You can open the book as soon as it is revealed and see the story. You just don't get the last verse on how to defeat the entity until the book is fixed. Once this is done if your players are having trouble working out what to do, have the last verse play on repeat louder and louder until they take note.
I ran part of this chapter yesterday for my 4 PCs who are currently in Hither's the Inn at the End of the Road in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign. I modified the events to more coincide with the NPCs of Prismeer (guides Clapperclaw and Squirt, just to name a couple) and the PCs goals (one of the PCs wanted to return to Hither from Thither in the hopes that the Merchant in Downfall is still there) to have the players be more invested in Shemshime. Thank you for this rundown. It was very helpful!
Thanks a lot for the in depth! I'm running this for at least one group in the coming weeks as a one shot. I suspect a lot of the tension is down to the players taking it seriously or not :)
Will be starting this off a little differently since im running all candlekeep together. Essentially having characters in a previous adventure already infected by the curse from a failed quarantine. Also im making the melody that of jack in the box, but the release will only come in from the millstone part. May make my party go insane
This was a great review and incredibly helpful. I wonder if you, or anyone else reading this, have any thoughts as to what to do with players who do evade the quarantine and are stuck upstairs, uninfected.
I usually get players to do a form of a group roll If they don't roll well, they get a clue and they need to put in some work to get the next roll I did not understand which clue reveals to the players that they need to crush it using a 1000 pounds though
Thank you! This is my first time as a DM and this helped A LOT! Luckily I have at least 2 players that will figure out that Shemshine needs to be crushed - hopefully. Do you think it’s important to say that the scene in the book changes into their characters?
that could certainly..................beat them over the head with that information haha! I would do that for sure if they dont get what they need to do right away!
I find it a bit weird that crushing Shemshime with *anything* over 1000 pounds is the answer to defeating it. I figure that originally, the crushing only worked because the millstone had been blessed.