Journal: This morning started with Steven, trying to truth the party. "Are you now or have you ever been a horror minion, horror tainted, working for or with any horrors?"

In the mean-time, I was arguing with Thwak. What a jerk. He deserves whatever he gets.
"I can turn you into a newt."
"Why don't you turn *yourself* into a newt ?"
"OK"
Thwak spent the next 25 minutes chasing a newt-mirage. I tried not to giggle, since invisible does not mean inaudible...

Steven, practical as always, continued to truth the party about their horror relations. He decided that everyone was telling the truth about not being horror minions. Hope he's right. We woke Joan, with Gilad pointing an arrow at her back. They questioned a very confused and addled Joan at length (Gilad's arrow-length, to be exact) and determined that Joan had heard K'shrik's voice talking in her head, telling her "Orleans doesn't matter" and asking "Do you want to die?" right before she was knocked out. Suddenly, Gilad let go his arrow, which went into her brain. I tried to ephemeral bolt it, and it went She got up, posessed by the Horror, with about half a head and pulled the arrow out. Almost everyone freaked, and the party erupted in a chaotic melee. Donk hit Gilad, and at the same time Joan charged Donk with the arrow, using it as a lance. Thwak drew his bow, and many of Joan's pieces ran away to the tree. One arm (with a wing attached) was running around, and a leg went hopping the other way. Gilad and Donk chased it around the tree, but Tristain (who is far more naieve) just whimpered, and Steven the coward hid from the whole thing. I cast Ephemeral Bolt on the arm/wing, and then tried to zot the leg. That thing dodged *way* better than Joan did when she was alive, but I hit it on the second try, just before Thwak (the clumsy oaf) fell on it. Donk caught the body and threw it into the fire, once he stopped trying to hit Gilad, and got the arm/wing that I eb'd, and threw it into the fire. Thwak took a cue and threw the leg into the fire too. With that done, Steven and I worked on healing Gilad, and the party argued.
Steven sent a wizardeye with a handkerchief into the tunnel that they say is the Caer entrance. His head flared purple, and he was entranced. He started reading out loud what he was seeing, and then all of them were entranced. (Low-circle non-mages are such suckers for mind control!) I managed to avoid it, and punched him. That knocked him out, and everyone was again okay. We put a gag in Steven's mouth and woke him back up. He managed to kill his spell, and took the gag out of his mouth. "plbbt! Use clean socks next time!" -- "oops. Sorry." Then the party argued a bunch more.
Eventually, we decided to go into the Caer (after all, now everyone is Taint-free, so we should be safe, right?) Just after the Interesting walls was a long passage which we had to crawl through. There is mud up to Troll elbows, up to my shoulders. The tunnel is rough, and about Ork sized. When we got out, we noticed there was a firehose of water coming out of the ceiling. Steven, Tristain and I managed to stop it up, but it might not last... We got to a place where there are striations in the walls. The party boggles, and told me they'd had dreams about this. Everyone was talking over the others... "Boston"
"Men in Black and short grey men"
"city which has no name"
"magic evil shrimp"
Then they said they went on a SpiritQuest, and this was somehow connected. I'll have to ask about that later. Anyway, apparently in their dreams this was a gravity-reversal zone or something. The "Windling Accelerator"

Thwak tried to shoot an arrow down the hall. "The arrow flies down the hallway, snaps into a bunch of pieces, and then they fall to the ground."
"Remember the windling accelerator had a weird affect on magic?"
"Oh, right"

Gilad shot one, presumably without talents, and told us not to use any magic in the striated zone.

Thwak discovered that this was the no-karma zone. Not a big deal, so we walked through it. Then I did my karma ritual by asking Gilad to help: I had him crawl around, go back and forth to the wall, and act like an Olliphant while I marched Olliphants around him and flashed blue, green, and purple light around him. This was *way* too much fun.

We went further down the hall, found the enspelled barrier, and Thwak hit me when I tried to enspell him. I did it anyway, while he was covering his eyes, but he got *really* upset at me. I am really starting to hate this assignment. I could write a whole other thesis: "Barbarian Manaphobe Trolls in the Recently-Opened Caer Camrish." That would probably get me in trouble, but it's nice to dream

We all got through the barrier, and found some of Wallenstein's men there, dead, who become undead. Some of them became skull spirits. Steven was casting lightining bolts, I cast Ephemeral Bolts, and the combat people smashed their heads, and we eventually vanquished the evil guys. I killed them, and then passed out from damage.

When I woke, the party had cleaned up a bit and rested, burning the bodies so that they won't rise again...