I feel like the info I laid out was sketchy, but that may be good. There is a lot to be said for including less developed elements in an adventure in order to allow for a more organic interaction. This encounter wasn't designed to really test any skills or abilities, but to offer an interesting twist for an encounter. The beauty of it is that it can be played in a very neutral way, as a pure role-play situation, or in an aggressive all out battle. Setting the encounter out as a loose collection of location, adversaries, and situation allow it to be developed in a variety of ways.
There is also a great opening for broadening the adventure while allowing opportunity for gaining further experience. I threw it out at the end of the blog yesterday, mostly as a way of wrapping things up when I couldn't concentrate on what I wanted to add any longer. But, in retrospect, it works. The other reason it feels right has to do with a flaw I've been sensing in the development of this adventure, namely that it is too linear.
The idea of traveling upriver to the mountains was meant to provide an opportunity for a wide variety of encounters of increasing difficulty to run the party up to a high enough level that they could successfully face a dragon in its lair. I didn't anticipate the majority of the travel being by boat. There have been chances to leave the river and cross the mountains directly, and that may be a very helpful option to go back and develop in greater detail at some point, but it becomes more difficult to justify with each mile.
Early on, the impetus to go overland would be to cut off the northern swing in the river. Other options would be to follow mining trails, bandit routes, or for some other rendezvous - like the original plan to gather information from a wizard. Now, having reached higher elevations, the likelihood of an overland route easing the journey in any way is slim. If the river became unnavigable, then the only choice would be to leave it and journey on foot, but to make a substantial mining community in Aron's Bowl a viable location, it is likely the river can be traversed from mouth to source. Otherwise, there would have been a major road striking out from the dock where the mephits and wolves attacked leading directly over the mountains through a pass toward the valley of mines.
In essence, the journey so far has been to posit you on the shore at this point of the adventure and now is where it starts to open into many possible avenues of action. You are basically back at the border of civilization. The attraction of civilization draws adversaries, the milder terrain and climate as you near the thermal springs is likewise more appealing for monsters to live in than the barren stretches. Naturally, there are more options for side treks, and a more pressing need to deal with them rather than move on toward safety. For the party, they are detours, but for the people of the upper valley and Aron's Bowl, they are threats to their safety and well-being. They will actively encourage hardy adventurers to protect them from the danger of the wild, and be willing to pay for the effort (in many cases).
From this point, there should be a side trek for each red dot advancement on the river. And it seems to me that each major side trek should be just that, something major - a lair, dragon caves, giant villages, etc.
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