So, I just finished up the first session of Haunting of Harrowstone and it's all going pretty well. I thought I'd keep notes on what's happened and share it for other people's reference. I had six players and decided to start them at level 2.
Maalvi - Male Elvish Necromancer 2
A student of Professor Lorrimar at Leipstadt university.
Elizabeth - Female Elvish Alchemist 2
Another student of Professor Lorrimar at Leipstadt university.
Rusty - Male Dwarf Rogue 2
A thief in Caliphas who stole a cursed Ossirion artifact from a shipment to Leipstadt university. Met Professor Lorrimar when he rode down to Caliphas to track down the artifact and helped break the curse before a ghost killed his entire thieving crew.
Sorisha - Female Aasimar Cleric of Abadar 2
A cleric of noble birth from Leipstadt whose family bore angelic blood. Performed community service as a town guard during their trials as a novice and was assigned to the university where she befriended the professor.
Gage - Male Human Druid 2
A young man who lived in the wilds with his grandfather. His grandfather was good friends with Professor Lorrimar but died six months before the professor. Gage received his grandfather's invitation to the funeral and went in his stead.
Frederic - Male Olead Fighter 2
A bodyguard for hire who accompanied Professor Lorrimar on an expedition helping to keep him safe.
I made a fair few changes to the adventure.
Firstly, I disliked the professor's thirty day "stay in Ravengro" request. I removed this from the will and instead decreased Kendra's age to 15 and gave her a 12 year old brother named Len. Then I had the will declare the PCs the children's legal guardians. This meant that the players themselves decided to stay in Ravengro and help prepare the Lorrimar family assets for sale to fund the children living in Leipstadt and attending the university themselves.
Secondly, I changed the murder site to a small workshop that the professor maintained outside of town. Vrood murdered him there in order to steal his notes on Harrowstone and an experimental "ghost chamber", a full sized version of the haunt syphon that could capture a ghost. This was what the Whispering Way used to capture warden Hawkran's ghost.
Thirdly, I had Vrood borrow the prisoner transport cart from Harrowstone furnishing it with two horses conjured using the mount spell and use this to transport the massive ghost chamber from Lorrimar's workshop to Harrowstone.
Fourthly, I changed the false crypt so that instead of it being a lost Pharasme cache it was where the professor hid some of his own materials. Instead of Kendra just giving the PCs the chest full of books, he'd hidden them in the false crypt. I also removed the journal and have been having the PCs figure a few more things out for themselves. I thought the journal made everything a bit too obvious.
Finally, I had Adrissant present at the funeral as a musician playing a dirge on the violin. Like many people suggested, I went with the friendship/rivalry aspect of a Xavier and Magneto type relationship. Adrissant wanted to attend the funeral, but didn't feel any need to speak up or make any grand gestures.
These changes all worked quite well. The PCs arrived in town and attended the funeral. Despite Rusty the dwarf rogue losing his temper a bit with the angry mob, the rest of the party talked the situation down and resolved it peacefully. They noticed the musician and even made a few jokes about him having to be a high level bard to keep playing while they went through massive long-winded speeches about how they knew the professor. However my normally quite paranoid group never suspected anything out of the ordinary about him.
After the will reading, they questioned Kendra on the events leading up to the professor's death and she revealed the existence of the hidden cache to the group. They went and got them straight away. The player who was running Sorisha the cleric had to leave early so at this point volunteered to protect the children while the others handled the investigation neatly keeping her out of the adventure while the player was gone.
Everyone went and looked at the murder site, gathering evidence but they weren't able to find much. I gave them some exceedingly difficult tracking rolls (I assigned -20 to the survival check for 2 months since his death) which they didn't succeed. Overall they gathered a bit more information about the situation, but nothing that gave them much more of an idea about what had happened. The druid discovered a few animals that lived near the site however. He didn't have speak with animals prepared for the day, but planned on coming back with the right spells.
The PCs spent the rest of the day helping the Lorrimar children. Rusty and Maalvi, having the most mercantile experiences was helping them to figure out their father's accounting information. Frederic meanwhile started teaching Len how to fence. Decreasing the age of Lorrimar's children really helped the PCs grow attached to them and feel a bit more responsible for looking after them.
The PCs went to bed but were woken in the middle of the night by a woman's scream. Gage ran out first using a longstrider spell to increase his speed, while the others delayed for a while preparing themselves for combat with armour/spells/etc. They arrived on scene to discover the town constable Benjin talking to a young couple by the monument. The couple were in a lover's lane situation and had fallen asleep, not waking up when Gibs drew the bloody letter V. The woman had screamed when she woke up with the blood dripping onto her face seeing the letter just above her.
After discovering what had happened, Gage went off tracking the trail gibs had left but lost the trail in the midst of the night. I let him try a few more times with increasing penalties, but eventually after a succession of bad rolls, the player decided that his character had grown tired and fallen asleep while trying to track. He tried one more time in the morning, when the better light removed some penalties but the dice gods frowned upon him once more.
Meanwhile Elizabeth crafted an alchemical test to determine what species the blood had come from, being relieved to discover it was merely pig's blood. The PCs went back to the Lorrimar house and all went to sleep.
In the morning Gage woke up and prepared a speak with animals spell, questioning a fox that he found near the professor's workshop. The fox described Vrood's bone armour "He was wearing carrion, I don't know why. The bones were old and dry, not even any marrow in them by the smell". The druid tried to get more information from the fox, but unfortunately the fox didn't really pay attention to a lot of the things that the PCs wanted to know about. Asking around town though, the druid found out the Sokkar had heard a couple of townsfolk gossiping about seeing "The Grim Reaper drive past on the old prison wagon the night the professor died".
The PCs decided to go the Harrowstone and investigate...