A spice ranger with no name wanders into a sleepy oasis village called Alquarfhaba, where two nomad clans are locked in a feud. One had stolen from passing merchant ships, and the other had robbed the local satrap. She decides to play them off each other to try and recover their plunder. She forges financial instruments appearing to be worth a great deal of money, and anonymously bribes one of the clans to frame the other for poisoning the well. The satrap catches wind of the forged documents when someone tried to exchange them, and informs the agent Unknown. The nameless spice ranger meanwhile is having a budding romance with Daria, one of the maidens in one of the feuding clans. While tripping together on ahtirak root powder, she discloses her name, Sora. She and Daria have a shared vision about the demonic agent, and discover that Zahand’s soul is trapped in his shadow, with the demon in control. The agent destroys several buildings pursuing the forgery, finds it, and the demon catches Sora’s scent from it. He apprehends Daria, who for unrelated reasons has the spice ranger’s scent on her and proceeds to destroy much of that clan also. Sora manages to learn the demon’s name from his shadow and thereby banishes it with purifying herbs, narrowly escaping with Daria, restoring the plunder to the satrap, and riding into the sunset together.
Part survivalist, part lawmen, and part alchymist, the Spice Rangers are a loosely affiliated order of mystics who prowl the Zerzuran Badlands tending secret groves of plants that only grow in strange conditions, which they use to make many tinctures, balms, and salves.
Though the badlands are inhospitable, the rangers have a special orange tree called Osage whose wood can be made into excellent arrows, and burns almost as hot as coal.
Some of what they create is sold at the Kurzmarch Ford, mostly recreational or medicinal - but it is said that much of their craft is kept within their order, or purposed for the use of the Zerzuran Wordbearers.