The road goes ever on...Palantir Quest

 The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter I: A Long-Expected Party

The Lord of the Rings is a book of endings: the end of the time of Elves in Middle-earth; the end of the reign of the Stewards in Gondor; the end of King Theoden's line, and his life; the end of the tale of the Ringbearers; and, of course, the end of the great Shadow that had darkened the world for millennia, which also ended the third, and very troubled, age of Middle-earth.

Yet, it is also a book of beginnings. The Fourth Age dawns as the book ends. The age of Men begins. Mirkwood is reborn as Greenwood. Elves and Dwarves move into new homes. Throughout Middle-earth a Renaissance starts, with the Peoples of Middle-earth coming together to create a new society. Rebuilding of much that was destroyed is begun. That which was lost is recovered. There is much remembered sorrow, but much hope for the future.

I never felt the need for Tolkien to write more about the Fourth Age. The story, as written, is deeply satisfying, even if also deeply melancholy. His attempt to set a tale in this new Age was soon abandoned by him, and it's understandable why; after the towering achievement of The Lord of the Rings, everything else would have been anticlimactic, and risk undercutting the power of that epic.

However, the needs of a reader and the desires of a roleplaying gamer are two different things. The Fourth Age of Middle-earth is ripe with opportunity for glorious deeds. Many - though not all - roleplaying games are, at their hearts, very optimistic. Adventurers go out to tame the wilds, recover the lost, and rebuild the ruined. For such games, the Fourth Age is a nigh-perfect setting. 

Sauron is gone, but his legacy still lingers. Middle-earth is still a dangerous place. Ancient secrets stand ready to be brought to light. For the first time, Iron Crown Enterprises decided to explore this new Age with a tour-de-force adventure.

I said in the last post that I had finished with the setting sourcebooks for the Middle-earth Roleplaying game. One last book remains that fits within the parameters of this blog. This is not a book about a place, but rather a grand epic journey of exploration and adventure across the entire continent detailed in all those books I've discussed before. This is a search for some of the great treasures of Middle-earth, long thought lost. This is:

Not the most dynamic cover, but one that helps capture an evocative mood and personage of a long-forgotten age.

After years of publishing solid, meticulously-detailed books and adventures for their Middle-earth Roleplaying game, Iron Crown Enterprises began to slow the pace of their production. At least, it seemed that way to me. By the mid-1990s, I rarely saw new MERP books. Occasionally I did see revised and expanded versions of earlier material, ranging from Arnor, which covered the same region as Rangers of the North: the Kingdom of Arthedain, Lost Realm of Cardolan, Bree and the Barrow-downs, and Rhudaur (in the form of Hillmen of the Trollshaws), to Moria, to Mirkwood. There was even, finally, a book dedicated to the Shire itself. Unfortunately for me, though, I decided to pass up these bulked-up books, figuring at the time that I already had the originals, so why would I need these? Given the crazy prices I've seen some of them going for now, and the revised Moria book I did, luckily, find for cheap, I now regret not picking them up when I saw them back then. Regardless, it seemed to me that MERP was slowly fading away as a game; in fact, when I found Palantir Quest for sale as a brand-new product, I was surprised. I'd thought the game had finally given up the ghost before then.

Palantir Quest further surprised me for what it was. Though the bulk of the material ICE published for MERP was set in 1640 of the Third Age of Middle-earth, Palantir Quest finally broke new ground and set the adventure in the Fourth Age. While many of the books and adventures that existed by then had brief notes for the setting at other times, Palantir Quest was the first to be explicitly set after Sauron's fall and the end of the War of the Ring. This was something I'd waited a long time for.

One of the problems with setting a game in Middle-earth is the carefully plotted timeline Tolkien had established. One could ignore the timeline and allow the player characters to do what they wanted, even to the point of changing the entire course of the narrative of The Lord of the Rings. ICE attempted to head-off this potential problem (though some might not see it as a problem at all) by making the time setting for their game material more than 1400 years before Bilbo was born. That era was rife with adventuring possibilities, with little chance of knocking all of Tolkien's story off-track. The downside was that Middle-earth did not much resemble what most potential players would be familiar with going in. There was no Rohan, and there was still a king in Gondor, for two big examples. Still, there was a lot for adventurers to do...but it just never really appealed to me, to be frank.

I've detailed elsewhere how the Fourth Age of Middle-earth is full of gaming potential, without the baggage of books and movies detailing everything about it. The downside to that, of course, is that players, being what they are, and most likely Lord of the Rings fans to boot, will also likely miss being able to interact with some of the setting's most famous characters. Another complaint I've heard about the Fourth Age is that there is "nothing to do." The One Ring is gone, Sauron has fallen, and even his greatest servants have been vanquished. It's an understandable reaction, of course; who wouldn't want the chance to at least help overthrow Sauron? Conversely, many roleplaying game settings don't have such a narrative focus around which they revolve, making the Fourth Age of Middle-earth much more reminiscent of them. It's a wide-open time, with plenty still left to do, and an incredibly long and detailed backstory for it all.

This isn't really related to the adventure at hand, but shows a pretty spectacular moment in Middle-earth history.

