Captain Blood: His Odyssey

Sabatini's Captain Blood: His Odyssey is a defining book for the swashbuckling buccaneer genre. I wish I'd read it as a kid, but I think I got more out of it as an adult. There is a lot of derring-do and high adventure, but there is also a good bit of history.

Peter Blood, adventurer, soldier, and physician, is caught up in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 and railroaded into a conviction of treason. The charges are spurious, at best, but given the political climate of the times, very little is needed to have Blood packed off into slavery in the Caribbean. Blood is given more latitude due to his expertise as a doctor, but it's still a dreary, harsh, and often arbitrarily cruel existence.

When the Spanish raid Barbados, Blood and a number of other slaves take the opportunity to make an escape. They seize the Spanish ship and off they go, with Blood's experience as a captain earlier in his career making him the natural skipper. Eventually, Blood's daring and ingenuity make him the scourge of the Spanish in the Caribbean, and beloved by buccaneers.

Along the way, Blood makes a number of enemies, from Colonel Bishop, who owned Blood as a slave, to a family of Spanish admirals. He makes a few friends, including Colonel Bishop's beautiful niece, Arabella, but he is destined to suffer from a series of romantic misunderstandings with her and a fellow suitor that will almost bring him and much of the British-ruled Caribbean to ruin.

There is a lot of fun here, with Blood leading raids and fighting off attackers almost non-stop, except for months of lazing around Tortuga or Jamaica, often feeling sorry for himself because of being scorned by Arabella. He also walks a tightrope between being a buccaneer preying upon the Spanish without being technically a British agent, and outright piracy. He briefly enters into the service of both the English and the French at different times, but both times he is faced with superiors so ludicrously villainous that he soon finds ways that his contracts with them have been violated, and thus, null and void. Colonel Bishop is one of those superiors, and is so wrapped up in his desire for revenge on Blood for escaping slavery, that he spends a good bit of his time as governor of Jamaica thinking of ways to hang Blood rather than doing anything productive.

George MacDonald Fraser provides an interesting introduction to the book I have, taking us back to his days as a Scottish schoolboy discovering Sabatini's book and being transported by it. Fraser is, of course, best-known for his Flashman books, about one of the worst poltroons I've ever read about. Although Peter Blood is a heroic character, always ready to risk death for what is right, one can discern Sabatini's influence on Fraser's writing, mostly in how deftly both authors wove the exploits of their characters around and through historical events.

That's N.C. Wyeth's artwork on the cover, which is the same painting that graced early editions of the book in 1922. Wyeth's work is always interesting, and in this case, it's easy to see where Errol Flynn's look came from when he played the title role of the 1935 movie of the book.

The book alternates between lighteartedness and some rather grim events, giving it a jarring, dichotomous feel. Also, major characters die "offstage" at times, making the demise of some of Blood's most persistent antagonists and faithful companions frustratingly anticlimactic. The ending of the book itself is oddly, and ambiguously, ominous, casting a shadow on what might have been a happy resolution. All of these things sound like I found them to be detriments, but I ended up finding them adding to the mystique of the book. There was something realistic about it all, with no character safe and some plot points left dangling, as often happens in real life. Sometimes life is messy and unresolved, and even Captain Blood cannot swashbuckle his way out of every grim situation...even ones he'd hoped for and found not as satisfying when he finally got his wish.

Starlight and more...

Late last night, closer to dawn than Midnight, I awoke and, feeling restless, stepped outside for some air and to let the dog do his business. The sky was star-filled and very peaceful. As I scanned the skies, to the northeast I saw a strobing flash I assumed to be a jetliner's running lights. When I see a red-eye flight tracing its way across the sky, I tend to look and ruminate on all the souls winging their way to their destinations way up there in the firmament.

But there was no further flashing. I stood for a moment, puzzled. There was no plane up there, just the stars. I don't know if I saw one of them pulse, or if it was a shooting star. I've seen plenty of shooting stars in my life, and this didn't look like any of those. A star that pulsed like that - far brighter than the twinkling you see when the atmosphere bends the light about - would be an astronomical event that would, at the very least, show up on space-related websites and blogs. I don't know a lot about astronomy, despite a lifelong love of it, but I do know enough to understand that such a pulse is a big deal in the astronomical world. So far, I haven't seen any mention of a star flashing last night.

So, the only conclusion I can come to is that it was either a very, very ephemeral shooting star, or a plane that had its lights out and suddenly flashed one of them once. The latter seems unlikely, so I'm left with the former. It would have been cool to witness a major event in the stargazing world, but hey, a shooting star is always a treat.

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...

Far under the living earth, where time is not counted: Moria

The image on this older edition's cover is from Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings movie of 1978.

