Conceptualization

 The Lamia and the Naga began as a desert campaign where a guardian Naga recruits PCs to secretly thwart the plans of a powerful lamia that infests a broken desert fortress.  It has evolved since then.  This campaign is designed for beginners at first level, but, since the initial attack (session 0) that destroys the fortress is caused by one thousand goblinoids led by a Fire Giant with two Hill Giants, plus a multitude of mercenaries, along with scores of slaves responsible for feeding and watering both beasts and soldiers, the whole campaign can easily accommodate PCs of any level and at any starting point.  Key moments come to pass (e.g. - the fall of the front gate, the defense of the Keep, the destruction of three towers, the loss of Aperton's Arch, etc.) either aided or thwarted by the PCs and events will occur (e.g. - the sapper cave with the gate to the elemental plane of fire, the Steam Fields, and the defilement of The World Shrine) whether the PCs achieve them or whether NPCs achieve them.  These events take place during the seventh Dark Crusade deep in the Hamakhaave desert at the Kingdom of Goldenshield's fortress named Kahar, one of three desert fortresses guarding the King's Road.  Powerful heroes of Goldenshield Kingdom guard the fortress and fully expect to destroy the invaders outside the fortress walls.  They remember and celebrate previous victories as holidays.  The Fire Giant and two Hill Giants and a thousand goblinoids (100 bugbears, 100 hobgoblins, and 800 goblins), along with a mercenary army, are overmatched and can never destroy the desert fortress alone.  The Fire Giant and the Hill Giants are moribund.  Concerning the goblinoids, 85% of the bugbears are destroyed, 82% of the hobgoblins are destroyed, but only 65% of the goblins are destroyed.  The mercenaries scatter but, if nothing is done about it, they will coalesce into quite a formidable group.   Rhael's attacking gang should never have made it inside the fortress but they do because of treachery.
  Only because of treachery within the walls of Kahar is the desert fortress destroyed.  It is Khalista the Lamia that is the author of this treachery.  She arrives on the eve of the 6th Dark Crusade.  She is thwarted in her designs when the heros of Kahar destroy the fire giant, the hill giants, and the attacking goblinoid army.  Khalista flees to the east where she finds an ancient temple to call her home, and though she names it Kout, which is dark despair, the locals come to call the place Sakala, after her former home far away to the southwest.  She sneaks in the fortress and slaughters the cattle on the High Plains.  She has her minions kidnap the family of the Chancellor of Kahar, but, in a botched operation her minions kill the wife and maim the son.  The chancellor of the realm, a powerful archmage, curses her and vows to destroy her and her realm.  Though she is able to magically charm him, he only gets sicker and sicker until he hides away in his tower, and she can never truly control him.  As other lords and ladies vie for power when the chancellor retreats, she no longer needs her magical charms to win them over to her service.  Some of the most powerful NPC's in the fortress of Kahar turn traitor against the Kingdom of Goldenshield for money, power, forbidden knowledge, and magical abilities.  Khalista raises zombies and skeletons and troubles the lands with undead servants, but she is hindered, fustrated, and stopped by the abilities of the Knights, clerics and paladins powerful against undead, able to turn zombies and skeletons away, or thwart the machinations of ghost and poltergiest.  So Khalista plots their doom.  It takes years, it requires her to nuture and raise a coven of hags, but finally the noble lords of Kahar are seperated forever by her scheming and manipulation.  The magicians in charge of the fortress believe the lies against the clerics and the paladin are led down a dark path where they fall and are seen no more.  The magicians in charge fall to her charm and manipulations and the chancellor is powerless to stop her.  She splits the magicians into three factions, and pits them against each other until betrayals and lies plague the magicians with feelings of guilt, sadness, shame, and remorse.  The Abjurer betrays his oath and Tower 9 becomes a belching volcano spewing a river of lava that runs north.  The Necromancer betrays his oath and the towers of Kahar are overthrown.
  Three of the nine towers and are broken into pieces allowing the goblinoids to storm into the fortress.
  Worse, Khalista the lamia is a master at raising and controling the dead, an undead army arises with untold numbers that will destroy any of her adversaries.  The Lamia begins her evil before the battle begins by saving a hobgoblin commander from assassins and then controlling him and forcing him to lead his band of goblinoids with the housing of a battering ram, to the base of Tower 9.  They begin to dig while thier enemy, the fortress defenders, defies the multiple siege engines and scores of goblinoids intent on destroying the fortress Kahar.  A traitor wizard, an Evoker, opens an arcane gate to her from inside the fortress.  She sends her undead servants through the gate with orders to kill the defenders of Kahar,  In this way, the first enemies that meet the PCs are the goblin zombies and crawling hands.