Palantir Quest cuts right to the heart of the matter by centering around one of the great remaining mysteries of Middle-earth. The seeing-stones of the folk who founded Arnor and Gondor were powerful and coveted artifacts, desired by everyone from the kings of Gondor to the Dark Lord himself. Few in number in the first place, their numbers dwindled as the centuries went by, lost to war and betrayal. Yet they weren't truly lost; palantiri are nearly indestructible. One was taken to the Uttermost West by the Elves who left Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age. Some may have been rendered unusable: the one in Minas Tirith would only show flames and Denethor's burning hands after that doom-haunted Steward of Gondor took it to his funeral pyre, though someone as strong-willed as Aragorn likely could have used it if he exerted himself greatly; while even if recovered, the one Sauron held at Barad-dur is likely too tainted by evil to ever be usable again by mortals. The Orthanc stone, used by Saruman, is the last known working palantir in Middle-earth, held and used by King Elessar (aka Aragorn) in Minas Tirith. However, three stones still remain unaccounted for, though still in Middle-earth. Locating and recovering them would be a great step in helping the Reunited Kingdom rebuild.

I would have thought they'd make the pedestal taller for the palantiri...

The three remaining palantiri were lost to the depths; the one in Osgiliath fell into the mighty Anduin River, while the other two, one that had been in the tower at Weathertop, the other from the long-ruined city of Annuminas, were lost together in a shipwreck in the far northern sea. These latter two are the focus of the titular quest of the book discussed here.

Polar bears?

Woolly oliphaunts?

Yes, please.

Palantir Quest is a true tour-de-force adventure. It ranges across Middle-earth, from Minas Tirith to the far north, and many familiar sites in-between. It even moves into territory only hinted at by Tolkien, including a hazardous sea-passage to an incredibly ancient ruin on the last bit of land remaining from the great continent of Numenor, which was drowned beneath the sea due to the hubris of its folk. If that last reminds you of Atlantis, it should; the tale of the Numenoreans, Aragorn's ancestors, is, indeed, Tolkien's take on the Atlantean legends. It's not an exaggeration to say that this quest is for lost artifacts of Atlantis, to help rebuild an ancient civilization that fell to its own folly and the anger of the gods.

This is what is called an "event-based" adventure, as opposed to a "site-based" adventure. However, many of the events take place in certain sites, so, in effect, this book is a pretty decent balance of the two. "Event-based" adventures have a negative connotation to some, since such adventures acquired the reputation of having things happen beyond the will or ability of the player's characters to change them. In effect, the players and their characters would become spectators to a story, not forging their own destiny. At their worst, these kinds of adventures are likened to amusement park rides through "haunted houses" or "jungles," where the riders are in no real danger, but also cannot truly interact with what's going on. They're also called "railroads," since they only go in one predetermined route (video games that are like this are said to be "on rails").  

Palantir Quest doesn't fall prey to much of these problems, though I'd suggest a careful reading of the book by the person who is going to run it for the other players. I suggest this so that the gamemaster (the person running the adventure) can grasp some of the possible side adventures, and add to them when and where appropriate. As an example of what I'm getting at, a brief interlude in the Barrow-downs could end up becoming a much more involved adventure of its own; also, the trek from Bree to Annuminas is glossed over, but the players, if they're like most gamers, will likely want to veer off the road or explore the wilderness. Thankfully, ICE's practices of old remain intact in Palantir Quest: there are detailed charts of random encounters possible for most of the regions passed through on the quest. I highly recommend their use, as, too, the climate tables. I'd also recommend the use of the regional sourcebooks in tandem with this book, as many of them contain information easily usable or adapted for the Fourth Age of Middle-earth.

The art is especially good in this book. While it doesn't contain the full-color Peter Fenlon maps of so many MERP books, it does have snippets of them, apparently reused from other books in the series. There are a number of other maps, of specific locations, that help detail the constituent adventures of the larger campaign, and which are pretty nice in themselves. I do have to mention the art of Kent Burles, which makes up much of the character and creature illustrations. I'm particularly enamored of his art, and it's too bad that I haven't seen more of it, either in other MERP books (besides in the expanded Moria sourcebook I mentioned and linked to above) or any other game books I've run across. Still, I greatly appreciate what there is.

I'm avoiding spoilers in this overview. I know it's an almost-twenty-year-old book, but adventures for roleplaying games are, by their nature, evergreen. I'll quote some of the text from the back cover of the book to give an idea of what the quest is all about:

Strange portents in the great Seeing-stone of Minas Tirith give promise that one of the lost palantiri of the North has returned to the lands of Men. Can the adventurers find this legendary treasure and bring it to King Elessar? Rogues of the wilds, blizzards out of the Forodwaith, and the greed in Men's hearts all conspire against them.

Plus, the player's characters get to hobnob with Aragorn and impress him. That's cool in itself.

I really like this depiction of Aragorn, or King Elessar, all decked out in his royal armor.

Being given this quest should come after the player's characters have established a name for themselves. You could start the campaign out cold, with the players using new characters generated to be powerful enough to take care of themselves in a dangerous quest, but it would be way more satisfying for them to be given this quest after several accomplishments under their belts from earlier adventures. Successfully completing it not only results in some great rewards, but also in gaining the trust of the King of Gondor. Of course, such trust means even more quests assigned...there is the issue of the still-missing palantir, washed down mighty Anduin and, likely, into the sea. Who knows where it now rests, or if someone has already recovered it and holds it, ignorant of its power, far to the South? Plus, Aragorn and King Eomer of Rohan will be striking into the East and South to vanquish the armies of Sauron's erstwhile allies, and seasoned, trustworthy lieutenants are always needed...

These places aren't going to explore themselves, after all.

This adventure has a lot of potential for fun. It's a well-thought-out campaign, taking the characters into interesting places in Middle-earth, some they will almost certainly recognize, others merely hinted at in the books and movies. It illustrates really clearly how the Fourth Age of Middle-earth was an untapped reservoir of adventure possibilities, and how disappointing it is that this reservoir was only tapped to this much depth the one time.

