Adventures in the wilds of Middle-earth - Phantom of the Northern Marches, Trolls of the Misty Mountains, and Haunted Ruins of the Dunlendings

By this point, I've covered almost all the Middle-earth Roleplaying books I own that are set in Eriador. The only ones left that are set west of the Misty Mountains are adventures, which differ from the books that I've discussed up until now. Adventures are more focused, concentrating on relatively small areas, but which are more nebulous in exactly where they are set. They are more about small-scale problems that need solving than sweeping history and epic quests.These problems range from missing people to giants roaming the land to ghostly manifestations. Doughty warriors, mysterious mages, ruthless bandits, and decadent nobles help and hinder the characters belonging to the players. This is the kind of stuff the Rangers took care of, or which slowed Gandalf down when he wasn't hanging out in Hobbiton. It's not all thumping the Balrog or tossing Rings into volcanoes.

First up is Phantom of the Northern Marches.

Daniel Horne is one of my favorite fantasy artists, and he did - and still does, I think - quite a bit of roleplaying game work, including some great Dragon Magazine covers. One of them is one of my favorite D&D images, ever.

Nowadays he seems to be concentrating on classic monster paintings and sculptures. Regardless, I've never seen a bad painting by him. He didn't do a lot of work for MERP (Middle-earth Roleplaying), but what he did was striking.

Besides Horne's fantastic cover, there is a bit of decent interior art, including maps that are different from the gorgeous Middle-earth maps I usually rave about. The maps here are more tactical in nature, showing monster lairs and the like.

Ridorthu has simple tastes, apparently.

The titular Northern Marches are the northern edges of Arthedain and Rhudaur, a rather bleak, wild region of Middle-earth even at the best of times. The town of Novtha Rhaglaw, besides being afflicted with an awkward-to-say name, is an isolated, somewhat ramshackle place. Not far from the land of the Witch-king, Angmar, it nevertheless remains untouched, though doom hangs in the air.

Phantom of the Northern Marches has three main adventures:

The Phantom of the Woods: The folk of Novtha Raglaw are puzzled and unsettled by tales of missing shepherds and strange lights in the woods. Now, a hunter has turned up dead. Could this be the work of barrow-wights, or forces of the Witch-king? Or some other dastardly villain?

The Riddle of Ridorthu: Farms in the area of Novtha Rhaglaw have had livestock come up missing. Huge footprints have been found. Strange sounds in the night seem to come from an invisible source. Shepherding seems to be a hazardous job in Novtha Rhaglaw, as yet another poor sap of that profession is found knocked senseless. So what's going on? It's up to the players and their characters to find out.

Gerse's Bane: A dragon rampages throughout the area. A classic fantasy game scenario, this could spell the end of the player's characters if they aren't careful and don't manage to enlist some aid...could tales of an ancient warrior hold the clue to the dragon's defeat?

The book details the town of Novtha Rhaglaw and its inhabitants, giving characters for the players to interact with. It's a pretty standard affair for a roleplaying game, though the adventures here have more of a fairy tale air than those for games like Dungeons & Dragons. Still, these types of adventures are a tested formula for success, with success defined as the players having fun.

Next, let's look at Trolls of the Misty Mountains.

Yep, another Daniel Horne cover. What's aggravating is that Iron Crown Enteprises (ICE), publisher of MERP, chose to do some of these covers as semi-wrap-arounds, with about a third of the image continued on the back cover. While this makes for a nice, almost letterboxed look, it's tough to scan and even tougher to post the two parts side-by-side here on blogger.

Yeah, tiny, I know. That's the only way I could get them to sit side-by-side. Here's a bigger version of the front cover, because it deserves to be seen.

Cool stuff, huh? Horne definitely has his own take on what trolls look like, and I think his interpretation is pretty fun, yet a little scary, though in a children's-storybook way. Even some of the interior art, by Denis Loubet, is whimsical.

Trolls aren't the most observant creatures.

