Wherein the company journeys to the City of Ten Thousand Pillars…

• Rewind: The Company spends some of their off-time gearing up for the next mission.
  • Aramis finds a strange ring
  • Ismir hires a local sage to identify the magical properties of the ornate bowl he found hidden in Farouk Ibn Said’s palace, and the strange “pendant” he found in the dragon’s hoard.
• The Company sets out for Iram dhāt al-ʿimād.
• A couple of days on, they encounter the scene of a massacre of a colony of Dragon-Sworn who had occupied an abandoned city.
• Entering the Great Desert, they encounter a nearly-dead man in the desert, apparently fleeing Iram dhāt al-ʿimād. As the Company carries him with them in a cart, he dies, and is later buried when the Company makes camp.
• A week on, the Company arrives at the lost city of Iram dhāt al-ʿimād.
• As they reach their objective, the altar Zat Al-Dawahi had sent them to retrieve, they are confronted by a band of ghouls, led by a spellcaster, who orders them to attack…