In my last post, I noted that it was the last of my essays and reviews of Iron Crown Enterprise's regional sourcebooks for their Middle-earth Roleplaying game. This post is the last on this blog for any MERP books. This book was unique in being a whole complex series of linked adventures, a campaign, rather than detailing a region and including adventure ideas, or an adventure of lesser scope and impact. It might interest the non-gamer who wonders what might have happened after Sauron was defeated; game adventures like this aren't necessarily the best reads for those unacquainted with roleplaying games, but this one is clearly-written enough to be worth a page-through. As such, it seemed fitting to end this series of posts with this book.

So there you have it. A series of articles about MERP books, books that I spent a lot of time poring over long after many a witching hour. In fact, these books were some of the first things I thought of when I first started this Dark Dimension blog. It's satisfying to have taken a close look at all of them, and written about them for those interested. This isn't the end of Dark Dimension, just the end of a project I didn't think I'd have the patience to complete. Stick around, and I'll see what other obscure subjects I can explore that are best perused on the other side of Midnight.

"...the Guarded City, with its seven walls of stone so strong and old that it seemed to have been not builded but carven by giants out of the bones of the earth": Cities of Middle-earth - Minas Tirith

The spiritual heart of Minas Tirith.

This is the last bastion for good in Middle-earth; should it fall, all hope falls with it. A great white stone city, anchored on a mighty mountain, Minas Tirith is the capital and bulwark of Gondor. It is the focal point of Sauron's wrath, the last major obstacle between the Dark Lord and total domination of Middle-earth.

The fate of Middle-earth rested upon the strength of the Great Gate holding just long enough...

As far as I know, this was the only hardback volume in the Middle-earth Roleplaying (MERP) game line by Iron Crown Enterprise (ICE). The Angus McBride cover depicts the climactic scene when the great gate of the city has been breached and Gandalf confronts the Witch-king, the greatest of the Ringwraiths. In many ways, this painting is symbolic of the entire story of the Lord of the Rings, distilling it down to its essence. It's a fitting image for the book and for the MERP line in general.

Minas Tirith was, long before the time of Bilbo and Frodo, one of two tower-crowned fortresses that flanked the greatest city of Gondor, its capital, Osgiliath. At that time, it was known as Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun. Across the mighty Anduin river, nestled near the Ephel Duath, or Mountains of Shadow, was its sister-fortress Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon. For centuries the three cities flourished. Then civil war and plague struck Gondor, and Osgiliath began a long decline into ruin. Then Sauron's lieutenant, the Witch-king, struck Minas Ithil and seized it for the Dark Lord, and it became known as Minas Morgul, the Tower of Black Magic. Afterward, Minas Anor was renamed Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard, and became the capital and main fortress of Gondor.

The lands immediately surrounding Minas Tirith, including the Pelennor Fields where much blood was shed.

As the centuries wore on, Gondor remained strong, though decline was obvious. King Earnur disappeared into Minas Morgul after foolishly challenging the Witch-king to single combat, leaving no heir. From then on, for nearly a millennium, Gondor was ruled by Stewards who ruled from Minas Tirith. A slow malaise began to take hold of Gondor, a pessimism that poisoned the will of the people there, until by the time Aragorn came to claim his birthright, Minas Tirith was half empty and awaiting the inevitable. Worse by far was the secret that Denethor II, the ruling Steward, had been using the Palantir, the great seeing-stone, to spy on Sauron. The Dark Lord knew this, and manipulated what Denethor saw, poisoning the noble steward's mind with dark images of defeat, until the Steward was driven to near-insanity...and beyond. The corruption of Sauron had finally taken hold directly within Minas Tirith, at the very pinnacle of its power. The great city was teetering on the brink of oblivion.

The Tower of Anarion. This book's interpretation of the city includes a spire on the pinnacle of rock right above the Great Gate.

Cities of Middle-earth: Minas Tirith details the city at a time before Minas Ithil had fallen and a king still sat in the great Tower of Ecthelion. The longevity of the city, and its relative stability, makes the book still usable in any era. Some attention is given to what the city is like in other time periods, and it's easy enough to adjust how the city is described. The culture, architecture, guilds, military, and government remain essentially the same, though, of course, the Stewards take the place of the Kings when Earnur disappears. I've criticized some MERP books for not being very true to the setting Tolkien created, but this book cleaves closely to a Tolkienesque feel. This may not be exactly what Tolkien had in mind, but it evokes the city in a way that seems authentic. As far as I can tell, none of it conflicts with what Tolkien wrote. This is a well-detailed book, and will appeal to those who enjoy reading about Middle-earth, including non-gamers.

For gamers, though, this is quite a package. The city is meticulously detailed, from the surrounding Pelennor Fields to the White Tower at the city's heart. Numerous characters and organizations are given for the player's characters to interact with as they explore one of the iconic locations of Middle-earth. For a long time, I didn't see how there could be much for players to do here, but as time has gone on and I've gotten (somewhat) more mature, I see a wealth of adventure opportunities within the city's environs. Those looking for a "hive of scum and villainy" to carouse in will, perhaps, be disappointed; this is a city in which the adventures are more about maneuvering within various social strata and finding subtle and deeply-rooted corruption, not barroom brawls and "kick in the door" looting. Libraries full of forgotten lore, nobles with mysterious agendas, rivalries between guilds, and even a thieves guild all provide adventure hooks, and any reasonably curious adventurers will find plentiful ways to get into trouble. Even if players simply want their characters to take a tour of one of the great sites of Middle-earth, the information is here for the gamemaster to provide a textured description of the city. This includes sites made famous in the narrative of the book, such as the resting place for Minas Tirith's venerated dead, the Hallows.

