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So, my players are very skittish. They hate taking risks and do anything they can to take the safest possible route to the end.
In the cabin encounter (The Spires of Xin-Shalast), they had stuffed all the dwarf bones from the larder into a portable hole. Once the "Canibal Fury" haunt had been triggered, they hung around for six rounds after I told the cleric that his Knowledge (Religion) check was giving him the feeling that they hadn't finished here yet. However, during the seventh round their skittishly got the better of them and they teleported away rather than hanging around until the haunt played out.
Once away, they took the bones to Janderhoff, where they ended up spending 10,000gp to cast Ressurection on the remains of Silas Vekker. At this point I ended the session. A few things I'm unsure how to deal with next season:
- Should Silas reveal the route to Xin-Shalast? The resurrected Silas probably has no memory of anything that happened after death, therefore is unlikely to know the fate of his brother. Should there be a condition for giving this information or just a solid Diplomacy check?
- My players think they are very cleaver in circumventing the remaining encounters of the chapter, but I don't want to reward unadventurous behaviour (their motivation in teleporting away was because they felt the encounters were too risky, even though their characters were considerably overpowered for them). Not sure how to proceed XP-wise (if the now-living Silas reveals the map, they will miss the encounter with Karivek and the wendigo).
- If they decide to return to the cabin for any reason, not sure how to play the haunts. Will the Silas haunts still work, now that Silas isn't dead anymore? If the "Canibal Fury" haunt triggers again, how will it end without Silas to chase the ghosts away?
So, according to Resurrection:
You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed. You cannot resurrect someone who has died of old age. Constructs, elementals, outsiders, and undead creatures can't be resurrected.
According to the AE:
Only one spirit among them, the shade of Silas Vekker, retains his mind and wits, but to reach him and learn how the haunted cabin can be put to rest, the PCs must brave the wrath of the rest.
There are many other references to Silas as a "ghost", a "spirit", or another type of undead. He's certainly bouncing around the cabin enough, and talking to the PCs enough, that I classify him as "undead". Dead men tell no tales and all that.
The point is, the Resurrection should have failed, and a quick Knowledge: Religion by the cleric would tell him/her that it failed because Silas is now undead.
If it's too late, and you already said, "OK, he's back alive," then you pretty much have to treat it as if his ghost has been "put to rest" and all those haunts that are Silas-specific are gone. But remember that many dwarves perished here, and many of the haunts are associated with other dwarves, and those haunts are no longer being held in check by Silas' calming influence. And the as-written AP says that the haunts don't go away until Silas confronts Karivek, so they somehow have to deal with Karivek. As he's a ghost whose "permadeth" is identified as, "Be put down by Silas," that's a problem. The party would have to bring Silas along on the fight, somehow keep HIM alive until they defeat the ghost, and then have Silas put his brother's bones to rest.
Honestly, my best recommendation is to retcon "The resurrection fails". Because if it doesn't, figuring out how to permanently destroy Karivek's ghost and thereby put the haunts to rest is a HUGE PITA.
Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind.
EDIT: Yes, now that Silas is alive, he could lead them to Xin Shalast and they could bypass the entire cabin. If you're playing with XP, that's a LOT of XP to sacrifice for just a shortcut.
Awesome. In the event of the spell failure, would the material components be consumed? (The characters either didn't know or were unsure that he was incorporeal undead).
I'm afraid that technically, yes, yes they are.
If you think that would cause a revolt, your universe may differ...
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I suggest you play it as written - with very minor changes.
Note: only the gold-eating dwarf haunt is specifically described as Silas. Simply change that to another more anonymous dwarf. The rest of the haunts could be easily described the result of the other dwarves in the expedition who either succumbed to cannibalism or the victims of those who did.
Silas a) has no incentive to help the pc's until his brother is laid to rest and b) I would suggest either he knows specifically what needs to be done or he simply is passionate about restoring his brother. Further he can simply say - "I don't know how to get to Xin Shalast - I don't remember, being eaten alive, rising as a ghost, etc. has left my memory a little fuzzy. And that's why we wrote it down in the log. Oh the pages are missing? I suspect Karivek has them." So the pc's get the missing pages from Karivek instead of Silas and in the same way. Have Silas have the same effect on the house in living form as he does in ghost form - including needing the same amount of time to accomplish the silencing of the house haunts and restoring his brother. And otherwise play it out as written. The pc's still have to deal with everything they would have if they had played through in the "typical" way. If you were feeling generous given they did resurrect Silas (which is an unusual but not outrageous tactic) you could have him warn them about the wendigo and the frost worm. Having a chance to explicitly prepare for those encounters should give the pc's an edge they wouldn't have had otherwise.
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Rules wise yeah he can't be resurrected since he is at moment undead. That is part of reason why necromancy is considered evil after all.
I wouldn't have the resources be consumed, but raw wise yeah they'd be used.
Besides, hasn't Silas been dead for far longer than 10 years? I remember him being dead for like hundreds of years