My party has just started book 4 and at the end of last session they arrived at the island. I've made tweaks throughout the campaign, such as the regatta being suspended due to the revelation of the spy ring plot arc that occurs over most the proceeding book. I also truncated the alchemist shop portion of book 3 and replaced it with a slightly scaled up and tweaked Tarin's Crown. The Dominator is still looming around as a menace on the hunt for pirates and the party has a healthy respect/fear of the ship. This brings us to the actual body of the thread, how I'm tying the three Islands of Plunder modules together into my S&S campaign. I figured I would post them here so that others can glean this thread for ideas and/or give me insight on to how to tweak this more!
It should be assumed from here on out that everything else is Spoilers both for Island of Empty Eyes and the Islands of Plunder series.
One of the tweaks I made in Tarin's Crown to tie it further into the story was that Tarin was a pawn of the Chelish spy ring and the goal was to smuggle the artifact out of the Shackles into Chelish hands. The Dominator was supposed to be the ship to pick up the artifact from Tarin and his erstwhile navigator (stat block replaced with the alchemist from book 3). The crew of the Dominator is now more determined than ever to hunt down the party and I intend to give the party the chance to have a throw down with the ship at the end of the book in place of the feast, but we'll get to that in a second.
Now, my party has completed Tarin's Crown and returned to Port Peril to report their success to Tessa Fairwind, who in my campaign is acting as their patron. Given that the regatta has been indefinitely suspended until a council vote brings it back, the party is pretty pissed, given that: a) Tessa was going to pay their entry fee, so it looks like she weaseled out of a deal; and b) they were informed of this by Harrigan, who hasn't blatantly acted out against them since the Wormwood but has been hounding them through agents throughout, though the party has no definitive proof of this. Since the regatta has been canceled for the time being, their is no in game reason for the party to be given the Island of Empty Eyes as a reward for it, so I've decided that Tessa Fairwind went there to try to influence Bikendi on a Pirate Council vote. In my game Bikendi is a reclusive Pirate Lord that no one's heard from in a number of years, so there's every reason for Tessa to head there. After some sleuthing around the party has made it to the island and found Tessa's ship anchored in the main bay completely abandoned, and here's where the main tweaking begins!
Since I want the Island to have a better tie-in to the overall narrative arc of the campaign, I've expanded a bit on the "haunted" premise presented with the old Chelish fort. I've also added Beacon Island from Razor Coast as a little side adventure for the party since we use slow advancement. Now, the next session is going to begin with the party's haunted dreams, wherein they will play out a small scenario. I will have the party experience the downfall of Tessa's one true love at the hands of his first-mate and a certain sea-hag who will become more important as I continue on.
For this I'm using a scaled up version of the second half of Spices & Flesh. We'll be skipping past the slave ship part and straight to the small isle at the end, with the objective being to seize the hag's dreamstone in order to tie it back into book 4. I've scaled up the encounters and retooled the hag a bit (She's now a Divine Sea Hag Knife-Master Rogue 8). The intent is for the party to drive her off and seize the dreamstone from her for Bikendi's research and then to flash-forward through the power of dreams to her forcing the ship they're on to run into the reefs surrounding the Isle of Empty Eyes. Here the first-mate, a one Dwali Kepu, will betray the captain and rename his ship the Wormwood. See where I'm going with this?
Later once the party has reclaimed or destroyed the dreamstone from the Cyclops ruins, they'll have a visit from the good ship Dominator. The reason for the rebuild of the hag is it's going to be revealed that the captain of the ship is actually the alias Shayonna has assumed over the decade since her defeat and is using her resources to hunt down what she believes is hers. The PCs will have received reports of their various holdings and allies having been attacked by the Dominator and that's when I'll allow them to track it down to the Steam Isle and have a final throwdown with the Chelish marines and its monstrous captain, and that will set the stage for book 5!
So, if you've made it this far through my long-winded ramble, I thank you. If you have any suggestions, questions, or tweaks, I would love to hear them!
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Sounds like great fun. A pirate campaign is really an ideal spot for adventure plug-ins because they're so versatile and easy to drop in either as-is or with tweaking to fit the particular vision you have for your campaign, and that shows in how you've weaved all of those together.
I will also note that Islands of Plunder: Raid on the Emperor's Hand is coming out in early August, so you may have one more adventure to weave into your narrative plan. That is, if your PCs like plundering ships that have run aground in a dangerous spot, with a race against time to get their first and claim it for their own! Is that the Dominator on the horizon? I HATE THOSE GUYS!!!
I will also note that Islands of Plunder: Raid on the Emperor's Hand is coming out in early August, so you may have one more adventure to weave into your narrative plan. That is, if your PCs like plundering ships that have run aground in a dangerous spot, with a race against time to get their first and claim it for their own! Is that the Dominator on the horizon? I HATE THOSE GUYS!!!
Sounds like great fun! I know I want Scourge of the Steaming Isle to be the final throw down with the Dominator and its crew, but if I can have them encounter it a few more times before then I'm all for it.
So, Saturday night my gaming group finally got together again after nearly 6 weeks of not playing due to a number of unfortunate events getting in the way. The night started off with the introduction of newcomer Barclay (Ratfolk Wood-Oracle) who has been stranded on the island for a while and seen a number of the stranger elements upon the Isle of Empty Eyes but really just wants to A) get off the island safely, and B) help the couple of other survivors under his care to get better. See, in my tweaked campaign the Cyclopes are using the power of the dreamstone as a mind-control device to try to rebuild their ruined city and search for more artifacts, using the crews of pirate ships brave (or foolish) enough to come to the island as slave labor. The survivors Barclay is watching after are under the effect of the stone but are too weak/injured to obey it's call. And as fate would have it, the party's captain (who's player was conveniently absent for this session) has fallen under the effects of the stone as well. Barclay can make an antidote (part of his backstory is that he dabbled in herbalism before being shipwrecked on the island) but he's missing a key component: fresh wyvern venom.
As noted in my original post, I've add parts of Beacon Island from Razor Coast off the shores of the main island and seeing as how the main island is surrounded by reefs it made perfect sense that such a lighthouse would be there. The party had previously sent their sorcerer to take a peek at the lighthouse and so knew that wyverns were roosting there. Off they went with Barclay in-tow to acquire wyvern venom. Once there they discovered the corpse and journal of a Chelish officer. They have identified the officer as being the true captain of the Dominator and now are speculating as to who is running the Chelish dreadnaught while masquerading as Captain Lorvika in place of this dead woman! (Dun, dun dun!) In the end it was a fun session with rampant speculation, fun roleplay moments, and a dramatic death for the sorcerer which will set the stage for our next session to begin with bargaining with a fey for the means to raise/reincarnate the sorcerer! And wouldn't you know it, Sefina is a fey that's quite curious about humanoids but doesn't much believe in the value of currency.