The Black Gate Opens: Mordor's Front Door

As I approach the end of my overview of Middle-earth Roleplaying sourcebooks, I now move to where some of Middle-earth's greatest confrontations took place. Where the Ephel Duath, the Mountains of Shadow, and the Ered Lithui, the Mountains of Ash, meet, is the entrance to Sauron's dark realm. This is a land of fetid marshes, blasted hills, dark towers, and the dreaded Black Gate itself. By the time of Bilbo and Frodo, this was the land of nightmare, a literal Hell on Earth. Only those on desperate missions or lost causes dared to brave this place, the most watched and guarded in Middle-earth.

The Middle-earth Roleplaying game covered the Dark Lord's domain well. I have already discussed Gorgoroth, the poisonous and deadly plains where Sauron draws his strength. So, too, have I examined both Cirith Ungol and the lost city of Minas Ithil. Now, at the last, we come to Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes, and the Morannon Gate itself. And that is where the examination of Mordor will end, because Iron Crown Enterprises never delved into the very epicenter of evil in Middle-earth, Sauron's enormous tower-fortress, Barad-dur. That's too bad for the truly adventurous and fearless, or insane, heroes who might have wanted to take the fight to Sauron's house. Still, what has been detailed is likely enough for a lifetime of exploration and derring-do.

First, we will pore through the adventure, Gates of Mordor.

This is a fantastically dramatic cover by the late, great Angus McBride.

It's a promising title, though it's not exactly what we might have expected. The book is a collection of three linked adventures. Set in northern Ithilien, the Garden of Gondor, and the northern Ephel Duath, these adventures bring the adventurers right up and on to Mordor's mountainous fence.

The wine estate the adventurers are sent to check out, and its environs.

The first adventure has the player characters trying to discover why wine shipments have been delayed or have simply disappeared. An isolated Gondorian villa in the wilds of Ithilien is the source of the wine, and though it's a fortified estate, the mysterious lapse in wine shipments does not bode well. Though near the border of Mordor, Ithilien is a fair land and evil does not often come there. Still, the shadow of the Ephel Duath hides many secrets.

The second adventure sees the characters following up the mystery of the winery from the previous adventure. Their investigation leads to the foot of the Ephel Duath itself, where an old Gondorian tower helped anchor the defenses of the Men of the West.

The third adventure takes the characters up into the Mountains of Shadow themselves. A Gondorian citadel has been known to harbor minions of the Dark Lord, but surely this rabble poses no real threat. At the most, it may be the staging area for some petty Orc chieftain sending raiding parties into Ithilien to bedevil the good folk there. The adventurers go to scout out the place and run off these vermin. Recovering ill-gotten gains and captives will result in good rewards for comparatively little work.

Is it that simple?

This is a decent, though fairly straightforward set of adventures. It does provide a tour of an interesting part of Middle-earth, taking the player's characters from a beautiful parkland into some of the most desolate, evil terrain short of Gorgoroth itself. It includes a description of Durthang, an important and powerful fortress guarding the entry into Mordor. The cover is definitely misleading, but what the hell, it's a cool piece by Angus McBride. I'll take that anyday, misleading or not.

Next, let's look at a much different piece of terrain: Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes.

One of the earlier MERP books, for a long time this was one that I rarely looked at. It's more of a regional sourcebook than a pure adventure. That's not bad; in fact, I usually enjoy these kinds of books. As with a number of books I've looked at in this series, it covers the climate, flora, and fauna of the region, painting a portrait of it that seems three-dimensional and realistic (relatively speaking). It could simply be that, almost thirty years ago when I first got it, this region didn't appeal to me much as the site of adventures. I was much more eager to see more familiar, "cool" places in Middle-earth. Here was a book that covered an area that presented more spiritual and psychological challenges to those who passed through it than opportunities for sword-swinging. Frodo and Sam slogged through the Marshes and the Plain, demoralized by the increasingly decaying, dead lands. It is a haunted place, scarred forever by titanic battles that raged there, and the memories of heroes who fell.

It does have another awesome Peter Fenlon map, hand-annotated by me in the mists of the past.

While once the site where the Free People battled and defeated Sauron, this region is also trade route for hearty merchants passing between Gondor and the lands to the East. Although desolate, the region is home to marshmen and a couple of horsemen tribes from the East, as well as the ubiquitous Orcs. Unsurprisingly, there is a variety of Undead haunting the Marshes and the Battle Plain.

An elaborate tomb for a fallen servant of Sauron, deep within the Dead Marshes.

