Desert of Desolation I
The Lady Amaranth, daughter of Straasha, communicates with Sir Blanque via dream-sending: "Go the source of the River of Sand". The players restored the temple of this particularly powerful water elemental on an earlier occasion, and she took a liking to the dashing Filkharian noble. He is, after all, part mer-person (it's a long story...).
Anyway, Sir Blanque relates the dream to his compatriots the next morning. Duke Avan Astran, overall leader of the expedition, is happy for some of the others to head northwards to the indicated location indicated. "After all," he says, "We are in no rush to return westwards just yet. While you are away, I can direct our friends in the two tribes to help rebuild the fort around our lovely blue tower. Just come back whenever you are ready."
Marion and Destiny are as usual more than happy to accompany their friend on this side-journey; Sir Blanque also asks Bomilcar to join them, reuniting the four characters for the first time in quite a while; "I think this could be quite dangerous," muses the nobleman, "So it's probably a good idea to take someone who has desert survival skills." The troupe's composition agreed, they head northwards:
Sir Blanque - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person
Marion - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff
Destiny - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone
Bomilcar - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family
The party skirts the low-lying hills that rise westwards to the Ragged Pillars, the huge mountain range dividing the eastern kingdoms from the Weeping Wastes, Bomilcar's homelands. They reckon it will take them around three weeks' travel to make it to what used to be the headwaters of the River of Sands, so called because it used to be a river and is now composed of, well, sand. The journey is reasonably uneventful if picturesque, with various herds of antelope, as well as the occasional bear and snake. There are no mishaps.
Arriving in the rough area denoted in Sir Blanque's dream, they are starting to encroach on the mountains proper. They are looking for the point where the River of Sands debouches from the Ragged Pillars into the hills; from there it wends its way across the land, eventually linking up with the Tears of the Land, the area of lakes where they first encountered Amaranth. They set up a reasonably adequate base camp and then cast around the area, looking for anything that seems somewhat out of the ordinary.
They find it. Following the course of the River of Sands, they see in the distance a partial collapse of a cliff face that seems quite recent, the result of some earthquake activity. Before they get to that point they come across some rather suspicious looking sinkholes, the largest of which seems to lead to a cavern of sorts. Something glints within, catching the rays of the sun at an angle, so they decide to investigate.
Destiny and Bomilcar string their bows in preparation. It is easy enough to jump down into the area below the ground, the landing cushioned by a drift of soft sand that has cascaded downwards. However, it is still quite loose, and Bomilcar finds himself sliding downwards towards an opening that leads to a huge temple-like building. It has a copper dome, which is what was reflecting the light. The others find their footing, but Bomilcar's uncontrolled descent disturbs some rather nasty-looking (and unnaturally large) spiders. Destiny puts an arrow right through one of them from her beautiful bone longbow, and then uses a fire elemental to scare off the others. Bomilcar finally comes to a halt in front of an enormous portico, none the worse for wear.
The others join him. This place is looking dilapidated, with quite a bit of rubble lying around the floor from what was obviously an impressively domed roof. This must have been cracked in the recent movements of the earth, and the temple itself shows similar signs of pressure. Some of the portico columns have collapsed, and the impressive bronze doors leading into the temple proper have been squeezed open. Taking care not to disturb anything too much, the group proceeds. They take their usual precautions so that Bomilcar and Destiny can see in the dark (heat vision supplied by fire elementals), while Marion and Sir Blanque simply rely on their non-human heritage.
A bit of mucking around the interior leads the party to a singularly large room. Rectangular in shape, there is a large white altar at the far end, with a glowing fist-sized gem set into its top. The characters have to pass through three different magical traps to get to it, one of which causes the demise of a water elemental as it protects the players from a rather dangerous curtain of electricity. As they approach the altar after working their way through the traps, the gem is forced out from beneath by some sort of titanic force. A voice resonates inside their heads. "At last, I am free" it intimates in various languages at the same time, as a blast of heat sears its way through the middle of the temple and upwards.
Everything starts to rumble and the four friends hastily retire they way they came, just in time to get out of the giant sinkhole before this buried town (or whatever it was) disappears forever, helped by the judicious application of earth elementals to stabilise their immediate location. They make it to the surface, reasonably intact.
Not only has the temple and its environs been buried for good now, the cliff face that attracted their attention in the first instance has been completely blasted open by whatever it was that they freed from its confinement. A perfectly cylindrical (but dry) canal tunnel leads directly into the Ragged Pillars; this must be where the River of Sand came from in the first place. Destiny theorises on closer inspection that the fiery thing they have unleashed has opened up an ancient passageway. "There are scorch marks on some of the walls, but the rest is untouched. This tunnel must have been here all along, but hidden from sight behind the cliff face."
The group rests overnight to give everything plenty of time to calm down, and discusses what to do next. Destiny is adamant that whatever they released is extremely powerful, probably a fire elemental of at least the same standing as Amaranth; Sir Blanque agrees. They decide to get some sleep and then follow the tunnel through the Ragged Pillars to see what is at the other end; that fire thing probably needs to be stopped, and after all it is their fault it escaped...
The next morning, they go through the canal entrance. It heads straight as an arrow right through the heart of this part of the Ragged Pillars, towards a region tentatively identified as "Kwan" or "Quar" on the old maps they have seen - something like that. After three days' travel, light grows at the other end, and they realise they have entirely passed right through the entire mountain range to an area that, as far as they are aware, nobody from the Young Kingdoms or the East has ever been. The floor of the canal has a partially sandy base much like the full River of Sand itself, but strangely, the daylight is not entirely circular, seeming darker in a shape that resolves itself into a triangle as they approach. They appear on the other side of the Ragged Pillars and are faced with an enormous pyramid sitting in a desert region; there is a mostly ruined, but very large, fore-temple sitting at the bottom of the pyramid. That explains the triangular shape, then.
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