Sinister Academics

A Zamani Campaign

Welcome to the not so friendly world of Academia. Winthrop University, located a short distance down the coast from Ravenguard in the Belgravian Republic appears on the surface to be a superior, if somewhat unconventionally organized institution of higher learning.

It is the second most prominent university in the country, but is known among academics for it's complex internal politics, large financial endowment and excentric variety of schools of study.

There are secrets that lie within this campus, many of which the world is not yet ready for. Dark Secrets, Shadowy Secrets and Personal Secrets. No one here is exactly what they seem to be, and there is a throb of power that runs from Winthrop thru the upper levels of the Republic's government (some say all the way to the Empress herself, or at least her Privy Cloister).

Winthrop University's College of Metaphysics is one of the few accredited high level schools of magic and mysticism in all of Jarro.

Player characters for this campaign should have appropriate academic related traits as students, faculty or staff for Winthrop University.

What Secrets Lurk?!!

You were all there the day Professor Adelaine Frezner died. You were passing thru the wide brick courtyard known as 'Red Square' on campus at noon that Midsummer Day when you saw someone else in the crowd of passing students and faculty looking up and pointing at the Bell Tower.

There she was, standing on the edge of the bell room, dressed in white summer dress, wind blowing her pretty long blonde hair. She said something loudly, as if addressing those of you below. Next you saw someone behind her, in the shadow of the bell, moving and then she was plummeting slowly thru space to crash down upon the fountain of the muses in the center of the square. Her dress now crimson with her own blood, impaled upon the muse of poetry's statue.

It was a day that has stuck in your mind and been replayed in your nightmares now for most of a week. What you don't understand is why. What you don't understand is why the local coroner has simply called it a suicide and ceased to investigate. And why no one in authority on campus want to talk about or will listen to those who say they saw someone else in the tower.

She was a popular figure on campus, on the fast track to becoming tenured when the board would meet in the winter that decided such things. She came from a good family and there didn't seem to be anything that spoke of suicide. And yet that is what they say happened.

Now you are meeting with a few other students, faculty and staff in secret, to discuss what happened. You aren't the only one that suspects there are secrets involved, possibly criminal ones, in what has happened. The nightmare is too strong. You need to vent, to talk, to find out what really happened.

And so, thru this mutual interest, you have gathered in a student lounge at the stroke of midnight. To talk where other ears cannot hear who might dissuade you. A Cabal in Sinister Academia....