So, yeah, still banging my head against the copy of the Fury of the Wastewalker (Season 2) book. There's three points that just need polish before I can get serious about mapping this out, and I just don't know what to run with on them. I'd like to see if any other GMs or players might have a few suggestions on how to solve these.

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BBEG Motivation. As far as I've read, the motivation the Wastewalker has for trying to kill the PCs throughout the campaign is that one of the PCs is a no-good gul-durned arcane magic user. My understanding is that pretty much everyone else in the campaign setting would have this same attitude towards arcane magic users... So, um... What kind of possible motivation can he have if the party contains no arcane power source characters?

Halflings fall, everyone dies until EONT. Chapter two ends with the PCs getting a handful of magic items from some pseudodeity elemental thingies. Halflings then appear and imprison the PCs without a fight or skill check. Okay, I get it, in Dark Sun our Halfings have sand in their shoes and are supposed to be able to slit your throat, but come on.

"Okay, you're my best friend! But I won't give you your stuff back." Chapter three begins with the PCs attempting a skill challenge to leave the Halfling prison. They can attempt to negotiate their release (which should be an issue in and of itself), attempt to jailbreak themselves out, or split the party and have some go one way and the other go another. The book's pretty clear that the PCs then go to the next encounter, which is built around them getting their stuff back from the Halflings, regardless of which challenge they took. So, assuming the PCs go the diplomatic route, we can have a situation where the Halfling King gives his unwavering trust to the PCs... But doesn't actually give their stuff back to them.

Narratively, I think I can just avoid those last two by removing the one encounter the players have with the Halflings. They don't serve any purpose in the story, they're not foreshadowed, and they're not used again later. It'd mess with the ongoing Survival Days mechanic, because one of the things you can do is use that encounter to get more Survival Days.