 As the battle progresses, all the slain lay before the lamia, ready to be her undead slaves.  The traitors pass through the Arcane Gate to meet the Lamia.  There, hidden behind a fallen siege tower, she commands the Abjurer, the Conjurer, and the Transmuter, to enter the sapper hole and open a Gate to the elemental plane of fire and reverse the gravity.  They preform their assigned tasks flawlessly, a Gate is opend, fire and lava fall up into the base of Tower 9, assuring that it is doomed.  Treachery occurs, the Abjurer traps the Conjurer and the Transmuter in miniture form inside an 8" diameter diamond.  The Abjurer and his minions enter the gate to the elemental plane of fire to hide the 8" diameter diamond and to retrieve several obsidian orbs.  They flee the gate and exit the sapper cave just before Tower 9 collapses and becomes a ring of stones.  As the lava spews out like a volcano, the Fire Giant dismantles the east side of the Front Gate House. After a bit of time, lava comes spills out of a ring of stones where Tower 9 used to be.    Kahar is doomed
 But now we come to Thamiar the Guardian Naga, a servant of a powerful Androsphinx, Thamiar orchestrates a second invasion by another powerful foe.  A young blue dragon, with an army of kobolds and some powerful servants of his own gather north of the fortress.  An ultimatum is announced to flee the land or to die.  One hour later, The Rear Gate is overrun by an attacking kobold force, and the dragon carves out a lair inside the shell of the west building and below the whole Rear Gate area.  The entrance to his new lair defiles the Shrine of Lophator at the Tunnel at Barabara Road.  His numberless kobold army stands ready to overrun all of Kahar.  While orchestrating a second invasion may seem like a curious plan to save the fortress, it works.  The lamia is caught at a time when she must hide away for one whole day, so, instead of dealing with this menace herself, she awakens an ancient evil and gives it command of her undead army, and all the myriad undead are diverted to the north where they clash with the invading kobold attack force.  This is The Mummy Lord Battle.  The adversaries cancel each other out and allow the soldiers of Goldenshield to gather at the 3 surviving Towers where they hold out against both enemies.  The lamia returns from her mandatory convalescence but must labor long and hard to fortify her claim to the broken fortress.  She commands her servants to sieze the library for herself and the keep for them, both of which occur without any problems or issues.  Once secure, her servants bring fire snake eggs to a lake of lava that has pooled where Aperton's Arch was destroyed.  There the Lamia uses her modified haste spell to infect the place with fire snakes and Salamanders.  Continuing north where the river of lava meets Surgebuilt Lake in a great cloud of steam and smoke, she gives a displaced tribe of fire newts sanctuary.  Returning to the south, on the east hills, she spreads more evil causing an outbreak of a deadly, burrowing family of kruthik.
 Elsewhere in the fortress, the Barracks are captured by the traitors, the magicians, priests, and the now fallen Knights.  Having broken away from Khalista but not willing to repent of their betrayal to the Kingdom of Goldensheild, they will attempt to seal themselves inside a magical Labyrinth.  Four of the nine hamlets become boarded up places of haunted nightmares that will be taken over by even more undead servants of the Lamia.  While much of the land inbetween will become filled with conflict, death, and other terrors of war.  The towers in the west are broken and destroyed, the rear gate has been siezed by the invading kobold army, Tower 9 has turned into a lava spewing ring of stones, and Tower 1 has been abandoned into a terrible, frightning darkness that traps anyone between unbearable heat at Tower 9 and horrible darkness at Tower 1.
 Only in the east part of the fortress have soldiers of the Kingdom of Goldensheild survived, the remaining three towers and nearly 9 miles of wall that still stands are held by the survivors of Kahar. These soldiers of the Goldenshield military become resistance fighters against the Lamia's invasion and the northern infestation of kobolds.  These resistance fighters are under the leadership of The Lady of Kahar who is in full alignment with Thamiar the Guardian Naga.   It is these powerful NPC's that will themselves contact the PCs or send their knights and other servants to contact the PC's, assign them their duties, direct them in the defense of the weak, and aid them whenever that is needed.
  Now it is up to the PCs and the DM to decide if evil triumps over the fortress, and if so, which evil, the lamia and her undead army or the dragon and his hordes of kobolds?  Or perhaps, the PCs will be on the side of good, join the soldiers of the Paladin King and attempt to play the two evil adversaries against each other until help comes from other parts of the Kingdom.  If they choose this route, they will have the aide of both Thamiar the Guardian Naga and the powerful Lords of Kahar.

