A common difficulty, from what I've seen of various posts, is the trouble that inexperienced and under-equipped parties of 1st level adventurers may have with some of the unforgiving encounters in the Whispering Cairn. Clearly, one way to ameliorate this is to provide some mix of adventure beforehand -- something to give the players' new characters a chance to spread their wings and experiment with the party dynamics before being thrown into the blender.
I was considering adapting an old published adventure to the power-struggle environment of Diamond Lake. Imagine, if you will, an ancient crumbling manor up on a lakeside cliff a few miles from Diamond Lake. For nearly a century, this home has been left to the elements and mercies of scavengers, its ancestral family long since departed or died of old age. Always considered a rather sinister reminder of past indiscretions, due to a certain unsavory reputation of the family in question, the more recent years have given rise to tales of haunting. Strange sounds in the night, and a light seen from a high window whenever fog creeps across the surface of the lake, brought fears and unpleasant images to mind.
The garrison has investigated but found little of import -- years-old remnants of squatters and skells, long departed -- and a garrison soldier's fall through an unstable staircase influenced the abandonment of the garrison's official investigation. But one of the mine managers suspects something is afoot at the old manor-house, something that has to do with wagons moving in the dead of night and mysterious packages delivered to Balabar Smenk's compound at unusual hours.
This mine manager (I was considering Moonmeadow, but almost any will do as long as he or she opposes Smenk) contacts the nascent adventuring party to do some investigating and determine what's really going on. Moreover, if there are unsavory persons operating in or around the manor, and the party should happen to confront and/or remove them, well, the mine manager would be inclined to look favorably upon that...
After all, anything that might inconvenience Smenk is good in the eyes of the party's employer.
Assuming the party investigates well, they'd discover a group of smugglers operating from sea-caves beneath the manor. The smugglers work with a boat bringing unusual supplies across Diamond Lake from a supplier of Smenk's, supplies which are destined to find use in certain lairs deep beneath the city... but of course, the adventurers won't know that yet. Of course, the leader of the smugglers is a Vecna-worshipping illusionist, which may provide clues linking later events together in the PCs' minds.
The adventurers make out with a bit of loot, some minor (probably healing) magic, and a chance to work out tactics together. Ideally, either the smugglers have recently captured an explorer (a possible DMPC) who was searching for the Whispering Cairn -- which is somewhere in the hills nearby -- or killed said explorer. Either way, you have the possibility to introduce a map or hint that points towards the old records in the mining office, and thereby leads them towards the theoretical riches imagined within and a possible way out of Diamond Lake.
The adventure in question? The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.
So, how have other DMs chosen to approach this problem?
If you take a look through the archives (or if someone can provide the link) there is a "side trek" adventure written by someone here on the boards that makes use of the abandoned mine office from the first Wormfood article.
In a nutshell, there are goblins holed up in the abandoned mine office led by a goblin shaman, and the PCs have to go and dispatch them. They can get experience as well as some magic items (potions), gold, and weapons.
One of my PCs is a wizard, so we set him up as an apprentice of Allustan. Allustan called him in to his study and informed him he had scryed some goblins at the old mine office, and that one of them, a "magic user of some sort" had an obsidian necklace around his neck. Allustan wanted that necklace, so he told his apprentice to gather some friends and go get it in exchange for 50gp each.
The adventure actually indicates that the goblin shaman has an "obsidian necklace" and I decided that this necklace was made out of a piece of the "black glass shards" from the broken mirror-portal in the Whispering Cairn.
After the PCs brought back the necklace, Allustan asked them to go to the Whispering Cairn where he suspected they might find more. Voila, adventure hook.
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I ran *A Night On the Town* as a prelude adventure to get the PCs integrated into Diamond Lake. The adventure works well as everyone leveled after their first session in the Whispering Cairn. Also one of the PCs were culled from the gang (Gerzy, aka Gerzin, aka Spade) and is a 10th rogue at this point.
*Link embedded in text.
If you take a look through the archives (or if someone can provide the link) there is a "side trek" adventure written by someone here on the boards that makes use of the abandoned mine office from the first Wormfood article.
It's here:
http://paizo.com/dungeon/messageboards/ageOfWorms/archives/aoWPreludeTheMin eOfficeSideTrek