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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 4442106" data-attributes="member: 54629">So none of my players bit into any of these hooks. They talked to Lord Padraig and the subject of missing persons came up but they didn't press him very hard when he said that people went missing on a regular basis and that most of them probably just got lost in the wilderness and/or got killed by monsters. So they didn't find out about his kidnapped son.I also had Bairwin approach the minotaur and offer him a proposition to join his little group, but the minotaur's player thought Bairwin was involved in some sort of "gay orgy" thing and didn't want to have anything to do with it. Shortly after that, the PCs all trudged off to the keep (they seemed to be in a hurry to go there and didn't want to wait around in the town any longer than needed).Now that I've actually got a copy of H2, though, I'm liking some of the hooks it presents. I think I'll leave Bairwin as a cultist of the Shadow, but if they don't ever pursue that line of thought any further and end up fighting him, then I'll go with the H2 hook where he hires them to take something to the Seven-Pillared Hall for him (there's no reason he can't be an evil cultist and an opportunistic merchant -- plus it fits with the goings-on in the Seven-Pillared Hall anyway).Depending on whether or not the PCs return to Fallcrest after they complete H1 (I've given them the "map the keep" quest, but I don't know if they'll bother going back for their reward right away), I'm thinking of having Parle Cranewing ask them to explore Thunderspire instead of Valthrun (who will most likely be dead anyway, since I'm making him a Blood of Vol cultist who will attack the PCs at some point). I'm actually going to try to get them to go back to Fallcrest anyway so I can get them to talk to the tiefling merchant there (of House Azaer) in order to find out how to get into Thunderspire (the Seven-Pillared Hall is supposed to be fairly secret, and the minotaur PC's backstory involves his father having gone to Thunderspire to try and find the lost city ... so I'm thinking the entrance will be more like the secret entrance to the Mines of Moria in LOTR -- hard to find ... which would help explain why the minotaur's father never found it and why more people in Nentir Valley don't know about it).Some things I threw in while improvising on the night:1) I gave them the dream I mentioned before but I told the player of the dragonborn paladin that he didn't dream the same thing. Instead, he woke up well-rested with only a vague and rapidly-fading memory of a large winged dragonborn watching over him (because of his devotion to Dol Arrah, her dragonborn exarch [of which there will be a mini in the Demonweb set but I don't remember her name] protected him from the dream).2) In the morning, the minotaur ordered some milk with his breakfast and I told him that it was curdled. There was a halfling (the PC of a guest player) in the inn whose milk wasn't curdled, and Salvana was just as confused as the rest of them. That was fun.3) Lord Padraig informed them that Salvana's husband, Kem Wrafton, had gone missing (I might make him be one of the slaves the PCs can rescue from the duergar in H2) but that they shouldn't talk to her about it as it was still a sensitive subject.4) When they approached the keep, I told the eladrin wizard PC's player that his character saw the landscape shift briefly, with everything becoming cold and grey and dreary. Shortly after that, he saw a raven land amongst the rubble, caw at him, then fly off. He decided to attack it with a magic missile ... and of course because the others couldn't see it, they all thought he was crazy.5) They reluctantly gave the mirror to Valthrun when he asked if he could borrow it and study it and then overnight it reappeared in their possession. When they met with Valthrun, they attempted to accuse him of losing their valuable possession but he pointed out that they didn't seem very surprised that it was missing, so they admitted that it had reappeared in their possession. Immediately, they got the idea that they could make money by duping people into buying it only to have it reappear in their possession overnight. Originally, I was just going to make it so that the money they got went back to the buyer but I might just let them get away with it and, after letting it happen once or twice, I'll have a disgruntled merchant send some enforcers after the PCs.</blockquote>

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