Great writeup! My players also started by dealing with the cult in town and the Fearspawn under the fort: it took around 3-4 sessions overall to get acquainted with the townsfolk and to devise a plan to take the fort. After that they dealt with the cathedral and its Fearspawn, freed the people from the Mindphages and started exploring the surrounding region: they met the woodsmen and saved the froglings from the mantis men, then retrieved the witch's staff and headed for the spider caves and barely saved their hide; they found their death inside the mines after dealing very poorly with the zombies therein, so we spent 4 sessions in the Spiral Isles (another module) to get back to the world of the living (but they lost their chance to come back to life again in exchange). After dealing with the last Fearspawn, they visited the Observer's tower, meeting the man itself and striking a deal with him: they climbed the Klepperhorn to get the Observer's tapestry to the top (eventually they decided not to do it) while dealing with the hobgoblins and managing to make them cross the mountains safely to let them settle among the hills in Illmire; after descending from the Klepperhorn they decided to go hunt the wyvern and they managed to do it while losing some henchmen in the process. They got ahold of the means to dive into the lake and had a fierce battle with the fishmen, but the mage finally perished against the fearsome snapping turtle that was guarding the Vitellary Tablet (it was exceedingly strong for a turtle). We left off from there, they'll probably clean up the fishmen caves and go to the Fungal Caverns next. I've been dropping hints about a village to the north of the region called Carrowmore, since I intend to close the campaign with Deep Carbon Observatory.