[Palacrisis D Jones]

Time stamp to be arranged but around Melora era XIII

[Pala in peer mod mode]

QM threw a burly arm across his broad Dorin face and scowled up at the suns that beat down with a remorseless laugh at the sight of the small caravan train which was plodding across the vast waste of the furnace lke desert. QM swore and then regretted the effort. He had vowed that after the last expedition he had led out here that he was never …..never, going into the desert again but his old friend Horo had persuaded him. The cactus wine had flowed in the nameless little hamlet and the strange little brown man had chattered on and on so much so that the truculent ex Mudjahedin quarter master had agreed just to shut him up.

So it was that instead of sipping cold wine in the shady little bar that he called home he was being broiled alive in the north- west corner of the Arakmatian desert sitting on a ….camel. Great smelly beasts with a temper like his mother in law when her porridge was too hot. QM hated camels but for all that he knew their worth in this environment a good camel was the difference between life and death. Horo had persuaded him that they should run carpets up to Silrosia and see if they got a better price but the QM knew this was not the real reason they were out here with eight camels and enough supplies to last three months.

Horo was strange, mystical and wise beyond his considerable years a doyen of desert men who knew the shape of the shifting sands better than he knew the dark wool of his yurt in the hidden valley deep in the southern desert. He was not a trader he was a dreamer of dreams a man of the deepest spiritual beliefs a father too many and husband to more wives than he could remember, old as the mountains and yet still sprightly as a nimble goat. He wore a simple brown blanket tied with cord and had a single obsidian knife with a medicine bag attached to the cord around his waist.

They had formed an unlikely friendship during the ill fated expedition to discover a lost gold mine and although the bluff warrior Dorin and the ancient little man were a strange couple they trusted each other implicitly.

As the suns rose to impossible heat in the centre of the brightening they tethered the camels put up a lean too, brewed sweet tea and settled down to sit out the worst of the heat to sleep drink and nibble dates and hard bread. The dark patch of the blanket could be clearly seen from the great dunes that surrounded their little camp and the hospitality code of the desert would allow strangers to approach their camp to share water and salt as a sign of good will.