I agreed with some criticism elsewhere on these boards that the introduction to TFoE just doesn't work. It's too convenient that Allustan shows up and directs the players. So instead, I have Smenk send the players into the mine after threatening to have them arrested for what amounts to breaking and entering and assault (at the Old Observatory).
So now I'm thinking of how I'm going to introduce Allustan. I'd like some suggestions.
Here's what I'm thinking:
After the players clear out the cults they have to come to the town's aid when the spawn attacks. (And if the players take awhile to get back to the cathedral after clearing the last cult, maybe they find a bunch of watery footprints leading from the well to the elevator shaft, foreshadowing that the spawn has escaped?.....I just had that thought so I'll have to think that one through.)
Anyway...
They fight the spawn in town and attract the attention of Allustan so it seems more natural when he asks them for help in the next chapter.
OR, maybe Allustan helps defeat the spawn (or spawns, since i may need to beef up the encounter...the PCs are level 5 currently). Maybe Allustan gets wounded in the encounter and isn't in tip top shape so he needs an escort in the next chapter?
I dunno...just throwing this all out there for some comments/suggestions.
Thanks everyone!
Did the characters uncover artifacts in the Whispering Cairn that they want to learn more about? If so, they should be seeking him out for sage advice, and you can introduce him that way. That was how I did it in my campaign. I would also point out that he's not really that important to the next chapter, although it is important the PCs get to know him. In my campaign I had the garrison ask the characters to go to Blackwall keep to help deal with hostile lizard men and sightings of worm zombies (it helped that one of my PCs had ties to the garrison as a scout).
I didn't like that the first four adventures seemed like they were all based on Allustan telling the characters where they should go and what they should do. I spent a lot of time reworking my campaign, so that there were other hooks to the adventures- especially TfoE and HoHR.
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Not every wizard is an adventurer. I simply made Allustan a wizard sage, scholar, non-adventurer. His spells are generally suited to knowledge, divination. Enough to wow 1st level characters but not enough that he can solo adventures. Although I replaced Blackwall Keep, Allustan can easily require an escort because fighting monsters just isn't what he does. He could, but not very well.
While it requires pretty specific actions from your players, here's what I did to get them to Blackwall Keep: they really latched onto Filge, and ended up taking him with them through the entirety of TFoE. I decided not to have him betray them like the adventure says, since it made little sense and we all liked the character, and I was playing him as genuinely interested in the Kyuss worms.
After they finished that adventure and took a rest, I had Filge come to them with a letter from Mazerna, who I had decided would be his sister. She wasn't captured in my game (though several soldiers, including the commander where) and had heard of the lizardfolk having problems with those same worms.
That let me keep Filge around for one more adventure, and since he was a level behind the PCs at that point, he didn't turn the tide of the siege in any major way. In all of this, Allustan was a pretty minor character, someone to identify magic items and give information about the Wind Dukes. That said, I ended up skipping AGoW for unrelated reasons, so having Allustan be important to the party was less of a priority.