Adventure advice needed, related to Savage Tide AP

[Wraith Form]

Hello.

I have a party of 4 players, iconic classes. All 1st level, about to be bumped to 2nd. Greyhawk, in the Dyvers / Wooly Bay area.

I have full intentions to run them through the Savage Tide Adventure Path in Dungeon, so please keep that in mind.

Last game they were taken prisoner by a pirate captain, who took all their stuff. He is undead (the revanant template from Monsters of Faerun) but I'm allowing him to use a "special process" to convert all his ship mates into lower level undead sort of like him. The party killed him in an earlier adventure, which is why he's a revenant (and why he captured them).

The pirate has sailed to a deserted island. (Likely in the Wooly Bay or Nyr Dyv.) The pirate took his remaining (living) crew with him onto shore (willing or unwilling), to go through the ritual to convert them to undead. Mr. Undead Pirate Captain left 5 undead mates behind to guard the boat.

The players managed to escape their captors, destroying a few in the process and trapping the rest of the pirates in the hold. The players then swam to shore ("shore" meaning the island's shore, not the mainland shore ). The ship is still intact. There is also a longboat from the pirate vessel on the shore, which my adventurers have "acquired" and hidden from the pirates. The pirates are somewhere on the interior of the jungle doing the evil "living-pirate-to-undead-pirate" ritual. These pirates might be convinced to turn against their captain, as he is going to kill them in order to convert them to undead.

Here's my dilemma: 1) they're barely 2nd level. I can't throw ultra-powerful baddies at them, and I suspect that the CR2 pirate captain and CR1 pirate crew (about 15 of them or so) are a little too much for the players to handle on their own. 2) I improvized the whole capture & deserted island thing--I have little idea where to take this adventure.

I want to keep the main pirate as an ongoing villain, so I want him to live...err, you know what I mean. But I want to have a Robert E Howard/H P Lovecraft moment where the players sneak through the woods / jungle and watch the hideous ritual that converts the living crew into undead.

Anybody know of a published adventure I might use? Or ideas how I can move this forward?

Thank you one and all for any suggestions.

 

[Nightfall]

Well you could always template them with weakened versions of skeletons/zombies. That's generally tough but not too tough.

The main bad guy can be like a ghoul instead of a reveneant. Make the rest into ghouls or else some low level undead, like maybe skeletal creatures from BoVD.

 

[Wraith Form]

I'm looking for adventure ideas more than villain ideas. My villians are pretty well defined at this point.

 

[Twowolves]

So, at this point, they are all but naked, pursued by undead pirates, and in the middle of the wilderness?

They have to get back to town somehow. I see no need to have the recurring villian be toned down at all. Decide what level you want them to be when they finally get to face him down, and build him for that level. In the meantime, chase them! If you want them to witness the ritual, you could always guide them to try to rescue on of their former fellow captives, only arriving too late or to see the odds are too much against them.

On the way back to civilization, have them be saved by a circle of fey, or some sort of hermit-ish monster. Having a troll snatch them away from the pirates, only to later turn out to be neutral, not interested in eating the party, or just lonely, could be a real twist for new players. And of course, there's always the tried and true "take cover from the storm in that ruined tower" (which conveniently has a dungeon underneath....).

Hope that helps.

 

[Dross]

I don't know about the Savage Tide Adventure path or the setup of the bay, but here goes.

The players are likely to try and get their gear back, or someone else's gear, or improvise gear. To get of the island you need a raft or boat of some kind (even if they can't get off the island this way). Either option allows them to see the ritual.

You do not need to make much use of the undead/pirates since you can easily have most of them at the ceremony.

How deserted is deserted? lots of small critters? have them make the amount of noise associated with larger animals. My knowledge of undead isn't that good, but if the revenant is a template stick it on an animal.

Can always have a group (or what is left of a group) of pirate/undead hunters stumble into the party, which conveniently gives the plays a way forward/out.

 

[Wraith Form]

So, at this point, they are all but naked, pursued by undead pirates, and in the middle of the wilderness?

They have to get back to town somehow.

Said wilderness is actually a small(-ish) island in the middle of nowhere. There is no "town" per se.

I see no need to have the recurring villian be toned down at all. Decide what level you want them to be when they finally get to face him down, and build him for that level. In the meantime, chase them! If you want them to witness the ritual, you could always guide them to try to rescue on of their former fellow captives, only arriving too late or to see the odds are too much against them.

I had no plans to tone down the main villain and his (soon to be all-) undead crew. There are no "former fellow captives"--the only thing close to that are the pirate crew members that the pirate captain hasn't converted yet. Sorry if I was unclear on that point.

there's always the tried and true "take cover from the storm in that ruined tower" (which conveniently has a dungeon underneath....).

Hope that helps.

That's what I was planning. If you looked at the Ravenloft setting back in 2nd edition, there was the Neither Man nor Beast adventure (http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/rv/rv-neither.htm)...I was thinking of just converting most of that over to 3.5. It's a lot longer than I wanted for an adventure, but it'll save me some time as far as writing something myself (which I'm not really good at doing).

 

[Nightfall]

I'm looking for adventure ideas more than villain ideas. My villians are pretty well defined at this point.

Ah well adventure ideas....I'm stumped. Sorry but unless you want your PCs rescued by ninjas, I don't know what else to do with pirates.

If you want to use Neither man nor beast, I don't see how using elements from there couldn't hurt, Wraith.

 

[Wraith Form]

I don't know about the Savage Tide Adventure path or the setup of the bay, but here goes.

The players are likely to try and get their gear back, or someone else's gear, or improvise gear. To get of the island you need a raft or boat of some kind (even if they can't get off the island this way). Either option allows them to see the ritual.

I agree--they're trying to get their gear back. The pirate captain took it with him. They can technically get off the island by using the pirate's boat, a decent sized vessel...but they'll need a crew. Four people, none of whom are sailors, can't maintain & steer & navigate a boat that normally takes about 15 men to crew.

You do not need to make much use of the undead/pirates since you can easily have most of them at the ceremony.

How deserted is deserted? lots of small critters? have them make the amount of noise associated with larger animals. My knowledge of undead isn't that good, but if the revenant is a template stick it on an animal.

Can always have a group (or what is left of a group) of pirate/undead hunters stumble into the party, which conveniently gives the plays a way forward/out.

Hmm, interesting idea regarding the pirate hunters. This pirate captain is "newly formed" undead...in fact, it is the PCs who slew him in the first place, about 2 weeks ago in game terms, and he's a revenant because of a fairly powerful artifact that they took from him which caused him to rise from the dead. (A shadow pearl, if you know anything about the Savage Tide Adventure Path.) Once he rose, he started hunting them down. He's been pursuing them for approx. 2 weeks, and finally caught up with them a few days ago. In battle, he knocked them all unconscious and dragged them back to his ship. He now has all of their gear (and the artifact) in his possession. The shadow pearl is, in every sense, a McGuffin--there can be any powers associated with it I want. The party has no clear definition of what it is--yet. Neither do I, as a matter of fact--the Savage Tide AP hasn't been published yet!

 

[Nightfall]

Can you send maybe a servant of Orcus to help the PCs out. Maybe play them against the captain? (Make for a pretty cool contact later on in the path...)

 

[Wraith Form]

Can you send maybe a servant of Orcus to help the PCs out. Maybe play them against the captain? (Make for a pretty cool contact later on in the path...)

I'm fairly Orcus-ignorant... Why a servant of him?

Edit: Oh, I see your point--to tie back into the Savage Tide AP.