This texture is reinforced with the usual MERP game material. Descriptions of the flora and fauna and weather of the area is given. There are tables of major characters to be found in the city, including a table of random encounters for each level, including the Pelennor Fields and the Harlond, Minas Tirith's ship dockyard. Random encounters range from cutpurses to tax collectors...though it may be tough to tell the difference. Even if renamed and used in another setting, there is plenty of material here to run a large, important city.

The only weak point of the book is its illustrations. Let me be clear: Peter Fenlon's maps are as gorgeous as they always are, and some of the high points of the book. The floorplans of many buildings are also well-done. The other art itself is good, though none of it is very dynamic. There are many portraits of city inhabitants, but most are static headshots. Many of those are by the redoubtable Liz Danforth, so it's impossible to really complain about them.

A mysterious inhabitant of Minas Tirith, with designs known only to her.

The problem is the paucity of pictures showing the city as a lived-in place. Street scenes and buildings views are few and far between, and, as with the character portraits, are not very evocative. The building plans are outstanding, but some perspective shots of them inhabited and in use would have helped bring some life to the city. Published about a decade before the Lord of the Rings movies, there wouldn't have been a lot of visual reference material to bolster the book's relative lack of them. Now, though, I'd recommend supplementing the book with still shots from the movies when using it in a game. Still, though, that Angus McBride cover may be the best image he did for the MERP line, and it makes up quite a bit of the ground not covered by the interior illustrations.

And let's not forget this nifty overhead streetplan of the city.

This is a fine book, one of the best of the MERP line. As true to Tolkien's writing as it can be while filling in a lot of detail, Cities of Middle-earth: Minas Tirith is an impressive work for gamers and non-gamers like. Readers and viewers of the Lord of the Rings see it at some of its worst, most desperate moments, yet it still manages to be remembered as a great, beautiful city. Although shadowed by the threat of Mordor to the east, it still manages to shine brightly to the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. Its greatest potential for adventure is during its darkest times; the city would welcome aid as Sauron's forces pour forth to conquer the city. Even after the Dark Lord falls, there is still much to do within the city; help is needed to rebuild, and the spies and agents of Sauron may still reside within, preparing final spiteful strikes to avenge their fallen master. Even ICE saw potential for Minas Tirith as an adventure site in the Fourth Age.

A splendid yet empty hall in Minas Tirith.

This is the final Middle-earth location sourcebook I'll be dealing with here on Dark Dimension. There is one last book in the line I'll cover here, but that will come later. There are other books in the series, but they are more geared to gamers, and will eventually be discussed in another blog. After that last book, I'll swing Dark Dimension's direction away from game books, at least for a while, and delve into more generally interesting topics. I hope everyone who's been reading has enjoyed these posts and gotten something out of them. I've enjoyed writing them and looking back on 25+ years of gaming. The last few posts have taken quite a bit of time to finish and publish, and I still have yet to convince myself to write smaller posts in the interim to break up the long gaps. I hope to fix that, with a few smaller posts here and there, but we'll see...

A memory of moonlight, long forgotten: Minas Ithil

From the spider-haunted pass of Cirith Ungol we go now to Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon. A city as great as Minas Tirith, it guarded the way into Mordor through the Ephel Duath. Perhaps the nightmarish presence of the Land of Shadow so close tinged the dreamy Gondorian city with a touch of darkness, as well as infusing it with a need for beauty to contrast the horror.

The Tower of the Moon that dominates the city, once a gleaming symbol of peace and beauty. Centuries later, it would be a menacing presence for Frodo and Sam as they attempted to slip into Mordor.

The Tower of the Moon was the ethereally beautiful counterpart to the stalwart Tower of the Sun. Both were bulwarks of Gondor, anchoring the realm and guarding the Gondorian capital of Osgiliath throughout the long centuries. Plague and civil war weakened Osgiliath, and it declined into empty ruin, leaving its guarding cities on their own. Then, fatefully, Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon, fell to Mordor's shadow and became Minas Morgul, the Tower of Black Magic. Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun, then became Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard, the last and greatest hope for the Free People of Middle-earth. Before Minas Ithil fell, though, it was a vibrant, creative place, a moonlit contrast to the bright warrior-city that took the name of Minas Tirith.

Queen Mirien has decided to make Minas Ithil her personal domain after continued friction with her husband, King Tarondor.

This book details Minas Ithil before it fell to Sauron's forces. It's an interesting place for those who enjoy urban adventures, and is detailed well. The culture of the city is laid out, with attention given to guilds, social strata, spirituality, education, and intrigue. This is a city of learning and art, and space is even devoted in the book to an overview of poetry in Minas Ithil. It also contains one of the few remaining Seeing-stones, or Palantir, that remains to Gondor. Minas Ithil is a living place, though the Great Plague has recently swept through Middle-earth, and while the city has weathered it better than many other places in Gondor, the weakening has begun that will allow the Witch-king to conquer the city centuries to come. The corruption is there, if subtle.

The marble buildings of Minas Ithil stand bravely, but a shadow already creeps within the city.

