System: D&D 5e (elements drawn from Strixhaven supplemental)

Status: Active

Active: December 18, 2021 - Present

OFFICIAL PHANTOM KNIGHTS DATABASE!!

Blackstar Academy, a once-highly-prestigious school now surpassed by its rivals, is celebrating its centennial. A crop of new first-years, including the players, take their tour of the grounds before attending the yearly Luna Fantome Feast. Following an introduction to the deans of each Blackstar Academy college the first-year students are expected to complete the Blackstar Nova Meridian rites of initiation. This is a Coming of Age spell cast by esteemed Stellametrix Dean of Theory, Professor Gerard Octavius meant to reveal which school of magic each student is most naturally inclined toward.

As the first-years complete the rite one by one, with the Headmxtre’s gentle reassurance that no one has ever failed the rite, their natural talents are revealed in columns of light from the rite’s casting circle.

Until Iolite Varena, the son of Blackstar’s student-voted Favorite Professor ten years running.

His column of light is black. Black corresponds to no school of magic the students are aware of, and the development creates a small panic among staff. The panic only rises as one after the other, the remaining students experience the same dark magic result: All player characters listed above, and one halfling NPC named Ozymandias Grimaldi.

The students in question are sequestered as the Headmxtre works to maintain calm in the rest of the student body and ensure the not-cursed first-years get to their housing. The players (plus Ozymandias) are eventually released without suspicion of wrong-doing and escorted to their dorms by the two Head Spectres, upperclassmen assigned to assist underclassmen.

When all have finally found their dorms and settled in for the night, the players fall asleep, and fall, and fall....

The players wake up in a strange place on black slabs.