Running the Adventure

 The Lamia and the Naga is a horror story.  Set in a vast empty desert, the story relays the events leading up to, including, and the aftermath of a battle.  And not just any battle, but a battle motivated by religious fervor and spiritual hatred, a battle appropriately named "The Dark Crusades".  Before, during, and after the battle, a nefarious villian, Khalista the Lamia, sets in motion many plots to stake her claim on this coveted land.  She has been sent to conquer and destroy the desert fortress Kahar by a nefarious diety.  The same diety has trained her as a necromancer and furnished her with the ability to raise and control unlimited undead slaves.  She arrives on the eve of the sixth Dark Crusade.  She witnesses the death of Frelot the fire giant and his 2 hill giants, and she watches as a gang of goblinoids is scattered in an utter rout.  She marks the heroes of Kahar that bring all these events about (if possible, it is the PCs) and retreats into the desert for 32 years, until the coming of the next Dark Crusade.
 During that interval, she observes the fortress with magic a thousand times.  She knows that there are more than a thousand caravans crossing Kahar on the King's road every year because Kahar is both the religious center and the banking center of a great part of the desert.  Khalista knows that control of the fortress of Kahar, where the caravan trains converge, will lead to unimaginable riches.  She infiltrates the fortress with scouts, agents, and spies.  She sets in motion a master plan of three strategies and two tactics all designed to throw the land in turmoil and confuse the inhabitants until her forces are able to sieze control.
 Her first strategy involves treachery and her magical control of four high nobles inside the fortress of Kahar.  Khalista waits 32 long years for the next Dark Crusades to return.    Slowly, as the years progress, she learns the walls and towers of Kahar are impenatrateble because of magic  She must concoct a way to penetrate the walls of Kahar with military forces.  Her capable servants alert her to a fued between nobles and she sets her plans to corrupt them.  Leisurely her servants make contact with their targets, and one by one they are brought before Khalista.  Once she can touch them she can place a magical command on them, forcing them to serve her, or, in some cases, refrain from acting.  Spell scrolls and potions are created for her by the 100s, many to destroy the walls and towers of Kahar, but others for more nefarious reasons.  The plan for the sapper hole and the gate to the elemental plane of fire is created at this time.  Her first strategy is complete when the 4 nobles no longer need spells or magical commands but themselves turn traitorious and aid the enemy.  Tower 2, Tower 3, and Tower 4 fall to treachery when the magicains read spell scrolls to move and rend earth and stone.  The goblins enter the fortress and the first people they see are the thousand refugees sheltering on the high plains between the barn and the farm.  The goblins slaughter them all.  All those dead wait for Khalista to raise them as her own undead army.  It is very sad.  The Fire Giants army is able to break the defense of Kahar only because of treachery.
 For her second strategy, Khalista raises the dead, making the land degenerate and depraved with fresh corpses, body parts, and rotting skin and bones that walk about in the dark desolation.  Skeletons, zombies, and shadows, are ordered to attack Goldenshield inhabitants on sight.  Ghouls, specters, and ghasts, haunt specific areas.  Mummies, wights, and ghosts are set to specific tasks.  But some of the scariest undead are not entirely of her work, but are terrifying spirits that haunt battlefields or hunt down traitors in the forms of draugr or revenants.  Her plan is to overwhelm the fortress defenses with ever growing numbers of undead zombie and skeleton servants.  This strategy falls apart and changes quickly when the kobolds invade from the north, and both these events end up culminating in the ruinous Mummy Lord Battle.
 Her third strategy involves awakening not just plants, but evil plants.  Khalista brought the cutting of the Gulthias tree, and has her servants plant it in the sparse growth near the oasis but not too near the water.  From this planting, comes a mutation from twig blights, vine blights, and needle blights into desert like creatures, terrible to behold, and deadly.  The cholla blight wounds unsuspecting innocents with their barbed spines.  The barrel cactus blight wounds those they fall on with thorns that penetrate the thickest leather or the hardiest chainmail.  And the terrible Joshua Tree blight, rivaling the mighty treant, stalks and terrorizes the land with evil intent.
 For her first tactic, Khalista orchestrates an opening to the elemental plane of fire.  Traitors, eager for power, implement a plan that causes Tower 9 to transform into an ash spewing volcano.  Above the sapper cave, a ring of stones bubbles fire and molten stone, and a river of lava runs north, destroys the King's Church, continues on to ruin Apperton's Arch and Moja village, and resumes flowing north until it dives into Surgebuilt Lake with hissing steam.  From this inferno and her dark necromancy, monstrous creatures of fire, smoke, and steam are spawned.
 For her second tactic, she follows the river of lava to where it has surrounded the Prison.  From the obsidian stones the magicians gathered for her, and her modified haste spell, she spawns fire snakes.  Doubling her modified haste spell, she spawns Salamanders from the fire snakes and arms them for war.  These fire creatures look to Khalista as a Queen and a god.  Khalista continues to follow the river of lava to where it dives into Surgebuilt lake.  She uses dipolomacy and her mastery of persuasion and intimidation, when her servants introduce her as Queen of the Desert to a displaced tribe of fire newts.  She has her servants secure the area and arm the fire newts for war.  She adjusts her plans on the fly.  She is tricky.  She is demanding.  She has a superiority complex and is brutal and viscious, greedy and selfish, powerful and unforgiving.  You will likely not be required to roleplay her character for many levels.  Rather, you will be busy presenting the many servants and minions under her control.  Many of whom are nearly as conniving and terrible as she is, and they will trick the PCs as often as they can.  They appear as friends but are not.  They will lie and cheat to get the PCs to do their bidding.  It will not be easy to seperate friend from foe.  So role play that!
 For eighteen long hours the night endures, eighteen hours of undead stalking the living.  Eighteen hours of spirits terrifying mortals, ghouls and ghasts eating their remains, while wicked creatures great and small terrorize the once peaceful fortress.
 This is what is here presented as a Dungeons and Dragons role playing game campaign for a party of four to six adventurers from levels 1 - 20.  A balance of character classes is helpful because of the variety of challenges presented, and a good understanding of balancing encounters is useful because of the sheer number of monsters at your disposal.  This adventure assumes you have the Dungeon Master's Guide, the Player's Handbook, and The Monster Manual for stat blocks, spells, and magic items.  I also used spells and monsters from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but I don't think you really need to own those, maybe just do a google search or homebrew something.  When in doubt, make it up!

