Well, the party that I'm currently playing with jumped Kullen's group after closing time at the Feral Dog. I provoked the drunken crew into attacking our party... needless to say we all survived (my character barely after going toe-to-toe with a raging Kullen). We killed Kullen, one of the henchmen, knocked out the mage and the other fighter/henchmen ran away in the dark.
So, needing to interrogate the mage, we hauled him off to the Land farm, healed him up, and then dragged him trussed up to the edge of the excavated graves and thoroughly threatened him til he coughed up the information we needed.
Now the party is a human fighter (me), a human wizard, a human cleric, a halfling rogue and a new addition, a dwarven monk. The monk was all for killing him, the wizard and rogue were asleep, and the cleric (in terms of "justice" and "retribution") was all for burying him alive in a new grave. My character was semi-willing to follow along as we didn't have enough evidence to turn the mage over to the garrison, and we didn't exactly want to get involved with them at this point until we had more information... we couldn't just let him go... so kill the mage? after healing him? The DM started hinting that "torture" wasn't going to sit well with the characters...
Solution? After some discussion we decided to haul the prisoner back to the Whispering Cairn... my solution was that if we needed him out of the way, that the ghost of Alaster Land could watch over him, and when we closed off the wind trap on our way out, there would be no way for the mage to escape... especially NOT with the ghost of the son of the people's graves he helped desecrate standing guard...
My DM was quite satisfied with our "unique" solution to the problem... and my honor's still intact.
Any other "unique" solutions out there?
This solution is a great example of the players and the DM drawing something from the module, rather than treating it stictly as a blueprint to be followed. That's a great idea. I'm sure everyone had fun with that one.
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Between my party's psion using mind-stuff, and the rogue's Gather Information, they found out that Kullen's mage worked for Smenk because he was in debt. They scraped together some money and some of the treasures from the WC, and paid him for the information they wanted, allwing him to cut Kullen out of the prize altogether.
He gave them the location of Kullen's house, a description of what he had seen at Filge's observatory, and information about the Sherrif and his cronies to boot. I plan on him showing up again in the Free City once they get there, now working for the arena owner.
The price is that now Kullen and the remaining two bullies are free to cause problems for the PC's during 3FOE and later, when the party comes back from the Free City.
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My players had a different solution - but in quite similar circumstances.
They waited until after the Feral Dog closed, but then followed Kullen until Kullen's comrades separated and went off on their own.
They then jumped Kullen and beat him into the negs - healed him up to staggered and then got the info on Filge out of him.
They left him alive. As the warmage reminded the party later "See? That was our mistake. Never leave the bastards alive."
After the Whispering Cairn was ostensibly "done", Kullen and his comrades attacked the PCs newly renovated home in the abandoned mining office at night. The ensuing fight ended up killing the party's rogue, as Kullen criticalled with his greataxe.
The party killed Kullen and 2 of the remaining three henchies, leaving the mage alive. They dragged the mage into the quite disquieting basement of the mining office and interrogated him there.
Merovin Bask, (the mage) ultimately talked his way out of it - offering to go to Smenk to arrange a truce if they let him live. The PCs hid the bodies of Kullen and the other two tough guys in the VERY deep pit within the True Tomb and took off for Greyhawk to get the rogue raised.
On their return, they met with Smenk at Lazarre's. Hoping to get rid of both problems, Smenk has promised to smooth things over with Mayor Neff if the PCs deal with the cult within the Dourstone Mine and get the goods on Ragnolin.
Bask will return later in the tale.
IMC, the players confronted Kullen and his gang after they got off duty at the Feral Dog. They got the drop on the mage with an animated rope, and his pals fled from some dire intimidation. The paladin and druid followed Kullen and his gang, while the group's mage stayed behind and transported the mage upon a floating disk.
Kullen ran and broke into a nearby house in which the players followed. The paladin was able to force Kullen into submission after charging him for conspiracy, not breaking and entering, since Kullen's girlfriend vouched for him. Kullen was turned over to the garrison and later hanged after the 3FOE adventure.
The mage was totured by the CN mage, Dak. His fingers were broken beyond repair. And then he was released. So far in the champaign, two of the three remaining gang members have come back looking for revenge. Todrik ambushed the party as they were traveling by wagon to free city. His clever drive-by attack by chariot was more flash then success. This endever was financed by Smenk.
Bask, the horriably scared torture victom, dedicated his life to ending the mage's life. He trained himself as a wand mage and studied still spells. His first attempt at Dak was by incapacitating a man Dak was meeting at night in regards to some dark things and taking his place. Although gaining init., Basks devastating attack against Dak still allowed him to escape.
Bask then fell back upon his secondary plan, working with Pitch Blade and facing Dak and freinds in the arena. Although a tough fight, ultimatly, Bask's preoccupation with ending Dak's life was his doom.
My PCs didn't intend to kill anyone in the group, but they also didn't take too many precautions and accidentally killed Kullen with a crit. They let the others go after they promised not to tell Smenk about what happened (they lied). :)
My group killed them except for the ranger - he was only unconscious. I had to fudge it a bit and had him wind up jailed in the cell next to them where they found out about Filge since the whole thing was the fault of "that necromancer we had to set up in the old observatory".