The book includes a few adventures and ideas for adventures. Most involve bandits and Orcs, though a few more powerful inhabitants and interesting sites are included, from disciples of Sauron to a hidden refuge of a healer. However, the real adventure here is challenging the terrain itself. The Dead Marshes are harbors for insects and disease, with treacherous footing the rule rather than the exception. The slow, insidious encroachment of swampy ground onto Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, has disturbed the final resting places of many of the warriors of the Last Alliance who helped defeat Sauron so long ago. Evil spirits that are at Sauron's beck and call have invaded tombs and graves, both in the Marshes and on the Plain. Simply finding one's way through this region can be life-threatening.

I'd like to note something here. This isn't a criticism of this particular book. In fact, Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes is a solid little addition to the Middle-earth Roleplaying line. The trouble is, there is a feeling of sameness to many of the MERP adventure books. Bandits seem to be a common go-to threat. That's not bad, in and of itself, and is logical enough. Many of the books detail villages or small settlements, and they begin to blur together after a while. It becomes a matter of all of it starting to seem very familiar - bandit and Orc activity instigates investigations, which ultimately lead to a hidden servant of Sauron in a fortified manor or keep. It's unfair to single out the MERP line for this, really; a lot of similar books for a variety of fantasy games from this era - the late '80s - use the same tropes. I've been getting a concentrated dose of this as I've immersed myself in MERP books, so it has become glaring to me. A good bit of this book, as with so many others, is actually interesting and varied. The common elements, though, begin to draw attention at this point. I don't know what the solution is. Perhaps adventure writers could come up with a "standard village" as a standalone product, inexpensive as a print product, maybe even free as a download, and in subsequent adventures provide a few notes as to how to modify it to suit a given locale. It could save some space that could then be devoted to unique content. Just an idea.

Now, we move even closer to Sauron's base of power.

Fortresses of Middle-earth: Teeth of Mordor goes into detail in describing the entrance into Mordor itself.

After Sauron's defeat that ended the Second Age of Middle-earth, the victorious forces of good decided to occupy strategic places in Mordor to ensure that the fallen Dark Lord's lieutenants and followers would never have the chance to take up their master's cause, or to prevent Sauron himself from returning to his home should he somehow cheat death again. Chief among these locales was the main entrance into Mordor, the plain of Udun, that lay at the corner where the mountain ranges Ephel Duath and Ered Lithui met. On hills flanking the pass into Mordor were built two watch-towers, Narchost - "Fire-fort" - and Carchost - "Fang-fort." Between them was the Morannon, a great wall that closed off Mordor from the rest of the world. Few places in Middle-earth are as fortified or as disputed.

Sauron had the Morannon and towers rebuilt and fortified more than once. Depending on the era, the Teeth and the Morannon are heavily guarded by the Men of Gondor or Sauron's forces, or abandoned and empty. Either way, they're prime candidates for adventure. Frodo and Sam's stealth mission to Orodruin shows that even the Dark Lord can't guard against every incursion. The Teeth and the Morannon are going to present a much trickier problem, though, because anyone moving in or beyond it during times of occupation are going to be immediately confronted by guards of some sort.

Sauron is not known for the subtlety of his architecture.

The bulk of this slender book details the nine levels of the two towers. Most fantasy roleplaying game towers are far more complex and varied than their real-world counterparts, and the Teeth of Mordor are no exception.

Throne rooms, lounges, and even greenhouses can be found in these towers. They come off as a combination of apartment and business high-rises, mixed with a few vague nods toward medieval construction here and there. That's not a knock or a dismissal. The book presents a place that would likely be a lot of fun for players to have their adventurous characters knockabout in, even if it's pretty much a suicide mission during the most interesting time periods.

Taken as a whole, these three books, Gates of Mordor, Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes, and Fortresses of Middle-earth: Teeth of Mordor, combine to form a good overview of one of the most dangerous, intriguing areas of Middle-earth.

More Middle-earth housekeeping.

This is another brief post to let those interested know that I've gone back and expanded and revised even more of the earlier Middle-earth Roleplaying posts. New images have been added, and I wrote some new material to beef up the analyses and overviews, which were often pretty anemic in those early posts.

Gorgoroth

Weathertop, Tower of the Wind

Calenhad, a Beacon of Gondor

Lorien & the Halls of the Elven Smiths

Fortresses of Middle-earth: Halls of the Elven-King

Mirkwood

Ents of Fangorn

As always, feel free to let me know what you think, either as a comment, or by way of the email address located somewhere below my smirking mug to the right.

Fortresses of Middle-earth: Halls of the Elven-King...

