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I came upon this idea that someone mentioned in passing on another thread and I wondered if anyone else had done it before I try it.
To make the finale a bit more epic swap some of the events of books 5 and 6 as follows.
1. After book 4, before you party decides to leave their island for Port Peril, Harrigan sends a small group of ships to raid them and their island. This includes the Wormwood. The PCs must defend their island the best they can until help arrives in the form of Tressia Fairwind, and/or any other NPC who are closly allied with them, such as Sandra Quinn.
2. After fending off the attack, they travel to Port Peril, attend the pirate lord meeting, and try and get the lords to agree that Harrigan is dangerous and should be dealt with. For one reason or another, no matter how hard they try, this should fail.
3. They take matters into their own hand, taking their small fleet to Harrigan's fortress to battle his fleet and sea serpent, they take the fortress and kick him in the balls.
4. They find proof that Cheliax is invading but the full force won't be ready for some time. This force is much larger than the one that actually comes in Book 5. They take the proof to Port Peril and present it to the Hurricane King who laughs them off.
5. NPCs decide that since they don't want to die, they need a new king. Play it out much like book 6, but modify for players lower level, or give them NPC help.
6. Now as Hurricane King, the PCs must quickly call/hire as many ships as possible to combat the massive fleet. As new King they don't have full respect yet, so it takes some wheeling, dealing, and threatening to get the force in line.
7. Massive Ship combat ensues near the Eye. Somehow PCs ship and enemy commander ship get pulled into the eye, have glorious final combat in the eye.
8. Victorious PCs sail out of the eye triumphantly just like the first hurricane king.
Thoughts?
I've been thinking about this as well. Getting ready to start book 3 and I have the feeling that my PC's are going to slog through the fortress just to stomp the hurricane king in maybe 3 rounds if he's lucky. Really what I'm leaning towards is having the PC's rush through the whole dungeon and come upon the final region of the dungeon just as the Hurricane King is launching his Flagship, the Filthy Luchre. From there the PC's can either try to board the ship and have a big fight there or rush back to their own ship to face him in full view of the Capital.
I like your ideas for book 5 a lot, it could do with some streamlining and should have really expanded upon the role-play that the players would have to get the as many "special" NPC's as possible in their fleet. Making deals with some, bribing others, Calling in old favors, etc. Really the raid on the black tower just falls flat for me and I'll either be finding a way to tie it into the main plot (maybe the guy that's supposed to ambush them instead offers his support for the sword), or just scrapping it entirely.
Really the only problem that I have with swapping the events of book 6 is that I can't imagine the pirates are eager to start fighting with each other once they find out Cheliax is coming ... Then again ... pirates. In the end I think that I'll be extending the campaign beyond book 6, which makes the order of events for the last book less important for my group.
Honestly its seemed odd, and even a little disappointing to me that the stickied GM reference threads for the final two books of an AP that was released in 2011 haven't even managed to pass one page. Makes me wonder how many groups actually played them as written.
The problems of how to make there be role playing to get pirates to work for you once you are king, and the whole tower section are really the only 2 things giving me pause. That and it would take time to rebuild everything, and I don't have to most time these days.
I was think about either replacing the entire tower section with something else, removing it all together, or making the PCs want the sword, because it radiates a defense against all outsiders, which would be useful against the Devil summoning casters of Cheliax.
I also forgot to mention I was thinking about using the big Cheliax ship from Ships of the inner sea, the Dominator I think, as the final ship they face.
I could also then skip a number of the mass combat rules. I know that half my party will like them, and half of them will not.