The game forums were full of information trading, as people discovered more about the new southwestern desert and northwestern ocean. Somewhat to Danika's surprise, the link between the oasis turtles and the water supply was quickly discovered.
Endless Song was partially responsible, since once she'd mentioned the pyramid temple, her guildmates had rushed over to it to join in the great looting. The easiest stashes of spatially enchanted lamps and other enchanted items there had been found, but it didn't seem like the entrance to the labyrinth had.
She chuckled over the excitement about the musically explosive desert plants that fired their seeds into the desert in orchestrated volleys. It didn't look like anyone had found the valley of the wind songs yet though.
A fierce sand cat tribe took over one of the oasis' designed for future player habitation nearest the eastern edge of the desert and the next closest was destroyed when its water system was disrupted by adventurers. So the first fully player designed settlement looked like it was going to be set deeper into the desert than Danika and the other members of the sixth had expected.
SaltySiamese reported that Justin the Grey's guild was focusing on gaining control of the southern coast. They were having trouble building the series of towers they planned, because every major construction resource seemed to be directed toward Nabatea at the moment.
Danika was puzzled. She was pretty sure that with her own selection of cantrips that she could construct sand castles. She tested it that evening, and if she used her aqua stone to make the sand wet, she could use her shape cantrip. She didn't have any way to magically dry it, so she had to keep maintaining it and asked Saaki to use his flames to toast it. That turned out better than she'd expected, since she was able to hold it in place while he melted the surface slightly.
She had Aishin take a screenshot of the little glazed sand castle for her, and sent it to SaltySiamese with the description of how she'd constructed it, along with the question: "With some of the top wizards in the game in that guild, can't they just conjure up the materials and magically assemble the towers kind of like this?"