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So, I may have a slight problem coming up in my campaign. Here's the situation, and the players:
Felnorn - Dwarven Wizard (Abjurer) 5 / Master Specialist 10
Laela - Human Barbarian 15
Nerali - Drow (formally Duergar, reincarnated) Ranger 15
(Yeah, I know what most will say, but Drow was a random roll. We just allow sub classes if the player is willing. She still uses a buckler axe and junk though)
Serafin - Dwarven Fighter 15 (Crossbow Specialist)
Ivan - Halfling (formerly Human) Cleric of Heironeous 15
So here's the situation. We just did the feast, and surprisingly, it went over better than I thought. Felnorn ended up sitting it out because he didn't want to hand over his spell components, so only the other four actually went in to attend the feast. Ivan pretty much simmered through most of the games, since he knew they needed to talk to Lashonna, though the female halfling sorcerer hitting on him the whole time did help to distract him a smidge. Laela won the skull contest, Serafin the bird shooting contest. Ivan participated in the cocatrice contest, but lost by 1 bird. He almost lost it when Zeech said "Once again, Hextor triumphs over Heironeous" but maintained his cool with some snide comment about Hextor preying on innocent cats.
The feast went somewhat smoothly. No one upped the Fool on his performs, nor succeeded on hiding their laughter when the head of Zeech rolled into Ivan's lap. Ivan's drinks, as well as Norny's (for being rude and not attending) were poisoned, and the rest were left relatively alone. Felnorn's drinks (he was brought a bit of each meal as they were had, as 'hospitality') were untouched, and Ivan had one of his. As they left, after getting a quick word in with Lashonna, Laela saw Norny's unhad drinks and drunk every one. Needless to say, she had very bad indigestion. She and Ivan both made their Fort saves though, so no death from poison. Laela got paranoid from the high amount of pain she still felt though, and decided to stay up the night. Ivan went back to sleep. Mistake, because Zeech had an assassination planned (I mean come on, priest of Heironeous in full regala? Ivan expected this the last week or so and had been sleeping elsewhere half the time, but he slept in town that night). Four erinyes port in, get up to adjacent his bed (pass their Move Silently checks) and let loose one shot each. He dies on the third coup-de-grace.
The party finds him in the morning and gets him to Magepoint for a Reincarnate (Ivan's player wanted to be human again). Amusingly enough, Halfling was rolled.
Still, him and Felnorn are both upset, and are now talking about taking on the Eyrie, getting rid of the source of the pests. Therein lies my problem. I'm not sure how many erinyes should be there, what levels, what other challenges/securities are in place, what kind of wards Zeech's palace has up, pretty much anything relevant to them going to war with Alhaster. I know that this pretty much happens anyways down the line in the final module and they can get control of the city, but they seem to want to take them on now. I'm hoping they will at least go to Lashonna first, and she can maybe lead them astray by overstating the odds of the city and playing up the need to go get Dragotha's phylatctery. Still, the meeting with her is in a couple of days.
Are there more stats/numbers/etc. for the city's defenses in one of the other modules? I've only read as far as the Library of Last Resort, so if they are all listed in the final one, I can just go from that.
Thanks!
No write-up of the Aerie exists in any of the modules. Besides having to make up your own side-quest here, sounds like this has the potential to get way off the published railroad tracks. Which is fine, if you don't mind, but if you want to minimize work for yourself you'll have to figure out how to get it back on the track.
I guess I'd try to use both in-game and out of game reasoning to keep it on track--your Hieronean cleric should be self-disciplined enough not to pursue a private vendetta (albeit with his god's worst enemies) when he's got the Age of Worms to worry about. I'd dangle an immediate opportunity to see Lashonna in front of their noses, along with some clear hints that going to the Library of Last Resort is the way forward in their quest to find out about the Age of Worms.
The Aerie will still be there when the party gets back to Alhaster, if that's what they want--you can even stat it up and include it somehow in the last adventure, either as an opportunity for reluctant cooperation in the face of greater evil or as an additional hazard that the PCs have to deal with during their fight against Kyuss's minions. Alternatively, you could include the Aerie somehow in the epilogue to the fight with Kyuss.