 The PCs may never even know that they are up against a lamia and an army of jackalweres.  They are only aware that they are living through the 7th Dark Crusades.  They only know that 2 Hill Giants, 1000 goblinoids, and many mercenaries are marching under the banner of Rhael the Fire Giant and have come to destroy the fortress of Kahar.  The soldiers of Goldenshield fully expect to defeat the attacking army as they have in the past, they expect to be victorious before the day returns.  Very few realize that the Lamia is an enemy, a secret enemy, hidden, shrouded and concealed.  The Lamia uses magic to disguise herself and camouflage to move among the goblinoids and work about the battlefield, most often appearing in the form of a great lion prowling about the battlefield, proceeded and followed by scores of jackals.  Indeed, the only evidence of her movements are the numerous jackals that both proceed and follow after her.  These most trusted minions of hers stay in jackal form so all that witness them think only that scavengers have arrived early to the battlefield.  Khalista the Lamia is not inactive, quite the contrary, she is busy calling out favors, burning infernos to create fire slaves, raising undead slaves in countless numbers, harvesting unique desert plant like slaves, and hunting for artifacts of great value.  She will change the nature of battle to "fear of treachery" and she will make the darkness full of necromantic terror.  Her victory would have been total and complete if not for the mechanations of Thamiar the Guardian Naga.
 At the Rear Gate, at the north of the fortress, a young blue dragon sends his minions to attack, staking a claim on the fortress, he will build a lair and completely disrupt the Lamia's victory.  She responds quickly and ruthlessly, giving up her power by waking the ancient evil in her hidden temple.  This precedes the Mummy Lord Battle, a vicsious night of death and destruction between the kobolds, the dragon and his druid servant defending against the terror of the dead.
 The PCs can be with the enemy, they can be independants, or they can be with the people of Kahar (recommended), a fortress of soldiers, priests, magicians, and warriors who have been preparing for war for months.  Everyone in the fortress, including the PCs, is equipped and assigned duties and responsibilities (fire control, supply runs, evacuate the wounded, communication runner, etc.)  Most of these jobs involve a wagon and mules or horses, often times camels are available.  At any moment, out of the darkness, something terrible will reach out for the PCs, whether it be undead or spirits or goblins shooting arrows from the dark, it will make the night the scariest night ever.

