I think you've moved away from the intended character, just insofar as the first thing Harrigan says to them is basically "Don't talk to me." He's written as basically an unapproachable god on the Wormwood. I don't know if it's a mistake per se. It might be possible to have him go off on them to get the NPC back on track. Possibly if they approach him to go above Plugg's head, he could bristle at them ignoring the chain of command and really make them suffer for it. Something along the lines of "If you think we're friends, you've got another think coming, you dogs!" That might restablish him closer to the AP.
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methinks : you are
you seem to have gone far too easy on that android player,attempting murder ( i am not even consideing what would have happened in a IRL navy if someone attempted it ) and never really established where the cruelty aboard comes from.
And playing Scourge and Plugg as some sort of comical buffoons ? this is not a Gilbert and Sullivan play.
your campaign... and your chance to wreck it - looks like you have some heavy housekeeping to do.
some examples (and it seems a tad late for that)... our Harrigan casually stepped on sailors hands (crushing thmem on purpose) while scraping the decks or nailed a carpenters helper to the mast when a "1" was rolled for the skilll check. he chained the dead blasted corpse of our gnome thief to the foremast when that guy blew himself up stealing.
Harrigan is the BBEG and he is hardly to be seen for three issues so you really need to rampup the hatred
hmmm, very little you can do then.
But first off- if it makes for a better story (not to cheat the players) ALWAYS FUDGE THE DICE to make for a better, more entertaining story. Yo are sitting around the table for a fun narrative, not for interpreting some dice.
Nevermind, somebody who wants a ninja android pirate aboard his campaign.... no real surprise there, that things turn out funny.
If they still have the "sharing of the loot" before them...mercilessly cheat them on that.
Or have Harrigan make some less than "welcome" advances during the follow up party
Or. Call the campaign quits and perhaps take some more thorough and planned out notes on the npc motivation for the next outing.
Harrigan in itself is not the most capably setup BBEG anyway, since he is utterly absent for most of the plot and development so some care must be taken with regard to that.
I did something similar, and I don't feel like it's going to throw the campaign off the rails. If you plan on ever playing this module, you know the drill - this next part is chock full of spoilers.
If the PCs decide they want to get on Harrigan's good side, let them be noticed. It doesn't matter in the end - the Man's Promise sails off and, even if things DID go according to Barnabas' plan, the pcs would be stranded in port peril waiting for him to come pick them up to rejoin the crew. That probably won't be happening for quite some time.
Harrigan is more fun as a tragic villain. Parents died when he was young, grew up listening to romantic stories of pirates and adventure. He was disillusioned when he discovered pirates were 'little more than lice-infested drunks who'd cut a boy's throat over a few gold pieces', got tossed in prison, lost an eye, etc etc. But the most telling bit is found in book five, when it's revealed that he's sold himself out. He's traded away the things he cared about most in the world.
"He would have been a champion pirate had his luck not ran out when Druvalia Thrune caught him. Harrigan appears confident, but while he attempts to bolster his ego with Thrune promises, ultimately he realizes he's a pawn and has been for some time. This
sense of lost destiny feeds his anger and his mania."
Have him LOSE his seat on the pirate council to the PCs during the race in part 3. Where he might have been only a good-natured adversary before that, this will be the last straw. It'll push him over the edge and he'll begin working on the Cheliax invasion immediately, planning on being the last pirate captain to ever live in the once-free Shackles.
I don't see problems with the story turning silly, after all, we got a guy based off of One Piece and a Calistrian prostite in the party, theyre bound to be less grimdark and more "yar har fiddle de dee" which I find perfectly valid.
If I run this again, I'll have more stuff happening with the captain involved
what you might do is have the players throughout the next adventures meet survivors who have been attacked by the Wormwood (and you could realy play up the tortured Caulky angle in AP#3 - no idea how your group would react to some of the more gruesome stories you could conoct around her.... Torture and scaring her to death just for the fun of it, accidentally putting out her eye witha carelessly hurled knife - even into the.... territory of her being is personal "slave"....let's not delve too deeply there.).
Or, just have maimed survivors on floats and rafts (look up the RL picture "The Raft of the Medusa", you can always find it on the net, but it is even better in the Louvre *snobmode /Off*) who have been drifting without water and supplies because they would not join his crew.
Or encounter some village he has sacked, or a harbourside wharf/Inn he has had pillaged and burned. Perhaps best one, the PCs have been too, previously....
Why not, after a few weeks/months they returrn to Rickety's and find dozens of dead, and crippled survivors, who faced Harrigan shortly ago and suffered his wrath for the locals squibbing "his prize", the Promise. Rickety nailed to his own wharf or sawmill..... workers used as rollers for transporting heavy trunks...
If you want the fear of God about Harrigan stuffed down the players throats, these indirect "encounters" might prove quite valuable ?
My brother is GMing the campaign himself now, and had a PC who nearly wrecked the ship to rescue a fellow group member, put in the sweatbox for 2 days (useless, she was a beastbourne Tiefling - and incidentally she is a callistrian hook.. ahem exotic dancer oracleˆˆ) but then proceeded to cut off her hand and made the character eat it...... raw. After that... no more mercy for Harriganˆˆ
The question is, to what degree of nastiness do your players' enjoy themselves, and where does one asa GM and playyer crossthe line into "too much horror". By your description.... it does look a bit hard to get them into a "Harrigan must DIE" mode
** spoiler omitted **...
Stealing bits of your spoiler, my groups on book 2 currently, though I'm running From Shore to Sea as an interlude.
My PCs were actually pretty okay with Harrigan when they left the Wormwood. Thought he was a decent captain who just delegated responsibility too much to Plugg and Scourge. Granted they also had a healthy fear of him as a crew member was accused of rather unpleasant actions on the ship and Harrigan pulled out a deck sweeper, shot the offender in the chest, tossed him overboard and then ordered everyone to get back to work unless they wished to join him.
I used the Cook to instill fear of Harrigan into the PCs following their mutiny on the Man's Promise. Harrigan has been using sendings to pass messages to the Cook on how he'll hunt them down for stealing his ship. Also, sayings like "you better hope the Chelish find you before I do" right after they encounter the Dominator is another good way to do it.
My players also were getting to feel that Harrigan might be an ally of thiers near the time of the taking of Man's Promise, but that was because Harrigan was "off camera" all the time, and they REALLY hated Plugg and Scourge. I think they began to idolize Harrigan as an authority figure that they could make fit whatever role they wanted since they had not dealt with him personally.
I let Fishguts put a worm in their ear, though. "Don't you be thinkin' the Capt' is a good lad. You hate Plugg and Scourge so much? Whodoya think put'em in charge? He knows what bastards they are, and he's happy with it."
Of course if Plugg and Scourge come off looking like buffoons and Harrigan shows some less evil tenencies then the OP may be looking at a very amplified version of what I was going through.
Correcting is still well within your perview. Once the crew gets to the Man's Promise, the PCs should still only be level 2 and easily bullied by Plugg and Scourge. Add Fishguts badmouthing Harrigan and you can get the PCs feeling what they need to by the time they get put off in a cutter to look for water and search for their missing allies.