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The difficulty with the cleric is he is an NG cleric, and so a lot less disciplined than an LG one might be. I could see him wanting to make it personal and go for it before the group needs to meet with Lashonna, but I am going to do my best to see if I can get them to meet with her first. If I can do that, the quest for the Library should get them on track and out of Alhaster. It's just a pit of temptation right now.
Designed to be that way, I think. You should try to reward players for staying on track with the quest, since by this time they have some idea what the quest is all about.
You can always use dreams and visions--gods are, after all, wont to send them to their favored agents, and a 15th level cleric is likely to be a favored agent. It doesn't have to be the god speaking in the guy's dream, but maybe something like a "preview" of the dream combat that happens after the players drink from the fountain in LOLR. The PC sees his friends fighting off an undead army, minus himself. He <i>knows</i> that the reason he's not there is that he got himself killed fighting the Blessed Angels (either he just knows it the way you know stuff in dreams, or you can preface with a vision of his corpse hanging on the island where they crucify criminals in the mouth of the Eel River). His friends go down under the onslaught, one by one. . . . Kyuss in all his glory walks on to the battlefield to kiss the last one and turn him into a wormy zombie.
For my group at least, cleaning out Alhaster did not look like a digression from fighting Kyuss. That pyramid is clearly part of a plan to get Kyuss back, and (if they figure out who she is) Lashonna is Kyuss' most powerful, active and dangerous minion. So--strike now, while there's still time! As far as I can tell this logic is correct, except for the little problem that Lashonna is too powerful for them. But the module wants them to go after Dragotha, who is *more* powerful....
My player and I talked this over, and I decided I couldn't do the prep work to run the attack on Alhaster. That was the beginning of the end for my AoW campaign, though, because it sucked so much of the energy out of the game--we forced the PCs too far from what they wanted to do, and neither of us ended up believing much in them anymore. (It didn't help that Tilagos never clicked for me at all.)
I don't have a good solution. I just want to point out that Alhaster may be "obviously a red herring" to the GM, but it may look quite different to the players, especially if they notice the pyramid.
Our analysis was that the PCs could beat the Blessed Angels if they took the initiative and had a good plan. Not Lashonna, though. But if you let them know how powerful Lashonna is, are they going to be willing to go off hunting Dragotha? Or are they going to become fixated on getting rid of Lashonna? (Indeed, the endgame suggests that that would have been a better strategy. I *hate* railroading the PCs to do the wrong thing.)
Mary
Yes, this can be an issue, depending on how strong-willed your players are vs how much they pick up on the DM's clues as to what the best course of action is and what's best left alone / for later...
Part of the issue here, which is too late to be solved now, is that by trying to assassinate your PC, you have given him great motivation to pursue that thread (revenge). I see some ideas for solutions here:
You let the PC's attack the fortress of the blessed angels - this adventure and the final adventure combined tell you what's there (something like a dozen regular angels, plus four more powerful ones whose stats are in the final adventure). If your PC's can take out over a dozen angels and their vorpal swords, all power to them - if they can't, hope they see a TPK coming before it happens and they get out alive.
Don't forget that Lashonna is the play-maker in this adventure (and beyond) - she is powerful, and she needs to get the PC's off to defeat Dragotha. No matter what your PC's think they need to do, Lashonna is going to try and deflect them away from Alhaster. So she might let them take on the angels, or she might even intervene earlier. The timing can vary according to what you think makes the most sense, or even ad-lib - heck, she could intervene mid-way through a fight with all the angels if you like. But she's not going to sit around and let the PC's kill all the angels, and she's not going to kill all the PC's yet either - she wants to use the PC's for her own purposes, so if you keep that in mind you'll find various ways to turn things around and get the PC's back on track...
In my own game, I changed the Lashonna piece a bit (it's in the archives by now probably, do a search of my posts) - from memory, I make it look like her servant had just recently escaped and taken off for the Island, so the PC's went all-out to try and intercept him as soon as possible, hence any designs they had on Alhaster were left for later...