Black butterflies and drunken elves. Those are two things that stuck out to me when I first read The Hobbit. Magical streams that cause deep sleep, paths that can't be strayed from, black squirrels, white deer, black stags...Mirkwood dominated the book in my mind.

There's something mysterious about even the most familiar patch of woods. It's easy to believe something strange and unknown lies within them, waiting to discover or be discovered. Throughout Tolkien's works, he presents a number of different woodlands, each possessed of its own secrets. The most mysterious of them all was Mirkwood.

Mirkwood is a darker counterpart to Lorien, with the Elven-King's realm an Unseelie Court to the Seelie ruled by Galadriel. King Thranduil of Mirkwood held sway over a wood haunted by giant spiders and a spooky atmosphere, quite unlike the starlit forests of Lorien.

Thranduil may have been the Elven-King in Northern Mirkwood, but his main stronghold was an underground fortress near the forest's edge. This fortress harkens back to the faerie mounds of legend, and is a labyrinthine place. This is where the dwarves were imprisoned by the elves, and from which Bilbo freed them after lurking about the place for who-knows-how-long, using his ring of invisibility. It's a clean, dry, civilized place, but still one with an otherworldly tinge to it, and sinister if one is not there as a guest, but rather as a prisoner. It's worth noting that Thranduil was the father of Legolas, meaning that Legolas was a prince and heir to the kingdom of northern Mirkwood.

Unlike Rivendell, the Halls of the Elven-King are an obvious site for a game adventure. The type of adventure is already spelled out for you in The Hobbit: infiltration, spying, and escape. The elves of Mirkwood, while not evil, are much more suspicious of strangers, and less likely to welcome anyone into their home.

This might be an interesting read for a non-gamer. The conceit for the description of the place is that it's a tale being told by a merchant who had dealings with the elves. Still, a lot of it is floorplans and descriptions of rooms that might wear thin after a while. The history of the place is probably more generally accessible, and like any of the Middle-earth Roleplaying books from ICE, it tries to cover several thousand years in only a few pages. Given the immortality of elves, this isn't as tough as it might seem; for a big example, there were only two kings in that time period, one of them the very one who held Thorin and Company prisoner in The Hobbit. It's a thin book, too, to boot, with a lot of maps and a few illustrations.


 The non-map illustrations have a faux-Bayeux Tapestry look to them. This adds to the alien atmosphere of the place, and gives the book a slight historical "feel" that is unlike other MERP books.

The MERP line extrapolates a lot of stuff out of necessity; a game book often needs to detail elements of the world that Tolkien either never addressed, or only touched upon. Sometimes the writers of the MERP books went a little astray from what seems "Tolkienian," but in this book they managed to do a decent job. Tree-forts grown into existence is a good example.

This is one of the better-done MERP adventure site books. With more substance, like a concentration on Middle-earth history, and more art rather than floorplans, this could have been a rainy-day book to leaf through. As it is, it's too flimsy for that, but it is good for those who might want to plug it into a fantasy game setting, Middle-earth or not.

Again, a map that has to be shown in two parts. Part the first...

...and part the second.

There's something dreamy about this book. Much of this has to do with the art, but the narrative description and extensive historical notes also contributes to it. It's a decent companion piece or quick reference for The Hobbit, though it's obviously not canon. ICE did a couple of books detailing Mirkwood itself, divided into Northern and Southern sections, so this one is a good companion for those.

Maybe the dreaminess has more to do with The Hobbit itself than with this book. That's entirely possible. I've read The Hobbit more times than I can remember, and I may well be projecting the mood I felt while reading that book onto this game book. I know that the entire adventure in Mirkwood always had a dreamlike quality to it, more so than almost anything else Tolkien wrote. I'm still struck by the image of Bilbo climbing out of the gloom and above the canopy of Mirkwood, seeing the black butterflies flying above the forest in the sunlight. It's a beautiful moment. I'm also struck by the image of elves drinking until they fall asleep, with Bilbo slipping around them as he works to engineer the escape of the dwarves. It's all a late-night fairytale.

Calenhad, a Beacon of Gondor - a review of a sourcebook for a great fortified tower in Middle-earth

Calenhad is one of seven beacons that stand along the northern border of Gondor in Middle-earth. When danger was at hand, huge fires were lit to serve as an alarm. This book portrays the beacons as border fortresses.

A closer look at the beautiful, evocative cover image by David and Elissa Martin.

This is a good, solid product. The fortress, with its walls and towers, seems well-designed and realistic, something which is not as common as you would think in RPG supplements.

