Paradox of the Good Act found that he was not afraid of death. He didn’t seem to be afraid of most things, he thought absently (while the goblins spread through the room, running up the walls, crying their war-shrieks). But he was made very sad by quite a lot. He was grieved to see […]

  Gryselde could not turn her mind from the sight of Elfrida’s corpse, and of Elfrida’s own knife driven cruelly into her heart. When Atrahasis began jabbering about the cursed treasure, and the sylph and the prophet, she hardly noticed; and when the others ran off she followed only slowly, behind them, at the edges […]

  Kate took out her dagger when she heard the fight start north of the round room. She was scared, a little, and also she wanted to be there with Domini killing the nasty cobolds. Why wasn’t the witch-girl going there to cast spells on them? Or sending her new cat to kill them? Kate […]

The big issue for me with this chapter was, obviously, alchemy. The idea of alchemy has percolated through a number of cultures — Egyptian, Greek, and Islamic, for example, to say nothing of independent traditions in China and India — but is perhaps most familiar in its Renaissance form. Certainly that’s what influenced me as […]

I was fairly pleased on the whole by how this one came out. Some of these chapters definitely flow more easily than others, and this was one of the ones that, let’s say, came with no resistance. I don’t just mean that generating text was a quick process, I mean that the overall structure sorted […]

  The wind took William by surprise; startled, he saw the ruby flying toward him, and stretched out his hands to stop it — Then he’d caught the massive gemstone, even as he was thinking, The wretched sylph, and to his surprise there was something else in his thoughts; or at any rate he was […]

  The cobolds drew up, hissing, their swords readied, as Amanos and Geoffrey came forward. Gral followed a step behind the mortals. Domini could see five cobolds. Three before, two in back. Domini gripped Odilo’s axe tightly, and remained behind Gral, as Amanos had ordered. I will honour your weapon, Odilo, she thought. You’ll see. You […]

  I’ve mentioned that the process of creating the dungeon by random roll feels like an extended collaboration, but the truth it is goes deeper than that. Actually writing the chapters — sending the characters through the areas and encounters I roll up — makes things take different turns than I’d expected, and produces a […]

  Come along, come along. This way. Yes. We are heading west. The way is straight. There is nothing on the floor. Yes. Keep going. Ah, we have come to a large chamber. I would say ten yards or more to one side, by which we have entered, and twenty long. It is filled with […]

Geoffrey’s an interesting character to me in a number of different ways. I want to talk here a bit about his background.