What has gone before:
In the city of Aljanaah, the desert warrior Shadya joined a merchant caravan as a guard. The caravan has traveled east, leaving the desert lands and trading amongst the forested lands. It has now gradually circled back towards the sea and the southern part of the desert. At an inn, the caravan encountered a small female bard with bright red hair and oddly-pointed ears. Strange even amongst the peoples of the forested lands, this teenager, Fiamma, seemed interested in the desert peoples, their language, their songs and stories. She engaged with the caravan master to accompany the caravan.
Bandit Attack.
On the road, the guards are ever vigilant, as the wealth carried by the caravan is quite portable: gold, jewels, priceless trinkets. The caravan does attempt to disguise the nature of their goods by porting several hogsheads. Nonetheless, bandits attack and, although they are beaten off and mostly chased down, the guard finds itself down to only 12 serviceable warriors. Fiamma, having found a broken Vial of Invisibility and squeezed some drops out of the garment it had soaked into, becomes insubstantial and, dressing herself in the jerkin of one of the bandits, scouts out their lair: a fortress-castle carved into the mountains.
As Fiama cases the joint, one of the escaped bandits gallops into the fortress to be met by a hail of arrows from a nervous guard. The mounted bandit thus dies. Fiamma, still insubstantial and still in the bandit colours, grabbed some broken arrows and the horse and represented herself as the dead man's ghost, terrorizing the bandit guard. Returning to her own party, Fiamma presents a case to the caravan master and guard for using the ghost tactic as a diversion that would allow storming the citadel.
Revenge.
Fiamma proposes using ghostly music in the dark to terrorize the bandit guard into abandoning their fortress. She checks out the muster-able caravan guard for voices that can be utilized as back-up singer-moaners. Shadya is among the three chosen; the remainder will hold for the mop-up action. It takes some persistence with off-key terrorism before Fiamma hears a noise and notes [via infra-vision] a group of people creeping from out a wall of the fortress where she had not realized a door existed. An extra effort spooks those bandits into running, and Fiamma's party secures the Secret Back Door. Leaving one guard to hold the door for the mop-up committee, Fiamma allows Shadya to cut their way through what little resistance they find.
On an upper level, the three surprise another three in a room. Shadya takes out the ready warrior, Fiamma keeps the mage engaged, and the other guard holds the seated warrior. Shadya and the guard finish up (including an additional set of reinforcements that tries to come in at the door) and Fiamma takes the mage prisoner.
The civilians (mostly women and children) of the bandit compound are located. Arrangements are made with them to care for the injured of the caravan party. Fiamma takes what treasure she chooses and all the rest is turned over to the civilians. [The desert peoples do not believe in desecration or robbing the dead. They also believe that to deal in stolen goods is to bring bad luck.] The caravan master chooses to have nothing to do with what treasures the bandits held.
Shadya arranges for the burial of the dead and for regular guards on the fortress walls while the caravan is camped within. On her off time, she hunts up Fiamma and finds her searching for the mage's lair. The little one does discover the secret entrance (and suffers some damage in so finding). She preservers up into a room of strange apparatus and a few books. Fiamma checks out the books, managing to decipher "stone" and "magic" in two of the titles. There is another door out of the mage's lab, closed and apparently locked by key. All the other doors dealt with thus far had hidden mechanical latches at some distance from the door. Shadya proposes opening the door.
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