The march of the gobliniods in the dark of night:

Khalista the Lamia

 Khalista is a monstrous humanoid, with a body like a lion, except bigger, with razor sharp claws and a twisting, snake-like tail.  But where the head of a lion would normally be is the torso, arms, and head of a beautiful and beguiling human female.  Khalista is large, magical, and terrible, and her powers included illusion and creation, charm, and curse at a touch.  Khalista is always alone, always sets herself apart and she lets her servants deal with visitors, She uses magic, and ordinary peepholes, to spy on visitors, and if she can catch them with a spell, she can dominate the very will of friends and enemies, or she can charm even the surest of foes into doing her bidding.  Woe to those unfortunate and unwilling beings unlucky enough to be brought alive before her for she will use teeth and claws to temporaily sate her unsatiable appetite.  She can cast a spell on a friend or foe and follow them, seeing their every move using her crystal ball or other device to see from afar all those things that would otherwise be hidden from her.

The Lamia's History

 Khalista had been a servant to a demon lord deep in the Abyss.  There she had learned how to be evil and conniving in order to not be reduced to ashes or fleshy lumps.  She prospered: the more wicked she became the more she was able to satisfy her desires.  She served her time in the front lines in the war against the devils until she proved herself and was promoted to command.  She ruled legions of demons and won battle after battle against her enemies.  Her world was perfect.  Then her perfect world was shattered to pieces when the gods themselves brought war to her plane of existence.  The demons had fought but were easily defeated, swatted away like insects, they fled and scattered into the Abyss.  Khalista herself, grabbed three servants, a male and two females, and fled.  Using all of her will, power, and might, she fled through the chaos and ended at the foot of a great portal.  Scooping up her servants, she fled through the portal and emerged in the Aljana River at the foot of the Whirlpool of Danube, and nearly drowned in the tumult of the water.  Emerging on the south shore, Khalista found she had lost her two female servants in the frenzy, and only her male servant remained.  No matter, she fled from the tremendous power that manifested itself there and was a very pain on her mind, body, and soul.  Grabbing her remaining servant, she fled south, far, far away across a desert so vast she depaired that it would never end.  When the desert finally did end, she hid, spied out the land, and began to hunt the lesser creatures.  Choosing a remote fortress, she siezed it and lived in it until she had carved out a reputation for herself as a ruthless and merciless trader in illegal and rare artifacts.  Only the bravest and foolhardiest would dare seek to trade with the "Queen of the Desert".

The Necromancer

 On a dark desert night, a strange visitor comes to see Khalista.  In great fear, she agrees to grant him an audience, and that is the begining of her descent into the world of dark necromancy.  The stranger is Prysm, a god-king of immense power, a Necromancer and Warlord of both the undead and the goblinoids and his power is very great, and his corruption is felt all through the world.  Very quickly it becomes plain that Prysm is the Master and Khalista is the apprentice.  He will guide her training in dark, secret, evil magic: raising and commanding the dead.  For nine long years, the land beyond her desert suffers from blight, famine, and drought as a result of his very presence.  Khalista, the Lamia, who had known magical spells and incantations of her own before Prysm ever arrived, is now a necromancer of great power and might.  In a terrible ceremony, Prysm reaches into his head and removes a small bone from his skull and hands it to Khalista.  Khalista completes the ceremony when she inserts the bone, slimiy and moving as it is, into her own skull.  After this ceremony, she is able to raise and command the dead at will, with no limitations or loss of control, but, every 36 days, on the aligning of the three moons, she must remove this bone for one full day or die.   The price that Prysm demands for passing on his knowledge and power to Khalista is for her to attack and destroy his enemies.  He commands Khalista to follow the Dark Crusades (which he orchestrates every 32 years) and sieze one of the desert fortresses of the Kingdom of Goldenshield.  She obeys his commands, taking many of her servants, she crosses the great empty desert once more in her attempt to sieze the fortress and complete her master's bidding.  But the Dark Crusades are a failure that year, and Khalista is forced to retreat into the barren desert mountains.  There she discovers temple ruins of an ancient culture, and amoung the ruins is limestone.  She has her servants carve out a road from those desolate places to the King's Road, and she begins her career, her facade to hide her real intentions, as a trader in chalk.