Trolls of the Misty Mountains is set in the region of Rhudaur that approaches the western foothills of the Misty Mountains. As you might have guessed, there is gonna be a good bit of troll action in this one. As with Phantom of the Northern Marches, Trolls of the Misty Mountains has three main adventures. The adventures are linked by a couple of isolated fortresses of Arthedain, which has tried to extend its grasp now that its brother-kingdoms of Cardolan and Rhudaur are gone, or nearly so. The players' characters are sent out to scout for the construction of a road between the fortresses. But, y'know, there are trolls, so it's not just a surveying job.

The Adventure of Duildin Hill involves farmers approaching the characters of the players to help them get rid of trolls raiding their farms. Guess where the trolls live? It's a fairly straightforward mission, but there are a few complications that may not be too much of a surprise. Still, it's an adventure in the classic mold.

Adventure at the Village of Garkash is another classic, and is also straightforward. An orc village has a bridge that lies right on the route for the road the player characters are scouting. It may seem uncomplicated, but the orcs have a few surprises to spring.

Adventure at Maes Fao is set in a forbidding gorge on the path of the proposed road. The player characters end up searching for an ancient artifact, an heirloom of the last king of Rhudaur. They aren't the only ones, though; the Dark Lord's reach is long, and his agents seem everywhere. There are trolls, yes, but they may only be tools of more calculating villains.

Trolls of the Misty Mountains is a pretty good mini-campaign for characters still learning to be heroes.

Haunted Ruins of the Dunlendings is, technically, not set in Eriador, but was more intended to be set somewhere near the Paths of the Dead in the White Mountains of Gondor. Still, as is stated in the book itself, it can be set just about anywhere Dunlendings live or once lived. This includes the Southern Misty Mountains.

 

This time, the wraparound cover is by Gail B. McIntosh, who did other MERP covers, including Hillmen of the Trollshaws. This cover is exceptional, also evoking a fairytale feel, reminding me a bit of Victorian-era illustrations by artists like Anne Anderson.

The Miller's Daughter by Anne Anderson

Anyway, this McIntosh cover deserves to be shown larger, so here 'tis.

 As with the other two books I've discussed in this post, this one has three adventures.

Adventure at Minas Anghen involves the tower of a Seer, or wise woman. The trade road that runs near the tower has become a dangerous place, with passing merchants often ambushed and robbed or slain. Rooting out the bandits and discovering the fate of the Seer and her tower draws the player characters to the area.

There are some nifty maps and schematics in this book, and Minas Anghen is the subject of some of the better ones.

Side view of Minas Anghen

Adventure at the Seven Stones (Setmaenen) is set at a site sacred to the Dunlendings, a stone dome with surrounding standing stones. A cursed artifact has made the place unclean, and the site has been closed off until the Dunlendings have made right the Oathbreaking, which is where they betrayed oaths they made to Gondor and the Elves. By the way - this curse was only lifted when Aragorn called on the Dead Men of Dunharrow to fulfill their Oaths, and help smash Umbar and rescue Minas Tirith. So, this adventure may be more or less interesting depending on the time period in which it is used. 

This adventure also has some nifty pics, the best of which is this one:

Adventure at Hogo Tarosvan deals with a site where the cursed dead were buried in cliffside caves, a forgotten village, and a fertile valley. This particular adventure is especially spooky, but is also more wide-ranging, both in territory and theme. The writers manage to evoke a feeling of evil that is not exactly that of Sauron, but is dreaded nonetheless. This one also has some interesting pictures.

 I also would be remiss if I didn't share this truly awesome picture by Jim Holloway, which deserves a spot of its own on this post:

These three books present an interesting glimpse of Middle-earth from a perspective not often delved into. Beyond the forests of the Elves and the Shire of the Hobbits, the wilds of Middle-earth are open and trackless, full of ancient and forgotten danger. I think my reassessment of these books is among the more radical of those I've made as I've done these Middle-earth roleplaying blogs. I didn't think much of them for the longest time, but looking at them in the context of what I've read and commented on up to this point, they really seem to have more substance and interest than I ever gave them credit for.

