Rescuing Khartasarr Dar'Anir in Alik'r Desert

After receiving the letter from Mirage, I gathered the help of an old khajiit who was easily distracted and reeked of alcohol everywhere he went, but has shown to carry his own weight in a battle in the past. I called this man "Smelly Uncle", a delightful nickname in my opinion, and not so much in his. Mirage seems to have sent him a copy of Khartasarr's letter too, so he contacted me to join him on the search.
We made way to Alik'r Desert, south of Bergama, and followed the indications to find the camp, which looked like it had been abandoned hastily. At mere meters from it, we unfortunately found the horse mentioned in the letter, laying limp in the surrounding heat of the desert, covered by flies already.
 
We had spent just some minutes looking for tracks when an elf man approached us and asked us if we needed help. After we asked if he had seen signs of a khajiit man, he said he would help us follow the tracks and both him and one of my dogs started working on following the scent and tracks from the camp. We progressed quite quickly, and after some time we arrived on a small plateau where Khartasarr was laying unconscious and hurt, breathing faintly. We quickly approached him and tried to wake him up. Smelly Uncle, with his characteristic finesse, poured some of his drinking alcohol on Khartasarr's injuries and mouth, making for a rough, but, I have to admit, quite effective awakening.
 
Khartasarr was badly injured, dehydrated and could barely talk or hold himself standing. He told us, speaking with a barely audible voice, that he was attacked and had to flee and asked how did we find him. We explained about the letter and the help from the elf, but when we turned to him, he had disappeared from sight and was nowhere to be found.
 
Something about the sudden vanishing of the elf stank of trouble to me, but getting Khartasarr to a safe place to let him rest was far too urgent to investigate more.
 
We carried Khartasarr on our shoulders and began our slow march to Bergama, occasionally having to stop for one of us to dispatch attacks from wild coyotes and similar creatures. Our man's consciousness was on the verge of fading all the time, and we had to make several stops to wait for him to be able to walk again.
After what seemed like hours, we finally arrived at Bergama, and went into Stone Oasis Inn to reserve a room in the furthest corner of the building for the three of us to spend the night. Khartasarr was quite worried that we were being followed, to which old Smelly Uncle reacted with an extreme distrust and even violence to anyone that approached us too much, perhaps attracting more attention than what I would have wanted.
 
Khartasarr explained to us that he was ambushed in the desert by a group that had been following him for quite some time. Reluctantly, he confessed to have stolen a powerful magical artefact from them long ago, a wand of great power, but which he sold off shortly thereafter. He then said that this group would continue chasing him until they got the wand back, and urged us to help him track this artefact in order to put an end all that.
We agreed to help him, after sleeping in the inn for that night. Still very weak, the kahjiit asked me to stay close to him for the night, while Smelly Uncle chose a bed that faced the rest of the inn to be of some sort of defence in case we were tracked there.
 
While I wouldn't deny the drunk cat's ability to fend off anyone in a fight, I would say that, if people left us alone and made room around us, it was more related to the pungent alcohol aroma than his fighting abilities.
 
On the following morning and after some good breakfast, Khartasarr insisted on making a stop at the stable where he had gotten the horse and where he had housed Rory, his lion mount, to apologise and compensate for the former's death and retrieve the latter. He insisted on going alone, which I didn't like one bit, but I honoured his wish and we waited near Stone Oasis Inn until he came back, still exhausted and barely able to walk, but satisfied with the resolution.
 
It was, now, time to follow old, cold, long forgotten tracks of the dooming sale of this wand.