If you don't mind me asking, how did the rest of the castle play out? In 3e I knew it was our only big 'dungeon,' so we tried to cram a lot in there, but I worried it might get grindy.
The castle played out pretty well. The party met the gnomes/halflings and agreed that they would go their own ways inside (friendly rivalry). The party went to the right from the entrance (after fighting the angel statues) and encountered the demon steeds in the equestrian arena. They then decided to walk along the dry creek bed to the pump control room, where they fought Thorkrid and friends (no interest in talking - they just destroyed him).
Next up was an exploration down the hall that revealed the non-functional lift and the bathhouse (which they just shut the door on when they saw the monsters).
Around this time the other party showed up and was excited about the lift and the dam, so Clan Millorn went to work on dismantling the dam and fixing the pump while the PCs took an extended rest.
The next day, the PCs checked out the room with Lord Gorquith and friends and agreed to try to find the scroll to restore him to life. Gorquith sent his bard Findle along with the party to help as they braved the chapel area.
I threw in one of the "wandering monster" encounters with a fiery undead patrol here, then let the group face the chapel full of demons. After a bit of exploration they found the scroll for Gorquith - at which point the zombie companion Findle made a humble case for restoring HIM to life instead of Gorquith. I apparently role-played this a little too well, as the party went for it!
First, they Arcane Locked the door to Gorquith's room so that he couldn't easily come after them. Then they holed up in the chapel to perform the restoration ritual on Findle. He's now an NPC traveling with them (I made him an eladrin and toned down his Lullaby - it now dazes instead of stuns).
As they were making their way to the lift, they were attacked by the wraith Reddengot and friends, which ended up being a pretty brutal fight. The halflings showed up in time to ride the lift (down to four survivors at this point, including the disguised Deception).
The party had only a loose understanding of how the lift worked. They knew about the force wall at the top of the shaft, having previously climbed all the way up. They had a couple of the fiery sergeants give them some lever positions for certain floors, but they mistakenly thought this meant that these were the positions to put the lever in if you wanted to GO to those floors. They eventually figured it out, with two PCs hanging beneath the lift to puzzle out the traps and the others (plus four members of the other party and Findle) standing inside the lift. They managed to figure out where to put the lever to avoid all of the traps.
The fight upstairs against Griiat and friends was a pretty good one, and that pretty much brings us to the blog post.
Note that I've been completely rebuilding monsters all along the way with new math, and when it comes to elites and solos I generally do a lot of revamping to make them scarier. It's gone pretty well so far.
Now, I did screw a few things up. I totally forgot about the Time is Short encounter, where a Ragesian advance scout gives away the fact that the army is coming (the absence of which made the party feel rather confused when the army showed up in this last session). I forgot to tip them off to the army's presence before they got to the castle, too. Oops. But for the most part, they seemed to have a good time with the dungeon delve of Castle Korstull.
The interesting thing now is going to be what they figure out about where to go next. They haven't revived the messed-up inquisitor yet, but they did bring his body along with them in the palinquin. They flew the thing to one of the PCs' hometowns in Sindaire. Yay for going off the rails!
