In-between CoT books, I like to run a lower-decks interlude for my group. I come up with a reason that the regular heroes aren’t available and have the players select four of the Children of Westcrown to fill in. The players are free to modify the NPCs’ sheets, with the only restriction being that they have to keep the base class, though they’re free to switch the archetype.

The first interlude was a fairly straightforward adventure, with the Children rescuing an artifact from some evil fey of the Hagwoods (Paizo’s Tide of Morning). For the second interlude, I decided to switch things up a bit, using a one-shot called Potions 11.

The premise

Originally, the premise was going to come from a rather complex set of events where Fiosa discovers that halflings are being sold watered down potions, leading to several deaths. She goes to Yakopulio for help, and the adventure kicks off from there.

The PCs, however, gave me an even better hook. During book three, after learning that there might be vampires in Westcrown, they asked around town to see if anyone had gone missing. They found out that several halfling families and households had disappeared. This wasn’t uncommon since sometimes a family or group would decide to leave town on their own, but the rate was higher than normal. They asked the lower-level Children of Westcrown to look into it while they focused their energy on Delvehaven.

Thanks, players!

What I changed

Originally, I was going to run the adventure as was, but once the missing halflings subplot was added in, I decided to modify it more to make it fit into the overall plot.

The mission runs parallel to the Delvehaven excursion, mostly to block access to the main PCs. The players, playing low-level CoW NPCs, start with only one lead: Halflings are disappearing, and it may or may not be attached to vampires being in town. Areal suggests a party of Fiosa, Amaya, Yakopulio, and Larko (all people who can seek information in a number of ways), but the players are free to choose who they want. They can also call on any of the other rebels, even opting to swap them out as their goals change. Doing so takes time, though, and the clock is always ticking.

I also connected Rugo to the plot of CoT in a more concrete way, making him not only a tool of House Drovange, but an illegitimate son of the head of the house. He’s been kept around all these years “just in case,” and because he’s proved extremely loyal and useful. He’s a treasure trove of useful information, which will help to kick off the next book (Book Five, since I’m doing them out of sequence).

The (new) overall plot

For this interlude, I set up several scenes:

• Finding the location of the last disappearance
• The achemist’s shop
• A tiefling gang hideout

The missing halflings

After gathering enough information (however the party plans on doing it), they find a house in the Dead Sector where a family of halflings disappeared a few nights ago. Investigating, they find:

• Signs of recent habitation
• Several valuables left behind (at least, valuable for a family of poor halflings)
• A strange canister of professional make
• Signs of larger humanoids walking away, with no signs of halfling feet
• No signs of blood or struggle

So, a rather obvious kidnapping of some kind. It’s not subtle, but I also don’t want spend two hours watching the players struggle to piece together what happened.

What did happen: A group of tieflings has been kidnapping houses of halfings using sleep grenades. They put all the halflings to sleep, then take them to a hideout. They send word to Rugo, an alchemist who has been supplying blood for Ilnerick and his crew. Lately, though, the tieflings have been getting cocky and have started demanding more money. At this point in time, they’re still holed up with the halflings, waiting to hear back from Rugo.

At this point, the players can choose to either find the hideout or try to figure out where the canister came from. Either approach works, since both parties are currently in a holding pattern.

The Alchemist

If the players decide to find the alchemist first, they’ll have to figure out who in Westcrown made the canister. In my game, I plan on offering a few options:

• Rugo’s Potions in the Coin Sector
• The Bee’s Sting in the Priest Sector
• The Western Star in the Crown Sector
• A shop owned by one of the main PCs.

Eventually, they should figure out that Rugo’s is the only realistic option. The Bee’s Sting is run by the Temple of Calistria, who is anti-slavery. The Western Star deals with imports only and has no equipment of its own. The shop workers at the PC’s shop check out (and don’t have the skill to make a grenade, anyway).

This is where I lean on Potions 11 again, though I replace some of the notes with communications with the tiefling thugs, as well as some letters to (as drafts) and from Thessing. By this time, the actor from the second book has been turned into a vampire and is unimpressed with the quality of the provided blood. I also changed out the eleven mysterious potions for vials of sleep toxin.

The best outcome for this encounter is leaving Rugo alive so that he can be questioned by the main PCs. If he is killed, however, then whatever information he has can be gleaned from the papers stored in his secret cellar.

The Tiefling Thugs

If the players choose to take on the thugs first, they can try tracking the footprints through the dead sector. The Survival DC for this is 14 (Firm ground +15, three in the party -1) if the players try to track during the day. Otherwise, it’s 17 (Moonlight +3). Because the DC is above 10, the party has to have someone trained in survival in order to find the hideout first.

The other way to find the thugs is to deal with Rugo’s shop first and either finding a note including the approximate location of the hideout, or getting the information from Rugo himself. He’d had been planning on hiring someone to take them out, so he’d already sorted out where they were staying.

Either way, I populated the hideout with four tieflings: Two level one fighters, one level two rogue, and one level two sorceress. There’s also a family of four halflings chained in the back, being guarded by the second fighter. If they assault the place by day, the sorceress will be up and about but if it’s during the night, she’ll be resting. Since the CoW PCs will be level three, I figured this should be a decent fight for them.

If the players hit up the thugs first, they can learn about Rugo by either interrogating one of them (they’ll flip easy) or talking to the halflings locked up in the back (they would have overheard quite a few conversations).

How’d it go?

Due to how Delvehaven panned out (the players rolled through it in one day), I opted to not do the events in parallel. Instead, the main PCs came up with some things they had to do, leaving them busy and the less experienced CoW NPCs on their own.

They did do one thing: A PC used Ears of the City to find out where the last disappearance was, tightening up the timeline of events. The players also opted to take Larko, Sclavo, Fiosa (as a GMPC), and Rizzardo. Eventually, when they realized they’d need to do some breaking and entering in a magical shop, they dropped Fiosa and grabbed Tarvi and Yakopulio.

The actual session went really well. They were able to follow the trail of clues and hit all of the locations, saving the halflings at both locations, collecting a bunch of loot, and finding out some interesting information, though they haven’t connected it quite yet to the rest of the AP.

It also forced the players to come face to face with the problems of halfings in Westcrown, which the AP doesn’t directly address. It also created a few situations where they have a foe at their mercy and they have to operate in morally grey areas. This lead to some interesting developments with the lower-level CoW, which will be interesting to play out as the AP progresses.