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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shieldhaven" data-source="post: 2332353" data-attributes="member: 23427">We did not return to the drow settlement as I had expected.  Hoping to avoid the wrath of the dragon, we went south.  We traveled for three days with only one sighting – through the canopy, we spotted a wing that was either brass or bronze.  It went by much too fast for any of us to be sure.  Brass and bronze are, according to what I have been told, among the weaker of the draconic breeds.  They are generally more selfish and concerned with shorter-term goals – decades rather than centuries or millennia.  Nevertheless the dragon remains our foremost concern.Xilonen led us over the mountains and into the desert.  This only compounds our worries, now that we do not even have the benefit of tree cover.  I have a certain feeling of resignation; I do not think there is anything we can do to avoid this wrath, and so I feel as though we are traveling under a sentence of death.Xilonen left us to return to the jungle when we got to a pair of stone pillars (inscribed with the words, “Curse those who enter unbidden”) that marked the head of a road in the desert.  He told us that this is where he had parted company with the students, and this is where he would meet us again in five days.  The road continues south to a fork.  The left fork leads to the tomb of a giant king from shortly after the coming of the desert.  That tomb was built by the king’s slaves.  According to legend, it was made small enough that other giant nobles could not raid his tomb without great difficulty.  The right fork leads to the giant city of Pazar.With this in mind, we passed through the pillars.  The sand here is ashy, possibly the result of a magical backlash as giants fought off an invasion from another plane of existence.  That was just the start of the deeply strange things that occurred.  We fell afoul of a rainstorm; when a drop of rain hit my hand, my skin was burned as if by acid.  Not long after, we saw swarms of worms approaching us.  Fearing that they were driven forth by something much larger and more fearsome, I did not destroy them with a Shockwave as I ought to have done.  Fel was trampled by one of the three distinct swarms.  We eventually dealt them sufficient injury that they changed course, and we never did determine that there was anything pursuing them.I think it was later that day that we were attacked by a giant starfish in the middle of the desert.  Gerron and Fel were both swallowed by this starfish and had to cut themselves out of its belly.  I felt that this really capped off the absurdity of the earlier incidents of the burning rain and the trampling worms.  My spells were only vaguely useful in this battle, though I did deal the final blow to it with the guttering remnants of a Scorching Ray.We have turned toward the tomb first, after a great deal of discussion.  We reasoned that a group of students in trouble in a tomb might be in more pressing danger than a group of students in trouble in a sand giant city.  We still have no idea if we even ought to hope that they still live.Some questions that remain:Are the gods merely toying with us now?  Will we ever get a few shreds of information that will actually prove to be useful in unraveling… whatever it is that’s going on in the world with the Dhakaani and the Cults of the Dragon Below?</blockquote>

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