     ‘There is a way that we may attempt,’ said Gandalf. ‘I thought from the beginning, when I first considered this journey, that we should try it. But it is not a pleasant way, and I have not spoken of it to the Company before. Aragorn was against it, until the pass over the mountains had at least been tried.’

    ‘If it is a worse road than the Redhorn Gate, then it must be evil indeed,’ said Merry. ‘But you had better tell us about it, and let us know the worst at once.’

     ‘The road I speak of leads to the Mines of Moria,’ said Gandalf. Only Gimli lifted up his head; a smouldering fire was in his eyes. On all the others a dread fell at the mention of that name. Even to the hobbits it was a legend of vague fear.[…]

     ‘I too once passed the Dimrill Gate,’ said Aragorn quietly; ‘but though I also came out again, the memory is very evil. I do not wish to enter Moria a second time.’

-- The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter IV: A Journey in the Dark

     ‘Long I fell, and he fell with me. His fire was about me. I was burned. Then we plunged into the deep water and all was dark. Cold it was as the tide of death: almost it froze my heart.’

     ‘Deep is the abyss that is spanned by Durin’s Bridge, and none has measured it,’ said Gimli.

     ‘Yet it has a bottom, beyond light and knowledge,’ said Gandalf. ‘Thither I came at last, to the uttermost foundations of stone. He was with me still. His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake.

     ‘We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted. Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him, till at last he fled into dark tunnels. They were not made by Durin’s folk, Gimli son of Gloin. Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day.’ 

– The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter V: The White Rider

There is something alluring yet horrifying about the depths of the earth. Below us are hidden places, caverns and passages sitting silent in the dark, mysteries stretching down through the ages never to be delved. Some are delved into, though, as we dig and mine, looking for treasures, while others reach up and open onto the surface, tempting spelunkers and offering shelter for man and beast. Even the most innocuous cave opening evokes a hint of the unknown, haunting the imagination. Thus, it is no surprise that caves and dark passages and gaping underground chasms figure into so many myths and legends, from the bleak, hushed land of listless dead of Hades, to the underworld of Jules Verne.

Tolkien's Middle-earth has more than its share of underground passages. From King Thingol's Menegroth to Morgoth's Angband, from the Goblin-king's city to Thranduil's palace in Northern Mirkwood, Middle-earth's surface has been riddled with delvings. Even Middle-earth's most humble folk, the Hobbits, dig holes in the ground to live in. However, the mightiest delvings are dug by the people for whom the underworld is home, a people created beneath the mountains and not the sky. Seemingly part of the living rock itself, the Dwarves have spent much of their history carving great and vast halls and cities stretching beneath hills and mountains all over Middle-earth. Much of that history has also seen those deep dwellings invaded and wrested from the hands of the Dwarves, to fall to the forces of evil. The greatest of all such cities was Moria.

Called Khazad-dum by the Dwarves, Moria was, by the time of Bilbo and Frodo, a name that evoked dread even amongst the unworldly Hobbits. A vast, multilayered city under the Misty Mountains, Moria was once the pride of Dwarves everywhere. It fell to darkness, the Dwarves driven from their greatest stronghold. Centuries after the fall, Moria was a shadowy realm, its state unknown. Attempts to retake the city met with failure, with even Balin's initially successful colony falling silent after years of gradual rebuilding.

There is no doubt that Moria was one of the models for dungeons in roleplaying games. The lost underground city became a template for many adventures for games like Dungeons & Dragons. Eventually, Iron Crown Enterprise's Middle-earth Roleplaying game would complete the circle, detailing Moria itself for game use. The initial book would be greatly expanded years later, but both detail a massive adventure area, filled with detail.

Angus McBride's cover for the revised and expanded Moria book for MERP depicts the Fellowship's desperate battle near Balin's tomb..

Even later, Decipher, another game company, would create the Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, for which a massive boxed set would be published that detailed another take on the Dwarven city.

Box lid of Decipher's Moria. The image quality is poor due to the box being too large for my scanner.

I will deal with Decipher's boxed set later.

In some ways, I consider the two editions of Moria to be the masterworks of Iron Crown Enterprise's Middle-earth Roleplaying game. Not only do they evoke the atmosphere of Moria as depicted by Tolkien, they also embody the quintessence of the roleplaying game dungeon adventure. Integrating the two isn't necessarily as easy as it might seem; published roleplaying game adventures are not often as massive or evocative as what Tolkien described. The design team at ICE came up with clever ways to bring to life a massive underground city in a limited amount of space. 

Stock areas and passages help flesh out a city the size of Moria without having to detail every meter of the place.

