Condensing Hellknight Hill after Fall of Plaguestone

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Cross-posting from the GM Reference thread because I didn't want to sidetrack things there.

I am modifying the first book pretty heavily. I needed to fast-track it since my players made their way here from Etran's Folly after completing Fall of Plaguestone and I have them at level 5. I'm trying to get them synced up with expected levels for Age of Ashes by the end of book 2.

I decided I wanted to modify with a few goals in mind:
- emphasize the Stepford Wives aspect of Breachill (relatively minor point so far)
- add some "regulars" to the town. Basically the local heroes that take the jobs too tough for any new adventurers and fill in whenever there are no out-of-towners to do the job (my PCs never meet them; see below). They were working on clearing out the Citadel and were also getting suspicious of Voz. I got this idea from someone else in this thread (and I also saw it on Reddit; probably the same person), although I modified and simplified it.
- cut the huge delay. At the call for heroes, Warbal has run all the way from the citadel to ask for immediate and urgent help (no 4 weeks of waiting here). On the way she encountered Voz slaughtering "the regulars" and manages to tell the council that much, and *THEN*...
- ... Voz hits Warbal with an acid arrow and calls her a filthy rat. One of my PCs managed to hit her, but then summoned a couple of living wildfires and a couple of fire mephits* and got out of there. I'm trying to play her up a little more as a Vader/Strahd villain that they frequently interact with and can't quite take on just yet, so I have her as a much more powerful necromancer, which means...
- ... Breachill has an undead problem, although they are only just now realizing it. The party encountered some zombies on the road from Etran's Folly, and everyone in town thought they were a little crazy "there's no undead around here, haha"

So I'm planning to have a lot more undead in the citadel; Alak will probably be cornered by some of them instead of some fiends. He may or may not have encountered "the regulars" since he only recently arrived. However, I'm not sure how to tie in the cultists and the Anadi woman; I'm leaning towards cutting the whole Guardian's Way/Goblinblood Caves portion out altogether. It looks pretty cool (maybe better than the Citadel material) but it doesn't fit my time constraints and I don't think as powerful a Necromancer as I am making Voz needs any mercenaries. I'm thinking it is probably Voz's undead, rather than collapsed stairwells, that are keeping the cultists trapped in the basement.

I had also been playing with Voz and Malarunk working together a little. I think I've talked myself out of that.

My players have dealt with the fire in city hall and made their way to the citadel, but we stopped there. I have ~6 weeks until our next session. Any suggestions? Would this be a better discussion for another thread?

*The PCs are level 5. A single mephit wasn't going to cut it. I handwaved the mechanics "story over mechanics blah blah blah." Not actually sure how I feel about the sentiment but I'm trying it. If Calmont could bungle his way through a special NPC-only parchment to summon a single fire mephit, Voz could find a more powerful single-use item.

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I've come about this far in trying to establish how the situation got here and what is going on in the citadel when my players arrive:

Timeline:
- Regulars working on routinely clearing out citadel
- Regulars begin to suspect Voz (or not; doesn't matter)
- Voz begins preparing to study and eventually activate the gates in the basement
- Cinderclaws chase goblins out of the vaults
- Voz, in a fury at the Cinderclaws for interrupting her, strikes back with a horde of undead
- The Regulars see Voz directing undead and start to fight her, but are overwhelmed/outmatched and retreat
- Voz, not ready to be known in town yet, destroys the stairs to keep the cultist's trapped (but it could be she just leaves them in a lull of the fight and hope her undead can hold them back), then catches up to The Regulars outside of town. A pitched fight ensues.
- Warbal stumbles across the fight and is seen by Voz as she finishes off The Regulars
- Voz chases Warbal to town hall, and sets fire to it, then returns to the citadel to deal with the Cinderclaws

Voz's plan now
- Deal with the Cinderclaws (and the goblins if they prove inconvenient, but they are not a priority)
- Keep a steady stream of undead about to deal with any pesky new heroes
- Try to activate the gate and run through if things go really south

Not sure where to fit Anadi in, but maybe I could have her hiding in the vaults somewhere.

[elisaelli]

Well that's quite a departure but should be interesting. Are you going to have the tunnels still intact? I'd have Voz blasting through the tunnel with her undead (including the newly raised Regulars), and the party is on the clock to stop her before she gets through. They will have time to do some investigation of the Citadel and her house but will get increasingly hectic clues about what she's getting to and what she can do if she gets the gates. No one currently knows where all the gates go to, so maybe have her muse on connecting to near Lastwall for undead, or near the triad for reinforcements. Depending on how quickly they catch up (and she will leave undead guards as she goes), they may have to face even the cultists as undead. Alternatively, they could try to dig through the collapse using the number of days required in the second book while being harassed by undead and we end up with a three way battle at the gates.

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I'm planning to have only one tunnel, the one that leads into the tavern basement. But I'm thinking of having it go to the bookstore instead.

I'm also leaning pretty strongly towards having the stairs not be collapsed. So the Cultists are trapped by Voz's undead rather than by stairs. I'm looking at a time crunch for the PCs to resolve everything measured in hours rather than days.