I'm in the midst of the Tides of Dread at the moment - the arrival of the Crimson Fleet is two weeks of game time away.
The party have clued in on the fact that the only real leak about the location of Farshore outside the colony that could have fed back to the pirates is Vanthus. And with his abysmal Will save, they have managed to scry him. Rewarding ingenuity, they have also used the scrying to get a feel for where the sun is in the sky compared to them and try and find possible locations for Scuttlecove.
With the battle coming up, I strongly suspect the party will capture some pirates and question them more about the location of Scuttlecove. What i'm wondering then, is why they wouldn't seek to head there themselves. I'm trying to keep things open and not on a railroad for the players, so do other people have ideas for how to handle this eventuality should it happen? Any adventure ideas to flesh out Scuttlecove having bypassed TLD and COBI?
You could do what my DM's done and drop large hints that Scuttlecove is as bad as it gets. When PCs talk about heading there to raid it / attack it you could have NPCs tell them stories from the place. Similarly, you could give them knowledge checks to know things about its reputation. It was made pretty clear to us in an IC manner that an attack on Scuttlecove would be a bad idea. We weren't told we couldn't do it, simply that it likely wouldn't accomplish anything given the size of Scuttlecove and the powerful forces behind / inside it.
You might also play up the shadow pearl creation / kopru threat as the more immediate problem. We had a Kopru raid on the village of Mora after the Battle of Farshore, which resulted in significant devastation and in us pretty immediately setting out for revenge and to keep similar attacks from happening. If you don't want to do something that extreme you could have it mentioned in Vanthus' journal about the Trogs raising the price on the Pearls and claiming other buyers had an interest. Might drive home that the Shadow Pearl problem is larger than the Crimson Fleet.
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If your players skip straight to Scuttlecove, Tyralandi can offer them a measure of protection at first--although the price will be high, and I don't mean coins. Tyralandi will likely ask them to do certain things for her in return.
I would fill in the gaps of TLD and COBI with two adventures. The first would be an adventure against the evil monk order, can't remember the name. Perhaps the PCs try to rescue the Jade Ravens from the monks. They find the first one as a freebie to learn what happened and that the monks have the others. Initial encounters tied around rescuing the next JR from sentencing and execution. The rest of the adventure would be a dungeon crawl into the monks' fortress to rescue the rest and crush the order for good.
Second adventure would be to bust up the Kedward Bone drug cartel. This could be Tyralandi's price for her assistance. PCs could just go to Bone's tower and fight him, but that would likely fail due to his defenses there. They'd need to draw him out by disrupting his drug production operation. First encounter would be shaking down a Scuttlecove drug dealer for info on his supplier, then climbing the chain until they can locate the production facility. Of course, this causes Bone's network of thugs and assassins to start coming after the PCs. Smallish dungeon crawl at the production facility. Tyralandi suggests they clear the place then wait for Bone to investigate. If PCs do not take precautions against scrying, he just scrys the place and sends increasing waves of thugs. If they do, he makes a huge error and sends his familiar... if they capture it, Bone freaks out and comes in person, giving them a chance to take him down.
Just some ideas that sprung to mind.
Thanks for the thoughts guys!
Consider showing Vanthus on board ship the next time that they scry. Show them the whole fleet that is sailing to Farshore. My players scried the fleet, and were considering teleporting aboard, but shied away from it when they saw the vrocks and yuan-ti. And if they teleport aboard anyway, or sail towards the fleet, reward them with an exciting fight.
You could also involve Emraag. If the players spot Emraag near the ships, they probably remain at Farshore.
Or otherwise reward them with a rumor that demons will be teleporting to Farshore (and let one or two demons teleport in during the battle). Give them the idea that, if they go to Scuttlecove, they will leave Farshore undefended, and they will probably decide to defend Farshore.