Back to Middle-earth: Thieves of Tharbad

Another great cover by Angus McBride.

We don't see much in the way of cities in The Lord of the Rings. The only ones of note are Edoras in Rohan and Minas Tirith, and Edoras isn't so much a city as a fairly large walled town. Beyond those, everything else is a village. So it's easy to assume that cities are few and far between in Middle-earth, and the few we know about are more like fortresses, or are ruined.

This presents a problem to anyone wanting to play the Middle-earth Roleplaying game. Cities are a staple of gaming, especially freewheeling dens of iniquity teeming with all manner of riffraff and ne'er-do-wells. They provide all manner of opportunities for players to have their characters to rough up and be roughed up, cheat and be cheated, and generally cause all kinds of mayhem while losing all those gold pieces they stole from a dragon or goblin patrol. Trouble is, all of that is hard to do in Middle-earth, with its sleepy villages and de facto military camps.

It's a poor roleplaying game indeed without the possibility of running afoul of a city watch and gangs of thieves. So, the Middle-earth Roleplaying folks settled on Tharbad. Sitting astride the Gwathlo river, Tharbad was one of the biggest settlements in Cardolan, and outlasted that realm by centuries, falling into disrepair and dwindling in population until it finally fell into ruin and became empty of inhabitants a few decades before Bilbo set out on his famous journey. Given that MERP books used a default time setting 1300 years before Bilbo's time, this doesn't present a problem, unless you want to use this site during the time of the War of the Ring. Still, as I usually say, it's easy enough to swap Tharbad out with another city or move the time period after the War of the Ring, when Aragorn, as King Elessar, begins a project to rebuild and repopulate that part of Middle-earth.

This book is pretty typical for its kind. The city is broken down into quarters, with prominent buildings and citizens detailed. Adventures are presented, from stolen crown jewels to smuggling. There's a princess who's the last scion of a fallen kingdom, assorted thugs, imperial envoys, spies, military captains, and assorted other movers, shakers, and cutthroats. Plenty of trouble for the players to have their characters stumble into.

To make these reasonably visible...

...I couldn't place them side-by-side.

This book takes a little getting used to for someone who's read The Lord of the Rings - or The Hobbit, for that matter. This game version of Tharbad doesn't jibe with anything in those books; Boromir mentions it in passing while discussing his errand to find Rivendell, with the only notable things said about Tharbad being that he lost his horse there and had to walk the rest of the way. It didn't just run away; it was apparently killed at the ford on the river Gwathlo there, a ford comprised of the fallen pieces of a once-major bridge. Boromir was kind of a modest bad-ass sometimes. It's too bad not much is told of that journey from Minas Tirith to Rivendell, because it had to be epic, in the true sense of the word. Regardless, Tharbad was a deserted ruin at that time, destroyed by time and floods.

Tharbad and its environs: northwest lie the Barrow-downs; further north is Amon Sul, or Weathertop.

In the context of playing a Middle-earth game set in the time of Frodo and Bilbo, the book has limited usability. There are notes on the surrounding flora and fauna, and the ubiquitous MERP charts of characters and creatures. There is a schematic of the sewers of Tharbad, which is handy, because game characters tend to always end up in sewers eventually. But that's not much material that will get use. Like I said, it could be used as a city elsewhere, straddling another river in Middle-earth or an entirely different fantasy setting.

Sewers always seem like much cooler places for adventure than they can possibly be in real life.

 
Tharbad does make an appearance in the MERP mega-adventure Palantir Quest, set in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, early during the reign of King Elessar after Sauron's defeat. In that epic adventure, Tharbad is being rebuilt, a revived frontier town working to return to life. In that context, Thieves of Tharbad might have a bit of use, as thugs and drifters who once served in Sauron's armies, as well as Saruman's knuckleheads who survived a thrashing in the Shire, head out to find new places to bedevil.

