Magical Treasure & Weapons for the Blue Mountains

[Blubbo Baggins]

I was developing the playable cultures and got side-tracked on an unrelated project with zedturtle.*

I'm basically using TOR's 8 current cultures and "gutting" or mix-match if you will, the abilities/virtues/rewards/cultural blessings to have a base for the new playable cultures.
Those cultures are:
- Men of Hador
- Men of Beor
- Men of Haleth
- Elves of Doriath
- Druedain

There is a small chance I will also have Dwarves in there. But the idea for the campaign will be men-centric. Elves will be friends, allies, or potentially not-trustworthy (not completely foes, but close). Retain the wonder of the Elven kingdoms of old without the PCs having their power-level.

*We're playtesting an rpg he's developed based on Native Cultures (called Tales from Torn Earth...look it up on rpg.net), it is VERY cool!

[Otaku-sempai]

Precious Object: Annals of the Lords of Nogrod (Dwarven relic of Nogrod)
Dating to the last years of the First Age, this book is a record of the Dwarf-lords of Nogrod, going back to the Father of the Firebeards and tracing his Line to the last Lord of Nogrod before the ruin of the city in the War of Wrath. The book is comprised of thin plates of platinum measuring approximately 1 1/2 feet by 1 1/2 feet, with gold covers bound with platinum rings. The title and text, written in Sindarin, were inscribed using a mithril stylus in the mode of the Angerthas Daeron (runes) used by the Dwarves of Belegost and Nogrod, similar to the Angerthas Moria. The original was lost in the flooding of Nogrod as a result of the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age. A reproduction is thought to still lie somewhere in Khazad-dûm, with new pages documenting the Line of the Firebeards through all of the Second Age to the awakening of Durin's Bane in the year T.A. 1980. Later entries are in a variety of hands using runes both of Nogrod and Moria, and even Elvish script.

The Dwarf Dolgthrasir Orc-bane or his son Draupnir Fork-beard would pay a high price for either volume. Dolgthrasir is descended from the Dwarves of Nogrod and believes that the Annals would confirm him as the rightful Lord of the Firebeards. Draupnir is the current Lord of the Dwarf-city of Hargrod in the southern Blue Mountains. Worth 120 Treasure points.

Note: I toyed with the idea that the Annals were written in Khuzdul, but the words of Balin's Tomb were in Westron (though written in Daeron's Runes); the inscription on the West Gate of Moria was in "the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-earth in the Elder Days" (Quenya? or an older mode of Sindarin?); and the Book of Mazarbul was written by many hands: "in runes, both of Moria and of Dale, and here and there in Elvish script." In particular, Ori's entries were made in "a large bold hand using an Elvish script". Assuming that even Gandalf was not fluent in Khuzdul ("...and I shall not have to call on Gimli for words of the secret dwarf-tongue that they teach to none."), I conclude that the language of the book was Westron or maybe Sindarin. Therefore, I decided that the Annals of the Lords of Nogrod were most likely written in an ancient mode of Sindarin.