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Glory raised her hand and the rest of the party came to a halt. The moist earth of the clearing was covered in fresh tracks. There was nothing obvious to be seen. She looked along the boundary opposite, wondering what was lurking beneath the leafy boughs.

Is it a trap? she thought. No, too elaborate. Besides, we only stumbled across this place by chance. Who'd be stupid enough to set a trap on the off chance someone might happen to turn up?

Nonethless, Glory was a little suspicious, and conveyed her concerns to the others, who advanced into the clearing with due caution. They had only progressed a few steps when from the trees opposite emerged several human-like creatures which, on first glance, seemed to be wholly dressed in the raiment of the woods, but which, it became clear, were

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Once again the tedium of marking exams which contain dull, unimaginative and heavily clichéd English has spurred me to resume writing. In fact, it wasn't the tedium of exams which prompted me in the first place, but rather the absence of anything much to do in study classes. The ghastliness of the exams has urged me onwards.

It's time for a recap, though, which is more for my benefit than for yours. Chapter 4 has grown slowly but to a monstrous size, accounting for nearly a third of the enture tale. I'm not surprised that Haven of the Bitter Glass has got so long. It's a big story.

Chapter 4 commenced with some shopping because Glory wasn't going to have the company turning up at Telicanthus' party looking like tramps or dressed for battle. (As I may have mentioned, this was to

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I begin this entry with some trepidation because my long entry on 5e got truncated and then a shorter entry about part of that entry also got truncated. The only common factor I can think of was editing the entry afterwards.

I've finally got to the end of Chapter 2 of Haven of the Bitter Glass after rather a lot of fighting, first against Thaggriel and his dragon, Xirakis, and then against Captain Iquel and the Sacrifice. The party is so well known that even the githyanki know who they are because their exploits have been being published in The Astral Sea Gazette.

The second of these two battles had me wondering how airships would engage in battle. Neither ship is really properly designed for aerial combat because they're too much like sea-going vessels and to spare me a lot of bother

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Haven of the Bitter Glass [Hang on. I thought this was going to be about Thunderspire Labyrinth. –ed.] has ground to a halt outside of Akma’ad because the battles were getting tedious. Captain Iquel of the Sacrifice is about to fight a duel with Saecula, but has been about to do that for a few weeks now. As an antedote to the tedium, I decided to write up Thunderspire Labyrinth with two things in mind: 1.) there’d be no fighting; and 2.) each encounter would be covered as briefly as possible.

In the end, the whole tale came to just over 10,000 words even although I dealt with some sections in a few lines.

In the earlier part I had the monsters wanting to know about events around Overlook and made the events in the adventure contemporary with the Siege of Bordrin’s

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I'd forgotten that I'd reached the end of the first chapter of Haven of the Bitter Glass. The story begins with the PCs complaining to Thorfinn (a sergeant in the Overlook City Watch) about the local paparazzi when a messenger turns up with news about the world's slowest flying ship approaching the city.

The githzerai, Tokk'it (and the apostrophe serves what function?), hauls the company off with him with minimal delay which I allowed because, according to my calculations, it's going to take about 17+ hours to reach Akma'ad because the ship, the Conqueror, can only do a pitiful 8mph. (I say pitiful because I'm over twice as far on my bike.)

As an aside, I've just been doing some research on sailing ships. The Conqueror is similar in size to an East Indiaman, which had a speed of 4-5 knots

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With the end of Beyond the Mottled Tower, I think the Heroic Tier of the Scales of War truly comes to an end. I managed to avoid getting bogged down in a lot of tedious slashing by lightly skipping over that part.

The party had an encounter with Kartak Spulzeer and Gaspard de Louca for the first time in the Adventure Path. Kartak knew exactly who Gunpowder and his company were because he's been reading about them in the Brindol Evening News.

“No doubt you’re on some exciting adventure, rooting out villainy and saving the day in the nick of time.”

I don't know whether I can work them in again or whether it was a one-time thing. It's a bit like the wall climb scene in 60s Batman when some celeb would stick their head out of a window while the Dynamic Duo climbed up the

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The party is getting closer to the big showdown with Sharshan, having reaching Djamela’s Tower and entered it. At this point, I’m wondering what to do next.

I redesigned the tower so that this part of the adventure would be more coherent. There’s now an outer courtyard with a gallery running along the side along which the party had to travel in the face of traps and githyanki guards to get to the portal to the outer part of the keep. The adventurers have just discovered that the locked door is, in fact, a portal leading to the next section of the building.

In the original, there are three whole separate scenarios to deal with with the usual incoherent range of monsters. Sharshan’s bodyguards (githyanki and shadar-kai) really make any sense; the rest are centaurs, something...

As I believe I mentioned in my previous entry, I jumped straight to the village of Talar (about a day west of Brindol) to commence the Paragon Tier adventures of the Scales of War. Not knowing exactly where Talar was until I checked the map, I'd made an error in the timing of the adventure, which actually starts with the arrival of the party in Talar on the 2nd of Marpenoth. I didn't want the background to the adventure (viz. Megan Swiftblade's letter to the Elder Council in Overlook) to delay things unduly.

In the village their initial encounter is with Bernath, the landlord of the Green Dragon Inn, who, a reader of the Brindol Evening News and Hildebrant's reports about the company's adventures, almost immediately recognises them. He's a little star-struck and babbles a little.

Fortunately,...

Here endeth the Heroic Tier. I did Fist of Mourning as a letter from Kingdom to Hildebrant in which the former explains how Rufus Crumley asked them to recover his residuum, which was stolen by the Cult of the Exquisite Agony while the Grey Redoubt was undefended. Crumley had had his zombies ready to fight General Zithiruun's forces, thus leaving his tower vulnerable.

The whole adventure is like a gross-out film with monsters spewing poison and acid or exploding in showers of acid or hurling gobs of poisonous snot or, as Nursie put it in Blackadder, letting off great smelly woof-woofs.

If I'd been doing this properly, I would've redesigned the tomb to try and ensure that the party didn't encounter Kalan and the undead dwarves until they'd spoken to Murat. Also, it would've been hard to

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