This place evokes a feeling of melancholy in me. Tharbad hung on long after its kingdom, Cardolan, fell, struggling on through the long years alone and isolated in the increasingly wild surroundings. Its last residents fled or were drowned in floods, with only several decades between them and salvation by a revived Arnor. Middle-earth history aside, this book is usable, though unremarkable. Placing it into the context of the setting it was intended for lends it more interest, but it still lacks excitement as written. The Angus McBride cover, and the Peter Fenlon maps, are, as usual, spectacular, and do pump some life into the book. I would have liked to see Tharbad presented as a haunted ruin, a haven for brigands and ghosts and assorted orcs and trolls, with the occasional Ranger patrol swinging by to roust out the bad guys.

Cursed Tombs and Hobbit Villagers: Bree and the Barrow-Downs

Fog on the Barrow-downs was, for the longest time, one of my favorite chapters of The Lord of the Rings. The title itself is evocative, setting a mood that is ominous, like a classic black and white horror movie. The story has, by that time, seen the Hobbits descend into a strange, dark world just beyond the borders of their beloved Shire. The Old Forest was dangerous yet whimsical, and Tom Bombadil's house a haven in it. Yet just beyond it is another shadowy land, one they are warned not to linger in. With good reason; the Barrow-downs are truly haunted, with dark spirits that desecrate the resting places of a once-great folk.

Later, after adventures amongst the downs, the Hobbits finally make it to Bree. Bree is an interesting spot on Tolkien's map, a small town that is apparently a crossroads on once-great thoroughfares. Now, few beyond Bree-land visit, except for adventurous Shire Hobbits (which is a vanishingly rare phenomenon), some closed-mouthed Dwarves traveling on mysterious business, and a few furtive Men on ominous errands. Even the occasional Wizard makes a stop there as he moves about Middle-earth. It's a rustically cosmopolitan place.

This Middle-earth Roleplaying adventure actually captures a lot of this. The cover uses an image from the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings film. I've been critical of that film, but there is some striking imagery in it. This cover shows one of those images, of Bree huddled under Bree Hill under a darkling sky. It sets the mood for a place that is a bit of light in a vast gloom.

The book gives a brief history of the area, which stretches back a surprisingly long way. Bree-land was never a pivotal place, so while much history passed it by, it never took center stage. That's a bit surprising, given that it's situated on the border between Arthedain and Cardolan, and is a crossroads, where the North-South Road - known to most in the area of Bree-land as the Greenway - and the Great East Road meet. By the time of The Hobbit, both roads were little-used outside where they ran through the Shire and Bree-land. The kingdoms that had built and used them were long gone.

There is a rundown of Bree itself, with some of the major buildings listed and detailed, as well as brief descriptions of the other villages in Bree-land: Archet, Combe, and Staddle. They're tiny, and are something like suburbs of Bree.

An overhead map of Bree and its environs.

Archet, Combe, and Staddle

There is a discussion of the local politics, economy, agriculture, and festivals. Overall, it's a bucolic place, not too unlike the Shire, though its people, including the Hobbits, are less naive than their neighbors. It's a clue to the importance of the Rangers to the safety of the Shire that Bree has built defenses and fields a town guard to protect itself. It's another indication of just how dangerous the outer world is, even within a short trip beyond the borders of the Shire.

A more northerly look at Bree-land and its neighbor, the Shire.

Southerly view of the region surrounding Bree-land.

Bree and Bree-land wouldn't seem terribly interesting as an adventure site, had readers of The Lord of the Rings not already followed along as Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin had already faced quite a bit of danger just in getting there. Tolkien unintentionally provided a really good introduction to the whole area as the basis for adventure gaming.

