Secrets revealed...

One of the herders startled awake, and in doing so awoke his brother. What had startled him from his fitful slumber was the sudden absence of noise. The sandstorm had ceased as quickly as it had started, and the only constant seemed to be that the old ashik was still telling his tale. The siblings threw off the blanket, and a significant amount of sand that was covering them, and looked around. Their beasts were starting to rouse and extricate themselves from the deep sand left in the storms wake and the landscape looked different as it always did after such powerful storms. But as far as they could tell all of their herd had survived the storm.

Finally the brothers checked the old ashik, and he too seemed unaffected by the ferocity of the sandstorm. The herders knew that it would be at least an hour before the herd were ready to move on, and as they had lost the majority of the day they agreed that it would be best to remain at the small oasis for the night. Telling the old ashik this he settled back down and said, “so the powerful Arthur of the Mul-Ard clan lay unconscious”. “What?” Interrupted the younger of the brothers. “When did that happen?” For the first time since they had met him, the old man looked annoyed. “If you are not going to pay attention, then there is no point in me continuing the tale.”

The herders looked hurt by this outburst, and pointed out that they could not hear due to the deafening noise of the sandstorm, and that they really did wish to hear the old ashik’s story. The old man rubbed his face with weather worn hands to hide the sly smile that rose to his mouth. When he removed them again the smile was gone and his old patient visage was in place once again, “so what is the last thing that you remember?” “The freed slaves had just discovered the mounds in the sand.”

The old ashik grumbled something about the youth of today not paying the proper respect to their elders and then said;

The group left Kank and Miloch to guard Ka-Reen just outside the smaller mounds and headed in to explore the mysterious feature. Arthur, Balboa and Scar broke into one of the mounds and found an empty space with nothing of note except a four foot wide plug of waxy sand blocking what appeared to be a tunnel down into another chamber. They left that mound and went to explore more of the smaller chambers, most of them were of a similar nature but a rare few held a corpse. In these instances the corpse always held some sort of larvae feeding on the putrid flesh.

The three finally agree that they need to head down and so break one of the waxy plugs and discover a chute that drops ten feet into a tunnel below. Balboa uses his powers to shape handholds to ease their descent, and so the three drop down into the tunnel and begin to explore the labyrinthine complex. They encounter one of the Weezers and after a short fight succeed in slaying it. They cut it up for food and return triumphantly to the others to share their spoils.

This cycle continues as the three intrepid explorers continue to explore. They encounter more of the Weezer, including a couple of larger creatures which Arthur concludes must be warriors of the hive. By this time the frequent skirmishes begin to take their toll, the fights are an accumulation of minor wounds that in the end see the powerful Arthur of the Mul-Ard clan lay unconscious within the tunnels. The group have been searching for almost an hour and one of their number is down. I think that you will agree, their life expectancy is somewhat diminished.