
KutuluKultist |
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In my campaign, the party let Yarzoth escape and she killed and impersonated one of the shipwrecked npcs and hitched a ride back to Eleder. Once there, she stole many relevant parts of her notes and disappeared. The characters are not aware that this has happened.
From here on, I want to replace most race to ruin with a "research race" in Eleder.
Durin the research, the PCs will have to consult with various scholars and authorities, meaning that information is going to leak out. Other factions begin to try and court them or steal their notes and, in one case, try to abduct their resident scholar.
In the end, it will become clear where Saventh Yi lies and the PCs will outfit their expedition. Tazion will be a stop on the way to Saventh Yi and the whole Pillars of Light stuff will not be necessary to find the City of Seven Spears, but merely serve to give and advantage to whoever gets the whole thing to work first.
As a side note, Racing to Ruin is written in such a way as to suggest that the PCs are the first ones to the Pillars of Light and due to the nature of the whole thing, it seems highly unlikely that anyone but the first party there will ever get to us it. The crystals are easily stolen, dumped in a river or just destroyed. Not to mention the rest of the assemblage. So it seems to me that this part alone is sufficient to make the whole exploration competition of CoSS impossible.
Anyway, the way to Saventh Yi will of course feature natives friendly and unfriendly, great beasts and tiny poisonous buggers.
Once in Saventh Yi, I will drop Eando Kline and his team. Since discovery is the main theme of the whole damn AP, putting in a Pathfinder, who actually was there before and already figured everything out that was there to find out, leaving the PCs to carry out his quest and little more seems like the worst piece of adventure writing I've seen in quite some time.
Hence, a rival agent will stumble into the vaults of madness, pointing the PCs towards the underground without actually giving them the truth of what is conspiring beneath them.
In Saventh Yi, they will also encounter Yarzoth as first climatic encounter and from her, the will learn something about what lurks below and that there are further Serpentfolk hidden among the expeditions that they have already found a way below early on during the exploration of Saventh Yi.
And indeed, if the PCs talk to the factions they are at least of talking terms with, it turns out that several of their members had disappeared during the first couple of days in the city.
On their way below, there are ample opportunities (the morlocks, the urfedhan, serpentfolk, and writings on walls) to help the PCs figure out what the serpent folk are after.
Do you think that this would work?

Nullpunkt |

Interesting stuff you are planning to do!
But just FYI, there are plenty of possibilities for late-comers to find the way to Saventh-Yhi. After all, a huge excavation trek shouldn't be hard to track. It really is only a matter of who comes first and gets how much of a head start.
The thing with Eando and his expedition is that they never actually were in Saventh-Yhi. They went into the Darklands some way north (IIRC) and made their way underground towards Ilmurea.
So the PCs are still the first people to reach the city and live to tell the tale (hopefully).
But nevetheless I would love to hear how things work out for you with these additions and changes!