The heroes decide to stick around the Expeditions Unknown HQ building to see if Vayl Naris, the sorceress wanting to explore the dying dwarf mining island, would leave to go to an inn so that they could intercept her and talk her out of booking passage with this bunch of pirates, but after a short while they see the crew of the Aether Ryder prepping the ship for launch and it looks as though they won't be able to stop her from going with the pirates. Bantu decides to do a little invisible recon and overhears some crew talking about the weird oily book that the others had brought back and how the crewman Nik who had given it to Gates to take to wherever (presumably to Krais) had been acting weird ever since. Bantu then sees a drow woman walking toward the dock with Vayl and bragging about how fast her ship was and wanting up front payment, which Vayl provides. Vayl decides to go back to the HQ building until the ship is ready for departure and Bantu follows her. Inside the building a strange event unfolds as one of the crew sitting off on his own is confronted by another crewman who accuses him of slacking. The lone crewman turns and suddenly the accusing crewman flies across the room and smashes up against wall with a bloody crunch and drops lifeless to the ground. The attacker, who others in the room call Nik, then starts attacking others, including Vayl, who attempts to protect her colleagues but is paralyzed by Nik's oily hand. Bantu, now close enough to see Nik, sees that his eyes are completely black and inhuman looking. Another two crew members come down the stairs, a bard and a wizard. The bard starts to move, but before he can the wizard shoots a fireball at him, burning the bard badly, killing another nearby crewman and setting a table on fire. The wizard also has solid black eyes and the weakened bard tries to attack her but his spell is countered by the wizard and she fires a lightning bolt at him, smashing him against the wall.
Meanwhile, outside the Expeditions Unknown HQ, the other heroes hear the explosion inside the building and move to investigate. Brahm has to put a nearby town guardsman to sleep and Solomon gets into a fight with the two guards at the front door. Norro comes around and enchants one of the door guards to take him inside where their belongings may be stored and sees the fight going on inside the building. Bantu is trying to get Vayl out but the black-eyed Nik is trying to paralyze him, or worse, with his greasy hand. Brahm and Norro start flinging magic around, the black-eyed wizard inside snaps the neck of the bard crewman with inhuman strength and fires off some magic missiles at them. A short fight later, black-eyed Nik is dropped and as he lay on the floor, a strange black oily substance flows out of his eyes, ears, nose and mouth and begins moving on its own towards another body. The heroes move away from it and Bantu manages to scare off the wizard with Discordant Whispers, who flees into the basement of the building where their stolen property is likely located. The heroes must now decide if they want to follow her into the basement, as the commotion caused by their fight and the crewmen that managed to flee will soon alert Captain Ryder and the other crew to come investigate, not to mention the soon to awaken town guardsman laying on the street outside the building where Brahm left him.
Thanks to the weird internet/computer/power loss gremlins that plagued us last night (I'm pretty sure were sent by Brian to sabotage the game because he couldn't play), we didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, but we'll see where these events take us next week. In the mean time, I have some troubleshooting to do on my PC, which I've decided is not functioning properly ever since the Windows Update from 8/16/16, so I'm going to try and reinstall the last good version and see if that clears up the PC problems I'm having. F*cking technology!
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