Khalista's Goals

 Khalista has the following goals for this adventure.

 These unexpected events upset Khalista's plans, but she is intelligent, resourceful, and conniving and she will make and cut alliances anywhere she can to aid herself and her interests.  The first unexpected event involves the young blue dragon that makes itself known during the eve of the battle.  While the second unexpected event is the result of her own extensive use of her modified haste spells.  The third unexpected event is the double treachery of the wizards.  Finally, a stroke of good fortune in her eyes, a behir from the southern desert canyons marches into the fortress determined to put an end to the young blue dragon.

 The servants of Khalista were named sakal ljudi by the people of Sicusne Rijecka , or more often just simply the sakal, but when they were gathered alone and in secret they called themselves alnaas abn awaa, The Howling People, or, more literally, People are Howling.  They looked just like jackals, same shape, size, color, etc, but they were shape changers, and could change into a normal looking humanoid, or a humanoid/jackal mix complete with claws and fangs.  They had the face, claws, and tail of the jackal but stood upright on a humanoid torso, but what is more, no matter what shape they took, is that thier skin was impervious to steel, bronze, iron, and many other materials that made up normal weapons.  Only magical weapons could harm them, or spells from a magic user, besides that very little could harm them unless it was a creature or beast greater than they.  What is more, the sakal could use their magic gaze against an unsuspecting enemy that would cause the enemy to collapse in a sudden deep sleep.  The sakal were a feared desert dwelling people that were best left alone and avoided altogether.
 When the gods invaded her home plane, Khalista had grabbed only three of her most trusted servants Terebo Inglofer, Mesika Yetara, and Amersis Disjaho.  When she left the other worldly plane and jumped through the portal she had lost the two females and retained only Terebo, her male servant.  Fifteen hundred miles south she had fled from the frightning magic power when she first arrived on Lophator, across a desert so vast and empty and utterly without water the farther south she fled.  Finally, she happened across Sakala, a desert fortress left in ruins, and quickly staked her claim to her new home.  One hundred miles farther south the desert ended into the grasslands and there were herds and herds of grazing animals, and feeding on the grazing animals were lions, hyenas, and jackals.  It was an easy thing for Terebo to attract the jackals deep into the desert to Sakala, but any breeding he did with the jackals only produced more jackals.  Until Khalista performed her dark magic and evil acts and Jak was born.  Jak was like Terebo and could shape shift and had skin that was impervious to normal weapons.  Jak was huge and strong, but Jak was simple, Jak was slow.  Jak suffered from an intellectual disability, he would never score above 70 on an IQ test.  Khalista had no desire to have an army full of Jak's and she abandoned her breeding program.
 In time, fortune shined upon Khalista, for they finally found, feeding on a village of men, one of the missing sakal females, Mesika Yetara, and a new breeding program began, and, in no time at all, Sakala had an army of over one hundred impervious sakal.

