Adventure Squadron 8 : Chronicle: The Oasis of the White Palm

One of the supposed cultists runs away and the mob takes chase after him. Bola tries to calm the mob, and they try to ignore him. Bola attempts to trip one, but trips himself instead. Kaleb tries to get a hold of a mob member but misses. The running guy is grabbed by the mob. Bola stuns one of the mob guys that grabbed the runner, and knocks out another. Kaleb casts sanctuary on the runner. The runner is now safe.

Unka is holding the runner and asks why he is running. She is suspicious of him. He says that he was scared of the mob and Unka gets paranoid about his story. The runner tries to leave, but Unka threatens to manacle him if he tries to leave. Bola calls a mob guy fat and he brandishes a rod at him. Bola hits the guy's rod. The guy backs off. Air lancers break up the mob, and ask us to come with them to see the sheik. Hera joins the crew. She's a half elf and was with the supposed running cultist, but we can tell she wasn't a cultist.

We make it to the Oasis. We go into the camp area with a lot people and shops. All the air lancers go to a tent, except the head dude and a second dude who stay with us. We go to a tent with the 2 guys. There are pillows with slave girls, some dude and guards. They are the Sheik and his people. The sheik welcomes us and asks us about his son. Unka bluntly says, "He's dead." The sheik seems distressed by this. Dorian weaves a story of a "Great Battle" where his son fought valiantly to his death. There is an uncomfortable silence. Unka says that she tried to save the son and he gave her his amulet to give to the sheik. The sheik asks them to stick around, but is too broken up to speak now. The sheik gives us a tent. Hera decides to stay with us.

Unka starts to undress and heads to the public water pool stark naked. Kaleb follows Unka to ward off trouble. Unka jumps into the pool. People get really pissed about her sullying their sacred pool and draw swords and run after her. Unka swims away from them and gets out to hide. Unka yells to Kaleb to get her clothes. Kaleb launches his raven at Unka and casts invisibility over her to hide her. Unka runs to the tent. We all notice her coming in, but she's invisible and we realize what she did. Unka puts on new clothes and attempts to disguise herself by wearing her porcu-dog hat and amulets.

The guys who ran after Unka, go to the sheik to get help. Kaleb tries to help the situation by offering to purify the water in the sacred well, but they don't care. They still want their priest to purify it. Kaleb asks about dates, and argues and confuses the guy. The guy walks off thinking the whole group of us are crazy.

Dorian and Nieve explore the area and find some shops that sell food and cloth. They see more shop tents by the second story building. Dorian and Nieve look in the building. Unka, still invisible from spell, steals some dates and follows Dorian and Nieve. She spits her date pits at Dorian pissing him off. Dorian and Nieve go into the compound. Unka runs off to get more dates.

Meanwhile, Bola goes to the sheik to take the scroll he was given by Elminster to give to the sheik. The guard goes to tell the sheik to come and talk to Bola. Bola chats with the other guard and the guard asks him to meet him at Happy Hogan's for a drink later. The first guard returns and brings Bola to the sheik. Bola gives the scroll to the sheik who then opens it. The scroll explodes in his hands and the tent starts on fire. Both the sheik and Bola are okay. The sheik runs out and Bola follows him to a side room. There, the sheik's favorite slave girl and guard are unconscious. Feeling bad, Bola offers his healing potion for them, but they decline and tell Bola not to leave town. The guard gets the head priest who finds the guard and girl are dead. Bola probably won't be going to Happy Hogan's. The priest does however, prove Bola's innocence by reading his mind.

Back at the tent, guards are posted because of Unka's skinny dipping incident and Bola's explosion. Kaleb, not able to get his point across to the guards about how he already purified the water, creates water on the guard in frustration. Kaleb is probably going to be taken to the sheik.

We find out that the guard toasted by Elminster's scroll is named Steve. Ohla asks for a "minute for pants" before meeting with the sheik. Kaleb tries to convince the sheik's son, Ikoff, that perhaps some other naked female half-orc was in the pool. Ikoff doesn't buy it. Kaleb then learns the bathroom customs of the desert people. He isn't happy. Sandy shorts.

Worried about his cart, Ohla coughs up 20 gold to have a guard named Bob check on the cart and hire someone to keep an eye on his hot ride. While they wait for Bob, Ohla tries to get the guard Jamal to buy everyone "a couple of rounds of frosties." Hera then tries and succeeds to charm person on Jamal. He thinks she's just awesome and takes everyone to Happy Hogan's for drinks.

Dorian unloads some gems for 1000 gold pieces and then buys some potions. Unka wants to eat more dates and dreams of the yummy dates on the White Palm. She goes to get her ladder from the wagon. Some kid is trying to earn his 10 gold pieces by guarding the cart for Ohla, but is no match for Unka. She scares him and gets her ladder.

Everyone shows up at Happy Hogan's. Bola is in his own manacles as a joke. Oh, where are you, Stu? Stu!!!!!

