Hi all,
Michael Martinez has just posted an article collating what Tolkien wrote regarding the Old Forest Road, and speculating on the possibility that there might have once been a town at its eastern end. This could be good background information for anyone running The Marsh Bell in future: Where Did the Old Forest Road in Mirkwood Lead To?

When I first ran it, my dwarves were keen to inspect the stonework of the ruins they found. I'd have liked at the time to have been able to confidently identify them as of an ancient Northmannish culture.
This would also allow for Player-hero students of lore to pursue research into the nature of the dread Bell, if the same tradition of bells survived (in some form) into the culture of Dale.

As we discussed in Follow Ups - Loremasters Only, Potential spoilers:

If things go back that far, the Northmen of that town -- if they made the bell themselves -- probably learned their bell-founding craft from their allies, the Longbeard dwarves...

The top link you provided isn't working on my PC - any help?

You should be able to right click on the link and Copy Link Location. Well, in Firefox you can, and I assume the same is true in IE and other browsers. Anyway the link is:
http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2012/06/27/...rkwood-lead-to/

Please note that no space is used anywhere in that link, not even escaped out (ie, %20). Browsers may be forced to add a space or an invisible end-of-line (newline, CRLF, etc), or treat some of the dashes as a hyphenated word in order to display the link "properly" - which breaks the link. This potential problem is most likely in the last portion of the link (where-did-...).

If the above still does not work, just go to the homepage of the website (the first portion of the link) and you will find a link posted there to the article, "Where Did the Old Forest Road in Mirkwood Lead To?".

(Historical Note: As more articles are posted to that website, users attempting to find the article will need to look at older pages; page links are at the bottom of the page.)

In the play-by-post game I inherited over on RPOL, we're in the final chapter of The Marsh Bell and I posited just such a town in advance of seeing this most excellent and admirable article. It seems only natural that the "Great Dwarf Road" would spawn a town at the point where it met a navigable river. I imagine trade once upon a time flowed from the Iron Hills to Erebor; down the River Running to this nameless town; onward to Khazad-dum; from there to Eregion, Eriador, and the Blue Mountains; and then back again. The Men of the North dwelt south of the Road in days of old, and the town might have been their northernmost settlement until those enterprising folk who would become the Bardings settled the lands between Erebor and the Long Lake.

Durin's folk in Khazad-dum (Moria) might well have used this road to ship goods eastward, to any Dwarven cousins in other clans. Possibly including the use of the river and the Sea of Rhun to send items east or south.

Nice one, UndeadTrout.

I enjoy following all the games I can. Can you share a link to this RPOL game with us?

Cheers,
--Os.

BTW, did anyone else take note of the 2nd comment, posted by Patrick, with regards to the terrain of the Carrock? I'm wondering because a description of the Carrock somewhere disrupted my "suspension of disbelief" when I ran across the reference to a bridge only covering half the width across the river. (Text explicitly states the bridge goes from the shore to the Carrock and you traversed something (shallows?) the rest of the way across. Cannot recall which direction though.)

Even assuming it was a sandbar or other alluvial deposits, or the debris from one of two consecutive bridges that allowed the crossing of the Anduin, we're talking about the largest known river in Middle-earth and it just didn't seem possible. But if the Carrock is more of a low-lying peninsula with a hill of rock at the tip, rather than an island in the midst of the great river, that would make more sense.

I'ld have to find the reference to be sure of the stray thought as I never made special note of, or jotted down, the reference. It just sort of stuck out. Sorry for the digression.

The game is Over The Edge Of The Wild, and I'll be recruiting additional players once we finish The Marsh Bell. We've lost all save one of our Men, and the player of that character hasn't checked in or posted recently. We've no Slayers or Treasure-hunters, unless one of the Hobbits decided to switch his Calling to the latter. You'll have to request lurker status, the in-game content is not accessible to the general public just yet.

Returning to the topic at hand, our Dwarf Warden recalled the following (with a little help from her Loremaster): "Rumours there are, amongst those steeped in Shadow-lore," she rumbled to her companions, "that the Men who dwelt hereabouts long ago were slain by a terrible pestilence." Bés grimaced, murmuring in a rough voice, "A curse laid 'pon them as retribution for their refusal to submit to Dol Guldur's might."

They could just as easily been decimated by the Wainriders, mind you, but a pair of failed rolls with Eyes by one of our Hobbits led to a chance encounter (I borrowed an idea from West End's Ghostbusters roleplaying game, in which the roll of a Ghost on the Ghost Die means Something Bad happens in-game. Nicely parallels the Feat Die's Eye) with an evil spirit of the same sort as those haunting the Barrow Downs. Instant link to the major plot-arc of Tales From Wilderland, which I'll not spoil here, with the added bonus that now my player-characters have just set all that in motion.

I've always been under the assumption that the Carrock is an eyot like those found in the Thames. A bridge from just one bank to the island isn't that odd a notion to me, but then I live near a place where just such an arrangement exists. Didn't Beorn basically use the Carrock as a observation post from which to track Orcish movements along the western bank of Anduin north of the Old Ford?

Hmm, we're moving off on a tangent here, but...

I understand the eyot concept although their is no viable river example in my area; they're only 6" above the waterline and not stable enough to be used in any manner. Mostly it was the explanation of how to travel over the Anduin in reference to the terrain that threw me.

The Anduin is comparable in length to the Mississippi which would mean a good portion would be half a mile wide, at least. So, two bridges, each 1320' long (plus ramps) would require 8 piers (7 arches) with at least 6 of them set into the river (medieval bridge max arch: 210' wide). Once you get to the Carrock, as an eyot, you've got a problem as seperate bridges would lack space for ramps capable of supporting the bridge. If a single span, the bridge is probably at it's highest point, meaning travelers have to negotiate either some kind of access / maintenance road or something akin to a goat path to get/up down to the shallows to cross the remainder of the river.

Thus my comment about disrupting my "suspension of disbelief".