The book offers a variety of sites within the city for characters to visit, from dive taverns to universities. In this respect, it's one of the better city supplements I've seen for a roleplaying game. The only criticism I can offer happens to be a major one: Iron Crown Enterprises had already published a major city supplement a few years before. Minas Tirith had been given the hardback treatment, detailing the most famous of Middle-earth cities. While Minas Ithil is a much different place, there is a feeling of sameness here. The opportunity was there for a much more dangerous adventure site to be detailed. Minas Morgul would have made an even greater contrast to Minas Tirith.

A portion of Minas Ithil, the city, with Tower of the Moon itself labeled #4.

Perhaps ICE felt that Minas Morgul was the kind of site that would see little use in a game, and if so, then I can understand that reasoning. It would be an incredibly dangerous place for the player characters to attempt to slip into before the War of the Ring. Teeming with evil, the domain of the greatest of the Ringwraiths, instant death would be at hand for most of the Free People. Still...such danger is part and parcel of roleplaying game adventures. The prospect of such a huge, open adventure site would hold an allure for many adventurers. Spy missions involving infiltrating the city are an obvious opportunity for derring-do for those with ice-water blood. After Sauron's fall, Minas Morgul would have been an immediate target of King Elessar, opening up a whole campaign's-worth of adventures as the remnants of the Dark Lord's forces rush to any bastion that remains to them. Sieges, pitched battles, and building-to-building fighting in a city dominated by complete evil for a thousand years, still possessed of macabre secrets, and so infused with corruption that the King of Gondor would have it razed completely, sounds like a lot of fun.

All that said, this is still an outstanding game book, taken on its own. With some adjustment, it could be placed in other settings, or even converted into Minas Morgul. The details provided, from climate and ecology to court intrigue and hidden spider cults, are all interesting and worthwhile. In any other game or setting, it would be considered a classic. It still is a classic, but is overshadowed by its sibling city, Minas Tirith, both as a publication and as a place, and by the city of black magic that it would become. But, that may be my own lingering disappointment than anything else. Setting that aside, Minas Ithil is one of the better MERP books published.

Along came a spider: The Tower of Cirith Ungol and Shelob's Lair

"There agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider form[...]she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dur; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness." - The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter VIII: Shelob's Lair

When the world was young and the fallen Vala, Morgoth, began his schemes to rule over or destroy Middle-earth, he found an ally in Ungoliant, a great, shadowy spider from a time before the world was created. Down through the long years, Ungoliant's brood infested the desolate places of Middle-earth. From the dense heart of Mirkwood to the borders of Mordor itself, spiders of a size and intelligence seen only in the nightmares of our world wove their webs. In the time of Bilbo and Frodo, there still lived descendants of Ungoliant herself. In the Ephel Duath, the Fence of Shadow that looms on the Western edge of the shadowland of Mordor, lived "Shelob the Great, last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world."

Sauron is an opportunist and a manipulator. The mighty Smaug and the horrific Balrog were not his servants, yet they anchored strategic areas for him. Whether they were drawn by some subtle influence of Sauron or not is unclear. As the greatest of Morgoth's servants, Sauron may well have drawn upon some glimmer of loyalty these beings felt for the master of them all, exiled into the Outer Dark. But his influence was not great enough to draw them forth into his armies; instead, they claimed realms of their own, content to rule what they had. Sauron's grand strategy was of no concern to them, but neither would they hinder it. It is a happy coincidence for him that these great creatures were in places that might have become strongholds against him. Or was it coincidence? The presence of Shelob in a critical pass into Mordor suggests even more strongly that Sauron could exert his will even on those unheeding of it.

Sam and Frodo's trek through the lair of Shelob imprinted itself on my mind from the first time I read it. Absolute darkness in a cave labyrinth is unnerving enough; finding that a true nightmare lives within it seized my imagination. Spiders are not among my favorite creatures in the first place; the thought of a giant one lurking in the dark, awaiting those rendered helpless by imposed blindness, was chilling, and still is. The taunting spiders of Mirkwood were a fairytale menace, and even little Bilbo could hew his way through them, at least when armed with the redoubtable Sting. Their mother, though, was no fairytale creature; she was pure night terror, mindless and driven by dark instinct. But, it was inspiring to find that Sting, the bane of her brood to the North, could also deal her grievous harm.

Tolkien did much of the work in creating iconic monster lairs in the fantasy genre with which we are now familiar. The great halls of Smaug's stolen domain in Erebor is a quintessential Dragon's lair. Moria is a classic Goblin haven, with the King Under the Mountain now a Demon of fire. And, of course, Torech Ungol, Shelob's foul nest, can be found echoed even in modern science fiction, manifesting as the hives of the cinematic Aliens.

A portion of Torech Ungol, Shelob's nest; consider walking through it in pitch darkness, with a foul stench and bits of webbing to confuse and confound you.

The Tower of Cirith Ungol and Shelob's Lair is a Middle-earth Roleplaying adventure of the first order. Set over thirteen centuries before the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the book provides detailed overviews of the climate, flora, and fauna of a relatively small part of the Ephel Duath. Interestingly, the time period is one in which Gondor still keeps a watch in force on Mordor, with a garrison in Cirith Ungol, and the city of Minas Ithil still centuries from falling to Sauron's forces and becoming the evil city of Minas Morgul. Orc tribes lurk in the area, Hill Trolls can be found, and, of course, there are Spiders of all sizes, up to and including Shelob herself. There are notes on using the area and tower of Cirith Ungol after it has fallen to Sauron, so it wouldn't take much work to make this book usable in any era. In fact, it could be used to show the area after Sauron has fallen, and Aragorn, now King Elessar, has sent forces to retake and man Cirith Ungol as Minas Morgul is retaken and destroyed.

