D&D 5E Tyranny of Dragons Adventure Path in the Silver Marches

[Syntallah]

I would like to have my 5E campaign based in the Silver Marches. A) I have the sourcebook, and B) I like the fact that it's known for the various races working together, which allows my verisimilitude to not be broken when my players invariably come at me with a very diverse group of characters (note: I want this for our very first 5E campaign!). Now, the problem:

My Realms Fu is not very strong, and I really don't know where to have the Path start. So, Realms Lore Experts, where is a good place for the equivalent village of Greenest to be in the Silver Marches, and for bonus points how about the other key places in the Path?

Thanks in advance for any info.

 

[Plaguescarred]

You can go with Jalanthar, a hamlet located on the Everlund to Sundabar (Trail) and which was once a stop on the Rauvin River situated between the Moon Pass and Everlund. In past years around 1375 DR the hamlet relocated from the south bank of the river to the foothills north of the river after repeated orcs raids. These have been overrun on multiple occasions, but the inhabitants retreated to safety into the mountains. Many of the new buildings are built directly into the hillside and are covered with turf to resist burning. Additionally they have strong doorway to resist battering. Currently the defenses are boosted by a troop of the Argent Legion camping in the old ruins.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I was also thinking of running Hoard in the Marches, although there are a couple difficult bits when it comes to adaptation.

The Greenest equivalent can really be any of the small villages, especially the ones near hills or mountains to use for the Cult's hideout and the hatchery. That can take you through the first few chapters.

However, it's Episode 4's long journey up the Sword Coast that would be the most difficult to adapt, due to the fact that travelling horizontally across the Marches doesn't equal the distance travelling north. Plus, even if you did adapt the caravan journey across the Marches... ending at some place like the Evermoors (to stand in for the Mere of Dead Men and the Episode 6 section at the abandoned keep)... there's really no logical place to teleport to using the portal to get to the hunting lodge and then to Episode 8. At least... no place that remains in the Marches that wouldn't be easier to just have taken the caravan directly to rather than detour to the Evermoors. That is unless you wanted to portal to the Underdark or up into the Spine of the World or something, but without seeing the Rise of Tiamat adventure, I don't know whether I'd want to arbitrarily send people that far into the boonies without knowing where they needed to go next.

Although granted, unless you adventured several times a week, I don't think you'd get very far into Hoard to worry about it before Tiamat was released in October now that I think about it. So you could maybe plan for a cross-Marches caravan when you got to Episode 4 in the future and then decide to remove that part of the module once you found out where Episodes 9-16 were taking place and whether a journey across the Marches to then teleport elsewhere is warranted.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do yet. And whether I just stick with the journey (down in Greenest) as written and then move to the Marches for Episodes 9-16 on the hope that those might make sense, or else start in the Marches and just adapt or remove the Episode 4 caravan or Episode 6 portal altogether as needed (or not needed as the case may be).