The Sunless Sands

The clear, moistureless air of the Tatooine evening chilled Ismail Montross to the bone even as the pangs of starvation weakened her under the setting suns.  A great and ravenous krayt dragon seized upon her to sate its own appetite, and Ismail knew it was eat or be eaten.  She ignited her lightsaber and began the Third Tribulation of her surreal desert vision quest. 

Meanwhile, several klicks away, the quasi-ghost-town of Mos Espa became a boom town as podracing enthusiasts came in droves for the upcoming anniversary of the Boonta Eve Classic that saw young Anakin Skywalker win his freedom, and the reunion of the racers who participated.  Quinn Algernon, though not one of the participants of that famous race, was working with Ark'ik, a Verpine technological prodigy he hired to help assemble his pod.  With Ark'ik's help, the pod was ready with ample time to spare, and Quinn invited the sheepish technician aboard for a dusk test spin.  Out in the desert, as darkness -- and the temperature -- fell, the pair spotted a lightsaber blazing in the distance against a giant, bestial silhouette.  As they drew closer, Quinn recognized the wielder as none other than Ismail!  Quinn tried strafing and distracting the creature with his lance, and Ark'ik, thinking Quinn's lightsaber was a plasma torch, did the same with the weapon, with results that startled the Verpine more than the krayt dragon!  Eventually, and with the help of Quinn and Ark'ik, Ismail landed a killing blow, felling the beast.  Quinn alighted from his pod with his lightsaber in hand to excise the dragon pearl rumored to be hidden in the creature's belly as Ismail sized up her kill for a cut of meat to sate her painful hunger pangs, when the corpus of the thing began to disintegrate in -- or perhaps into -- a violently whirling sandstorm!  Inside the epicenter of the twister, Ismail and Quinn saw a black-clad sandperson pass through the whirling detritus on a great black bantha, though Ark'ik saw only a cyclone of sand.  Lonely Bantha was nowhere to be found, but Ismail somehow knew who this dark rider was:  Majaea, the spiritual incarnation of the desert's Third Tribulation: famine.  Majaea lowered his double-cudgeled gaderiffii, weighted on each end with scales.  As soon as Ismail divined his identity, the sandy whirlwind subsided, revealing a strange, gray desert landscape beneath a pale sky, quite different from where the trio had been standing moments prior.  Quinn's pod was nowhere to be seen. 

Ismail, Quinn and Ark'ik plodded across they sunless sands to a distant settlement surrounded by slaughtered livestock covered in carrion flitters.  As they entered the settlement, they saw rivers and pools of red blood, and eventually the dead denizens, slaughtered viciously, some hideously impaled on long, sharpened beams as a warning to passersby.  Ismail, Quinn and Ark'ik found a survivor, lying in a pool of his own bodily fluids, who begged them to kill him, and warned them to "abandon Fort Tusken."  Ark'ik was shocked by the statement -- he had heard of Fort Tusken only as an ancient site long claimed by the desert.  Tatooinian historians attributed the vicious slaughter of its inhabitants by the sandpeople as the origin of their moniker "Tusken Raiders."  Ismail obliged the moribund settler's final request, ending his suffering with her lightsaber.  As she did, a pale rider appeared on a cadaverous bantha wielding a gaderiffii with an elongated hook shaped like a scythe.  Almawt, the spiritual incarnation of the desert's Fourth Tribulation, death, swiped his gaderiffii at her with a deadly accuracy.  Ismail deflected the death-blow with her lightsaber, and the apparition dissolved, as did the landscape around them, and they found themselves back in the slightly less unfamiliar sands of the Jundland Wastes, amidst Lonely Bantha and his tribe as they prepared to immolate the shaman's wife, Jah-Lee-Lah.  Upon Ismail's reappearance, signalling her victory over the Four Tribulations, the sandpeople bowed down to her, recognizing her as a Holy Woman.  She commanded them to release Jah-Lee-Lah, who beseeched Ismail for her "blessing" that she and Lonely Bantha may conceive a shaman.  Quieting her mind, Ismail reached out with the tendrils of the Force, manipulating the midi-chlorians themselves, and creating life in Jah-Lee-Lah's womb!  Though only Ismail knew for certain that she succeeded in this legendary Force feat, the sandpeople's blind faith in Ismail as a Holy Woman assured them that a new shaman of their tribe had been divinely conceived.  Stacking slats of flat desert rock, the sandpeople created a sculpture of Ismail Montross in that remote stretch of the Jundland Wastes that future generations of the People of the Sand might know the power of the Spirit of the Desert.