Class Dismissed

*The beginning! What a fine place to start. We meet our nascent heroes in the throes of the beginning of the sunset of their scholastic salad days. Demon possessions, ominous warnings, and threats from Hell itself auger ill and trouble. Can they matriculate from danger to destiny? Can they graduate magna cum...adventure?*

The first episode of Rude Tales of Magic and the first episode of the Class Dismissed campaign.

The following episode is Down for the Count.

## Summary

We start in the forgotten first draft of the world, Cordelia, in the year 497 After Affair, gradually meeting the player characters, a group of students on the Friday before the spring semester finals week at Polaris University. Albee, a faun, is meeting with her advisor, Bento, to declare her major. She wants to become a monk of the four elements like her hero, Kreedis, but it is outlawed to study this field. Bento tries to talk her out of it, but Albee is not dissuaded from “following her dream”. Bellow, a blue tiefling, gets chewed out by the Dean about his poor grades and potentially selling bootleg PU shirts in between the Dean talking about his relationship with his father. Bellow has not been a good student in his three years at Polaris, but he’s trying to do well on his exams after getting news that his Dad has been eaten by a gelatinous cube. Stirfry, a Kenku with the power of speech, and Frederick de Bonesby, a man who became a skeleton when failing to become a lich, are attempting to steal the answers to finals. Along with his skin and his flesh and his fats, de Bonesby has lost all of his magical ability. A security guard, Douglas, née Rahm Ulceris, comes to tell them to leave, but agrees to leave them alone if Stirfry “boils him a cake”.

Lastly, we meet Cordelia, a 35-year-old Sasquatch and Albee’s best friend. Their sorority, Mothra Tau Delta, performs their regular good luck ritual to help them with finals. After the recitation, Cordelia witnesses time freeze as the demon Cheddar possesses Rina Hanowary, the, uh, head of the sorority. He sees potential in Cordelia and grants her hellish powers in exchange for passing out coupons to his restaurant in Hell: she must place coins on the eyes of the dead. Cheddar passes one last word of advice: get off campus as soon as she can, because something bad is coming.

Time resumes and Cordelia convinces Albee to go off campus with her. Polaris University suddenly vanishes behind them, leaving undeveloped forest in its place. Bellow had stayed behind at his off-campus frat house, Sigma Sigma Sigma, while the rest of his brothers went to cause a ruckus on campus. Both Bellow and his one remaining frat-mate, Davo, experience an unsettling event where every single sound in the world goes silent for a moment, then all comes rushing back. Cordelia and Albee find Bellow at the house where all traces of his absent roommates are missing - no PU merch, no pictures of anyone other than Bellow and Davo. Time freezes again and Cheddar speaks to Cordelia through Davo, glad that she got off campus in time and letting her know that the Mothra Tau Delta ritual attracted the wrong attention in Hell. Albee, Bellow, Cordelia, and Davo set off to search the school grounds to see if anyone else is still around. Frederick and Stirfry also experience a strange sensation in the underground room housing the test answers: a tremor in the earth. They then witness Douglas get sliced in half as the part of him outside the room is ripped from existence. The room, which they realize is older than the rest of the university, is left with only books written by the founder and tally marks and “Lexicon” scratched into the walls. The other four, venturing from the frat house, find Frederick and Stirfry in the remains of the school’s archives under a wall of solid stone, freeing them to compare notes on the missing school. The party is complete.

They are interrupted by a fiery demon who announces himself as Strayd Plancis. He demands that they leave and takes control of the unconscious Davo as he shrugs off the team’s ineffectual attacks. Cordelia manages to fool him (and herself) with a Minor Illusion, convincing them both that she has Strayd trapped in a magical bubble with her brand-new hellish powers. Cordelia “frees” him in exchange for releasing Davo, but the demon kills him anyway as he vanishes from sight, with only a warning to "leave this place". The party leaves their former campus, wandering into the Teenage Woods rather than take any further risks.

## Trivia

* The first roll of the game is Joe rolling a perception check for Bellow. He gets a 5.
* The Simplecast link for the episode includes the phrase "Schools out forever." This is likely a reference to Alice Cooper's song School's Out and a possible alternate title for the pilot episode.
* The episode's name is also used to refer to the first campaign of Rude Tales of Magic as "The Class Dismissed campaign."

## Transcript

The fan-made transcript of Class Dismissed is available here!

## Link

https://rudetalesofmagic.simplecast.com/episodes/schools-out-forever