Why not start the campaign with the strange weather active?

[Wonton]

Just a thought I had, why does the "Maze of Mist, Rain of Blood" only happen *after* the first encounter? The adventure starts with some light mystery, but I could see an alternate version where the strange mist is there as soon as the PCs wake up to give it more of a "horror" feeling.

And lore-wise, if it's Kugaptee's influence causing the mist, it feels weird that it just suddenly "activates" as the PCs head west. I even think some PCs could be misled by that

Just curious if there was any reasoning for this. I could see arguments to both start the tension low & ratchet it up over the first hour, vs to just start the tension high.

Anyway, we're gonna be playing this in about a month and I'm quite excited!

[James Jacobs]

The reasoning is that just as the campaign is starting for the PCs, it's also just starting for everything else, and rather than hit the players with everything weird at once, the adventure does so in stages.