[Willy]

We have a civil war in caithness, so the group may stumble over a old battlefield, or met either royalists or rebels. They may even be forced to "volunteer" int the war.

Just for flavour, the Great Desert was once a wood with big trees. The dunes and the wind may have given free the petrified rest of them, imagine wandering them trough a wood of tree trunks all made of stone.

The can stumble over a old elven dwelling, searching for this locations is hard because the elves were good at hiding them. The elves are great mages, and while they hadn´t money the made fine weapons and wrought wonderfull jewelery.

Finding the mine, it can be a place of hazards flooded tunnels, broken equipment, traps to keep plunderes away and so on. Not to mention a dark shady cave is a good place for the lair of a monster. Maybe the met the now undead owners of the mine? Speaking of owners, imagine the group walking out of the mine treasure ladden and surrounded by dwarfs angry about plundering their property and desacrate the burial place of their ancestors? or as plot hook let them find the mine empty but with the hint that it was once the home of a now important dwarfen clan, lost in history, let them travel to the dwarfes and haggle with them for the price of the location. The mine can also be crawl with certain insect man who are hinted in older publications.

Last but not least there are the lizard man, the group can always met them by accident, be ambushed by them ( lizard man can bury themselfes in the sand and wait for the heat to vanish ), the oasis can be belaguered by them and and and. By the way the shamans of lizard man can be mages sometimes powerful and will have no qualms to use dirty spells on something the call talking food. And they are fighting a war with the humans down south, or better to say have overrun a lording and are hard pressing a second.

Meeting a group of civilized lizard man can be of course a big surprise for the players.

You can met caravans, traders or people lost in the desert. The usual oasis and caravan adventures are covert in previous posts.

Edit since their is a weirdness magent under the players a banestorm victim, not necessarily human or a misguided conveyor is a possibility, a member of a race from one of the worlds which are the origin of the banestorm victims which is truly alien. Or just a genie as the desert nomads call them.