Hello all.

I bought this game a few weeks ago and have started playing it with the wife. I've started writing an adventure for her and I thought I could share it with some more individuals.

A few points!
- IF YOU ARE A PLAYER IN YOUR GROUP, DO NOT READ FURTHER (if your loremaster intead to use this material of course)
- The adventure is scaled for two players (I have a character as well).
- English is not my native language.
- Most is written during my lunch breaks.
- My adventures often start small and tend to grow organically depending on the choises of the players.
- I'll post part two (and further) as I write and we play them IF there's an interest. No point in writing them in english unless people want them.
- Feel free to do whatever you want with the story.
- From part 2 and onwards, I'll start with a few points how we played out the last part.
- The characters are a barding treasure hunter (wife) and a dwarven scholar (me).
- At the time of posting this we have already played part 1 and part 2 will soon be finished.

House rules:
- Invoking a trait lets the player roll the fate dice twice and pick the best result.
- Whenever a player rolls a gandalf rune on a skill roll, both characters gets an advancement point in that skill group. This is the only way to get advancement points.

Here we go...

i) PC’s are in Esgaroth in spring 2946th. They have busied themselves with some odd jobs but nothing permanent.

ii) They are called up by the Bardian merchant Vali. He claims to have inherited an old map of his now deceased grandfather. He was a greedy old man who hid a portion of its gold in the northern mirkwood and the map will show where.

iia) Indeed, there is a marker on the map and a note: At the hand, the five fingers points to the sky. Dig deep into the palm. Therein is hidden the enemy's offspring. Runes carving on account of the head showing where the black be killed. From this , walk where the sun falls until you behold Gámbâirs tree. Search for the roots and crowns you find crowns of iron and silver. (The treasure is old coins of angband, which have Morgroths crown on one side).

iib) A long time ago in the war against the Witch-king of Angband, a troll king was slain in the woods, king Gûrbash. His wickedness was great and his spirit still lived there and caused all kinds of problems. Therefore, the forest men who lived there asked Saruman the White for help. He raised the five stones to catch the monster's spirit who now cannot leave the tomb. One of the forest men fell to temptation and stole the coins buried with the troll. He hid the money under a mighty tree in the woods and wrote a riddle to hide the treasure. Eventually, madness afflicted him, and he thought the others chased him. Of paranoia, he refused to leave his treasure and died under the tree.

iic) Vali is in reality a greedy and treacherous thief who stole the map from the archive of old scripts that are in Dale. He was chased by two soldiers, and therefore in a hurry he has approached other heroes in Esgaroth but they turned it down when Vali was not reliable. However, he has learned his lesson and has come up with the false story of his grandfather as he tells the PC’s. He offers the half of the treasure if they help him find it.

iid) Two soldiers named Ilena and Bragi are chasing him. Ilena is patient and stoic while Bragi is more hot-headed and weak-willed. They have identified the thief and are now trying to find him. Would they catch up, they will try to grab him to bring him and the map back to Dale. However, there is a high risk of Vali succeed in corrupting Bragi. That or they might be persuaded to follow the PC’s to find the treasure or even lending them the map.

iii) Along the way, RP meet a group of beornings who hunts a group of goblins that swept through the area north of the river, but now crossed it and have started to cause problems. The woodsmen are basically a nice bunch and know the area well, but they cannot help that much as long as the goblins roam. They have already attacked a farm and who knows what they will do next.

iiia) The beornings are six men and women lead by the jovial and redbearded Bolvar.

iiib) The goblins are the ten plus two wolves that have joined, they are led by the fearless and shrewd Umash. Their goal is to find their way south, they have heard that the old forest road started to be explored by people, people they can rob and murder. They have also kidnapped the two children, Foron and Emla (approx. 12 years old) from the farm, they attacked, and Umash does not hesitate a second to use the children as hostages or living shields.

iv) The where the troll king Gûrbash is buried is marked by five stone pillars that are unevenly spaced in a semi-circle. Four on one side and one on the other side, vaguely in the shape of five fingers. The stones are moss-covered but are richly decorated with magical elven runes beneath the moss, created to imprison the monster's spirit.

iva) The circle inside the stones are counted as blighted and requires a corruption test. A test for each day they visit the circle.

ivb) At night the spirit awakens, it is invisible and relatively harmless. However, a craft-or athletics-test is needed to avoid an accident (damage 7, wound: eye, injury: 12). Just roll fate-dice to see if there is a wound, the attack hits the automatically if the PC fails to avoid it.

ivc) When digging in the circle, the PC’s will find the monster's remains. Weapons and armor are still in good shape, but covered with evil runes and a symbol shaped like a black iron crown with three jewels (morgroth). A human skull with runes is also present. The runes are of an old dialect. They describe the place where the battle was fought, it is a day's march north. A hard-lore test tells the PC that a kind monster's spirit remains and stones purpose.

v) They need to walk west from the site of the battle for more than a day before they see Gámbâirs trees. The tree is easily recognizable as it is large and sickly, thick bark with dark furrows. The treasure is indeed buried here (along with the previous owner's corpse). The treasure is composed mostly of iron and silver coins from Angband. The treasure is a dark influence and has transformed even this place to a blighted place with the same rules as the magic circle.

va) Iron coins are basically worthless but if they take only silver coins, it’s worth roughly 10 treasure. There are also two other items of notice. A small silver cup of elven design with green leaves of gold, which winds around the rim of the cup. All water (or other liquid) poured from the cup tastes fresh and lose all harmful properties. A large troll knife (counts as a short sword) of a black metal. The blade is covered with runes in the black language, it says "Morgroth the beautiful denies you the song of Valar." Against creatures that do not belong to the shadow the weapon inflicts 4 extra damage and the target regains no endurance without special medicine.

vb) There are two dangers with the site. A large spider has made the tree its nest. It is difficult to detect but sleeps during the day. It's pretty stupid and has lost all intelligence except what it needs to hunt. At night, it goes out to hunt. The treasure has slowly corrupted the tree, it now lives on the blood of the victims that the spider drags up to its nest in the tree top. The tree has limited mobility but will try to lull the heroes to sleep so that the spider can kill them. If they remain for a while, they have to roll wisdom or fall into a deep sleep. Should all RP fall into enchanted sleep, maybe they can wake up covered in web up the tree top, with the spider sleeping. The spider should be dangerous enough that a full party of heroes should be hesitant to attack it (and with good reason). Trickery and cleverness should be required if they wish to defeat it.

vc) The coins and troll knife are obviously corrupt, so it is up to the RP if they should take them at all. They will draw misfortune on whoever owns them.

vd) There is a high risk that any weak NPC’s (Vali, Bragi, for example) suffer dragon-sickness and tries to take all the treasure for themselves.

Hail, Johan!

Thanks for posting this. I'd love to bring my wife into the hobby, and would like to hear how your wife is enjoying the game. Please keep the posts coming!

Yours in fellowship,
Stephen "Trotter"

Johan,

Very nice indeed. Some lovely ideas in there and will make an excellent introductory adventure for my group. Let's read more about your adventures.