As with most of ICE's MERP sourcebook offerings, there is an overview of the climate, ecology, and history of Moria. This is pretty interesting, as it makes the books something of a primer on dungeon adventure design in general. Subterranean flora and fauna are discussed, with how they all interact given some attention. While giving thought to the logic of a given adventure environment is not a recent innovation, and wasn't even when these books were first published, the Moria books are some of the most prominent examples. Using them to depict a non-Middle-earth underground setting would be logical.

The history of Moria is also, largely, the history of the Dwarven people, too. So, as sourcebooks like those for Mirkwood and Thranduil's Halls detail a history of Elven folk and their culture, Moria can be used as a reference guide for Dwarves apart from Moria. The history of the Dwarves is fascinating and filled with setbacks. They persevered in the face of incredible adversity spread over several millennia, maintaining their pride and culture in the face of odds that caused the Elves to slip away into the Uttermost West. Yet the Dwarves never gave up, and continually sought to reclaim their cities and treasures.

The cleverness of the MERP books resides in how practical and modular they are. Examples of typical rooms and passages are given, which lends an efficient air to the material. Tools, machinery, and architecture are depicted and discussed. 

Blended together, all of this combines to give the impression of a bustling, thriving city, whether it is still living or if it is now a shadowed memory.

Both editions are handsome, useful books. The maps in both are, as might be expected from MERP products, outstanding. The illustrations are good in general; I'm especially taken with the art by Kent Burles in the newer edition. It reminds me a bit of the art of Stephen Fabian and George Barr, mostly due to the mood and feel it evokes.

This and the Under-deeps picture above are examples of Kent Burles' expressive art.

Liz Danforth also provides several outstanding illustrations. Both books show MERP at its best; the older from when it had just hit its stride, the newer later in the line's run, when it was about to run its course.

And not to mention the Balrog, here depicted outstandingly by Liz Danforth.

These two books are among my favorite game books.  They both cram a wealth of gaming material between their covers, creating a vivid portrait of a place and a people that would appeal even to a non-gamer.

Moria by Decipher

I won't spend a lot of time on this product, not because it doesn't deserve it, but because I'm not as familiar with it. This is a boxed set - the cover of which can be seen above, which has a still from Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring. The box contains two books and several maps.One book details Dwarven culture, in a somewhat different, but similar, way to the MERP books. The other covers Moria itself, choosing to do something similar to what was done by ICE by breaking the city down into reusable modular parts. As a whole, this boxed set is much more sparsely illustrated than the MERP books. The maps are nice, and also usable in multiple ways, fitting together almost any way the user of the boxed set would like. It's a good, solid product, but I do prefer the MERP version.

Moria is a vast underworld in any incarnation. Its influence on gaming, as noted, is profound, to the point that there are numerous Morias going by other names; many adventures for roleplaying games use it as a template, whether unconsciously or not. Every deeply-delved dungeon with winding passages and echoing chambers contains a bit of Moria in its shadowed recesses.

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.

Laughter in the Night: Late Night Autobiographies

Given that I subtitled this blog "Things Best Viewed After Midnight," it should come as no surprise that I've been an insomniac since I was a kid. Late night television kept me company on many sleepless nights. A couple of books by late night TV icons drew me back in time, when the world after Midnight seemed deep and mysterious to a young kid.

We'll be Here for the Rest of Our Lives by Paul Shaffer

After 30-plus-years of being David Letterman's bandleader, some might not remember that Paul Shaffer was more than just a second banana. Grounded in musical theater and strip-joint gigs, Shaffer would later become a member of the original Saturday Night Live house band. He also had enough comedy improv training to appear on the show in sketches. He helped assemble the Blues Brothers band, only to be pushed out and off the Blue Brothers movie by John Belushi. Eventually recruited by Letterman to be musical director for Late Night, Shaffer would eventually come to be a late night television fixture.

Shaffer's book is an interesting, if unfocused, glimpse into a varied life. Enamored of the trappings of show biz, the "schmaltz" and "sleaze" of Vegas lounge acts and the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon, Shaffer would eventually take on a suitably faux-"hip" persona, with flashy suits and bizarre eyewear. While it is all interesting, Shaffer keeps the reader at arm's length for much of the book. I never quite felt like I was getting into his head. He does wax poetic about his love for music, and there is no doubt he is close to his friends - among whom are numbered Martin Short and Harry Shearer - and family, but there is not much depth plumbed here. Events come and go, and Shaffer reacts, but it all passes by in a blur, with the narrative jumping back and forth in time, much like listening to an interesting but slightly scatterbrained friend telling stories.

