Falling at the last hurdle - Help!

[Horus]

Ok so my groups PC's got brutally slaughtered by Nualia, but not before doing a blitzkrieg on the thistletop goblins and her henchmen. Assuming that she still manages to free Malfeshnekor(sp?).

What happens next?

I'm still planning on running the next book so we're going to run a few adventures that occur at the same time as burnt offerings and lead the group to Sandpoint and into the Skinsaw murders. However I don't want to just ignore the consequences of the groups earlier failiure.

So given that she succeeds in freeing the barghest but loses all her allies what should the consequences of the parties failiure be, especially in regards to Sandpoint.

Any and all ideas welcome.

[tbug]

Spoiler:

Nualia would begin pulling in goblin allies from the bands north of the Mosswood. Maybe they're gathering, and maybe they have "goblin heroes" all their own (similar to the five Shalelu described as living in the Hinterlands).

Are you going to throw in an Aldern encounter to restart that plotline, or keep him obsessing over a now-dead character? If the latter, will he retrieve the corpse? Either could work, but it will depend a lot on the kind of tone you and your group prefer.

[Horus]

tbug wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

I was thinking of using a battle between the goblins and Sandpoint/new PC's to level them to 4th and also make them the new heroes of Sandpoint. I'm thinking with the loss of an entire tribe Nualia is unable to amass a force as large as she intended.

Hopefully if I'm working this out right in my head I can use heroes of battle to run a short war based adventure with the PC's finishing off Nualia and Malfeshnekor in battle.

I'm thinking of reintroducing Aldern to them in one of the build up adventures and his motivation in Skinsaw Murders will be to ruin these false heroes who have replaced his idol.