When Charly Talljohn was ten, she watched in horror as a band of marauders rode into her village and killed every person there and burned the village to the ground. A group of seven people came by and took her into their band as one of their own. She says, "I'm going to be a paladin when I grow up. I'll fight evil like that until the day I die." Now her Paladin training is finished and the group is sent on a mission in the desert, to find the daughter of a prominent desert sheik who has gone missing. Desert Ruins is about Charly learning to be an adult and the support she received from her home group.