Shelob herself is detailed using the Middle-earth Roleplaying (MERP) game system, and she's pretty horrible, as you might expect. Her lair of Torech Ungol is shown to be twisting and confusing, perfect for getting player characters lost. The great Spider herself is described as being literally a Demon, which makes sense given her ancestry. She is also described as having numerous magical abilities, which, at first, I wasn't too keen on - she never demonstrates anything like them in Tolkien's book - or so I thought. Looking more closely at the sequence in Tolkien's book, though, most, if not all, of these abilities can be rationalized as innate abilities used by way of pure malevolent instinct. They mostly deal with Shelob being able to resist damage and frighten her prey. The latter seems like overkill, since a Spider of her size is automatically guaranteed to scare the waybread out of those unfortunate enough to encounter her. However, considering the thick darkness that defies even the Phial of Galadriel, and the choking horror that seems to lurk about the place, attributing much of it to Shelob's supernatural essence as a Demon seems more than reasonable to me.

This is a particularly solid entry in the MERP line. It resembles classic Dungeons & Dragons adventures in its focus and its underground exploration. Actually, it's more correct to say that Dungeons & Dragons adventures resemble it, because the entire sequence of Shelob's lair in The Lord of the Rings almost certainly had a good deal of influence on D&D in its early incarnations.

A wretched hive of scum and villainy: Brigands of Mirkwood

South of the East Bight, the treeless gouge in the eastern side of Mirkwood, a shadow has crept across the forest. Grim folk and dark creatures make their homes there, while others are transients, moving from one evil place in Middle-earth to another. Mercenaries, spies, and unscrupulous merchants ply their trades from the empty lands West of the Misty Mountains to the plains of the East, Rhun and beyond. Just beyond the East Bight is a crossroads of sorts, the town of Strayhold. Corrupt and colorful, few of the good folk of Middle-earth find their way here. Instead, it is the base for the Brigands of Mirkwood.

The ragged-edged town of Strayhold is a strange place in Middle-earth. Perpetually awake, the flames of torches and lanterns has caused some to dub it Fire Town. It seems a festive place in some ways, with music and carousing to be found at all hours. Yet, it is a festivity that is much like a nightmarish version of the grand celebrations of the Elven-king's court far to the North. Here, though, there is no underlying decency and concern for the well-being of others. The populace is a random hodge-podge of bandits and refugees, earning it the name of Strayhold quite deservedly.

This is a place that will draw the attention of any adventurer in Middle-earth. The foes of the Dark Lord, and those who would do his bidding, will both find much to attract them. It is a raucous place, with the energy of a frontier town, and the decadence of a civilization in decline, corrupted by long years of being a waystation for those who travel to the haunted lands of Middle-earth.

Southern Mirkwood and the lands beyond; Strayhold lies in the southeastern quarter of the map, just beyond the "thumb" of Mirkwood sticking out below the East Bight.

Strayhold is an "evil twin" of many places in Middle-earth. It has the raucous holiday energy of the Elven-king's realm, a melting-pot populace that echoes that of Bree-land, and a wildness that must be akin to that of Tharbad in its decline. The book details numerous characters for the player's characters to deal with, and numerous sites within the town that will naturally draw attention. These latter range from the inevitable taverns to guild-halls for thieves and beggars. The entire city is a black market, with just about any good or item in Middle-earth being available here, for a price. Strayhold is a town for those who have no place left to go, or those who are on their way to even less savory places.

Besides extensive descriptions of the people and places of Strayhold, the book also contains several adventures, three of which are the main focus of the book. Excursion to the City of Strays involves the player characters being hired to acquire a book from a bookseller in the "beggars quarter" part of the town. This is primarily a MacGuffin to get the characters into the town and get a good dose of the two-fisted, fun side of the place. Raid on the Clan-Hall of Rogues has the player's characters asked by some good folk to recover a horn sacred to them from the titular location - the thieves' guild, in other words. The Castle of Leardinoth has no less a personage than Gandalf the Grey himself(!) enlisting the player characters to take down the evil wizard who rules over Strayhold. This will be no easy task, even taking into account that it requires having fun storming the castle; the wizard was trained by no less a personage than the Necromancer himself(!!) In addition, there are a few adventure ideas to keep the player characters busy in the town.

All in all, Brigands of Mirkwood is a solid little book in the Middle-earth Roleplaying line from Iron Crown Enterprises. The Angus McBride cover is dynamic, and the maps, especially the always-impressive regional map by Peter Fenlon, are colorful and evocative. The book gets close to the line between what I think Middle-earth "feels" like and what it doesn't "feel" like, and, I think, straddles that line a bit. Still, the designers did a pretty decent job extrapolating how such a location would come to be and continue to exist in Middle-earth, without resorting to anything truly outlandish.

Way Up North...in Middle-earth: The Grey Mountains

We go now from the vibrant far Southern reaches of Middle-earth, to the cold, windswept, mountainous North. One-time home to a Dwarven kingdom, it became the home to some of Middle-earth's most dangerous creatures: Dragons. These are the Grey Mountains.

The Withered Heath is the basin-shaped area between arms of the Grey Mountains to the North. Erebor, or the Lonely Mountain, is just south of central on this map, with the Long Lake on the Southern edge, and Mirkwood to the West.

Removed from much of the grand history of Middle-earth, the Grey Mountains nevertheless played an important role. They loomed in the distance from Mirkwood and Erebor, a haven for threats to the Free Peoples.

