Increasing Attacks against Otari

[Snake0202]

I've ran the graveyard encounter, but let's just say my PCs luck has turned against them. One died to the Cult of the Canker, and another turned into a ghoul. The three others ran for their lives. They've now decided to take some downtime to recruit new heroes, retrain a bit, and intergrade themselves into Otari.

Sounds like a good plan to me, but I don't want them to feel like the threat of the Gauntlight will wait for them, so I've been describing how each night the blue glow gets a little brighter.

My question is, if they take over a month to go back I want to launch another attack on the town, what sort of encounter would you recommend? I don't just want to redo the Graveyard encounter, I'd like to do something different that maybe focuses on another part of the town.

Thoughts?

[EmpCod]

I was pondering the same myself as I've been tracking days since the graveyard encounter and let's just say my players tend to take a lot of downtime in town. Which is fine, but I wish the book was more detailed as to how we can as a GM convey some sense of urgency. Like you I've made the Gauntlight a little brighter every night fortelling some bad stuff about to happen.

In case my players reach day 30 before Chapter 5 (which adds it's own element of time pressure with Dorianna's curse), I plan the beam to strike Otari again.
Here's what I've imagined so far for such an encounter:

In the spirit of the 1st graveyard encounter, I want lots of undead minions rising from dead bodies. That's why I chose the Ruins of the Thirsty Alpaca as the beam's target. 400 years ago Otari was invaded by Stonescale Kobolds whom made a huge network of caves and tunnels under town. When Otari got liberated, the bodies of the defeated Kobolds were piled up in the tunnels, in the fashion of Paris' Catacombs IRL. What I like of this idea is it could potentially endanger some NPCs like Tamily Tanderveil (her fishery is somewhat connected to the underground tunnels, see description of area C2). Also the Osprey Club thieves are know users of the tunnels, so I imagine Crook's Nook basement somewhat connected. Maybe more but that's the gist.

The 2nd element needed is some sort of big baddy beemed into the ground like the Scalathrax. For this I'm still unsure, but my initial idea was to have some unfinished business the PCs left behind bite them back. In area C27 there was a Lurker in the Light that tries to dimension door into bright light if he drops below 20hp. Unfortunately for him, the torch in C26 had been looted and thus I imagined his only hope was to teleport close to the ribbon of light in C15. The poor Lurker got too close and got zapped like a moth. The players think it's dead because they've found burnt pieces of the Lurkers' wings. Maybe it's not dead and just got absorbed by the beam to be used as a beefed up (fleshwarped or undead) version of the Lurker?

That's my thinking so far. Unfinished business in your campaing may differ, but I'm sure there's something to latch on with a bit of imagination. I'm also curious what others thoughts are.

[EmpCod]

Now that I think about it, there's the remnants of a purple worm in B35 that begs to come back an undead through the tunnel in C32, causing great turmoil in Otari!

Also keep in mind that if the heroes rescue the living anchor in area D9, this effectively neuters the Gauntlight beam for the time being. There's also 2 Scalathraxes available there for beaming, if you don't mind the repetitiveness of the 1st encounter. As the PCs level up the Scalathraxes may not represent a meaningful threat anymore. Maybe as an extra minion?