So my party has basically done everything possible to derail this campaign - completely benignly, not out of malice or wanting to fhtagn with me as the DM, just that they're a very abnormal party as far as following the expected progression of events. And while most of this I can roll with fine, there's a few things I'd appreciate a little feedback or suggestions on.
Party composition, for reference: (We are playing a Gestalt game, since only 3 PCs)
Halfling Swashbuckler (inspired blade) |Magus (Bladebound/Kensai)
Changeling Oracle (Mystic Theurge)|Invoker (Star Pact)
Human Oracle (Life)|Harbinger (Crimson Countess)
First and foremost, Vanthus. At the end of Tides of Dread, the group did everything in their power to prevent him from being returned as an undead. They disintegrated his corpse after casting rest eternal, mixed the ashes with holy water, and buried the bottle in the hallowed graveyard in Farshore. This is obviously not enough to stop someone of Demogorgon's power from bringing him back, but I'm going to have to either explain how he got a physical body back in his undead form, have him come back as something incorporeal, or have him return as not-an-undead - and I don't want to make him just come back as a demon, that kinda nukes the reveal at the end with Ghorvash.
Secondly, Golismorga. The group was extremely suspicious of N'glothnoru, quickly discerned its true nature, and the party Star Invoker basically bullied it into a deal that keeps it from harassing the party - I forget the exact spell (if any) she used, I'll have to ask for a reminder - before getting as much info about the city out of it as they could. In addition, once there - and after getting some more info from Rakis-Ka - they decided to not shatter the Tlaloc's Tear and instead beelined directly for the Ziggurat and the Bilewretch, using a clever combination of magic and stealth to bypass most of the defenses, get inside quickly, and deal with the bosses and the problems of the shadow pearl-bilestone pipeline. Their main reason was that they feared the aboleth would be a greater threat than the kopru and their underlings, and that they didn't want to harm Barbas with the removal of the Cerulean Curtain and the flooding that would follow.
I'm not too worried about the deal - aboleth are schemey and I'm sure N'glothnoru will be able to weasel its way out of any parts of their agreement that it doesn't like - but without the city being flooded I'm not sure how he's meant to escape from his current prison. The state of Golismorga doesn't affect much of the plot going forward, admittedly, so I could just leave it all as water under the bridge (or not, as the case may be) but that feels kinda... anticlimactic. Like no Chekhov's Gun payoff for the deal with N'gloth.
Thirdly, I'm looking for a reason to get the group moving toward Scuttlecove and the later parts of the plot without pulling the damsel-in-distress thing with Lavinia; this group wouldn't likely respond well to that particular story beat, which hasn't aged well I admit and also doesn't jive greatly with how Lavinia's been played. I'm half tempted to have her run off on her own after Vanthus's return, instead. I'm also leaning toward pulling on a plot thread from the Wells of Darkness to lure the group down - apparently one of the imprisoned fiends there is very late for a meeting with an eldritch being from beyond the stars and has been receiving messengers demanding it pay its part of the deal, and I'm leaning toward having them approach the Invoker mentioned above and getting her to intervene on behalf of the dark places between stars.
And last but not least, I'm also wanting to bring back the ex-paladin Larcos from War of the Wielded, which I ran between chapters 1 and 2. The party made an enemy of him by keeping the intelligent blades (most of them, one of the really problematic ones they imprisoned) and killing the Kogloxen instead of using it to follow his scheme. He's particularly spiteful and vengeance-driven against the party Magus, who claimed one of the intelligent weapons as her Black Blade.
I replaced Rowyn with him in Chapter 3, since they had very thoroughly killed her in the first part before she could escape, and that worked well for the group; instead of killing him in this second encounter, they dumped him on a fortified island for the local authorities there to deal with. I'm thinking he's long since escaped and needs to show back up, though I'm not yet decided how.
Open to thoughts/suggestions all around!
