The only reason I'm complaining is because it's the Harpers. Look at how they get Xzar killed. That's how they operate. They had you find a poisoned man and lead you through destroying Xzar's lab, the Harper necklaces, the Spectral Harpists, the bird... To genuinely write a quest for them would be a headache, and I'm just making sure people know that.

<span style="color: lightblue">Ok, as promised, work on Third Way has started. I'm going to keep following this discussion, so I;m bumping it in the hope that more ideas will evolve...

I think that the simple answer is that the Shadow Thieves want you to discover then deal with whomever is challenging them. After you defeat Bodhi the first time, you've basically done what the ST's want of you.

This is a fair question. And I think that it should be possible to have a high level way to describe what the Harpers may want of the PC when the PC has dealings with them. I don't think that it's necessary for the Harpers to betray the PC, although they may certainly be rather deceptive or obtuse during their dealings with the PC.