So I've started GMing War for the Crown a while ago (online, via Roll20), we just finished the Book 1 Wyssilka fight today, and are gonna handle the finale of the book tomorrow before a break while I set up Book 2. The adventure has been quite... shall we say, unique, and I've been advised to share the results here!
Foreword: I tend to be a reasonably lenient GM, and try to help encourage creative solutions. This has resulted in very unusual circumstances, but people love having me as a GM, so it works out!
-LG Human Male Paladin (Shining Knight) of Iomedae
-TN Human Male Occultist (Silksworn)
-NG Kitsune Female Swashbuckler (who's in human form most the time)
-NE Human Male Cleric of Norgorber (who's telling both the other PCs and players he actually follows Cayden)
Certainly that last one gave me some pause, but as the player is my best friend, I will trust in her decisions. I'm aware of the Norgorber involvement in the AP, especially where it comes to later books, but I've studied the details, and, ultimately, I found the idea workable. It helps that the character is from Vyre, which has some very... unique cultural takes on being a Norgorber cultist that do not particularly mesh all that well with the Norgorber caste in Taldor.
Right off the bat, the group really liked Martella. I helped set things up with a sort of pre-session (at the tailor shop they were getting clothes from) to set things up, and that segueing into the actual meeting with Martella the next morning worked quite well, and rapidly established Martella as being both clever and resourceful.
The way the party were able to adapt to waiting in line before the gala felt so appropriate. The Swashbuckler even thought it would be interesting to actively go buy the knickknacks available at the store, and spent the money to get these trinkets in her inventory. They picked up pretty quickly that Kathann's singling out probably meant she was helping them and was one of Martella's allies.
The gala itself proceeded rather smoothly. The Paladin quickly finished his Politicking mission, and proceeded to hobnob with anybody that looked reasonably just and heroic (developing a special fondness for Remilliard Kastner, who was one of the bonus senators I added into the event), while the Occultist made a beeline for the Archives to talk to literally every intellectual there, as well as Abrielle for completing his Discovery mission.
The Cleric focused on getting his Sabotage mission done quickly, then attempted, with repeated and often hilarious failure to influence the Gallery. He also made very quick success in befriending both Kalbio and Wyssilka during the event, which turns out to be quite fitting. (And his player was the only one to notice the correlation between Wyssilka being a halfling and having raccoon facepaint... that was quite the foreshadowing!)
The Swashbuckler wanted to talk to a lot of random NPCs after she was done doing her Spy mission on Pythareus, and that included Pythareus himself. She didn't have any skills that worked well for that... but what she did have was Bluff. A whole lot of Bluff. So she literally faked her way into influencing him, despite the high DC I set for it.
When Malphene showed up and Martella asked the group to keep an eye on her, half the party decided not to and just spend that social round socializing instead of stalking her. So only the Paladin and Cleric ended up showing up to stop her, failed to either Diplomacy or Intimidate her, and ended up having to fight an extremely lopsided battle that actually proved to be rather dangerous for them.
And then Stavian's announcement, which caught the entire group by shock. This scene went over very well with them, and Stavian's default script proved incredibly effective at communicating his general slightly-off-ness. Then the party were caught trying to fight the assassins, and then things went dark.
So remember that part about three humans and one kitsune? Yeah, nobody has darkvision. And nobody brought torches, candles, or any of that. They fumbled in the dark until they found the candles, and then were able to use a flint and steel to light it and gain at least some light.
It is at this point that it came to light that the Cleric has claustrophobia. Being trapped in an enclosed space didn't sit well with him at all, so he ignored every room, quickly taking the candle into the next one in a desperate attempt to find some sort of way out until it dawned on him that he was actually stuck. The party worked together quite effectively to solve the puzzle, and the players absolutely loved the escape room style challenge. And with that handled, they were able to get into the main sublevels.
Despite the issue with Malphene before, the party was immediately sympathetic to her loss, and worked hard on befriending her. Jowuan, they were less happy about having to pay for, and ultimately never bought any spellcasting from him. As for Imistos, everybody more or less ignored him, except for the Cleric who thought he looked suspicious but was clearly trying to avoid attention, so more-or-less left him alone. The other nobles to rescue were mostly considered accessories, and I didn't force too much involvement with them.
After easily defeating the phantom armors, the Occultist used Item Reading on Dignity's Barb (psychometry is an amazing thing, since this basically let him peer directly into the Taldan zeitgeist) and immediately decided he wanted to use it. The rest of the path out of the museum was uneventful, as the path they took was one without traps (other than the wig ooze, which was spotted quickly and done away with). They definitely found all the circles appearing everywhere ominous, and once the Occultist found Glendower's autobiography in the library, conspiracy theories began to circulate (with the prevailing one that Glendower became a ghost).
The Occultist also did not particularly appreciate Viecar, due to being a devout follower of Aroden. (He insists Aroden isn't actually dead and will return.) He did, however, appreciate the gishvits. After deciding to befriend them by voluntarily sharing information with them, he immediately started considering what it would take to get one as a familiar.