IMO, considering all of the effort your players put into making sure Vanthus never comes back, I recommend you not bring him back. Since you aren't planning to have Lavinia kidnapped to Scuttlecove, there is even less need of Vanthus later in the campaign. When Dungeon #146 was published and people pointed out Vanthus had been brought back despite the hallow spell on the graveyard, James Jacobs admitted that was an oversight. You can just have Ghorvash in the final adventure comment as he is torturing Vanthus that he tried to bring him back one more time but couldn't... and your players will take pride in that.
Yeah, I can't disagree with that. They'll certainly be happy to never see him again until he's getting some much-deserved comeuppance.
You can continue with Dungeon #146 by having the Crimson Fleet strike again at Farshore or Sasserine once again. I ran Strike on the Rabid Dawn from Dungeon #111 before Serpents of Scuttlecove, with the Rabid Dawn being a Crimson Fleet flagship attacking Sasserine using the hurricane and the BBEG being an ally of the Crimson Fleet. Instead of the lighthouse it was the Witchwarden Tower that had been captured. After stopping this latest attack, the PCs head for Scuttlecove to put down the Crimson Fleet one and for all.
I'll have to look that adventure up, I'm not sure if I have it or not but if I do I might take that track. Thanks!
From there you can plant some evidence to lure the PCs to Divided Ire, either to rescue some good outsiders or hostages taken by the Crimson Fleet or they might come across evidence there are potential allies to be found in the prison where they can also find some leverage against Demogorgon.
Maybe this would be a good place to introduce the messengers of Bolothamogg who are trying to get Areex out of the Wells to go meet with their boss like Areex was supposed to? I imagine the demons aren't too fond of aberrant critters from space getting in their space, much less trying to raid their most secure prison, so they tossed them in their second-most-secure prison. The notes on the Wells say the messengers are Gibberlings, but Pathfinder gives us a lot more options of spacey aberrations to use.
That wouldn't necessarily be why the players would go to Divided's Ire, of course, but it might be a good way to point them toward the Wells.
Not sure about the aboleth/kopru situation, the kopru could start raiding the villages and Farshore and the PCs might decide they only way to stop them are to unleash the aboleth.
I was thinking about maybe having them be active/involved somehow in City of Broken Idols, since Khala is there and all that.
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If you did want to bring back Vanthus as an incorporeal undead, I might suggest a specter. Calling back to Gary Gygax's early conception of them as extremely evil people sent back as servants for fiends or dark gods. The Advanced Bestiary has a Dread Specter template and a normal Specter variant as well.
I'll definitely keep those in mind for use, I think I'm going to stick to Dave's recommendation and leave Vanthus dead and not have him show back up until the scene with Ghorvash at the end.
At this point the only other hanging threads, besides N'glothnoru, are Larcos Dengrin and Czarina Valora, the only one of the intelligent blades they couldn't convince to drop the whole clan war. They locked her in a box and threw her in the bay off Sasserine, but I've been wanting her to show back up, possibly with an appropriate new puppet (Rowyn or Diamondback would've been my go-tos, but they're both very dead). Meanwhile Larcos is still after the group for continuing to use the blades they kept (the Magus has Princessa Cathandra as her black blade, and the Invoker uses Contessa Invicta; the others ended up dispersed among the Farshore militia during Tides of Dread prep); also I checked my notes, the party didn't kill the Kogloxen, so I'll probably have Larcos using it as a mount or something.
I'm 99% sure the best way to have them both rejoin the plot is in Scuttlecove, with Larcos having tracked the party there and Valora having her own reasons for being there (possibly tied to whoever her new wielder is) but also happy to take her vengeance on the party given the opportunity.
As much as I love Savage Tide, it is *heavily* reliant on nothing bad happening to the Vanderborens and other key NPCs in individual adventures. There is always the chance the characters become pirates for a while, but the Savage Tide would eventually catch up to them, possibly without even a hint of its beginnings in the world.