The third in the Intermediate “I” series of modules and the first of the Desert of Desolation series, which would further include I4 and I5, this is basically the AD&D take on Ancient Egyptian/Middle Eastern setting. Later it would be retconned to be set in Faerûn, but here we don’t get a specific setting.

There are good and bad things about this setting, let me get the bad ones out of the way first. The Dervish that show up here are a kind of “dirty Arab” stereotype to oppose the players and feel a bit beyond the pale today. In the real world Dervish is a name for Sufi Order Initiates in Islam, it’s a religious term for a member of a living religion and a mystical practice in that religion, they aren’t “fantasy monsters” or ninjas, which is what they look like here. Let’s chalk it up to this being 1982 and standards for cultural sensitivity being different, and move on. It’s easy for a DM to make them something else if running this module today and I think that would be a good option. Another problem is the fact that the story doesn’t make much sense, but then that’s also typical of modules of the time, particularly ones like this which is really a reprint of a adventure that the Hickmans had released under their own company in the 70s. 

The good things are just the cool desert setting and some innovations in the story telling. It’s easy to see that the Hickmans really cared about fleshing out their world, and there is an amount of lore here which is uncommon for stories of this period. Room descriptions have lore sections with explanations of the history of the place or translations of writings on the walls, there are even a couple of books that you can attempt to read and have transcribed at the end of the module. This gives a real sense of place and history to the module, which means that even with a somewhat weak plot there is still plenty of crunchy lore to get your teeth into here.