They players aren't in the dark, but most townsfolk are probably not even aware of Sarshan. Remember, this is what the Council asks: "Travel to the village of Talar and find out what Megan knows. Keep her safe, neutralize any immediate threat to her, and then return her to us." They probably know who is behind the attacks, and the Council (being particularly good at politics and such) know that sending the PC's to help Megan will undoubted lead them into conflict with Sarshan, and most likely killing him. The Council knows the PC's are badasses, so the 'mission' they send them on could be mere formality.

As I suggested in the treasure parcels above, they will pay a huge bounty for Sarshan's defeat.

From any other DMs who have run this, I'm curious to know: How did Antharosk and Caulaxin play out? It may be sensible XP-wise, but it just reads as really brutal to have the PCs fighting two dragons at once.

evilotto: I'm not the DM who ran our adventure, however when we took on the two dragons guarding the Ever-Tree in October it was fairly easy, however I believe we are a bit over the level as we were Level 12 at the time. Our party consisted of Eladrin Warlock, Air Genasi Sorcerous, Human Fighter, Half-Elven Bard, and Half-Elven Wizard. Basically we immobilized one dragon mid-air, causing it to take massive falling damage and then pummeled them with spells.

As for the "Megan knows something" tie-in? A complete dud for us, as we already knew Sarshan was behind the whole thing and had told the council so during the Seige, however our group agreed to go get Megan - mostly because most the group dislikes her and her adventuring group (our so called "rivals") and wanted to show her up by dragging her back to Overlook.
Another tie-in for our group, is that one of the characters (well, actually mine) is being hunted and so the night before our DM had us have a run-in with an assassin, so we were a bit eager to get out of town for awhile.

Great stuff here BTW - good job. Quick question - where can I find the Khalir Vampire? I like the idea of the all undead encounter, and we are at Fetid Darkness
come next week.

Did the dragon fight last week. It was, as some have said, not at all that difficult. It was fun to see them panic a bit at the sight of the first, and then REALLY panic at the sight of the second, only to realize shortly thereafter that the dragons seemed almost completely unable to hit the defender (AC 30 vs their +13/+14s to hit). They didn't have much trouble with it once they settled in and go their bearings.

Re: Fetid Darkness, thanks for the all-undead suggestion. I'm using a Banshee in lieu of vampire for my controller, but am going with the Horde Ghouls so as to give the Skull Lord Servitor some minions to resurrect.



Lastly, for any who follow the multi-stage "boss fight" idea floating around on some blogs these days, if you're interested, my version of Sarshan (as yet untested), is here:
http://everburningcandle.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-is-this-sarshan-fellow-anyway.html
http://everburningcandle.blogspot.com/2010/11/sarshan-revised.html

@Evilotto, how did your Sarshan work?

They're about 2/3rds through the module, so I hope to be able to tell you soon. :)

It went fairly well, but there's a few things I need to tweak. They unloaded on him pretty quickly in stage 1, so he didn't actually get to litter the area with Blood Chaos much, and then they still had enough firepower left to push through his brute phase quickly as well. By the time he reached his final stage, they were down to mostly just at-wills, and very little healing/surges. His shadow attack kept recharging, so he was mostly insubstantial, which caused it to spiral down into a long drawn out ending. Overall, I don't think he was as difficult as he should have been, though the Flare effect still frightened them, and thematically they loved the whole transformation thing.

I'm going to tweak the stats on the blog a bit further, to correct some omissions, but also because I think his damage output in stages 2 and 3 actually need to be higher. By making the damage higher though, I'm figuring on reducing the amount of insubstantial, to eliminate that drawn-out ending.

Looking forward to the update. Just finishing up the Temple Between on Friday.
Is there any reason for the troglodytes to be in the encounter below the mottled tower?
Any other suggestion for allies of the Shadar-kai and Githyankis in the "Blood Chaos Cavern" encounter?
Another thing, let me see if I get this straight, the heroes fight their way down the mottled tower, find Falrinth on level 1, the bottom floor, then drop down into the cave, fight the witch and Giths and others, then come back up and question Falrinth and Megan, then are supposed to go back down and through the portal. Is that correct? Anyone have problems with the group not following that railroad?
Finally, where is the Ever-Tree? Is it on the Prime plane surrounded by Blood Chaos?

