Game Mechanics
Allowable races are humans and half elfs. Half elfs get their choice of a bonus feat or lay on hands at CL/2. Half-elf paladins add this to their paladin LOH pool. Races resembling humans (such as aasimar or tieflings) can be used as long as you're careful not to let the Inquisition know you aren't human, but run it past me first. You may also add templates, and the alignment restriction for werewolves is waived.
Feats can be pulled from the Completes set, PHB, and Unearthed Arcanum.
Class levels in the following may not advance in spellcasting at levels 1, 5, 10, 15, or 20. You may multiclass or gain a level in your existing class; your caster level will improve but you won't gain spells/day. Casters with class abilities can still take those levels as their caster class, they just push their spells-per-day one level up (EG, a level 5 druid still gets Wild Shape and has a caster level of 5 but only gets spells per day as a third level druid. A level 5 fighter who then took 5 levels in druid would get spells per day as a level 4 druid).
Cleric Druid Wizard
Class levels in the following may not advance in spellcasting at levels 1, 6, 12, or 18. (Caster level may still improve).
Sorcerer FavoredSoul Healer Warmage
Class levels in the following can start at level 2:
Beguiler Duskblade Bard DragonShaman
The following classes can be taken at level 1:
Rogue, Barbarian, Warlock, Scout, Ranger, Hexblade, Adept, Spellthief, Marshal, Fighter, Monk, CA Ninja, Paladin
Monk, Ninja, and Paladin will gain additional or replacement abilities (usable 1/day unless otherwise noted) as they level. I will be monitoring the power levels of these classes closely and may have to make minor adjustments on the fly.
Background
Head south for a few weeks and you'll see it: the drifting green acid fog that marks the border of the Blighted Land. Every year, it drifts a little further north, and the weather is a little drier. The old men remember when the river by your hometown was twice as wide as it is, when they'd grow two or three harvests a year. Now people have started calling what was once the verdant breadbowl of the Empire, the Dry Lands. It's too bad, they say, about the Magefire Mountains. That's the range that popped up east of the blighted lands during the Third Magefire Wars, a hundred years ago. If it weren't for those mages and their wars, we'd be able to survive here.
More immediately interesting, you and your party are the elite of Lord Edric's forces. You just finished rooting out a cultist of something called the Black Moon, whatever that is, who had abducted, mangled, killed, and then animated a surprising number of villagers and Lord Edric's son. Last week Edric sent a fast rider to Atalantea, to beg the Church of Light for an Inquisitor and some Blades. Yesterday, however, Lord Edric fell critically ill. Black spots mar his skin, and it's unlikely he'll survive to see his rider return. With his only child already dead, succession to his lands is murky, at best. Because Lord Edric's lands border the river Av, they're considered quite prosperous. It is situations like this one that spark the bitterest and longest feuds in the Empire.
The Vanished Archmage
