ZEITGEIST ZEITGEIST: Bonds of Forced Faith

I made some quick NPC flash cards for this, just the 4 witches.
https://www.overleaf.com/6798306wwhfsm#/23147353/

Maybe someone finds those helpful

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Looking over the characters I wonder why Dame Melissa is carrying a lance (yes, and a dagger). Isn't that a somewhat sub-par choice for a romp up a hill on foot through the night? Personally I might change that into some pole weapon, Glaive or Halberd.
Thoughts?

Edit: Feel free to smirk at me - I just now saw her fey stag companion...

I ended up running this on Halloween night for a group of 5 players. It was a really good fit for the occasion; man, did I love the teaser.

Warning: Spoilers! (I can't figure out how to spoiler-wrap stuff...)

We started play in a dark room, just two carved pumpkins and a few candles for the players (and a tiny flashlight for me to be able to read and spotlight players). Their faces when 60 seconds in after one single failed die roll the first character died; priceless. I think they thought I was kidding until the next one bit the dust. And then the finale with the mayor, defiantly spitting into Red's face as he dies.. lovely.
Then I turned the lights back on and handed out the real char sheets.

Everyone enjoyed the night, I can say that much.
Despite skipping Pernicity's hut and cutting short the incident at the lake we still ran near 6 hours. Admittedly, over 1h of that was the characters trying EVERYTHING in their power to kill Red with anything they come up with. In the end, the player of Tomas got fed up and just kicked the darned cauldron over (which I had conveniently roll downhill).
Either way, I don't see how you would run this in 4h at a con, but I also have zero XP in con-GMing.

The pre-gens aren't terribly well balanced, in my opinion. The king is killer, the mayor is strong (and with sometimes 4! of him, he takes up up to 4 times the time and space compared to a single character, thus giving one player a lot more "screen time"). Tomas and the Tiefling seem underwhelming, and while the Dame has nice hitting power, she's a bit single-mindded that way.
That all makes sense, if you look at who the characters are, and my players took it in stride, took the night as a fun one-shot also serving as introduction to the setting we'll hopefully play the full campaign in from here on.

Oh, and I found some typos, and given EN Publishings usually dead-on flawless copy-editing, that did surprise me.

So, 3 / 5 lonely wet dogs in a street overall, from me.
Very much worthwhile re-joining the Trailseeker Patreon for, absolutely worthwhile running on Halloween with a great party of friends (though you might NOT want to have to get up at 6:30 the next morning to go to work).