I ran into an odd... hiccup in today's Runelords game. The group got fixated with not just turning off the minor Runewell... but making sure it wouldn't ever be restored. Yes, they want to permanently destroy the Runewell. The thing is, the minor Runewell is is essence a minor artifact, along the lines of a Staff of the Archmage or a Deck of Many Things. So... how do you learn how to destroy something like this?
While I ended up letting them pay a high-level bard to cast Legend Lore to determine how best to destroy it (the group is currently convincing Sandpoint to raise taxes in order to purchase enough holy water to use in the final destruction of the Runewell) I must admit being ambivalent about it because it IS a minor artifact. The primary reason I went ahead with it was I wanted the game to move forward and they'd ended up spending an hour roleplaying on this one aspect. (Which, mind you, I loved to pieces! But I still wanted to go into the next storyline without just shanghaiing them into the walking dead.)
So I'm curious what other people would have done in this situation.
As an amusing addendum to this... I calculated what would be required to permanently destroy the minor Runewell.
Looking into the Runewell, I realize that in order to fill it, we're talking a little under 100,000 gold JUST IN HOLY WATER to fill it.
Considering holy water costs 25 gold per pint? And we're talking about a well that's three feet deep and with each wall at around 7 feet? We're talking 3,900 flasks of holy water.
The town council is going to look into collapsing the wall on top of the well. Neither the town nor the party have the money to afford that much holy water! ^^;;
I tackled it a little different.
To figure out how to destroy it, they turned to Brodert in town (Who they have good relations with), and he figured out how to do it. However, It took him two to three days to figure this out, via a trip to Magnimar and visiting his old buddies in the archives there to do so. Magically, these two to three days was about the length of the time it took the party to tackle Thistletop. =)
For the holy water, I created a level 3 spell called Mass Bless Water. All it was is Bless Water, just can do gallons of water instead one flask. They bought a scroll of it, and then the cleric filled the Runewell with create water, and cast the scroll on it. I found this to be simpler solution.
Be careful -- the runewell is supposed to be functional to start Book 5, otherwise you're going to have to do a bit of a song-and-dance as to why what happens in Sandpoint happens. That's kind of why it's so immensely hard for low-level characters to destroy...
That's interesting. It makes some sense too... as my PCs have already established connections with the Pathfinder Society, but none of the Pathfinders were wizards or bards powerful enough to use Legend Lore, so I figured the PCs would have to pay out-of-pocket to find a solution. But I'd not thought of using Brodert for this.
Though the party mostly decided on destroying the well after Ripnugget (who was allowed to live (unconscious) by the merciful members of the party) (yeah, they're building up Virtue points. Go figure.) raided Sandpoint to free Nualia, Tsuto and Lyrie, all of whom were taken prisoner. (Ripnugget died in the assault by Sheriff Hemlock's blade. Critical hit taking off Ripnugget's head.)
So while one of the players was coming up with plans to "weaponize" the Runewell water to summon Sinspawn into the midst of an enemy, I had the NPC point out "Nualia's still alive and she knows how to use the well." That decided things, which is why they chose "destroy."
I also realized there was a small problem in allowing the PCs to destroy the Runewell. Much later in the AP, when the Big K dominates his giant servant, it causes a "flare" for the minor Runewells (as NobodysHome wrote while I was typing this up). This is what causes the sinkhole. But a permanently-destroyed Runewell shouldn't be affected by this. That's the whole point of permanently destroying it. ^^;; (Now, admittedly, this can be handwaved away easily enough.)
Seeing the party is choosing to let the town raise taxes to destroy the well, I figured "covering the well" works too. Especially as one of the PCs was advocating just that (he was overruled as a fuel-air bomb created via lamp oil in the underground chambers could have caused subsidence and the party didn't want to get blamed for any sinkholes).
Better yet, the Scarnettis are involved in the decision to just cover the well. Considering one of the players is a bastard scion of the Scarnettis and not exactly well-liked by them, I figure this also allows for some "fun" later on - both when Sandpoint is attacked by giants (seeing that the Scarnetti player is a transmuter interested in crafting "Boots of Flying" for everyone, mobility won't be a big problem) and later when the Scribbler appears.
(BTW, the group is getting paranoid. Their research suggests only a Runelord could reactivate the well. So they know there's SOMETHING out there. They haven't figured out what yet, however.)