Harmonium Officers

If the characters completed the additional adventure arc by investigating the dead drop at Cuckoo’s Corner and uncovering the Frostfell cache this is a good place to award them a milestone level. It’s a little earlier than the adventure suggests, but we’ve put more meat on the bone. Additionally, the Chapter 3 milestone advancement is a little thin–taking place only within Fortune’s Wheel and this pads that out.

If the pace of your adventure allows it, this is also the place to tie up any loose ends the characters were pursuing since there may be a pause before the characters venture back to Sigil.

Setting Up the Encounter

As written in the adventure, you are instructed to trigger the Harmonium Officers encounter whenever you are ready to end the Sigil exploration. The officers stroll up, accuse the characters of violating the laws of the multiverse, and arrest them.

The problem here is there’s nothing in Chapter 2 that points to the glitch outside of the characters resurrecting. The adventure book recommends having a witness to their death and resurrection. There’s not a lot of meat on the bone here, and this beat could easily scream “railroad” to the players.

What we’ve done with our weapons smuggling arc is allow room for conflict to naturally develop from the characters’ actions. Here are some ways that the Harmonium can take interest and track them down:

• The characters made a mess of the infiltration at Cuckoo’s Corner and the Harmonium is investigating it.
• Emmo or one of the Consortium agents escaped and dropped a dime on them.
• The characters eliminated everyone at Cuckoo’s Corner and now the Planar Trade Consortium wants blood.
• The portal to the Frostfell was compromised, the characters’ frozen bodies were found, and now they are being investigated for their own murders!
• The weapons smuggling scheme is being investigated and they are the prime suspects, because, well, they did smuggle weapons.
• They pushed Spiral Hal’oight, Tripicus, or Zadara too far in their encounters and they’ve turned on the characters.

Whatever you choose should put focus on the part of the campaign that has impacted your players the most. It may even be a thread that you want to explore in future visits to Sigil. The important thing is to use this encounter to show that the characters’ actions have meaning and impact.

Roleplaying Farrow

The published adventure hints at Farrow’s identity crisis endearing some sympathy from the characters. Let’s flesh that out a bit.

If the characters already believe the person with the mysterious mark on their cheek is an ally, have them interact with Josbert Plum in a quiet place. This should give them an opportunity to question him. If they bring up the prior disguises outlined in The Bar Tab or The Broken Mimir scenarios then a pained look overcomes him. After a moment of internal struggle his form reverts to Farrow, who explains that they were sent to help them.

Optionally, the characters can succeed on a DC 13 Charisma (Persuasion) check to trigger the identity shift. As a last resort the disguise self spell will wear off in half an hour and Farrow will revert to their true form.

Farrow will apologize that their transformation forces them fully into the identity, and sometimes it overwhelms their core personality. “This may sound a bit crazy, but sometimes I feel like I am all of these people at the same time.” Have fun with this so that the characters warm up to Farrow after the intensity of the Harmonium arrest.

Once they are ready to go with Farrow, they will lead them to Undersigil.