Hi All,

I've been working on writing up the adventure "To Journey's End and the Eagles' Eyrie" from my actual play thread ( http://cubicle7.clicdev.com/f/index.php?tr...&showtopic=3424 ) based on various people expressing an interest in the scenario as it combined the hook of Balin's mission to deliver an invitation to the Lord of the Eagles to attend the festivities celebrating the victory at the Battle of Five Armies as alluded to within the Marsh Bell adventure in the LM's book.

It should therefore be noted that this adventure comprises of content (though keeps repeated information within it to a minimum) from "The Marsh Bell" and "Don't Leave the Path". It is therefore pretty bespoke in nature and means that only those not running those scenarios will be able to run this one. I still think the content is useful though and can be mined for ideas, etc.

This took a lot more work than I anticipated! I've been beavering away on it all day and finally I've completed it:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/79541775/To%20Jour...%27%20Eyrie.pdf

Woohoo!

There will probably be errors, as I haven't read through it in detail (just quickly scanned it), but I thought it worth posting now so people could take a look and comment on it - within reason I'm happy to update it should the need be there.

Anyway, as always, I hope its of value to people.

Fantastic work Rich. Though now you've gone and made me wish I hadn't already started on the Marsh Bell as written with my group!

That said, assuming the Fellowship successfully liberates the Dwarves from the Marsh Dwellers, I'm absolutely going to use the remainder of your adventure, to give them the option to accompany Balin and Oin along the Old Forest Road and complete the mission to deliver the message to the Lord of the Eagles.

Cracking stuff. Massive thanks for all the hard work you've obviously put in on this.

Ha-haaaa, sorry about that!

That's a good point actually! Even if gaminggroups have played through the Marsh Bell they can still play this - accompanying Balin to ensure his success.

Thank you! It was a lot of hard work but I have enjoyed it - especially the map I did of the Amon Naugrim; proper old-school stuff, I think!

Yes indeed. I didn't highlight your map-making skills but the map of Amon Naugrim is definitely a very nice touch. Bravo!

Lovely work - just too late for us, though! I'll be posting the AP from our own bridge between Marsh Bell and Don't Leave the Path soon.

Thanks for the compliment and, yes, I was concerned that it wouldn't be a lot of use to people. A fair few new posters have joined recently though and discussed new campaigns so I'm hopeful they'll see it and use it. Additionally I did it for myself - the theory being that it makes writing up my AP that little bit easier!

One thing which puzzles me is why Beorn was (seemingly) not invited to the Gathering? In Rich's adventure, the characters actually visit Beorn at his hall en route to Eagle's Eyrie.
Perhaps it might be considered that the characters have been hired by the Dwarves because of Beorn's dislike of Dwarves and that they must deliver his invitation and a gift?

Thoughts anyone?

Whoa.

You weren't kidding about the amount of work you've invested in writing this excellent adventure! I can't wait to run some dupes, er, valiant heroes through this

Thank you for sharing the fruits of your labors with us.

Yes, Rich, this is amazing! I had just started reading your accounts of your adventure on the old thread (from the link in your sig).

My group is new enough that I should be able to incorporate a lot of this into my campaign (so great timing!).

Thanks for all the hard work. I love the descriptions, the clarifications provided, the poetry and songs; all of it, really!

This was a deliberate decision on my part, as within my game it's a well-known fact that Beorn is not comfortable around the company of others. Behind the scenes, Gandalf has already counselled Bard and others to not invite him to the celebrations - for a reason he probably hasn't shared with other. Maybe he suspects or actually knows something. This is a mystery for the players to focus on if they so wish, so I'll say no more here as they may be lurking, but I've thought quite a bit about the secrets Beorn is keeping (and Gandalf perhaps suspects).

Mim and Majestic,

Thank you for the kind words and I'm glad you'll get some use out of the scenario - you'll have to let me know here how it went!

Damn you Rich, I am about to start off the Marsh Bells saturday in 2 weeks time, and you deliver this and I like it to much so now I have to learn this one to kickoff my campaign!!1 Damn you Rich


Yes I love it!!!


