How to improve the ending of the campaign?

[Hespi]

- This is a continuation of one of my Reddit posts, so its possible you already read it.
- Of course there will be spoilers
- My native language is not english, so sorry for the mistakes.

So, I liked the adventure path, but for some reason the ending doesn't feel that great. I saw that others say that Narseigus is to blame for all of this, because we only meet him at the end of the campaign, until then the players harm him but they never speak to him, and he welcomes the party as quasi "strangers" at Taargick's tomb.

I feel the problem originates from a completely different place: the message of the story itself could be strong. Imperialism and the "manifest destiny" attitude can be extremely harmful and bring destruction and suffering. My problem, however, is that while the destruction and suffering is shown, why the creatures of the Darklands don't deserve it isn't really. A very significant percentage of the creatures are evil, treacherous, or just plain brutal monsters that want to eat you inside the Darklands. The funniest thing is that I was happy when we finally found someone in Hagegraf who is an activist(Dhorri) and who tries to help the creatures against Hagegraf's laws, only to find out that she is not a hryngar, but a caligni. Later who help the party against enemies? 99% dwarves, and some nyktera (who, to the best of our knowledge, Taargick never fought).

In my opinion, the adventure path would be stronger if we got a slightly more nuanced picture of the members of the different ancestries. I understand that obviously their evilness also developed on some level because the dwarves destroyed their homes on their way, killed them, etc., but it's hard to feel sympathy for them. Also the main message of Taargick is not that strong. Yeah, he regretted killing others. And? In the end of the third book we got the information that this completely change dwarven culture, but why? Highhelm is already a pretty cosmopolitan and open-minded place. This is literally a part of the Lost Omens: Highhelm book:
"Dwarves have long since discarded the idea of predetermined gender roles,
and those in Highhelm are coming to let go of predetermined attitudes based
on ancestry or ability as well."

So my question is: how would you improve the ending of the campaign? Perhaps give some important information to the cave worm? Because I feel like currently almost nothing is added in the ending of the game what the players dont know after the crypt in book 1.

[Yakman]

1. I think you need to have the party find some 'goodly' inhabitants of the Darklands and learn about the destruction the dwarves wrought during the Quest firsthand. The help from this group - probably met in Book 2 - should be critical in some way to the victory in Book 3. We are thinking about running this, and depending on what PCs are on the table, I might go with some cavern elves or fleshwarps or umbral gnomes... but you could easily choose almost any of the less evil races of the Darklands.
2. Narsegius could be met in Book 2. Heck, you could meet him in Book 1 as a guest of Clan Tolorr!
3. I think you could easily make Highhelm a little more crude, a little more brutal. And lean harder into the veneration of Targick as a paragon of virtue in Book 1.

Just some quick thoughts.

[Gayel Nord]

... Yeah. I had problems as you fight a lot of evil creatures.

Book 2 has a lot of mind their business type of foes. (Like the foodies ghoul). But it lack a lot of the quest consequences.

It seems that Ghouls were the one the dwarfs run against...

[Hespi]

Gayel Nord wrote:

It seems that Ghouls were the one the dwarfs run against...

Actually if you follow the book there is a pretty good chance even the ghouls want to eat your party members. You know the portrayal of Darkland creatures is one sided, when after the ulat-kinis the most normal ancestries are well... ghouls who might want to eat you, if you look delicious enough.