Skeledjinn has had it with you guys. He casts "Rocks Fall, You Die!" If you make your save, you only take half of a million points of damage. 
Really have a hard time understanding how anyone can seriously play this way.
So there is pages of crap where the HIGH LEVEL PC's are supposed to be flunkies in some loser army. They do watches. They report to their commander. Blah Blah. This whole scene is basically to set up a patron encounter WHICH THE DM COULD HAVE JUST INTRODUCED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Missions are fine. My players would do just about anything if there is significant gold for training costs on the line. But module X4 assumers that the players will just do whatever they are "supposed" to do until you just hint to them what they are "supposed" to do. Toxic!
Any group that is playing D&D long enough to get 5th level characters will already have a background and it won't fit with this. The players will already be "Knights of Trollopulous" and can be hired by Prince Elric when they show up for the special Monster Girl Ball. Not hard!
Pointless set-piece encounter happens when the players are sent on their mission. No chance to avoid. No way to find out that it is coming. Assumed here is that the players will be travelling by boat and they will be sitting ducks. Everything wrong with post-2000 D&D RIGHT HERE.
The whole point of the wilderness rules is that the players CAN GO ANYWHERE THEY WANT AND DO WHATEVER THEY WANT. If they get lost, they will do something they didn't plan on doing which may be more fun than what they intended to do.
Taking the wilderness framework given in the B/X rules and then imposing a linear script on top of it that short circuits player autonomy is STUPID. Given that these modules are supposed to illustrate how the game IS INTENDED TO BE PLAYED, this is REALLY BAD for the hobby. Fail!
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