 While Dragons were the most spectacular of the region's inhabitants, Orcs also came to infest it, and doubtlessly they assumed ownership of the Dwarven halls delved under the mountains, once the Dwarves fled or were killed. That is, the Orcs took ownership of the fortresses the Dragons did not take for themselves. From then on, the folk of Northern Mirkwood and the surrounding lands had to be wary of attack from the North, drawing attention away from Sauron's machinations in the South.

Within the Grey Mountains is a vast plain called the Withered Heath. This desolate land is the stomping grounds of the Dragons, where they fight and, presumably, mate, far from the eyes of Elves and Men. They seem largely content to stay there, though occasionally one may decide to foray South and seize treasure for its own. The greatest of these conquerors was Smaug the Golden, who took the Lonely Mountain as his home, driving away and killing the Dwarves there, as well as making a ghost town of Dale. Smaug was the greatest of his kind in the Third Age of Middle-earth, but that is not to say his brethren in the Grey Mountains were of no consequence; without doubt similar scenes of destruction took place in Dwarven holds there, too.

This is one of my favorite Middle-earth Roleplaying books. It takes a region that Tolkien gave a little detail about, and manages to flesh it out in a way that seems appropriate to the setting. It's also interesting in its own right, separate from Middle-earth. It's a wild, rugged place by the time of Bilbo and Frodo, bleak and forbidding. The book details Dwarven underground cities and fortresses, an Orc fortress, a Mannish village, and the lairs of some of the Dragons who live in the Grey Mountains and the Withered Heath. An overview of the climate, flora and fauna is given, with Dragons as the apex predators, but bears, lions, and wolves also prowl about, preying on the reindeer, elk, and goats indigenous to the area. It's an area rich in adventure possibilities.

...and I didn't even mention the giants...

 Add in that far to the West, commanding the gap where the Grey Mountains end and the northernmost point of the Misty Mountains begin, stands Mount Gundabad. This great mountain-city, capital of an Orc kingdom, is an anchor-point for the Shadow in the North, and the Orc-King there draws strength from and exerts influence over the Orcs of the Grey Mountains. Even further West lays Angmar, one-time Empire of the Witch-King, and later a haunted land; between it, Mount Gundabad, and the Grey Mountains, the North of Middle-earth is a de facto bastion of evil. For a game, that's a good thing. After all, heroes need evil to fight.

Orcs on a dark expedition.

The Grey Mountains includes a mini-campaign of adventures that involve the characters belonging to the players to help defend a town from Orc raids and assorted other threats. Besides that, the various locations discussed in the book are implicitly ripe for adventure. The Dwarven strongholds, once abandoned, become lost cities waiting to be explored and cleared out, whether they have become homes to Orcs or Dragons.

A one-time bastion of the Dwarves, now lost and defiled by Orcs.

One level of several of a Dwarven city deep under the Grey Mountains. Yet another citadel of Dwarves now in the hands of evil.

A Grey Mountain Dwarven hall in happier times...and I realize the irony that this is a depiction of a funeral.

The book is pretty much chock-full of things for heroes to do. The mini-campaign - and the Dwarven settlements, if the Dwarves are still there - provides an opportunity for interaction between the player's characters and townsfolk, if that's the player's bag. But, if they're more the straightforward kind, who simply want to bash some heads and take some treasure, there is plenty of opportunity for that here.

This is a well-put-together book. It's a setting ripe for adventure. Being tucked away from much of the narrative action of The Lord of the Rings doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't important. Morgoth, Sauron's boss, had his base in the far North of Middle-earth, though that entire portion of the continent to the West was smashed out of existence at the end of the First Age. Still, some remnant of his memory could now still haunt those northern reaches that remain.

Homesteading in the Grey Mountains is not advised.

Certainly such lingering evil can be inferred from the fact that Tolkien made it a haven for Dragons, and it was accessible to places like Mount Gundabad and Angmar. What kept the Dragons there, rather than sallying South into the lands of the Free Peoples? Was it a lack of ambition on the part of Dragons? After driving away the Dwarves and claiming the treasures of that folk, did they simply decide it was easier to remain in the North and occasionally tangle with one another, rather than come into conflict with Men and Elves? Why was Smaug the only one to come South and make his mark? Did some other force for good tie down the Dragons, taking the fight to those Wyrms in the Grey Mountains and Withered Heath? Perhaps Smaug's presence prevented lesser Dragons from foraying out of their traditional territory, and Smaug's subsequent death gave them a healthy dose of fear at the capabilities of the smaller folk of Middle-earth. Whatever the reasons, there is a load of possibility to this region.

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.

Southeast and under: Erech and the Paths of the Dead

They are the shades of the restless dead forever waiting in the endless dark, the silent passages beneath mountains their prison until they uphold a pledge broken long ago. They are the ghostly memories of a cursed folk, fated to extinction by an act of betrayal. They are the Oathbreakers, the Dead Men of Dunharrow.

From Angmar, I'll now leap to the southeast, to Rohan again, and the mountains upon which the capital city of the Rohirrim, Edoras, is anchored. Under the mountains lie subterranean passages into Gondor itself: the Paths of the Dead. The Paths pass beneath the Ered Nimrais, the White Mountains, which lie between Rohan and Gondor, and contain the tombs and forgotten cities of a mountain folk culture that is, by the time of Aragorn's passage through the Paths, a distant memory. These folk haunt the region, giving it a foreboding air. It's an interesting, and spooky, realm, right in the heart of the lands of the Free People of Middle-earth.

