Part 23 of Lady of Shadows is up.
This was not going as I had planned.
As you did not arrive with an army, might I assume you are not here to arrest my nephew? Lord Talibs voice was so soft as to be almost a whisper. His pale eyes seemed to look past me, and I wondered if perhaps he were blind.
After talking with some of the other staff at athas.org, I’ve decided to close the arena.
The code for the arena is based on a dead forum project; even when it was alive, the hacks that I made to enable single signon made things very difficult to keep up to date. Because of this, it’s become a drain on server resources, and has actually made it more difficult to keep other aspects of the site up to date.
Considering that the traffic on the arena numbers in the single digit posts-per-month range, I think it’s best put into mothballs.
While I’m going to be removing the site soon, I will be saving the database; if there’s a demand for it, I’ll see about setting up a read-only archive of the site.
Once the arena is removed, I’ll be undertaking some infrastructure modernization efforts – Some visible, some behind the scenes. I’ll talk more about that later.
This month’s Dragon magazine is live today:
Let the tarrasque run roughshod over your campaign. Save the town of Hochoch in the Grand Duchy of Geoff. Deck the halls with wondrous tapestries. Build fantastic inns and taverns from scratch. PLUS: The return of the decapus, the magen, the rhagodessa, and the thoul. We proudly present for your gaming pleasure, Dragon 418.
Rodney Thompson’s Eye on Dark Sun is titled The Widow’s Spirit, and features plot hooks relating to the bitter spirit of an executed templar-wife of Nibenay.
As usual, all Dragon content requires a DDI subscription.
For anybody who happens to be on Google Plus, I’ve set up a Dark Sun community. Join up and introduce yourself; I’m interested to see what direction these go…
Over at Obsidian Portal, December’s Campaign of the Month on Obsidian Portal is a Dark Sun campaign. The campaign is La Decade des Heros! by Athas.org member Pils. Congratulations Pils!
Part 22 of Lady of Shadows is up.
Floating indolently in a steamy haze had resolved nothing. My shoulder still ached as I clambered out. So did my heart. I drew a little magic to quickly dry myself, wincing as the beads of moisture flashed into steam as though my skin were hot stone, then padded back to my quarters. I dressed quickly, in the charcoal-grey sampot, crown and collar. My makeshift leather armour would serve for the journey, but was not appropriate attire for visiting the manor of a noble house.
Part 21 of Lady of Shadows is up.
The Temples baths were a late addition to the building, when the number of templar-wives in the Naggaramakam grew too large to be accommodated in the main bath-house near the eastern wall.
A new Dragon is up (DDI subscription required). This month’s Eye on Dark Sun article is “Ysrilla Lightstep”, by Rodney Thompson
Ysrilla Lightstep stalks the desert wastes of Athas in search of elusive prey, defying death to claim her prize.
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If you’re wondering what’s happened with the Ashes of Athas home / non-convention play, it seems there’s been some kind of snag with distribution permission.
There’s a thread on the WotC site acting as a sort of petition, asking Wizards to prioritize resolving the confusion. If you’re interested in playing Ashes of Athas, and you can’t make the conventions, this is where you want to weigh in. Please remember that hostility just makes the overseers mad.
Dragon #416 is live, here. (DDI subscription required)
In a twist from the past, rather than posting separate articles as separate PDFs, the whole magazine is in one PDF. This month’s Dark Sun entry:
Eye on Dark Sun: The Withering Ones, by Rodney Thompson
Kalak kept a horde of zombies hidden below Tyr. Now that he is dead, do these undead horrors pose a threat to the city above?