Editing I3-4-5: Desert of Desolation (section)

==Oopsie!==
The angel Moroni must have instilled some cognitive-dissonance in Tracy because he couldn't leave that story, nor that setting, be.

As the I-series casts ''Pharaoh'': in the course of healing the land, the party has the opportunity to... kick off the next two I-modules. They might, by raiding ''another'' tomb, loose The Treasure That Must Be Kept: a ''Wishmaster''-esque evil afrit. The party has to fix THAT by robbing still more graves and collecting soul-gems. The first gem is/was had in the Pharaoh's tomb in the first module. The other two are got in the course of followup I4, starting with a temple of Set and culminating in the tomb of Badr al-Musak.

Note how the core of I3 is entirely disconnected with the I4-5 cycle. Literally a side-encounter of the first one becomes the root of some other epic. (How very Arabian Nights...) I3-5 is not a series, in a narrative sense; it is two adventures set in the same location. Thematically the two storylines are mutually redundant, at that - the land was supposed to be healed in I3 and, oops, we're still in a desert I4-5.

An apologist for these modules would say that the two storylines are mutually balanced, the point being that [[rape|consent matters when doing a plunder]], unless it's against dead Set worshippers in which case screw 'em. But what if the players ''aren't'' tomb raiders? In this case groups who'd play Hickman's "full" epic must railroad the PCs into committing an act Hickman himself would classify as a crime (and a stupid one). Don't eat that forbidden fruit - the really tasty one over there, and by the way you're stuck here until you do.

The I-series ramps up the Islam, by way of the Ibn Ishaq Sira. Hickman and Meyers pose a holy cold-war between the Thune Dervishes and the Symbayans. The Thune protect ALL the holy sites of the wastelands, whatever their supposed "alignment". The pegasi-riding Symbayans are monotheists to Anu. I4 especially would have you side with the latter against those intolerant fanatical ... pluralistic pagans. Well at least Hickman (and Meyers) allowed the Thune have an ethos (as ''The Great Lebowski'' might put it).

The finale I5 is mostly in one final tomb, that of Martek, where Hickman rewards you with a ... Liahona. Well so much for all the Islamic themes, here's that Hickmanite Mormonism you'd been wanting.