The Red Potion of Greater Healing

Dear Valued Blue River Pharmaceutical Shareholder,

With first-quarter profits of $822 million, 2011 is shaping up to be a landmark year for Blue River. Our flagship products, Lixor and Ephemerax, continued to generate strong revenue, and our research and development arm made promising breakthroughs in the search for a more effective rasputinase inhibitor. Our legal team won a key victory in the ongoing Beaver River Basin "pretzel baby" litigation, scuppering the appeal attempts of the plaintiffs.

Though the outlook is overwhelmingly positive, Q1 has not been free of setbacks and new challenges. The generic market continues to chip away at sales of name-brand drugs, and the Eel River Basin "skinless burrito baby" litigation, though totally groundless, is still an ongoing concern. The main challenge we'll face in 2011, however, is competition from Szagna International, which has just launched an impressive new product which threatens to moderately impact our operations.

In a recent expedition to the Dragonhold Dungeon beneath Mt. Despise, Szagna International research adventurer Drake Longmir discovered a Red Potion of Greater Healing, concocted from inexpensive ingredients, which instantly cures all physical damage and most diseases. Szagna has now reverse-engineered and patented the Red Potion of Greater Healing, and worldwide sales are expected to exceed $40 billion in the coming year and make almost every other medical and pharmaceutical product, from adhesive bandages and blood pressure medications to kidney dialysis machines and artificial limbs, fully obsolete.

We at Blue River believe healthy competition is not a thing to be feared. We applaud Szagna's discovery; the Red Potion of Greater Healing is a fine product which will deservedly put almost every other pharmaceutical company out of business almost instantly, but we have full faith in the time-tested ingenuity and competitive spirit of Blue River's world-class research department. In fact, the discovery of the Red Potion of Greater Healing has opened up entirely new avenues in our pharmacological research-- and the boys at Blue River, as always, are on the bleeding edge.

For example, our research indicates that the Red Potion of Greater Healing is weak against poison effects. If, god forbid, a child were to be bitten by a cobra or drink a gallon of antifreeze, the Red Potion of Greater Healing would bring that child back from the brink of death and restore it to peak physical condition. However, the poison would still be in the child's system, and would continue to damage its vulnerable hit points every turn until cured. While the parents could continue to administer Red Potions of Greater Healing periodically until the poison worked itself out, that would become prohibitively expensive. But there's good news: Blue River Pharmaceutical has been granted a patent for the Green Potion of Cure Poison, which instantly dispels all poison effects in the human body.

Furthermore, drugs that treat sexual dysfunction have been one of the most lucrative areas of the pharmaceutical industry for the past decade. While those who take the Red Potion of Greater Healing will be cured of most ailments that cause erectile dysfunction, many men would still love to see improvements in performance even beyond their normal capabilities. That's why Blue River has developed the Blue Potion of Vitality, which fully revitalizes the imbiber's stamina for greater duration and stimulation. We're currently working on a variant, the Blue Potion of Vitality AM, which produces a similar effect of energy and refreshment without causing embarrassing physical rodneys.

We hoped to maintain a strong share of the antidepressant and anti-anxiety market, but the Red Potion of Greater Healing seems to totally correct the brain's chemistry. But again, there is a drawback to exploit: the Red Potion of Greater Healing does nothing to cure spiritual ailments. Indeed, research adventurer Drake Longmir died of a sorcerer's curse shortly after escaping Dragonhold-- if only he'd lived long enough to see Blue River Pharmaceutical's Purple Potion of Soul Cleansing, which dispels all status effects that cause spiritual damage, such as magical diseases, voodoo hexes and the wearing of cursed items. While we acknowledge that these ailments are rare in the modern world, we're confident that the Purple Potion of Soul Cleansing will soon gain a foothold among superstitious ethnics, who will drink it to bless weddings or cure imagined demonic possession.

Proud as we are of these breakthroughs, we do anticipate that their worldwide adoption will begin to eradicate most disease and ailment over the next three or four months, making our business model increasingly tenuous. Therefore, it's important for the long-term success of Blue River Pharmaceutical to explore new strategies in treatment necessitization.

Our research team is working round the clock to break the Barrier of Souls that separates our world from the Demonic Nether. By Q2 2012, we anticipate the opening of our first exploratory Demonic Nether Portal Facility, which will flood the lands surrounding our Indiana headquarters with demonic liches, succubi, giant spiders and other paranormal horrors. We predict that thousands of adventurers will flock to the area in search of glory and powerful demonic items, leading to a major rise in local demand for Green and Purple Potions.

In concert with this, we will launch an innovative new treatment delivery option: we've partnered with over ten thousand Indiana crypts, caves and dungeons to exclusively carry our Blue River Treasure Chests, value-packed with a selection of our most potent potions. Keys will be available for $79.99 at Walgreens and CVS stores throughout the area. Best of all, we've already begun negotiations with Szagna International to stock Red Potions of Greater Healing in all Blue River Treasure Chests-- in exchange for a small portion of their profits and a guarantee that our ruthless demonic hordes will not overrun their Chicago headquarters.

Here's to many more successful quarters!

Yours truly,

Dr. Ramses Doomthrottle
CEO, Blue River Pharmaceutical

– Dr. David Thorpe (@Arr)