 Sakala was a stronghold in the southern desert constructed by brave men, elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes.  It took twelve long years but they completed nine war towers, a gathering hall, and three towers dedicated to the desert gods, all connected with an 18 foot high, 5 foot thick stone wall.  They finished barely in time it seemed, for every sixteen years the fire giants of Burning Summit Mountain would venture forth from their mountain thrones and go about the lands raiding for slaves and plundering for riches.  It fell to Freot FirestormBringer, the fire giant, and his two hill giants to collect slaves and bounty from the area north east of Burning Summit Mountain, where the towers and walls of Sakala Fortress was built one hundred miles inside the burning desert.  The giants were not prepared for the fierce defense and were driven away, still, the fire giant and his slaves were able to collect plenty of bounty and slaves amoung the villagers outside the fortified territory and even damaged some towers by throwing stones.  But Freot was a military genius and knew he was overmatched and only reluctantly gathered up his slaves and bounty and retreated.
  It was another 16 years until Freot returned, and he was ready, with tools, and slave warriors, and his two faithful hill giants.  Freot the fire giant assaulted Sakala Fortress.  But Sakala was ready, too, and, though they did much damage, the two hill giants fell in battle.  Freot halted the assault and carried his two slain servants back to his fiery mountain home.
 Freot returned the following year with nine other fire giants bent on revenge.  The fire giants began their assault from afar by throwing giant stones into the defenders.  Once they razed two of the towers, slaughtered many warriors, enslaved most of the others, with only a few escaping and fleeing south into the grass lands, the fortress was sacked.  Sakala Fortress was left in a state of ruin and disrepair until Khalista took it for her own.
 Khalista used magic and enchantments and filled the broken palace and restored it to impossible features.  Beautiful sculptures and marble statues adorned the court where the Queen of the Desert and her servants wallowed in crapulence.  It was all a lie, all illusion designed to lure the unwary.  Those seeking for that adventure and riches soon found themselves on the menu as Khalista and her servants gave in to their voracious appetites.  Her servants would also travel over 100 miles south to the caravan roads and came back laden with riches and slaves.  There in Sakala, Khalista established herself and regained a little of the glory that she commanded in her younger days.
 In Khalista's time, Sakala became a place of fear and loathing.  Only the most evil and wicked beings would be drawn to her kingdom. Among those, only the bravest would cross the haunted bridge and enter the Dark Courtyard.  Skeletons and zombies would rise up in the Dark Courtyard and attack in protest that the living would intrude on their burial grounds.  If one gets past the skeletons and zombies and scrambles over the piles of crumbled stone, they find themselves in the Broken Courtyard.  There they encounter the Wraith of Commander Veljcro and seven specters.  Battling through those undead fiends is no easy task, and beyond lies the old gathering hall where within the magic of Khalista is able to grant them every perverted desire at the cost of their lives and their souls.

 Khalista grew secretive yet powerful at Sakala.  She practiced her dark arts and scried near and far along the path of the caravans.  Her servants raided the caravans and she began to grow very wealthy filling her palace with stolen goods.  She spyed on the people to the south with her magic and began to prey upon the richest and most powerful until they would not stand against her servants anymore but left offerings and payments instead.  She became well known as an extorter of riches especially against the very powerful. She eliminated her competitors first and then began to prey upon the upright and lawful.  Tempting a person to betray their beliefs was a favorite torture of hers and all in the area began to fear the Queen of the Desert. Rumors could never name a specific person but only state in great fear that deep in the desert was a being who dealt in souls.  As her wealth increased, Khalista paid the men of the surrounding countries considerable wealth to supply Sakala with the one thing it lacked: water.  Brave and unscrupulous men looked at this opportunity as a get rich quick scheme.  It was a dangerous journey, and many of the Water Suppliers never made it back home.  Those that did return told tales of a palace of incredible wealth in the desert where all worldly desires would be fullfilled but the cost was high, either a life or a soul.
  But then there was the coming of Prysm, and Khalista was thrust into servitude as she had not been since her days serving the demon lords.  Khalista became powerful and was able to command the undead in great numbers but the price was high.  She was commanded to attack and sieze one of the fortresses of the Paladin King.  Prysm reminded her of the great power that was once the Whirlpool of Danube and Khalista was tempted beyond her endurance and lusted after the power that she beheld.  After much preperation, she followed the Dark Crusaders north but the Dark Crusades were a failure that year, and Khalista was forced to retreat into the barren desert mountains named Red Rock.  She would have to wait 32 long years for the Dark Crusades to return, but that was just the perfect amount of time for her to begin her devious plans of attacking Kahar Fortress with spies, traitiors, and other decietful schemes. She sows corruption and takes advantage of avarice and discontent amoung the Lords and Ladys of Kahar.  She knows if she is clever enough, she could sieze the fortress and have months to establish herself before the men of Goldenshield Kingdom can retaliate against her.  Once established at Kahar, she will begin her policy of lies, traitors, and spies until she works her way to the ultimate prize, that she might find that awesome power that she beheld that was once the Whirlpool of Danube.   She embraces the feelings of accomplishment that comes from destroying her foes and she lays out her wicked plans with relish.

