HAHAHA! OH MY GOD!

I have a bad habit of doing area search and just clicking on everything in the area to speed up looting...that is, until I got to the village ruins and the goblins torturing the deep gnome on the windmill.

The first item in area search looting was the release brake lever. IT CHUCKS HIM INTO THE FUCKING STRATOSPHERE. Oh my God, Larian - seriously? I laughed about that for the next 15 minutes. I was unhappy about having to load a save and replay about 15 minutes of prior content (edit: so I could actually save him), but TOTALLY WORTH IT.