The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles

[Dalmosh]

Probably more one for Afro's thread but...

Specific locations are less useful as a concept on the Astral Plane, because, while it is coterminous with the Prime, and mostly empty, the distances between two astral locations are largely subjective. Since it's a transitive plane, I think there's an argument that the writer intended this ability to work a bit like a Ghost's Manifestation ability, but that becomes much messier with the Astral.

So, while the dragon might have a lair somewhere fixed and permanent, like on a Dead God, the further it travels away from this point on the Material, the more distant it would be on the Astral as well due to the coterminous nature of the Astral. However, the nature of the Astral makes covering such a distance in Material Plane terms fairly subjective as well. MotP makes it clear that the abstract nature of the Astral means that a location one is "very familiar with" always takes 2d6 hours to reach by mentally willing yourself through the Silver Sea.

So I think I would rule...
Dragon's lair corresponds to a fixed physical location on the Prime.
Travelling out of sight of this location means that you will then just zip back and forth between your current Prime location and a blank area of the Silver Sea which you then "know" as the spot corresponding to that area of the Prime.
It always takes a minimum of 2d6 hours (from your point of view) to travel through the Astral between such locations, no matter how far away they are from one another in physical space on the Material, usually this will take "longer" though, as areas that one has, for example, only "seen casually", take d4x10 hours to reach.

However, the Astral is also timeless, so from the objective point of view of your adventuring party, effectively, you teleport anywhere around the world infinitely, and instantaneously, taxed only against a 4% chance of encounters per astral "hour", most of which you can instantly escape by just zipping back to the Material. That said, zipping back to the Material (unless you have the Colour Pool ability Beni-Kujaku suggests above), may kill you instantly if you pop out inside solid rock. The Astral lacks the Material analogue terrain that the other Transitive Plains have to allow you to do this more safely.

I don't play very optimised games, but I think that needs an Asterisk.