Isolation can be a boon, but when strange events leave the members of an airborne boarding school for young nobles in High Dale ill, only aid from outside can offer a solution. Can the PCs solve this discretely and in time? A Living Forgotten Realms adventure set in the Dalelands for characters levels 1-4.

DM: Chris (Nuke)

Players:

• Shadow – Human Assassin, Level 2 (Scott – ssevener)
• Keldaer’lyn – Revenant Drow Assassin, Level 4 (Craig – EvilRubberDucky)
• Kairos – Tiefling Warlock, Level 3 (Joe – joef60532)
• Nereth – Elven Cleric, Level 2 (Brett – khyron)
• Miranda – Human Assassin, Level 2 (Perry – pgfrix)
• Splash – Genasi Swordmage, Level 2 (Russell – Russell the Muscle)

After long journeys in from as far south as Westgate, our adventurers convened in Daerlun just in time to find a young professor named Torleaf in desperate need of their investigative services.  It seemed that his school, Arrowpoint, while awesomely floating hundreds of feet in the air on a massive earthmote, still suffered from the pressures of modern society and had begun showing odd symptoms throughout the student body that some might correlate to drug usage. Torleaf didn’t know where or how, or even the who that could be infecting their prestigious academy, but hopefully our heroes could get to the bottom of it…

Once the group had endured a partially traumatic elevator/griffon ride up to the top of the massive rock where the school resided, they immediately began to scout around as inconspicuously as possible for clues, posing as new teachers for a variety of randomly vacant positions. They soon learned that the situation had taken a turn for the worse when it was mentioned that Lord Statwick, the head of the school, had gone missing shortly after Torleaf had left “for business,” thus proving all the more why time was of the essence.  Between makeshift classes covering the party’s skills of everything from fencing and physical fitness, politics, and even a dash of TV/VCR repair, they did their best to survey both the lay of the land and also the other teachers until late one afternoon they uncovered the break that they were looking for.

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Deep in the woods on the far side of the earthmote stood an old cabin that had apparently become the hangout for one of the school’s premiere cliques – the same clique, in fact, that a student who had recently gone missing as well belonged to.  In persuing their lead, however, the party approached the cabin just in time to find another closing in as well – a familiar face, even, but with not nearly as virtuous motives.  Forced to draw blades against the Weapons Master of the school himself to defend the children who had now taken refuge inside the cabin, the group took many blows before felling Sir Rodan and his battalion of hell hounds…

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After defeating the rogue teacher and discovering that he, along with one of the students, had been charmed into assisting the literature instructor, Barlunien, spread the drugs around the school, our heroes found themselves in a race against time to return to the school and hunt down Barlunien before he could do anymore harm. Of course, they feared the worst and nearly found it as they approached to see even larger quantities of students than ever before succumbed by the efforts of the poisonous drug.  Fighting their way through the sickly masses, they did their best to calm the crowd and heal what students they could before continuing on into the school’s hidden dungeon and eventually Barlunien’s secret lab.

Granted, they didn’t get far before they encountered the tragic results of alchemical waste in the form of mutant plants with a particular thirst for blood…

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Slowly the party beat back the vicious vines until they finally made their way into the vile teacher’s inner sanctum. In one cell near the far end of the room sat the captive headmaster Statwick, however it soon became clear that Barlunien’s henchmen would stop at nothing to end the encounter long before a rescue was possible.  They came on strong, quickly bloodying over half the party and sadly reducing the Genasi Splash to nothing more than a puddle before the heroes were finally able to identify a small weakness and gain the upperhand. After a long and harsh battle, they eventually brought Barlunien to his knees and were able to both save Lord Statwick and craft an antidote to restore the school, however the triumph was no doubt a bit less sweet without everybody’s favorite radical swordmage around to share in the spoils.

The war on drugs may have finally been over, however victory always comes at a price.

(Additional Photos Available Here)
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Living Forgotten Realms is a 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons shared-world campaign played Wednesday nights at Anthem Games, among hundreds of other locations around the world.

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