Durch Die Wuste
Having hacked the Castle of Maidens, Harald and Co. set off into the desert to the east to avoid the Djinn upon his return. Hippolyta takes the surviving Amazons and runs off across the desert. Walid heads off for Cairo to report to his superiors, Asterion takes Rebhid as his future wife and goes back towards Ethiopia, Gur rides away on Cleantha the centaur, and Justinian goes away to Baghdad to find a high-level Muslim cleric. Harald is left alone with a bunch of prisoners, including one of the Orotheans, Hassan Azam, Anmah, and Brigette. He cuts a lot of tendons, pokes out Brigette's eye and cuts off her hands.
Harald, the simulacrum of Wirshin, and Afaf go back to the Forbidden Dungeon to enact a plan to kill a beholder. Ishmael buys a bunch of supplies in town, including sheep to offer the Sphinxes of the dungeon. The party goes down and negotiates with the Sphinxes, resulting in a truce. They also give Harald some info about various magic items. After getting really ready Harald attacks the beholder, only to have it explode. It was just a Gas Spore all along! Well, now a lot of goddamn fungus men are going to be Sphinx food. Good riddance.
After returning to the ladies the whole group takes off through the desert. Harald keeps casting Clairvoyance to get the lay of the land. This reveals a gigantic sea of reflective glass in the middle of the Arabian desert, around 400 miles wide and 1200 miles long. There is no real way around it, and it has a big building fairly close by as well as ruined city far to the South. The group begins marching towards this Sea of Glass. On the way they are attacked by a purple worm which kills Ishmael and almost kills Afaf, as well as a tree-monster and some giant spiders.
Upon reaching the Sea Harald magics up a sled and some phantom steeds to pull it along. The girls giggle as they hold one another tightly around the waist while gliding swiftly over the night sky reflected below them. In the day the Sea gets really hot, so everyone rests on the sand nearby. After two days the group reaches a half-buried metal boat that looks like it is made to ride on the Sea. However, it lacks a power source, which would appear to be an 8-inch ankh of some sort. The group passes it by, and after a bit they arrive at the large building previously viewed from above, and enter.
It appears to have been an ancient Elven temple of some sort. There are three giant statues inside in a sort of worship hall. One is a strong male elf with a spear, one is a beautiful elf maiden, and the third is a giant snake, coiled and looking upward. A lot of elf ghosts and zombies attack and are defeated. While everyone is resting and recovering a giant metal boat pulls up outside and a ton of skeletons start pouring out. Harald gets the ladies to hide in a room downstairs, and he and Elgale ambush the skeletons. Lots of spells are cast and weapons swung, and finally all 100(!!!) skeletons are destroyed. Harald and Elgale enter their boat, only to be attack by the ship itself. They destroy it, and recover a magical ankh that appeared to be powering it. During more rest an elven woman in white walks up to the temple. Dolores translates Elvish for Harald, who finds that the woman just walks around the Sea, which she calls the Sea of the Sky. She warns that the Sea will burn you alive if you walk on it in the day, and that a herd of purple worms destroyed the city to the south. She says the city was abandoned before that, though, when the people there could no longer trade for goods they needed. Then she walks off.
Further exploration of the temple reveals a very weird basement. There is a very very large area, lit only by a pale red psuedo-sun. Trash (pottery shards, bits of cloth, food garbage, etc) litters the ground, and twisted and stunted plants grow in places. Harald, Elgale, Afaf, and Wirshin go in to explore. The walls eventually fall away, revealing an abyss falling away from either side of a 300 ft wide span of earth. Strong winds blow. One one side red clouds can be seen below and on the other a maelstrom or swirling red going down, perhaps forever. There is no ceiling, only weird sky. The "bridge" of land the party is walking on is shaped like a crescent with the maelstrom in the middle, and it is unsupported in any way. Going around the crescent distance starts to change strangely, with things suddenly coming closer together or farther apart. The party ties themselves together to keep from being separated or falling into the abyss.
Then everyone seems to wither speed up a lot or slow down, as though Hasted or Slowed (or double-Hasted, for Elgale). A demon of some sort jumps up from the below the bridge, luckily moving very slowly. Elgale kicks his butt, but Wirshin takes a shot and goes back with Afaf. Harald and Elgale proceed and are attacked by two more demons, one moving as fast as Elgale and the other just moving as though Hasted. Battle is joined and the demons start doing well, especially since now Harald's spell all start to go awry. Elgale goes negative and crawls away, and Harald almost gets thrown into the Abyss. However, he manages to get away, taking out one of the demons and forcing the other to run. While crawling on his belly, guts hangin out, Elgale notices another magical ankh in the trash, and takes it. Everyone returns to the upper level of the temple, and they rest more, interrupted but once by horrible crab-monsters that Harald quickly dispatches.
