idea of everything that was happening in the city, from the Nel-Thaggu trying to ascend, to the Kopru army, to the presence of something truly vile inside the Ziggurat. She even felt the aboleth, still slumbering in their cocoons. Through this, she knew that the tear would be falling soon enough, but in that time, a great evil might rise (the nel-thaguu) and if they were to fail later, the kopru might be able to restore their base, even if the PCs destroyed it.
I agree, its kind of hard to get the PCs off of the linear "bust our way in" mentality, especially if they feel that stealth isn't an option due to a heavy armor character. I advise being a little more free with information, especially through the encounter with the Devourer, who can know and tell as much as you want him to, and the Tear itself, which is a blooming artifact, and can do what it wants!
Yes, destroying the Tear looks like a lesser-of-two-evils situation, which befits the tone of the adventure.
Also, I believe the adventure states that the Tear is running out of power and so it will eventually let the waters back in and the aboleths back to power.
It does say something about that in the adventure, about the Tear. As someone else suggested, an Olman PC could have visions, or even something like an Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering(or Stonecraft), or something similar could alert the PCs to this fact.