A lot of fantasy roleplaying games have a long tradition of using villages as the "home bases" for adventurers who strike out into the wild. These villages serve as rest stops, resupply areas, recruitment centers, and motivating factors for further adventures. All have at least one inn, where adventure hooks, gossip, and rumors float about, and mysterious strangers sit in corners waiting to be spoken to. They exist near wild places and crumbling ruins, where it is rumored that all manner of danger exists. Bree is the prototypical roleplaying game village.

A town guard can be found in just about any fantasy roleplaying game. Their main function is to bedevil the characters that belong to the players.

True to form, beyond Bree is a place rife with danger and adventure: the Barrow-downs. These ancient burial mounds are filled with treasure, but also with undead. In addition, the Old Forest of Tom Bombadil lies to the west and south. To the east is Weathertop and the lost land of Rhudaur, and, of course, Elves live there.

The book provides a number of characters for the players to interact with in Bree and Bree-land, and beyond. There is a band of Dunlendings holed up in an old fortress nearby, some bandits, scattered trolls and wolves, and, of course, down in the Barrow-downs are Barrow-wights.

Quite a few barrows are detailed. These resemble the kinds of "dungeons" made famous in adventures for Dungeons & Dragons, though these barrows are much less complex. In fact, even the most elaborate barrows are a handful of rooms, and most are a single space. There are illustrations and maps that give a good indication of what the barrows look like within and without. A good bit of treasure lies within the Barrow-downs, but it can be deadly to get to and to keep, as seen in The Lord of the Rings.

A description of the Barrow-downs from the book.

The barrow of Ostoher, the last king of Cardolan. Ostoher is on the cover of Lost Realm of Cardolan, discussed in an earlier entry in this blog.

This volume in the Middle-earth Roleplaying line by Iron Crown Enterprise is not likely to appeal too much to non-gamers. There is quite a bit of game-specific material that makes it really useful at the game table, but not as a good read. There are charts of statistics for characters and monsters, and a lot of specifically-detailed treasure - these all have effects in game terms that might look like gibberish to the casual reader. So I can't recommend it as a late-night or rainy-day read. The maps, though, are gorgeous, especially the regional maps by Peter Fenlon.

Bree and the Barrow-downs is a MERP book that actually is better than I thought it was before starting this series of blog posts. Closer examination shows it to be much more useful than I originally thought. I was put off by the time-setting, which is about 1300 years before the time of The Hobbit. The Prancing Pony is not here, though a similar inn, the King's Rest, is. Still, it's easy enough to just rename the inn and have Barliman Butterbur own it. The Barrow-downs are essentially timeless, and the surrounding lands don't change much. So, this makes for a good beginning area for playing a game set in Middle-earth. It's actually pretty fun.

Lost Realm of Cardolan - a long-forgotten Middle-earth kingdom of the Dunedain.

Umm, yikes.

They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and the towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight. - The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter VII: "In the House of Tom Bombadil"

'What in the name of wonder?' began Merry, feeling the golden circlet that had slipped over one eye. Then he stopped, and a shadow came over his face, and he closed his eyes. 'Of course, I remember!' he said. 'The men of Carn Dum came on us at night, and we were worsted. Ah! the spear in my heart!' He clutched at his breast. 'No! No!' he said, opening his eyes. 'What am I saying? I have been dreaming.' - The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter VIII: "Fog on the Barrow Downs"

Arveleg son of Argeleb, with the help of Cardolan and Lindon, drove back his enemies from the Hills; and for many years Arthedain and Cardolan held in force a frontier along the Weather Hills, the Great Road, and the lower Hoarwell.[...]A remnant of the faithful among the Dunedain of Cardolan also held out in Tyrn Gorthad (the Barrowdowns), or took refuge in the forest behind.[...]In the days of Argeleb II the plague came into Eriador from the South-east, and most of the people of Cardolan persished[...]It was at this time that an end came of the Dunedain of Cardolan, and evil spirits out of Angmar and Rhudaur entered into the deserted mounds and dwelt there. - The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A: Annals of the Kings and Rulers, I: The Numenorean Kings, (iii)Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur

Embattled from the start, destined never to greatness, Cardolan was one of the "little kingdoms" that resulted from the splitting of the kingdom of Arnor into three parts. Overshadowed in the west by its brother kingdom Arthedain, and beset from the east by its lesser, corrupted brother kingdom of Rhudaur, Cardolan was doomed to nonexistence in the end, the greatness it managed to create lost to the ages, not even a memory to most in Middle-earth.

