Preparing our mounts for the flight to the ziggurat something strange happened. Out of nothing Romero bend over, crawling up in a ball of pain. As soon as he stood up his eyes had changed, they had transformed to the facetted eyes of an fly. It was creepy like few things I have ever seen. With the change in his eyes his demeanour also changed, his replies to questions where short, to the point. The whole feeling he gave of was that of a cornered animal.
K’Tau prayed to Bahamut to restore his fellow dragon, but it did not work until a second attempt (with some help of yours truly), that he was able to save Romero from a permanent transformation (it was a DC 30 spellcasting check!!). Wasting no time we hurried to the Haugbui.

We made an offering at the place where the ziggurat was buried. An offering of food, of magic and of music. Beneath us the sand moved away and we were let to an entrance of the ziggurat, an entrance at the very top.

All of us except for K’Tau entered the ziggurat, lights sprang up as we walked down endless stairs. The further we went down the less broken down our surroundings became. Stones went from withered to dust to pristine, and on the walls we discovered mythical lore that gave great insight into was has been going on on this continent

Eventually we arrived in a big room, 4 pillar and in the middle a small sand whirlwind. The sand formed together in the shape of an humanoid. The Hammers had seen the creature before, but it was my first encounter with this being, standing 7 feet high and floating another feet above the ground, with two burning points as eyes.

It spoke to us, asking why we had come.
We explained that we were looking for Esk, that she had changed, that she was becoming a danger, not only to us and the people of Soro, but eventually to the Haugbui as well. The creature listen and agreed with the assessment. However it wasn’t able to help us very much, Esk had been going in and out of its territory every time choosing different entry points. She was being careful, she knew she was being watched. Finding her would be hard, so letting her come to us seemed like the most appropriate course of action. The plan was to lay in waiting at finley farm, the Haugbui would keep an eye out to look through any illusion and would notify us if anything was spotted.

While finalizing the plan the vile creature deemed to mention that finley farm was in chaos, that is was being attacked.
We were already almost up the flight of stairs when the Haugbui told us that it would be able to teleport us to the farm, saving precious time. Our mounts would be notified via telepathy and follow. Not wasting time we went for it, hoping that K’Tau would mount the mounts so he would arrive as quickly as possible as well.

Arriving at the farms we saw destruction, fire and monsters. Especially the gnoll part of the town had many fires arising from it. The westvalers had some fires of their own while the gnomes only had some pieces of smoke coming up.
We hurried towards the Westvalers first, hoping that we might be able to save some people there and hopefully organize something there so the village could fight back to whatever was happening.

As we approached we saw a group of organized gnolls marching towards the westvalers, there was a feint hope that they might also be helping, the hope was soon quenched however. The gnolls were mutated, one of them growing a big a ogre, other exuding some kind of strange light, while others had enlarged claws, ready to do battle. As soon as we came within range they changed course and came running towards us, yelling challenge, yelling that we would make a nice snack. Whatever had happened to them it caused us to be fighting for our lives in just a moment.

Ricardo, brave fool as he is, sprang forwards first. He went berserk on the creature surrounding him, but it wasn’t long before he got swamped by the creatures, only staying alive by restorative energies that Fharlanghn allowed me to channel into him. Meanwhile both Redemption and Garritas went to work on the gnolls, cutting them down one by one. The big one, their leader had some kind of smoke coming of him, it made it hard to hit him, and made the creature itself even more unpredictable in combat, it even healed the creature! The beast was even able to knock-out redemption before Garritas shot it with a firebolt. It turned out that fire was it weak spot, smothering the smoke and making the creature vulnerable to our attacks.
As we cut it down it gave a last cry: “I’m sorry mistress!”
Esk.

We quickly sped towards the westvalers, there we met up with Jonathen, who had luckily survived. They told us that earlier that day Esk had come riding in on top of her golem. She had come barging in, and as soon as she was there she had gathered magic around her and a big population of the farms had turned into monsters! She had commanded them: “spread chaos my minions” and left while the now mutated farmers began attacking everything around them.

Ricardo has scouted ahead and found that there was a party of 6 gnolls attacking the finley home, and another party of 6 was attacking the temple that K’Tau. The hammers and myself were exhausted, but hammers only rest until all nails have been hit!