I had a cultist slip them all some poison right after the "Contraband!" incident. (By the way, it was the newlyweds who had the accident in my game too! They're a good choice because having even one crate of treasure is suspicious, given their cover story.) The situation ended up not escalating beyond that because of the way it played out. The group found the poison in the cultist's wagon after some investigation, and they dragged him out into the woods early the next morning, before the caravan left. He didn't quite admit to having poisoned them ("Look, you found the stuff; anybody else could have discovered it and stolen some!"), and they knew that having him just disappear would be difficult to explain, especially with the rest of the caravan crammed full of his buddies. So they finally came to an agreement that they would let him go, and in return for his life, he would refrain from future attacks and pay them 400 gp each when he reached Waterdeep safely. (He skimmed those coins from the hoard; he was more interested in saving his skin than in dying for Tiamat.)How did you resolve the Recognized event? Did you have one or more cultists try to murder the PCs in their sleep? I'm thinking I might have them use more indirect means at first - like poison - in order to draw things out a bit more. Or maybe just have one cultist act on his own.
This created some interesting situations later after "Who's Your Friend?" because the party immediately suspected this guy of being behind the bone splinters in the oatmeal, before they realized they were a hoax. All the same, they really hated the guy and they were very satisfied when Jamna Gleamsilver defenestrated him in Waterdeep later.
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