/Khamul

My humblest apologies!

Hi Rich, once again as per my PM, excellent work on the adventure. Your last post on the Beorn situation has really piqued my interest.
I would certainly expect that Beorn, even if invited, would not attend and that Gandalf might have counselled Bard to expect as much. I'm not getting why Gandalf would advise Bard not to invite him though.
You mention secrets. I would love to read your thoughts on this. PM me if you are worried about your players getting info that you don't want them to have.

My pleasure and thanks!

Okay, will send a PM.

Rich, any chance I could get in on these covert Beorn secrets too?

Okay, PM sent!

Rich, I just want to thank you for what will (hopefully) be a fantastic starting adventure. I'm about to start my campaign this Tuesday and your adventure definitely grabbed hold of me.

I'd love to hear your behind-the-scenes thoughts on Beorn, especially since I have a Beorning in my party and he might get uppity.

On second thought, why don't you post them here under a spoiler tag? It seems people color things yellow for spoilers. and that's been successful in other threads. I figure some more LMs might want to see.

I'm curious as well, please PM me!

May I join in on the Beorn secret too. I am starting the journey tomorrow :-) please.

Well, that's a pleasure. I hope you enjoy it and it goes well. Any bits that you struggle on (ie, not sure what I meant, etc) then feel free to post in this thread and I'll off advice or maybe even re-write the adventure if it needs it.

Good luck though and let me know how it goes!

That's a good idea, but I've tried both "[spoiler]" and "[sblock]" and neither of these seem to work here. I'll quote it and set the font colour as white. People need to highlight it to read it. Hope this works:

... Hope that was actually worth waiting for. Not sure it is!

Not a bad way to spoiler a post Rich

...oh and by the way, nice adventure. I was planning on playing March Bell, but now I have to choose...

'findel

We played today, and boy is it frustrating to try to find rules in the rulebooks, it's just impossible, (Thank the Lord for the TOR index) but it is very frustrating not to find what you try to find in the rulebooks. I love the game, and it is so inspiring, with the art which is mindblowing.

When you have the battle at the dwarven tower in Mirkwood, I let the elf archer to continue to shot arrows even if there where 25+ orcs fighting in the battle. Because he was on the second floor of the tower, and no orc could get to him.

Another thing, The Intimidating you can do from the Forward Stance against alot of low Attribute Level enemies are crazy good, and you can just keep doing this round after round...nuts, but our Beorning had alot of fun with it.

Thank you Rich!

...btw why did you name Balins dwarf companion to Barrak...suddelnly I started to hear, and now it's Barraks turn....and a low voice at the table whispered obama... Are my players the only one that has done this or are there more LM out there....who have heard this?


/Khamul

Deadly marksman, those elves of Mirkwood!

Hey, my pleasure. Glad you liked and enjoyed it - makes all the work putting it together and posting it here worthwhile.

Well, it's a different spelling to the US president's name but I thought it went well with Torrun's name (the other dwarf). There was nothing deliberate in it. Nice that it provoked a bit of humour at your table though. Those kind of things are nice - they break up the tension and give everyone a laugh.

Hi Khamul. Your comment (above) about Intimidate Foe made me wonder if you were distributing the lost Hate amongst the monsters, as it suggests in the line "The Loremaster assigns the Hate point loss in any way he sees fit" AB pg162.

I found this thread to be a useful discussion about it.

Please forgive my speculating if I am wrong and you were already doing this. The comment just surprised me a little as I've found Intimidate Foe to be mildly effective rather than "crazy good"

I dont think I did Fictionaut as I cant seem to find anything in the rule books haha

But I will check it out right away, and thanks bud

LOL It's definitely another of those implied rather than actually stated rules

You're most welcome

And in an effort to get my comments at least vaguely back on topic Sounds like you had a blast. I was eagerly anticipating running the awesome looking tower battle in session three of our campaign last Friday. I'd planned to segue into Part Five of Rich's adventure mash-up off the back of completing The Marsh Bell. I had a big A3 print of the "Amon Naugrim and Surrounding Area" map waiting and everything. Sadly my players spent so long pfaffing around with the Marsh Dwellers that it's going to have to wait until next month now . The more I read of the battle set up the more I like it though. Rich has done a fabulous job with all the tactical details etc. Should be a great March session. I can't wait.

