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As I suspected, the end of the holidays and the advent of term saw the end of any progress on Last Breath of the Dragon Queen. I left the heroes in the fountain room about to enter the white dragon's lair. Since then, I haven't been inclined to do any writing, although the story does pop into my head from time to time, and even more quickly pops out.

I was thinking about Last Breath of the Dragon Queen again this evening. I've had it in mind for some time that the party will tackle the matrons in the order in which they tackled Tiamat's exarchs. To this end, I've been thinking that the entrance to the white dragon's lair will be in alabaster covered in astral diamonds. The other entrances will follow the same sort of pattern: emeralds on jade, jet on obsidian, sapphires on lapis lazuli,

One of the things that I've never ceased to dislike about China is the appalling long school day. It's not conducive to being creative: just look at my AS class this afternoon. Bias in the media was the topic. "What do you think?" I asked. I should've said, "What? Do you think?" They had plenty of time to discuss the questions I put to them, but my exhortations to them last year to be creative and imaginative seem to have been forgotten over the summer.

Fortunately in spite of the school day here I managed to find the energy to finish off Test of Fire. It starts with Xerefri turning up in Sayre to fetch the heroes. The adventure makes much of the damage he causes, but rather than having the company remonstrate with him, I had some belligerent woman accosting him about his thoughtless damage

Work on the Scales of War has slowed but not stopped with the approach of the start of the new term. I'm late in the third part of Test of Fire with Bashumgarda about to get given a spanking.

I've also been looking at something to fill the gap once I've finished with the Scales of War on which I've probably been working for two and a half years. This summer saw some extreme progress on the Adventure Path because there were no interruptions. My next aim may be one of Paizo's Pathfinder Adventure Paths where I perhaps aim to write up each part in the space of a month or so.

I've been wondering about adopting the approach in Neverwinter Nights and reducing the party to a pair of characters. The longer I've been writing the Adventure Path, the more I've been thinking that too many of the

One of the problems with Those Once Loyal is that it's a linear adventure which tries to be non-linear by stating that the order of the encounters, excluding the last, doesn't matter. In fact, it does matter. It also matters that when the PCs go to Celestia, they randomly appear outside Bahamut's Palace unless (and this is unlikely) one of them has previously been to Empyron, the City of Healing, which is their preferred destination.

Once inside Bahamut's Palace the party eventually encounters Dispater, whose conversation is based on the assumption that they've already been to Empyron and that Amyria has been abducted. Certainly, the story works much better this way because I had to treat Dispater like a devilish version of a wikipedia entry be­fore I sent him on his way. I had to

Overall, I thought Legacy of Io was the most interesting of the Epic tier adven­tures so far.

It starts with Amyria having visions of the Arrow of Fate (a bone arrow wrapped in flesh? Nothing suggestive here), which sends the party off to the city of Hestavar, the home of Erathis, Ioun, and Pelor.

Things don't start well because Bahamut's own people seem determined to stop the company, the reasons for which become clearer in the next adventure. I had a flight of angels turn up after the fight, but fudged their proper reaction (which should be, "I'll have to ask you to accompany me to the station") once they knew who the adventurers were.

I treated the library in the Swan Tower like the Cambridge University Library – you can't just walk in, but, if you're not a member of the

Having lost interest with Betrayal at Monadhan, I decided to take a different ap­proach with Grasp of the Mantled Citadel. As I said in the previous entry, I've been writing these adventures keeping in mind that the reader can only know what the heroes know. In most cases I follow the various checks (even if I am thinking, "How in the name of Erathis can you possibly know that?") in the adventures, but when it comes to NPCs, it can only be what that character seems to be doing.

In Grasp of the Mantled Citadel, I did three things: I was more authorial; the mon­sters took centre stage; and I wrote the whole thing in reverse order. I also used Darrhkerrar the Adherent of Tiamat as the thread binding things together so that he was the one who passed on the news about the new band of

I finished off Betrayal at Monadhan without much ceremony. The tale had been going well enough even if it seemed to have the party working through two encounters back-to-back. First was the encounter outside Sarissa's hut, which was immediately followed by the encounter with the well-hard vampire some­where in the village; and then there was the encounter with Rolain, which was im­mediately followed by the encounter with the desecration.

Kas then arrived at that point to ask the adventurers to retrieve his sword for him in return for which, he'd tell them what Arantor's weakness was. Things didn't quite work at that point because Kas, in effect, had to pay the party's wages first. The request also overlooked the fact that Kas has a band of his own: Rolain, Gwenth, various callophage

I finished off A Tyranny of Souls this morning and thus brought the Paragon Tier to an end.

I started with Amyria barging into Gunpowder and Glory's room in Overlook while they were [engaged in a spiritually uplifting conversation –ed.] and telling them to go to the Mercane Citadel for talks with the githyanki rebels.

"But we're mercenaries," said Gunpowder. "Why don't you send professional diplomats?"

"It's because we're expendable," explained Glory, and Amyria nodded. "Now be quiet and take me to heaven again."

I conflated bits of the trip to the Mercane Citadel. I was tempted to have the PCs have a chat with Scaramandar as part of their quest to find a way to Tunarath, and probably should have in spite of any resulting penalties. Instead, I had Mayhem arrange passage with Captain

I finished off Garaitha's Anvil this afternoon. Considering the number of encoun­ters, I shouldn't have been surprised to find that in spite of my attempts to abbreviate some of them, the entire tale ended up being the third longest in the entire series so far.

I started with slapstick by having the inattentive githyanki guards fall over each other in panic outside the entrance to the Fane of Chanhiir. Inside, Glory mocked a pair of vengeful ghosts by observing the logical shortcomings of spirits. They were happier when their presence frightened off a couple of githyanki soldiers.

The party tried to get round the fomorians guarding the githyanki rebels by ex­plaining that "ugly" ≠ "evil". The fomorians took the view that "violence" = "pleasure", and there was a fight.