So, I've unfortunately let my party of five get themselves into a pickle. Two characters have already entered the Starry Mirror. The other three, not making headway on the puzzle, started to explore the rest of Vaprak's Voice that they hadn't seen, and ran afoul of the hill giant nest. Now, two characters are dead.
The last character (the healer, of course, an oracle in this case) managed to flee the giants and is taking refuge by the Mirror. Normally, when the party has a death (as they did in Zenith Trajectory), they just drag the body back to town and resurrect him/her. Now, the party is split with no way back, but of course they don't know that. If the last party member enters the mirror, according to the story, they're on their own all the way through Occipitus (and it's a boring time for the two players who are dead).
Best case, the oracle is smart enough to heal up, race and/or sneak his way to one of the corpses and beat feet back to town. But it's at least five days round trip, and the party isn't carrying an extensive water supply. But I could fudge it just enough that he's able to get a resurrection (with its -2 level hit), and bring back water and food for the rest of the party as they're just on the brink of dehydration, and send it through with the newly rezzed player while he goes back for the last member, and delay the arrival of Nabthatoron until they are at full strength.
Thoughts on how to run this? Of course, much depends on what they *try* to do, but I'm wondering if I need to try to push them in a direction.
If they choose not to go back, I agree that the bodies will not be recoverable. I think allowing Occipitus to be a place to obtain other characters is feasable, please hear me out.
The Cagewrights likely use slaves of some sort, and there are several locations on Occipitus to allow characters to meet them, possibly adding a "slave rescue from the Cagewrights" encounter, or perhaps Alex saved them and they are reasonably equipped, but not perfectly equipped. This would allow you to foreshadow a cagewright that may or may not have been expected by the PC's, depending on how invested in the game they are. Perhaps the new PC had been following the Alex Tercival and got stuck as well, and, when Nabthatoron shows up, they jump into action to help?
The Cathedral of Feathers or other celestial wreckage might also be a good opportunity to introduce the PCs to trapped celestial beings with the power to solve some of these kind of issues.
Thanks for the suggestions, this are great ideas if they end up pressing on, and the characters can't be raised. I'm still hopeful the character still outside elects to try a rescue. I'm considering having Nidrama waiting outside near where they first met her, to allow a shortcut to getting them raised without risking the other characters running out of provisions.