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Dear players,

I am a bit late for the update due to a nasty cold.

There goes the Mystic-Theurge.

I had mentioned that the haunts in this part of the adventure were easy and mainly there to tell a story... well they are easy up to a point. Had the party followed the D&D adage "Do not split the party" or its corollary: "If some PCs in the party are having an encounter, make sure the others come in support even when not needed." Because if the other half of the party decides to split even more and opens doors by themselves more than a round of movement away from potentially needed assistance, things can go bad.
As I said during the session, I had not got up that morning thinking about killing a character, but it happened. After an underwhelming Cryo-Hydra last time, which read as a threat on paper, I was, like everybody else I guess, surprised to see Valakan dropping in one round.
In my next campaign I will try to devise rules to combat involuntary min-maxing, in this case the "min-" side was the problem. I just find it hard to believe that an LV14 PC has an AC of 10.

Also, you are a bunch of penny-pinching adventurers, at these wealth-per-level earnings the party should invest in scrolls of Resurrection and not the basic, more LV5 like, Raise Dead + Restoration.

Anyway, as we had realised a long time ago this particular Mystic-Theurge was not exactly ticking in sync with the party. If Andrew is indeed considering a Cleric of Shelyn, there is a good article on her in Nights of Frozen Shadows.

Railroady sandbox.

You need to be warned that this adventure may seem a bit disjointed once you arrive in Xin-Shalast, i.e. "sandboxy" in a not very nice way. However it would have felt too "railroady" before that. The background story is decent and I will do my best to let the PCs find out about it.
Spires of Xin-Shalast suffers a bit like most, if not all, of Paizo's "end of adventure path" adventures. We all know the BBEG is coming and everything between now and when you meet him is going to feel a bit like speed bumps. I am not saying that Xin-Shalast is merely a big random encounter table though, just that it will not have the refinement of The Hook Mountain Massacre or Sins of the Saviours.

Literary references.

Back in the days, the Paizo editorial team was not too sure about stepping on the IP of Chaosium, so the Lovecraftian references will sound a bit muted. Those in the know will certainly realise that The Plateau of Leng is pretty much coterminous with the highest regions of Xin-Shalast.
Because Pathfinder has now become a bigger fish and people at Chaosium have been very friendly with them, the Carrion Crown adventure path has been far more open with Lovecraftian creations.

Laurent,