One level of the beacon tower.

This is more of a site than an adventure, making it particularly adaptable and useful. Someone running a Middle-earth-based game could use it as a good example of a Gondorian fort.

Notes are provided to use it as exactly what it is: one of the beacon towers of Gondor. This latter use may provide limited possibilities for adventure, depending on the time period of the campaign being run. After all, it is located in the interior of Gondor at its height, and on the border of its great ally in later times. As mentioned, though, it could easily be placed somewhere closer to adventure with just a change of the name. The players could be facing hordes of Orcs in no time.

Like this guy.

A nearby town that supports and is defended by the fortress of Calenhad.

It could also be used in a setting other than Middle-earth; it would fit easily into any RPG setting with a vaguely medieval background.

An early, simple signal platform where Calenhad would stand in later centuries.

It could be used as a waypoint for adventurers, the last safe spot before proceeding into dangerous territory, or as an enemy fort that needs to be taken. It also looks like a good example of the kind of stronghold a player character in a game like MERP or D&D might end up building or taking control of when they achieve a certain status or level of power, especially since various stages of development of the place are shown.

As Gondor's power increased, so, too, did it strengthen its communications network, replacing more vulnerable platforms with towers.

Overall, this is a very useful RPG supplement, versatile and well-designed. The artwork is outstanding, some of the very best done for the Middle-earth Roleplaying line.

Weathertop, the Tower of the Wind - a review of a sourcebook for Weathertop as it was, and as it may be again

Weathertop is an iconic location in Middle-earth. In The Lord of the Rings movies, it is a ruin; in the book, it is barely even that, little more than a ring of broken stone overgrown with grass. In this product, it is shown at its height as an important fortress and observation post for the northern Dunedain kingdom of Arnor, and later Arthedain. It became a bone of contention among the three kingdoms that resulted from the fragmentation of Arnor, as the fortress was located where the borders of Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur met.

Map of Middle-earth showing the fractured northern kingdom of Arnor.

Amon Sul was home to one of the palantir, or seeing-stones, until the evil kingdom of Angmar destroyed the fortress. The palantir was saved, though later lost, but the tower remained broken for nearly a millennium and a half. It would be rebuilt in the early Fourth Age by King Elessar, formerly known as Aragorn, as he reestablished the northern kingdom of Arnor.

A closer look at the cover image.

Weathertop or Amon Sul, the Tower of the Wind, is the subject of another in the "Fortresses of Middle-earth" series produced for the Middle-earth Roleplaying game. This is more of a site than an adventure. That is, there is no overarching plot. The tower and attendant structures are detailed and populated, and some notes are given for how it might be used.

The fortress at different stages of its history.

There was something both grand mysterious about Amon Sul, or Weathertop as it was mostly known in latter days. Even bereft of its tower and fortress, it was a defensible place, with a breathtaking view of the surrounding lands. It was a natural place to get the lay of the land and look for danger to avoid, but it also drew the attention of those who would do harm. Gandalf fought the Ringwraiths here, who later returned to attack Aragorn and the Hobbits. You'd think Gandalf and Aragorn both would have seen that coming. Still, it must have been hard to resist the thought of getting such a good look at their surroundings. Plus, the history of the place must have an allure, especially for Aragorn, who was heir to the kingdom to which Weathertop once belonged.

It must have been a splendid place in its heyday, and this book tends to reinforce that idea. The cover is a complete extrapolation, but an attractive one. In some ways, this book's version of Amon Sul seems more humble than I imagined it would be. It's a fine place as presented, but given the impressive fortresses of Isengard and Minas Tirith, one would think Weathertop, home to a palantir and one of the most important strongholds in the region, would have been more imposing. Regardless, the Weathertop we have here is arresting.

As presented, the tower would require that the game be played either long before the time of the book and movies, or a bit after. However, there is nothing to prevent this fortress being renamed and placed elsewhere as an example of Gondorian martial construction. It would also work really well in a game set during the early Fourth Age, a base for adventurers to foray out to help tame the wilderness that will become part of the Reunited Kingdom. Weathertop and Calenhad, another in the "Fortresses of Middle-earth" series, are similar in all these regards. It (and Calenhad) could also be used in an entirely different setting, unrelated to Middle-earth. It could fit well in any setting with a high fantasy/vaguely medieval feel, and the game statistics can be used as a guideline for adapting the fortress to other games.

Especially one that features knightly characters.

This is a remarkably useful product that with a little thought can be used for a wide variety of games and settings. Need a strong tower or lookout point somewhere in your game world? This may well fit that need.