 The Guardian Naga, Thamiar, sees the corruption and avarice grow in Kahar.  Many who were formerly his friends now shun him or ignore him entirely.  The Marquis and his wife, blissfully and happilly celebrating their recent accomplishments, are surrounded by sychophants and assenters and are blind and unaware to the chaos that corrupts their bureaucracy.  Thamiar uses The Stone of Seeing and Speaking often, a crystal ball of great power and might, surveying land and kingdoms at will.  Thamiar the Guardian Naga not only identifies those that will betray Goldenshield, but also comes across a young blue dragon establishing territory far to the north of Kahar.  Thamiar takes no action, but instead, seeks out his mentor and advisor, Arprevant the Androsphinx.  Arprevant uses that power that is granted to him and takes Thamiar into the far future where they behold the terror that Khalista the Lamia causes on the land that was once Kahar.  Undead creatures scour every living surface, ghosts, spectres, and wraiths cause havoc with any remaining life, and a lich and a mummy lord vie for control of the ruins of the once sacred temples.  In this future, both Thamiar and Arprevant are dead and Kahar is in the hands of evil.  Arprevant returns Thamiar to the present and several days pass where they are both distraught.  But Thamiar conceives the solution to stop the destruction and desolation of Kahar.  In the future, far to the north of Kahar, a young blue dragon grows to adulthood and then returns to Desolation and enters the decades long civil war.  Triumphant in that war, the young blue dragon establishes himself as King and Lord of Desolation and his rule is calamatous and spectacular.  The young blue dragon never sees The King's Road.  The young blue dragon never plunders the many caravans that leads to his establishing his second lair.  In the future, the young blue dragon never interacts with anyone in Kahar and, certainly, never establishes the lair at The Rear Gate.  Thamiar sets in motion a plan that will change everything.
 With the magic stone, Thamiar finds the blue dragon flying far to the north of Kahar.  Thamiar uses the stone to cast suggestion and the dragon, succumbing to the spell, travels south, farther south than he would ever have gone otherwise, and there the young blue dragon meets the Guardian Naga.  Though powerful, the young blue dragon falls to the command spell of the Guardian Naga and is rendered immobile but attentive.  Finally, Thamiar casts geas on the young blue dragon and directs him to establish a lair near Kahar and erases any memory of this encounter.
 Now a whole new set of events occurs just before the occurance of the Dark Crusades: the young blue dragon spots The King's Road and begins to plunder the myriad caravans.  After establishing his second lair, the young blue dragon sees Kahar from far above and, finally, witnesses the march of the gang of goblinoids under the leadership of Rhael the Fire Giant with his two hill giants Rulos and Eclith.  Thus is set in motion everything that leads to the Coming of Zmaj Pustinjski and the kobold invasion of The Rear Gate.  This change of events makes it possible for the soldiers of Goldenshield to form a resistance and they are able to save 3 of the 9 Towers.  The massive undead army that would have destroyed them has now been sent to the north part of the fortress to struggle with the invasion of the Blue Dragon's kobold invasion.  Evil will never completely destroy the Resistance fighters and they will always struggle to gain back their control over the fortress.
 There is a huge consequence that comes back to haunt both the NPCs and the PCs.  As a result of this excursion through time, a paradox has arisen.  The heros who defeated Freaot Firestormbringer and his two Hill Giants during the 31st Dark Crusades are recognized by The Marquis and his Wife, who were 32 years younger, and Khalista the Lamia.  Those heroes are the PCs.  After the PCs confront Teobold the Destroyer, obtain the Efreeti bottle and trap Dahkjuan (who is really Hollowlife), thus freeing the south part of the fortress from his domination, both Thamiar and the Lady of Kahar will reveal the truth to the PCs that they were the ones who fought and defeated Freaot Firestormbringer and his two Hill Giants Juit and Veene.  They will urge the PCs to enter the Temple of Time and go to the past, to the 31st Dark Crusade and there they must fulfill their destiny, they must fight and destroy the Fire Giant and 2 Hill Giants exactly like the NPCs remember.