In Mar'uun, Marcus and Wren continued their experiments with their test portal, further enhancing it. At the entrance to the town, two mysterious Virindi appeared, making the residents uneasy. The pair, Jean and Luc, simply observed from the bar, and when spoken to insisted they were human travelers. A new faction of Virindi forged from the remnants of the original Renegade Virindi appeared, ready to fill the power vacuum left after the defeat of T'thuun. These new Virindi call themselves Apostate Virindi. The Apostate Virindi rekindled the alliance with the Renegade Tumeroks and Lugians the old Renegade Virindi once had. In the Direlands, the Virindi set up a mining operation to extract Aetherium ore, using their new Gotrok allies as workers. Elsewhere in the Direlands stronghold of the R