I don't get the AP plot line after Adventure #4, am I missing something? The Whispering Way is collecting items to create the Carrion Crown. One of these items is the Raven Head. The party finds the Raven Head at the end of Wake the Watcher, and yet the WW still can make the Carrion Crown without it. Ice Titan in another thread suggests the WW finds a replacement item, OK I guess that can work but its a bit flimsy.
I just can't help but thinking that I'm missing something. Really? the way this is written all these items are important to the plot of the AP, the party gets one of these items and in the end it doesn't really matter the WW just keeps going without a hiccup.
I wouldn't exactly say 'without a hiccup'. It is assumed to be a setback to the Way. However, with such a wealth of alchemical knowledge and experience (not to mention other resources) at their command they could find a replacement and fudge it. Think of it as a recipe, sometimes you have to substitute. Honestly, if I were playing in this and I found out that they folded entirely because we had the mace... I couldn't respect the WW. I have trouble respecting a plan that cannot withstand one changed variable.
When the time comes, or if your PCs ask why they went through the trouble of getting the mace at all, work to convey to them that it certainly was a fly in the pudding. Imply to them in game that the Way had to cut corners just to get the Carrion Crown to work at all -important corners.
Perhaps thanks to their meddling, the 'weaker' elixir that Adivion drinks is what even gives them a chance to defeat him that close to the Tyrant's power (not just the improper target). The idea is that this hitch in their plan is making them take more desperate and arguably foolish measures. Remember, their plan does -not- work as intended as a direct result of the PCs' intervention. You could insinuate that Adivion's horrible fate was also due to improper ingredients (i.e. lack of Raven's Head).
TL;DR - To them, it might not appear that the PCs' actions really did anything at first unless you work a little to convey just how much of a nuisance they've been.
I dug through my old posts to find this previous response on the subject, which includes a few ideas to fill in the gap, and it can be as big or as small of a problem as you wish:
I think maybe Adivion was interested in the Raven's Head not as a component for the Carrion Crown elixir, but because maybe it is an very powerful artifact that is capable of opposing the Whispering Tyrant when he returns.
This very well may be the simplest solution to implement. The references regarding raven's head in the final few books as a component of the Carrion Crown formula are actually pretty scant, so a minor change here isn't going to cause any major plot points to shift.
I think the best solution is the interpretation that the poem's mention of "chronicles of raven's tongue" simply means the Whispering Way needed to retrieve the mace and cast legend lore or some similar divination to find some vital piece of information about its history battling Tar-Baphon. They don't need the mace itself, per se, but they need information they could only retrieve from the item by handling it and subjecting it to divinations, thus collecting the "chronicles" referenced in the poem. That works, too, without disrupting the formula's creation on the PCs' acquisition of the item.
I love the "Legend Lore" take! For years my players have always wanted to cast Legend Lore on an artifact but they have never really managed to pull it off in a game yet. Having their enemies need to do it on something they (will eventually) posses is just a perfect hook for me to use on them. Consider the idea swiped, I never would have come up with that. Thank you very much!
Thanks for the props!
I can't recall if I covered that discrepancy when I was writing Shadows of Gallowspire or not. I might have addressed it in a sidebar that didn't make it to print, but the Whispering Way's need for information obtained through legend lore, rather than the mace itself, should be considered the official solution that we should have made sure made it to final. It makes the most sense, given the text of the poem.
Easy fix, right? =-)