The party took the plains route to the South, but were forced into the ominous Thornwood Forest by the Horse Nomads. In the forest they stumbled upon a clearing, in which there were several statues and a tiny hut. The wizened old woman who lived in the hut introduced herself as Mother Thistle (“Mother Thistle Knows!”), and invited them inside. Surprisingly enough they all fit.

Once they were inside she spoke obscurely of three mages who had touched the party: The Mage, The Necromancer, and Balour Shaw, saying that they had angered the first two twice each. She then went on to say that the Hand of the Otherworld had touched all of the party, and had possessed one of them. She warned that the dead could help them, but could also destroy, and that the desert's most powerful dangers were also the least obvious.

When they left her hut the next day, they found they were on the southern edge of the forest, though there was no way they could have traveled that far before finding the hut.

South of the Forest was the Vale of Morin, once the site of fierce battles against the Horse Nomads. During their first day in the Vale the party saw the Horse Nomads who had chased them earlier, but the nomads, though they obviously saw the party, did not enter the Vale. Later, the party was accosted by a group of Ghosts, who asked about the state of their city, Korsepolis. Upon learning that Korsepolis had been in ruins for centuries, the Ghosts traded the party a promise of safe passage across the Vale in return for the party's oath to reestablish trade with the Kingdoms of the Five Sisters and resettle Korsepolis. Since the former they were already Geased to do and the later was a matter for the future, they agreed, as the best bargain in the situation. The Ghosts also told the party that Korsepolis had the best roads through the mountains to the desert, and so would be the easiest route to the desert.^[16]

The party found Korsepolis in the mouth of a valley that led up into the mountains. They snuck through the city after dark, almost blundered into a war between orcs and hobgoblins, and then followed the road out of Korsepolis into the mountains. The road crossed the mountains and ended at a tower overlooking a one thousand foot drop to the desert: this was the Mountain Wall from which these mountains took their name.