We are leaving the mining town. It was as friendly as I could have hoped, they gave us shelter from the desert, they aided us on our appointed task, and furnished us with the finest craft we could have hoped for without regard to any knowledge of their skills that we could glean from such a thing. And yet we did not all survive the encounter, this does not bode well for our future exploration.
I will have to examine those emeralds, to imbue such a sustained magic on a regular basis would leave one of our artisans greatly diminished. Perhaps they have found a means of channelling power from an external source. Or maybe the gem traps a more mundane magic so to make it unable to diminish...
We <Iinsert what happened to the horses and cart> and set off across the desert in our new ship. The trip was uneventful, though the ship does offer some curiosities, and is much swifter than our previous efforts. Having reached the ruins we can confirm that they are, indeed, in the location described, the maps accuracy does not appear to have been misrepresented. The ruins themselves are indeed ruined, they are the site of such devastation as had never occurred to me to be possible. Apparently the trouble was caused, at least as far as records survived, by relatively minor creatures, I can only imagine that more powerful beings might have been involved, and yet, they do not appear to be present...
We entered the ruins and located some treasures that had survived the battle, which my companions took for themselves, while one of the arcanists left to explore by themselves, and found a monstrous scorpion, which was disabled by some glue and promptly killed. We then returned to the ship and encountered an Azer at the city gates. It seemed to be uncharacteristically calm and rational for a creature of fire, and requests to return to its home plane. Doing so may prove a valuable insight into both the plane and the magics required to banish such a creature. Apparently the creatures summoned here have been attacking one another, which would explain why there are so few. What puzzles me is that they do not seem to be related, coming from different planes, and why the effect ended when the place was destroyed. It is all consistent with an attack, and bears disturbing similarities to the magic we encountered in the mining town. Could it be that our plane is under attack? How do the forces behind this so easily manipulate so many planes?