Can you summarize ch1?

[Someonelse]

HI
So I'm planning to run Age of Worms. I have tried several times in the past but the game always fizzles out after a few sessions. I have also played it a couple times, but never past the first chapter. Everyone in the group has been present for at least one of these attempts to play AoW. I think it's a great module, but we just need to get past the first chapter. But I don't want to just pick up at chapter 2 either.
So I was wondering if anyone could summarize ch1 for me in such a way that I could run it, maybe as a one session dungeon crawl, skip almost everything and just include the most vital components. For example, do I really need to keep the ghost? It's an interesting encounter, but everyone in this group knows how it turns out. What else can be cut and what can be kept. I mostly ask because while I'm very familiar with the first chapter I've read 2 & 3 once or twice and skimmed the rest, if something is important or if there is some significant forshadowing I don't want to cut that out, I just want to get past the stuff everyone is familiar with and get on to the ch2 and beyond.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[Jam Falcon]

The ghost does have some minor significance later, and the lore of the cairn comes up again in A Gathering of Wind, but really you could just run the investigation of Filge as an introduction, since that's the most important part of the book. The rest of the stuff in the Whispering Cairn is just a red herring, for the most part. Maybe you could have it start with the party having already reached the ghost and cleared out the rest of the cairn, so they just play out that end section.

[Callum]

I think the background stuff relating to the Wind Dukes is really important - it's certainly been a major feature driving the story forwards in the Age of Worms campaign that I'm running. So I'd suggest having most of the Whispering Cairn be already explored by others, with your group coming in at the point where they need to get through the face trap, then meet the ghost of Alastor Land and claim the legacy of the Wind Dukes.

Other people seem to have had a lot of fun with the NPCs in Diamond Lake, but as they don't really come back later in the campaign, you can safely miss out most of those interactions if you want to.

[wordelo]

one time I was playing a game in the epic levels it was really long and boring but had a good story tied to it me and the players weren't really feeling the "playing the game" part of it, they were anxious to start the next game but since the stories tied together I had to see this game to its end. so I decided to speed things up and simply tell them the story, and they would just automatically win in all fights I would tell them the monster tactics and how they would most likely overcome them. like one monster had an 80 BAB with 30 heads (30 bite attacks) a 40' reach and did about 150 damage per hit and they would pretty much always hit. I told them tactics were to hit and run never let the creature get a full attack. a 1-2 hour fight was reduced to about 5 mins of explanation. while I did this at the end of a campaign I see no reason why it can't be done at the beginning of a game.

[Callum]

You can find a summary of The Whispering Cairn (and every other instalment), along with plenty of other good stuff, in the Age of Worms Overload.