I'll let you know how it goes in a few weeks.

Please do! ... And thanks for the positive feedback already made by all of you.

This is awesome! Thanks so much!

... You're welcome!

Okay I was just thinking och this necklace that Balin is gonna give to Gwaihir as a gift from his people. He is carrying this in a box right....and it is one solid piece of gold like an old viking necklace.

Here comes the tricky part, I read that the eagles are 30-40 feet from the tips of their wings, with Landrovala nd Gwaihir doubling that with up to 80 foot between their wing tips, that is amazing 24 meters!!! wide, lets say Gwaihirs neck is 4 meters (12 foot) now we are suddenly talking about something I have hard to think an old dwarf is carrying. It could be a chain or it could be in many pieces and when put together it would take this great shape of this magnficent piece of art made by the mighty dwarves.

If it's not I bet Gwaihir would be very offended and send all his eagles to rip the poor Heroes to peices and then have em for dinner haha

....I have to get back to the drawing board with this.

I question for you Rich, the reason they travel to Beorn is just to get permission to travel though his lands right? (I have a have a Beorning in my party so he would represent the Beornings).


/Khamul

That's right. It's something I didn't pick up on when altering this adventure for other LMs but your reason for speaking to Beorn (ie, getting permission to cross his lands) is okay.

Alternatively, the whole encounter with him could be removed or used as a guideline for, perhaps, doing the same thing for another culture not represented in the PC group. That may be too late to do though if the PCs are already on the journey!

I have been running this over the last few weeks and it has been going quite well. This evening we had the entertainment of the party not being very careful where they hit. Several eye of saurons had them hitting other party members, quite a silly night.
E

Hi Rich bit of a spoiler, possibly

I knicked the bit with the orks after substituting the travellers for my own. It was brutal. But fun. It went to the wire.endurance loss on the players had two down and the last facing down the leader.if either did damage the other would be out of action.
So many thanks

Hey Rich!

First of all thanks again for the great work you ve done in this adventure.
Our party finished Marsh Bell and after rescuing the two dwarves is going to continue the road to meet the lord of Eagles.

I want to ask you a couple of questions. As you mention the areas below Mirkwood Mountains are considered blighted area. They travel many many days under their shadow these mountains. How do you handled the corruption tests? If we consider all the length of the road along with the mountains to be blighted area then the players should roll many many corruption checks (i think the journey last 35 days meaning a maximum of 35 cor. tests). A probable solution would be to roll for corruption when they roll for fatigue plus the days they experiance a hazard.

Also did you calculate the journey with the "alternate journey rules" link or with the revised journey rules that are found in the download section of the forums.

Thanks again for the awesome work!

My pleasure and thanks for the kind comment.

I think I stated the following in the scenario:

Corruption Tests
Certain areas along the Forest Road, particularly south of the mountains should be considered blighted areas and therefore the company should make Corruption Tests every day while travelling through them as the darkness of the forest weighs heavily on the company’s spirits. The Loremaster should subject the company to such blights sparingly – used to increase tension or if the journey is proving too easy (eg, no fatigue has been gained).

That's only certain areas, not the whole of the road - ie, blighted areas exist along this part of the road but only in "certain areas" so when travelling through those specific areas then corruption tests should be made every day. So, just to clarify, that's not the same as a corrruption test for every day travelling along the road as a whole, just the pockets along it that are Blighted.

No, just the RAW with a few slight extrapolations, for example: for some of the journey I thought the Old Forest Road would be overgrown and unused (ie, not really qualifying as a path/road) and therefore decided not to apply the rule regarding roads. That's why you may get different journey results if you work it out yourself. I think I decided that around 150 miles of it would be overgrown etc and therefore at Severe rating.

A pleasure. I really hope you have fun with it! Don't kill too many PCs!