title: "Session 40 - The Brother on the Sand"
date: 2026-04-29
date_solaris_start: 1267-08-29
date_solaris_end: 1267-09-03
role: public
summary: "Waiting for [[Milo Puddlewick|Milo]] in the desert ruins, the party was overrun by sandwalkers and a wall-walking sandwraith — until a halfling with a shortsword cut the wraith down and turned out to be Momeline's brother. Milo smuggled them past the dome and into [[Khasim's Crown]] under [[The Open Door]]'s roof, where [[Mama Sherahn Anuvesh|Mama Sherahn]] welcomed them with a strange, lingering look at Ferinthria — and Milo quietly confided that another Ferinthria had walked through the gate three days earlier."

The party held their camp in the desert ruins, waiting for the brother Momeline had reached through the dreamvale. At the centre of the broken courtyard stood an old well, and curiosity got the better of them. Dravencoles braced the rope and lowered Momeline down into the dark where she found a tarnished coin stamped with a single open eye.

The dunes broke open above. Sandwalkers came at the ruins from every side, dozens of them, and a Sandwraith passed straight through the standing walls to lash at Ferinthria before drifting back out of reach. Dravencoles broke shapes apart with his hammer, Lirielle dropped a chromatic orb that flashed white-hot and turned a knot of sandwalkers to glass before they shattered, and Landor swung wide more than once as the wraith ghosted in and out of the stone. Momeline cornered it inside one of the ruined buildings; Ferinthria and Landor Misty Stepped in beside her and nearly finished it before it slipped through the far wall and out into the dunes.

More than thirty sandwalkers were closing on the ruin when, all at once, they fell. Momeline Misty Stepped through the wall after the wraith and found a halfling in light desert garb standing over its body, shortsword in hand. He looked up, and it was Milo.

What followed was twenty years of catching up. Milo had left her on the bridge in Brandyburrow because he had thought she was dead and her killers were close behind. He had run east until he half-died in the dunes, where a Sirocco Warden patrol had picked him up, and he had served the city as a Warden ever since. He told them, plainly, that he ran a quiet operation with Mama Sherahn to bring people the city's diviners had refused (people like a half-dead boy named Zef he had pulled from the sand five weeks ago) in past the dome.

He led them east across the dunes. The dome's edge tried to turn them, a soft urge to look elsewhere and walk away, but Milo led on and the party followed, and after passing an invisible threshold, a city rose ochre and terraced out of the sand. At a guarded bridge over one of the outer channels, Lirielle cast Spider Climb on Dravencoles, who carried each of them across underneath in turn; Momeline, Landor, and Milo went invisibly over the top.

Inside Khasim's Crown, Milo brought them through the lower terraces to The Open Door. Travelling Bazaar vendors were striking down their stalls when Mama Sherahn came out from her kitchens to meet them. She was warm but cautious with the party, but her eyes caught a beat too long on Ferinthria before she led them up to the rooms.

Later, in the quiet of the back court, Milo told Momeline what was wrong: another Ferinthria had walked through the Open Door's gate three days ago, and Mama had not been able to put her finger on what was off about her until the real one arrived tonight. Someone, somewhere in the city above them, was wearing their friend's face.