Nobody expected Dagio (though they expected enough rats to buy out Mimips's stock of alchemist's fire, despite no common language), and, while surprised, ultimately decided to leave him unconscious but not bleeding so that he can recover. Due to his fascination with Glendower's intellect, the Occultist felt sympathy with the rat and later decided to seek out ways to negotiate with him.
Similarly, while people were suspicious of the halflings afterward, the Cleric didn't realize the sheer ramifications of his positioning until Imistos rolled higher than him in initiative... and was 10 feet away. What followed was quite the amazing roll of dice where, in view of everybody, Imistos got a nat 20 attack roll, followed by a nat 20 confirm, followed by max weapon damage and max sneak attack damage, which knocked the Cleric from full health down to a sliver. Luckily the earlier persuading with Malphene led her to lend her blade in support, and she was able to distract (and kill, with very lucky rolls) Imistos while he limped off to try to not die.
After taking another rest break, the group went off to go find Martella, though the Cleric already knew the hint on who captured her.
Stealth, alongside the Occultist having successfully influenced Gloriana earlier to get the Pathfinder Support, enabled the group to take out the entrance guards stealthily. One of them was taken out before his turn, and by the time it was the other's turn, they were already at their flee point in Morale so they didn't even bother triggering the alarm.
Efarni was another story. Nobody trusted him, and by the time he got a good chance, he decided his best bet was to dump a stink bomb on the group, run to the northern door, and open it and shout the alarm directly at the entire warehouse.
The battle of the warehouse proved to be quite complicated indeed, not only because multiple party members got nauseated by the stink bomb and were stuck dealing with half a dozen rogues as well as Efarni and Mr. Smiles, but because half of them were practicing nonlethal tactics, as the Cleric felt like he shouldn't be killing followers of Norgorber and the Paladin simply didn't like killing, which added a surprising amount of penalty to everybody's attack rolls. Up until the Occultist imbued the Paladin's weapon (Malphene's +1 Rapier reward) with Human-Bane, which was suddenly meaning it was dealing so much nonlethal damage it was looping around and very nearly killing them with lethal damage instantly.
Battered by the battle but unwilling to take a rest, the group continued into the safe house, where the paladin ran ahead, got a javelin trap in his arm, and decided to be more cautious from then on. The cultists up near the sleeping quarters proved to be quite the challenge, especially owing to Commands to flee and tricky total defense into sudden shift tactics. They fell too, but took so much damage that they died before they could be healed, which pained both the Cleric and Paladin. (To add further insult to injury, the round the Occultist finished using Spellcraft to speed-ID their potions as healing was the round the last one died.)
The party met the fantionette, but nobody took her bait. Everybody just assumed she was a child, due to their prior attempts to nonlethal the rogues above, and nobody got close enough to warrant the Will saves for the aura (or get sneak-attacked by her), nor rolled high enough to beat the fantionette's Bluff, so they just told her to stay there since they were at a loss of where else to take her and went back around.
They also decided to handle the halfling guard outside Wyssilka's room in an interesting way, since, rather than immediately leap into combat, they decided they'd rather not actually bother with that, and instead started trying to buy the Gixx-follower's loyalty. Being easily won over by the opportunity for free gold (and the promise that they'll try to keep his boss alive), the halfling left them alone for the final room, and after spotting and disabling the final trap, they went in to deal with Wyssilka.
They also greatly enjoyed Wyssilka as a character. In general, being able to so enthusiastically talk about what was going on while still being clearly unrepentantly evil made Wyssilka affable in a strange way to them, and when combat finally broke out, they fought hard against the dangerous sneak-attack-prone cultists, even despite getting Outflank.
Things were going pretty well, with the Swashbuckler dealing a lot of damage (and resisting Wyssilka's Hold Person), but in one single round, Wyssilka both KOed the Swashbuckler and had her Spiritual Weapon KO the Cleric (who she didn't recognize as the guy who influenced her, due to a high Disguise result and Oath of Anonymity)
The Paladin fell afterward, and the Occultist tried to forcefeed a potion to the dying Swashbuckler, prompting Wyssilka to just kill the still-unconscious character before going to try to kill the Occultist, who at that point was convinced to escape via a stolen gaseous form potion and barely survived the negative energy Fervor before escaping.
With one PC left dead and two more unconscious and at Wyssilka's mercy, this would seem to be the end of the campaign. But with the Occultist leaving to try to get help, I ruled that the Pathfinder agents were able to storm the place and force a retreat from Wyssilka, rescuing both Martella and the other three party members (who, at that point, would require just as much recuperation as Martella herself), so people could keep playing. Though with the fact that they didn't get the experience for Wyssilka, they didn't get the massive 2000 gold payoff, and they didn't qualify for the first triumph for their relics, they'll have a little bit of catching up to do during the between-book downtime.
And Wyssilka herself is on the loose, and since every single Silent Blade member either fled or was nonlethaled, they'll be returning to cause the party some more mischief later.