And for evilotto, is the "Sharshan, Revised" the current most bestest updated one you have?
And, is that 3 stage Sharshan sstill meant to be run with the other shadar-kai and giths in "Final Battle"?
What about the forceshield, is that still used?

He's updated now. That is the latest suggestion, yes.

How I ran it: players arrive on the roof to find the Gith, Shadar Kai, and Sarshan (the Arrogant). He's in his shell along with his two bodyguards, and the Gith engage. As soon as some of the Gith start falling, he instructs his bodyguards to go join the fray (topping it up again, more or less), and then when more have fallen and it again looks like they're about to overcome the enemy, he finally gets frustrated and comes to join the battle. They'll finish off the last of the Gith/SK while he's "toying" this them in his first phase, and likely it'll be a solo fight before they're able to focus enough on him to push him to transform.

Re: EverTree, etc. I found this very confusing, as did my players. Whether you place the Evertree in the Vale or in the Elemental Chaos, it remains that they must at some point pass through/cast a Planar Portal (which none of the PCs/NPCs should be capable of casting, but that can be swept under the rug). Then, after the final battle atop the tower, there's the question of how they get home, again requiring a Planar Portal.

Re: tower. My group fought until they found Megan, chatted with her, fought down to Falrinth with Megan in tow, chatted with them both briefly, and then headed into the basement and beyond while Megan took Falrinth back up through the tower to escape. At first they thought they'd have an easier time fighting downward having convinced Megan to come with them, but I decided she was already low on healing surges, and poorly equipped, so she quickly became a liability instead, and ended up not affecting the encounters since they asked her to stay back out of the way.

So, does anyone have an issue with the blood chaos/magma slurry doing 10d10 + 15 ongoing?
Why is it 2d6+3 acid & fire sometimes, and 10d10+ongoing others?
I think I'm gonna go with 2d6+7 when it's only difficult terrain, the first few encounters, and then 3d6+13 when it's full immersion, when they get to the Dragons and beyond.
Also, does it read as if they just copy and pasted the rules for swimming? Is there any reason that fire magic would take a -2 to attacks? In fact, I think any power with the fire or keyword should have a bonus. Maybe to damage instead of the attack though.

Thoughts?

Something I just noticed as I'm getting ready for the game this weekend, The spiral staircase doesn't go all the way through the tower. Not a problem. EXCEPT THE TOWER IS ENCASED IN CHAOS LAVA
So Good luck with that inconsistency.

I'm drawing in a Spiral staircase on Level 3.

The skulking terrors have a burst attack, but it doesn't say any range. Anyone seen one somewhere or got suggestions? You who played it, how did you solve it, or did you not notice?

Cool, thanks!

Anyone ever encountered an arctide spiralith before? Is it a creature unique to this adventure? It seems to me to be some kind of large demon in a rune-scribed shell, but that's not a very expressive description. And what is it doing fighting together with a couple of devils? End of the Blood War?

Anyone have any suggestions on printing out the maps above for game play?

I use a tool on my Mac called PosteRazor which will allow you to rescale and print multi-page overlapping
poster size maps. You just have to play with the scaling to map the squares to 1-inch size, but it works
awesome, and my players really love their maps. :)

The MSPaint solution works great!!! (Sorry, didn't try the mac option as I don't own one). I've been using an old application called Poster Printer which worked on my old Windows 98 desktop. It no longer works on Windows 7. Thanks Mister Ham for uploading the maps already sized. These color maps are a huge improvement over the old maps drawn by hand on the battlemat!!!!

I'm a big fan of Mister Ham's maps. *tips hat* Cheers!