More gorgeous maps by Peter Fenlon.

On the southern side of the White Mountains is the Hill of Erech.

A huge stone, called the Stone of Erech, or the Black Stone, taller than a Man, is set in place there. In this Middle-earth Roleplaying book, it's portrayed as something like a limited-power palantir, though there isn't anything from Tolkien that I recall reading to indicate this to be so. It's not a bad extrapolation, though, given that it's apparently spherical - or at least, that's how I always pictured it when reading The Lord of the Rings - and held in high esteem by the Dunedain, much as the palantiri were. After all, the Black Stone was hauled from Numenor when that land was destroyed, which had to be a tough undertaking, given the limited freight-hauling capacity I would assume the Faithful Dunedain had when they fled the sinking of that island. Whatever properties the Stone of Erech possessed, it was considered holy enough for powerful oaths to be sworn upon it, most importantly the Oath sworn by the King of the Mountain, swearing that the Men of the Mountains would aid Gondor at need. The Men of the Mountains broke that oath when called to help during the War of the Last Alliance. They were cursed even in death to wait until called again. It took over 3000 years for that call to come, when Aragorn came to claim his heritage in the South.

That's a lot of history for an area of Middle-earth that isn't focused on too much in The Lord of the Rings, and only rates treatment in a 40-page MERP book. Still, it's a pivotal place in the narrative, setting up Aragorn's deus ex machina later on. Plus, in terms of a roleplaying game, Erech and the Paths of the Dead is almost perfect for a game about adventurers looking for danger and treasure, because there is plenty of both to be had here, what with underground passages full of kingly tombs and long-abandoned cities running for miles under a mountain range.

This book gives an overview of the region, from the valley in the northern side of the White Mountains Rohan used as a refuge, where the Dark Door into the Paths of Dead let into the haunted underworld, to the Hill of Erech and its surroundings, including a town and fortress, and the Morthond River that leads into Gondor.

It's actually a really good roleplaying setting, with adventure sites readily accessible and just waiting to be delved into. I mean, it's a whole civilization of the dead, just sitting there, waiting for adventurers to blunder in and get themselves killed or scared half to death.

Evil folk skulking about and doing their evil thing.

Of course, as with most MERP books, Iron Crown Enterprises goes beyond the most obvious adventure site. It covers the mountains and valleys also, providing a rundown of fauna and flora, as well as intelligent races like Men and Elves, maybe a few Dwarves, as well as Trolls. It seems incredibly unlikely that Orcs would be in the area, given that this is smack-dab in the middle of a region long settled by Gondor, and later held by both it and Rohan. Still, it's possible, I suppose, especially after Saruman's fall to evil, that Orcs could be skulking around the area, though not in great numbers.

Orcs do show up on the inevitable Master Encounter chart, which also accompanies the equally inevitable slate of charts that are so much a part of MERP: Master Beast Chart, Master N(on)P(layer)C(haracter) Chart, and the Master Military Chart.

There is a town - there's always a town - called Sarn Erech, and a fortress called Morthondost, where the characters belonging to the players can rest up, get equipped, and engage in political intrigue, if so inclined. It's not likely that much swordplay will occur in any of these more settled places, but they are positioned so as to give a good jumping-off point for forays into and under the mountains. It's a good, solid base of operations and living area for player characters, though not terribly unique, as these things go. It's nicely integrated into the setting, though, and doesn't seem simply tacked on.

The real draw here are the Paths of the Dead themselves. As you might guess, they're teeming with undead, from ghouls (analogous to zombies in most other roleplaying games) to ghosts (the terrifying, though incorporeal, undead that seemed to make up the bulk of the Dead Tolkien wrote about). In addition, there are some nifty extrapolations of "Pukel-men," the stone-carved figures found in Rohan and other places lived in by Wood-woses and Dunlendings. Here, they are tomb and temple guardians, some more able than others to back up their foreboding appearances. There are also other stone carvings, which seem largely like near-to-abstract religious or cultural designs.

Some may just be symbolic decoration...

...or, perhaps, warning signs.

The Paths are fraught with dangers, and players may end up losing quite a few characters here. That seems fine to me.

Typical.

The only complication here is the nature of the Paths of the Dead, and how it relates to using the site in other time periods. Specifically, after Aragorn's passage and the final fulfilling of the Oath that the Dead broke so long ago, the implication is, obviously, that the Paths are finally left unhaunted in the Fourth Age. It makes for a nice narrative bow on the end of the tale of the Dead Men, but it leaves the place a bit empty for the purposes of adventurers. One could rationalize that some of the Dead remain, perhaps those who once again refused the fulfilling of their Oath - after all, when Aragorn arrives, Gondor teeters on the brink of annihilation. Even a ghost might quail at the thought of having crossed Sauron in his final victory. One could also suppose that some tattered remnant of the Dark Lord's forces fled into the Paths as a final refuge, somehow slipping in or fighting their way into the passages. It's unlikely, but possible.

This is another Middle-earth Roleplaying book that has benefited from the closer look I've given it due to this blog project. It had always seemed a bit bland to me, too similar to many other such game books, whether for something like Dungeons & Dragons or MERP itself. However, my closer look this time reveals a moodier, almost Gothic feel to the place, a haunted valley in the midst of civilization, an ancient curse that lingers dimly, waiting to be lifted. The climate described in the book seems appropriate - rainy and chilly, with storms wracking the mountains. If Hammer Films made a Middle-earth movie, this is where it would be set.