Ostensibly a sourcebook for a region of Middle-earth, Lost Realm of Cardolan can be plugged into another game setting, if one wishes, with a fairly low amount of work. This book details a region of Middle-earth that was empty and desolate by the time of The Lord of the Rings, and though the time period covered is roughly fourteen hundred years before the events in that book, even during that time the region was fragmenting and falling into ruin and chaos. Adding to this is that not much was detailed by Tolkien about the region. So the authors had to create much out of whole cloth, which could irk Tolkien purists, but it makes for a supplement that is more universally useful than most setting sourcebooks for a licensed setting.

The time setting for the book is when the kingdom of Cardolan, ravaged by centuries of war and plague, is fragmented and shaky. Various petty princes vie for the remnants of empire in Cardolan as the population steadily flees or is killed. Evil spirits invade barrows. The evil empire of Angmar works through its proxy Rhudaur to undermine and bleed dry Cardolan and Arthedain.

Hobbits are elusive and dwindling in numbers as more and more of them head for the new Shire established for them to the West. Mercenaries abound, including a unit of polearmsmen called Raggers. This is the only instance I know of in a book like this in which a unit of polearm-wielding troops is featured. 

The Raggers, polearm troops with a cool name.

Trolls and orcs carve out a slice of empire. Lost treasures lie waiting for discovery. Cities and towns are often declining, with Tharbad the most notable settlement, and the one-time capital of Metraith more of a ghastly joke than a seat of power. The future is uncertain. It's a dangerous time, with peace and recovery more wishful thinking than possibilities...perfect for adventurers wanting to make their marks.

The postage-stamp-sized maps above are of southwestern Cardolan. I'll post bigger versions below, but the above is how they are positioned in relation to each other.

Eryn Vorn is a substantial forest along Cardolan's coast; no doubt full of mystery, as are all of Tolkien's woods.

Besides a fair amount of woods, this part of Cardolan is served by a port city.

The region is isolated and desolate enough that it could be placed in a suitably bleak section of a once-great empire in another game setting, including a homebrew campaign; even the names wouldn't necessarily have to be changed, unless the players are very familiar with Tolkien's work to a great degree. That assumes you don't want to use it in the context in which it's presented, the mid-Third Age of Middle-earth. If you have the desire to use it for its intended purpose, it fills in a relatively blank spot on the map. Using it in the time period of The Lord of the Rings would take a good bit of rationalization, as the sourcebook posits a setting that is more densely populated and organized than is implied in Tolkien's books. It could be used in an early Fourth Age game campaign if the players were willing to accept that remnants of Sauron's forces fled into the region after the Dark Lord's defeat and set up ramshackle kingdoms, working against vassals of King Elessar sent to re-establish the northern kingdom. In fact, that's the most appealing possibility to me.

This book would be best used in conjunction with Thieves of Tharbad and Bree and the Barrow-Downs. Tharbad is still a major settlement in this region, and Lost Realm of Cardolan only gives it a cursory look, with a map (which you can see in the Thieves of Tharbad entry to this blog) and a column or so of description. In the time in which this book is set, the Barrow-Downs have yet to be invaded by the Wights and other spirits that would infest the area in later years, so not much is said about them here.

I think this book deserves to be praised very highly because I find it to be really useful beyond its intended setting. It also has an edgier feel, more swords & sorcery than Tolkienesque, which is a nice change of pace.