Also, just in case you've never heard this trick before: if you want to turn such maps into something more durable (though they're likely 'one-offs' in this instance), head to your local dollar store and buy the cheapest peel-n-stick floor tiles you can. With a paper cutter/scissors to trim the paper and/or tiles to fit... voila! Map tiles.

I just ran the first segment of this adventure (through the Chase-is-on Part 1).

Some notes. 1) The module is not clear about how to get into the Blood Chaos Caverns. There is a "hole in the floor" of the lowest level of the tower, where the PCs find the cowering Falrinth. That's how they got down there, but once they "peered down the hole" they wanted to battle from above (it's logical to want to gain the "upper hand" but the tactical does not allow for that. In retrospect would make climbing down a skill challenge and make sure to force them to descend.

2) I also started to find that battles were taking way to long at paragon level. This is a 4e issue. So, to solve the problem, we cut all HP's in half. PC's and monsters. That worked out really well.
3) The whole thing with Megan doesn't make sense to my party. Why would someone whose life they just saved be pissed off?
4) The tower is sinking. How fast? When will it submerge? How long do the PC's have?
5) Where is the smoke on the maps? It says that there's smoke but it's not visible on the map.
6) Why is the pregnant woman on the cart just hanging out there? Jeeze. She should just run.

The things that this adventure really misses is everything between the encounters. There should be a map for "under the evertree" and those three extra encounters were worth doing but in a formal setting. where is Sharshan running to in "fetid darkness"? It says the entire area beyond the bridge is a teleportation area but there are two circles BEFORE it? Huh?

Then, where do they land? How do they move earthbergs? how do they know where to go in the City Of Brass?

In area under the Evertree Sarshan is pumping Blood Chaos again. Those two portals are just targeted to different locations in Elsir Vale for Blood Chaos pumping. I placed a third circle under the current flow of it too. Over the bridge there is an ancient teleportation arch buried under ground, which Sarshan uses to escape. The purpose of these Modules isn't to hold your hand 100% of the time. These Modules give you more of an "ironwire" version to build up on. Your players most likely won't follow every detail and plot curve anyways. If you don't like something or if you wan't to add something, feel free to do so? Don't stress too much about details, but if you feel it matters, then just make something up for a missing info. Too much details and info won't stick in anyones head either ;3

Thanks. I was giving more of a review than a lament. My last session went very well but I wrote most of it. Between the skill challenge and Fetid Darkness I put together a basic dungeon crawl filled with the 3 extra encounters and several hazards and traps. I played it old school and was enjoyable. I adapted where I thought it was needed. As for the 'info doesn't stick' comment, that goes without saying when you've got a bunch of demicenturians playing ;)

I'll be drawing up a lot of flavor and a map for the encounters between and incuding the Sea of Fire and the Final Battle.

The encounter with motes moving around was fun, I actually added a Chaos Storm there which is some out of the box hazard, teleporting people and motes and adding a great fun for the chaos. I also made it change the element of those motes (don't remember if it was originally so). I also suggest you great a 3x3 navigational helper grid to address people for moving those motes. (1 is north-west, 2 is north, 3 is north-east and so on...)

I also made the whole island start to sink in the Sea of Fire at the start of Final Battle, which made the scenery even more dramatic. If you want to make players who fall off to be able to resurrect you can always say he was lucky and splashed on an earth mote. We had 1 such case but the group still wasn't able to retrieve his body. I'm probably gonna make him haunt the elemental chaos when they visit it again in the far future :)

Alex, Those are great idea and you are inspiring me. Not a good thing for my players (bwahahaha). I'm going to lower the damage significantly for the blood chaos. Probably to 6d8 plus ongoing 10. I've got 6 player so I have to add 700xp worth of enemies. I'm going to add 7 minions, probably a custom elemental flying critter to join the fray. I'm also spreading the motes out a bit more and expanding the map a bit to enhance the board game. Sinking island is good. They have to get back to the teleportation circle to get home and we'll play out the escape back after killing Sharshan.