The Intrigue Pales beside....& Alternate beginnings

This thread is for discussing starting the adventure in Pale. Certainly ideas can be gleamed from the Dragon article "The Volturnus Connection" And yet I get what SF-0 did by starting the action "en media Res" and throwing the PC's into the middle of the action. However, I've thought that hinting at some intrigue while the PC's are still at Truane's Star would have value for the story but experience tells me that subtle clues and foreshadowing is only effective when it has all the subtly of a fragmentation grenade.