Need help with Serpent's Skull

[ngilop]

Hey everyone. I just managed to get serpent's skull after reading the blurb aboutti on the pathfinder wiki.

Instabtly I liked how the base principle of the adventure path fit into my campaign world's own history and thought that would be an thing to run and build up some cool backstory for players who might not otherwise dig into my world's history very much.

In short...

a long time ago there was an almost world ending war between the Serpentines and Saurials (snake men and lizard men) of my campaign world. The Saurial's won (at great cost) and the majority of Serpentines were driving underground, in stasis, another plane, and what not.

Elves were able to rise to dominance and changed basically everything, making magic more accessable yet, at the same time, less powerful. the Serpentines

So the Serpentines that survived mostly whole, have access to magic that is literally unheard of and I plan on showing this by things such as having spells operate how they did in 1st/2nd edition and pulling some bonkers 3rd party spells in that while are not broken, don't exactly operate under normal D&D spells. (like being a stream as an area)

I have gotten most of it done, then i hit a wall and a hefty realization.

The first part really doesn't work into getting the heroes where I want them. (maybe even part of the 2nd as well)

One thing that i find Glaring, and i may have just missed it. Is the lack of foreshadowing of what is really going on. I just felt that suddenly out of nowhere its these old snake dudes popping up that are the thing its supposed to be about, kinda almost like an aside.

I'd like to fix that in the first part, and even if the 2nd.

My issue is, with all the changes... my mind is kinda fried and I am honestly just not able to do think of anything.

So, any helpful suggestions, hints or the like would be greatly appreciated.

Right now, i think the big change I have is I got rid of this weird (IMO) faction reputation farming ala an MMORP such as wow. I replaced that with a couple actual parties. 1 of which was secretly hired by the big bad of the AP.

so agian, just suffering form writer's block and brain meltdown and any help is welcomed.

[Rynjin]

So a quick note on why the structure/plotting of Serpent's Skull may seem odd: it's because it's designed as like a general Indiana Jones or Uncharted-esque adventure that begins by sheer chance. The party is shipwrecked on an island, the island contains clues as to the location of a long lost Serpentfolk city, and then they join an expedition to map the city and do archaeology or whatever. It doesn't have much of a plot beyond "explore weird place, see weird stuff" until near the end.

Some quick suggestions:

1.) Add more specific references to Ydersius in book 1. Not necessarily by name, but "the long-dead snake god" or something.
2.) Make the crew already be a part of an expedition. Start them off as part of the pathfinder Society or Aspis Consortium (their pick), which gives them more reason to be traveling near where they are...and more importantly give your PCs a reason to be excited and care about the lost city besides the money they might make.
3.) Make the rival faction a bigger deal, make it a real race; if your party sides with the pathfinder Society, make the Aspis Consortium a real threat. not necessarily martially, but by staking a claim to key landmarks before the party arrives. Encourage a rivalry and genuine dislike for the rival faction.

This should add enough player investment to coast on through to the end.