Scholomance

The Scholomance is a school of necromancy in the crypts under Caer Darrow's ruined keep, on an island in Darrowmere Lake in the Western Plaguelands. The keep belonged to the noble Barov family, whose lands also included Brill, Tarren Mill and Southshore. During the Second War the Horde sacked the island and carried off its high elven runestone, and after the war Caer Darrow fell into ruin.

The wizard Kel'Thuzad recruited members for his Cult of the Damned by promising immortality to anyone who served the Lich King. Tempted by that promise, the Barovs handed their keep and its catacombs to the Scourge, and the cultists murdered the family and turned the catacombs into a school that became the Cult's capital. The household servants became test subjects, and Doctor Theolen Krastinov, known as the Butcher, used the head maid Eva Sarkhoff and her husband Lucien, the butler, in plague experiments before feeding them to his ghouls.

Kel'Thuzad has moved on, but his cultists still run the school. The lich Ras Frostwhisper, a hedge mage from Stromgarde and Kel'Thuzad's favored pupil, rules the site for the Scourge, and a living necromancer, Darkmaster Gandling, serves as its headmaster. The undead Barovs, Lord Alexei, Lady Illucia and their daughter Jandice, still walk its halls, and Krastinov serves Kirtonos the Herald, an undead gargoyle who craves the blood of innocents. In the Great Ossuary, necromancers breed plagued dragon whelps to build a Scourge dragonflight.

Alchemist Arbington at Chillwind Camp and Apothecary Dithers at the Bulwark guide the forging of the Skeleton Key that opens the school, a task that ends with the scarab of Araj the Summoner, the school's former leader. The two surviving Barov heirs, the human Weldon at Chillwind Camp and his undead brother Alexi at the Bulwark, each pay adventurers to recover the family deeds kept inside. The ghost of Eva Sarkhoff asks for Krastinov's death, the burning of her and Lucien's remains, and the summoning and slaying of Kirtonos. The ghost of Magistrate Marduke leads a chain that makes Ras Frostwhisper mortal so he can be killed, and Betina Bigglezink of the Argent Dawn wants the plagued whelps destroyed.

The dead townsfolk of Caer Darrow still walk the island as ghosts that only a wearer of the Spectral Essence can see. Eva Sarkhoff gives that essence as a reward for slaying Kirtonos, and it reveals Magistrate Marduke, Artist Renfray and the town's other spirits.