One common theme that keeps cropping up with Shaffer is the "pressure of time." Dealing with some of his boyhood idols - Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Sammy Davis Junior - Shaffer finds himself caught between the fluid concept of time as adhered to by the artistic temperament, and the hard-stop scheduling of television programs. Shaffer seems to be casting himself as a lesser talent, one too concerned with precise timing, rather than letting the flow of the music go where it will. In this, he seems too hard on himself: these idols of his can come and go as their whims take them; he has to put together precisely-timed performances every night without fail.

Oddly, Letterman and his show only get occasional mention. There is clearly affection there, but Shaffer seems reluctant to delve into his Letterman show career. Whether this is due to simple respect for his "boss," as he calls Letterman, a pragmatic reluctance to infringe too much on his ongoing gig at the Late Show, or a combination of both, is left up to the reader to suss out.

Still, it's an engaging book, and a quick read. Shaffer is self-deprecating, yet confident in his abilities. His book helps fill in a little of the background of two TV shows - Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman - that helped define some of what I mean when I refer to things best viewed after Midnight.

Big Chuck! by Chuck Schodowski

Anyone living in the Cleveland area from the late 1960s until the 2000s would almost certainly know of local Friday night channel 8 mainstays Hoolihan and Big Chuck, and later, Big Chuck and Li'l John. Their combination of shoestring-budget skits and horror movies dominated the scene for decades. Eschewing the common trope of make-up-and-costumes that so many monster-movie hosts take on, Big Chuck and his successive co-hosts Hoolihan, who left the show in 1979, and Li'l John, who took over the co-hosting duties from 1979 on, somehow managed to endear themselves to generations of kids and adults. Big Chuck retired in 2007, but he still continues to host a Saturday-morning show with Li'l John.

Big Chuck! covers Chuck's life, of course, but especially the 47 years he spent in Cleveland television. He gained a good measure of fame in the region, but never aspired to anything more than that. He frankly admits to enjoying being a big fish in a small pond.

As a long-time fan, especially as a kid and a teen, this book gave a lot of depth to a show that even today informs my idea of what late night creature features should be like. It's all endearingly mundane, with Chuck and crew cobbling together shows and skits with spit and bailing wire, criss-crossing the state week-after-week with a traveling band of misfits for personal appearances and various softball, football, and basketball games, all the while fending off bosses determined to mess with or cancel the TV show. Chuck never seems jaded by any of it, and in fact retains a sense of humor and sense of duty to the fans across the decades. It adds up to what seems like a grueling, neverending schedule to me, but Chuck never seems fazed.

A good chunk of the book is devoted to something of a mini-biography of Ghoulardi, the late-night movie host that pre-dated Big Chuck's show. Chuck worked on the show, first as part of the TV crew, then drafted against his will as onscreen talent. Ghoulardi was a phenomenon in the early 1960s in Cleveland, and even today retains a cult following. Ernie Anderson was Ghoulardi's real name, and he would eventually become a successful voiceover announcer, the voice of ABC for decades. Anderson died in 1997. Notably, especially to younger readers, his son is Paul Thomas Anderson. Chuck's description of Ernie Anderson reveals a bigger-than-life personality, chaotic and iconoclastic, with the world as his stage.

Big Chuck's show was important to me for a few reasons. It created a sense of camaraderie among its viewers with its deeply local focus; Cleveland and the surrounding region became something of a character itself, which we didn't see on TV much at all. The skits were so threadbare and makeshift that they seemed relatable in a way that slickly-produced shows can't be. Perhaps most importantly, and something Chuck doesn't really go into at all, the show introduced me to a plethora of old horror, mystery, and science fiction movies, from Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes flicks and Charlie Chan movies, to Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, to The Hypnotic Eye and Cult of the Cobra, to W.C. Fields comedies, to Silent Running. Not knowing how TV stations do their programming, I'd always assumed that Big Chuck and his co-hosts chose the movies they showed. Now, I know that is almost certainly not the case; they were likely given packages of movies. Still, some movies did seem hand-picked, with Chuck praising W.C. Fields back when his show had My Little Chickadee scheduled. But, none of this is discussed in Chuck's book. It isn't a glaring omission, but it would have been nice to have some insight into that aspect of the show.

Big Chuck! was a satisfying book. Chockful of anecdotes and insights into being a local celebrity who also had to hold down a full-time job, the book is also charming in its direct, simple approach. Chuck seems like a nice, solid guy. His background working in a foundry in Cleveland of the 1950s provides insight into an era of Cleveland history which seems long gone now. He also has a bit of a gruff, pragmatic, yet profoundly open-minded take on political correctness. All in all, the book takes the reader into the trenches of local television production, and shows just how hands-on and human it all is.