I am looking for some advice on Lessons from the Past.

I am upgrading the enemies in it for a more advanced group of characters.

It is possible during the course of the first part of the adventure to enter the archive and completely not draw the attention of the ISB Agent.

It is also possible that they sneak away from the archive and still not manage to draw his attention.

Here is one issue:

At the end of the first part of the adventure, even if they do not draw attention from the ISB agent, He issues a lock down at the spaceport to try and prevent them from leaving.

Another issue:

At the very end of the adventure, the ISB agent arrives at the site of the Sanctuary.

I want to do all of the parts of the adventure.

So, if I my group manages to be discreet and leaves the Archive unnoticed, I am going to have the scholar go with them and skip the lock down.

I am going to have the ISB agent track the scholar. That will give me a reason for him to show up at the end.

Does that sound reasonable? Does anyone have any better ideas to make it plausible?

That's more than reasonable; the adventure does say that Ashur offers to go with them and specifies that the ISB agent has been keeping his eye on the scholar. Of course, they could always try to talk the scholar into not going for a number of reasons - they don't want him to lose his job, they're worried he's a liability, they're afraid of them giving up their secret, etc - and the adventure kind of assumes they're going to do this. (Predictably, then, my group totally welcomed him aboard. He's now the group's historian, and the eventual write-up I'm planning about their past adventures is in character from his book on the subject.) If that happens, you'll need a back-up.

You said they're advanced PCs? Possibly they triggered something in the agent's system as he was running a routine double-check on them due to past actions, or a previous nemesis somehow gave them away.

There is unnoticed and there is unnoticed. If they take any of the artifacts with them the ISB agent will notice they are missing and then he will lock down the spaceport. If they broke in then that also can lead him to locking down the space port. If they used fake ids to get past the security check point he locks down the space port to interrogate them despite not knowing they are guilty just to gather background information on the Scholar. If the Scholar is missing then that is a lock down. Or introduce another Treasure seeker who wasn't quite as skill full in avoiding detection. Nothing is more fun then letting the pcs think they have been caught and blowing it themselves.

There is unnoticed and there is unnoticed. If they take any of the artifacts with them the ISB agent will notice they are missing and then he will lock down the spaceport. If they broke in then that also can lead him to locking down the space port. If they used fake ids to get past the security check point he locks down the space port to interrogate them despite not knowing they are guilty just to gather background information on the Scholar. If the Scholar is missing then that is a lock down. Or introduce another Treasure seeker who wasn't quite as skill full in avoiding detection. Nothing is more fun then letting the pcs think they have been caught and blowing it themselves.

Yeah, I realize that.

My issue is that at the end of the adventure it lists bonus XP rewards. One is: +10 XP for escaping Phelar without arousing Garai’s suspicions.

If they successfully slip away and I make the spaceport get locked down anyway, isn't that is kind of like denying them that chance at bonus XP regardless of what they do.

I suppose if they walk away suspicion free, but with Ashur, I could just have his image thrown up on all the security monitors instead of theirs. Then they would still be entitled to the XP bonus.

In all the options above he doesn't know who the guilty party is and the lock down is his attempt to trap the guilty party on the planet so he can find them. So if they successfully get off planet without him discovering who they are then award them the bonus xp.

It depends on when their noticed.

You're right to go with the agent tracking scholar as a good first call and as others have said if they swipe the items that's going to draw attention too.

I have a third contingency; my players are being hunted by bounty hunters after they botched the heist in Lure of the Lost.

If they avoid detection and the bounty hunters the hunters are going to get caught up by the ISB anyway and give the information about their target.

Leading the agent to follow the players.

It's unlikely you can do the same but all it takes is for a previous enemy who they may have upset to be at the space port, gun fight ensues and the players escape but it's enough to get the ISBs attention.

You'll notice there's a lot of places the writers say "if you do X action, you arouse his suspicion" or "fail this check, and he's suspicious", even "if you don't pass this check, he's suspicious". That's what I think the 10 XP is about - minimizing chances to pique the agent's interest and succeeding at playing it off when you can't avoid the situation. If you have to shoe-horn in the ISB agent finding out about them later, rebrand the XP as "did everything possible to avoid suspicion of as long as possible". That being said, I'd still say that taking artifacts (and who wouldn't want the cool Force amulet that gives a free Force pip 1/session?) and almost assuredly setting of the alarm probably cancels that XP. But what's 10 XP per party member when you have a MacGuffin you can pass around to give someone an automatic success on a Force roll/do cool plot stuff with?

Taking an artifact only adds a setback die on their checks to leave unnoticed, so that won't necessarily set off the alarms unless I stack the set backs if they take multiple artifacts.

Our party has 6 PCs, so 60 XP is a lot, and our party only has one Force Sensitive character in it, so that artifact only benefits one of them.

It will play out how it will. In the end, the dice will tell the tale.

Your solution is absolutely reasonable. Should the PC's refuse to take Sungazer, you can still have the ISB agent come after them, having brought in Sungazer himself and working the information out of him and giving chase afterwards.

Your solution is absolutely reasonable. Should the PC's refuse to take Sungazer, you can still have the ISB agent come after them, having brought in Sungazer himself and working the information out of him and giving chase afterwards.

Awesome Idea! I had not thought of using that contingency if they leave Sungazer behind.

I had the ISB guy monitoring their conversation as PCs examined the artifacts. So he knew they were headed to Koler

I had the ISB guy monitoring their conversation as PCs examined the artifacts. So he knew they were headed to Koler

If I did that without reason, then that would really nix any chance of them getting the "+10 XP for escaping Phelar without arousing Garai’s suspicions"

Now obviously, if they arouse his suspicions early on, he'll begin monitoring their conversations.