Unka shows up with her fresh dates that she successfully picked from the sacred White Palm, but still needs to pit them. The party takes offense at the bar's wicker furnishings. Ohla buys a round of shots mystery liquor for us and our halfling bartendress. A drinking contest ensues. Bola loses. Rosie the bartender points out the slaver guy in the back of the bar. Unka yells at him remembering her disgust of the slavers of past and tells him to leave. He threatens them with retaliation but leaves.

A drunk Bola decides to go off to get jerky to prevent a hungry Unka from eating sacred dates in public. The guard helps drunk Bola to the jerky stand to buy 2 pounds of jerky. Meanwhile, Rosie Underwood , the bartender, tells us that the sheik's second son Ikoff was seen going into the temple late one night. We find out that it's a ruined temple of Set, but they still have secret meetings there.

Rosie also says that she heard some strange screams and gurgles come from north of the compound and that they haven't seen the head sand voyager for days. She tells Ohla that the slaver dude that Unka scared off came around the time the noises started. She also says that the sheik's oldest son's fiancée has disappeared in recent days. She says the oldest son's name was Hussein, the 2nd son is named Ikoff and the 3rd dead son is named Kazahn. Ohla flirts mercilessly with Rosie and tells her of the free enterprise system. Workers of the World Unite!!!!

A well-dressed man with a banjo comes into the bar. His name is Roland the minstrel. He says that he has heard of Squadron 8. Ohla decides that he doesn't like the name Squadron 8 and since Stu isn't around he is going to call us "Hell on Wheels." It sounds more bad ass than Squadron 8. Unka challenges Roland to a duet with her flute. Her talent doesn't please him.

Happy hour hits the bar and more patrons come in including Happy Hogan himself. Unka asks Happy about the "rock" (i.e. monolith) . Happy tells us that the scrolls on this monolith may be about the prophecy of the Desert of Dust. He tells us that Martek has something to do with the monolith.

Unka opens a secret door in Happy Hogan's to see if she can find anything interesting. There are more doors in there and a cook is cooking something. Happy is really pissed that Unka opened that secret door and is coming after her. Unka covers and tells Happy that she was just looking for the little ladies room. Unka charges ahead and opens another door, which opens to guest lodgings. Happy tells her to get out and shows her the ladies room in the common area. Nothing looked very interesting in the "secret room."

After escorting Unka to the bathroom, Happy points out to Ohla that the water bearer Korgan is never at his post and is now at the bar. Happy also says that Ikoff is jealous of the sheik's first-born son, Hussein. Ohla approached Korgan and the stranger he is with and tries to strike a conversation about Korgan's cushy position as the water bearer. Kaleb detects evil on Korgan and his guest and a few other patrons as Ohla tries to gather information from Korgan. Ohla's attempt to pump some info out of Korgan is , while dogged and slightly overbearing, ultimately unsuccessful.

The new babe Hera is at the monolith in the palm grove and tries to decipher the stuff on the monolith and gets a whole phrase, " Guarded by the White"…

Meanwhile, Dorian and Nieve search the crates in the compound and find a secret room there with a ledger. They search the room for secret doors and find a trap door rigged with an alarm. They disable the alarm and go in to explore. They are dungeon delving in the secret passage and find that there's a secret hatch in the ceiling. Dorian and Nieve have a map drawn for them with trap doors and monsters and stuff. Dorian uses his rope to shimmy up and makes a move silent check. "Shit!" He rolls a 5 and Ben laughs, " I have to do this - It's been a long week." And then shouts "ASS HOUSE!!!! in German. (ASS HOUSEN!!!!) Dorian tries to escape and succeeds. Meta-gaming and dice throwing diversion after Phil, in his "50 years of gaming experience" blurts out that the grotesque humanoid that Ben illustrates via the Monster Manual is nothing more than a bugbear.

Dorian, comes back to Happy Hogan's to collect the rest of the group and informs the doughty band of torture and misdeeds. A mystic scroll appears out of nowhere to offer a ransom deal with the kidnapped princess. "I don't like scrolls appearing with mystic deals" or words to that effect are uttered by Dorian before Bola flicks it onto the floor.

The whole mob heads out the door, but not before Ben reveals his unsophisticated and bigoted bias against half-orc / halfling relationships, which can be pure and beautiful and hot-hot-hot despite his hate. Why? Because love conquers all!

Anyway, Nieve thinks that there is a secret door where no one else sees one, until they open it and we follow them down past a giant statue of what we identify as Annubis, but what Ohla might refer to as "Poochy the Grim." At the room at the bottom of the stairs, we find MUMMIES . Combat ensues against bad guys that do CON damage. But Kaleb turns a couple and Hera skins a third with lightning bolt while Unka and Ohla sit back too scared to do anything. Phil to John! "YOU'RE A FUCKIN' MAGIC WEAPON" as Bola tries to figure out whether he'd take a risk of disease with unarmed attackin'. Bola winds up just using the Ring O' Ram on him, so it's all good. GEEK DIGRESSION INTO STAR WARS KID, RESUME FORGERY, OLD SKOOL VIDEO GAMES AND CAPTAIN KIRK'S CELL PHONE. Then Nieve takes CON damage, too and Kaleb learns that magic is still wild without his "magic" staff.

GAME CALLED at 11:38 PM Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep end transmission.