It began with me waking up with a pounding headache; I had passed out while on watch, and while the group slept, those Vistani and their entire vardo (a wagon, if you're not up on gypsy lore) had vanished. Personally, I'm convinced they drugged us, and I'd be quite happy to do some rather unpleasant things to Scarengi right about now -- my head feels as though all the dwarves in existence are busily mining away inside my skull. But the rest of the group elected not to try to track them down, especially once we found a scroll which is frankly a little bizarre and only confirms my belief that I was drugged, since the scroll makes it pretty clear that these Vistani are obviously quite familiar with such things. In case you're curious, I reproduce it here:

Five things must happen, chores for you to do:
Deeds which must be done, ere the Mists release you.

He'll pull your strings with a needle silver,
Fire makes this actor quiver.

When the Mud Hound's Howls echo in your head,
Justice give to the centurial dead.

One life gone: eight to take,
Lay to sleep the one that is awake.

When the Shadow Prince brings an infant Fake,
Ware the wail: the Eye you must take.

When Darkness the land circles, Hell itself will roam;
Provide for the devourer and the Arch shall lead you home.

We elected to head towards Marais d'Tarascon, having nothing better to do, even though the Vistani last night had seemed notably uneasy about that place (which right about now recommends it to me quite thoroughly). Surprisingly, the day passed uneventfully all the way until late at night. Then, things got interesting...

We were searching for a place to stop when we saw a light in the distance. As all bold and foolish adventurers do, we approached it (cautiously, since bold and foolish though we are, we're also not complete idiots). Upon arriving, we found the light to emanate from a hut on stilts in the middle of a large natural pond. Leighla tried to boost me up on her shoulders to see into the building (in retrospect, Prihelm, being tall and strong, would have been a better choice, since Leighla complained about how heavy I am, which of course no girl wants to hear), but this proved to be ineffective. We were just debating climbing up the stilts to see into the house when a rope ladder fell from above. Of course, with our usual good fortune, the bottom rung hit Leighla square on the forehead, knocking her for a loop and into the water. Since I was standing on her shoulders at the time, it's a miracle that I didn't take the blow instead, but I'll count my blessings. Of course, even though I don't have a large bump on my head like Leighla does, I did go flying into the water when she lost her balance, and since I had farther to fall, I got fairly well drenched and made a tremendously loud and rather embarrassing (not to mention painful) belly flop into stagnant and scummy water. It's quite fortunate that I'm not a screamer like Mitsy, else I would probably have swallowed something that I'd rather not have. As it is, I'm once again in tremendous need of a bath (and I just had one this morning!).

Upon climbing up the rope ladder (Prihelm led the way, by virtue of being the only adventurous one of us who hadn't become one with the muddy and crocodile infested waters), we found a single large room, well lit by about half a dozen oil lamps. Several boxes were neatly stacked next to the door; on the other side was a barrel. These later proved to be food and drink for the hut's sole inhabitant, a rather strange fellow who I'm convinced is thoroughly insane; quite possibly he's the madman that Valana mentioned last night, though none of the others seem to credit my theory. All he does is babble a few seemingly random phrases, although I firmly believe that there's more to this than meets the eye. Since these phrases may prove important, I'll write them down for you:

"The on descend shall evil of night the land, at near is signs of hexad this when hand."

"In sorcerer the Daegon of house the born, though shall unliving, unlife, life scorn."

"The mother stern of child lifeless found, heralds of evil of night a time unbound.

Okay, so I lied: they're sentences. Big deal. I haven't yet entirely decoded them, but these are what I think they mean, respectively:

"The night of evil shall descend on the land, when signs of this hexad is near at hand."

"The sorcerer in the house of Daegon born, ... scorn."

"The stern mother of lifeless child found, heralds a night of evil of time unbound."

I think that we can assume that these are supposed to form some sort of rhyming poem (a hexad, I should think), and that each clause is a line, with the words rearranged. Although I don't understand all of it and don't claim that there aren't other and maybe better ways of interpreting this, I think it's pretty bad, and frankly, the entire thing gives me the chills.

Anyway, Prihelm thoughtlessly shook him, trying to get him to speak sensibly (oh, the irony!), which sent this strange guy (MM, or MadMan, for short) into a screaming fit which almost rivaled Mitsy on a lesser day! Hard to believe, but true. Eventually, he calmed down, and about at the time that Prihelm started babbling something about having released a curse by touching the poor lunatic. How he knows this is beyond me, but since the boy hasn't necessarily shown a great deal of sense yet (although he has resisted Mitsy for almost a week, now, which is surely notable in some respects), perhaps it's just his imagination.

The only other experiment we tried was snuffing one or two of the lamps, after moving them didn't cause any reaction. Big mistake - MM really started screaming (surpassing Mitsy's wildest dreams!), and beat his head to a bloody pulp on the floor. Somehow, I wasn't entirely surprised (there had to be a reason he had so much light in here), but... We eventually got the lamps relit and calmed him down, though no one was considerate enough to try to heal him (I suppose they were all too worried about Prihelm's "curse" to bother helping the poor lost soul). I did my best, but not being a healer, there wasn't much I could do.

At any rate, we are currently camped out here in MM's hut; being spacious, there's room for plenty of us, though all the lanterns do make it a little hard to sleep. Fortunately, Reverie can be performed despite the lights, but my less fortunate non-elven companions (i.e. all of them) are having problems. Oh well; that's what they get for not being elves!