Thinking of having a villain flee into the Brown Lands with the heroes in pursuit. What I know of the Brown Lands is that it is a barren region destroyed by Sauron. It was once the home of the Ents. I was wondering if old ruins might be found in that locale... something that dates back to the time/ battle when Sauron lost the One Ring and his finger?

Any ideas or suggestions?

There is nothing wrong with adding an ancient ruin, of old, of elves or high men... haunted by a minor wight or ghost, that at its very least could add as a hazard or shadow test. Many of these, their tales lost, would not require or have much backstory, especially if they are mere foundations, parts of 1 or 2 levels above ground, perhaps just a cellar and tunnel/cave below...

Generally, a stone watch tower, an old stockade with small stonekeep ruin, a tomb or crypt... could have also been one of Sauron's minion's ancient ruins, one who boldly tired to fortify or claim an area during their movement to war. A shoddily made upper and haphazard underground network, though I wouldn't make anything epic.

The Brown Lands belonged to the Entwives. There's a really good MERP adventure based in it called Taurefanto, originally published in White Dwarf but later updated by the author - I'm having trouble locating it, but I think the second version was published by Other Hands.

I'd guess there were Gondorian and Rhovanionic forts and trading outposts dating back to before the Wainriders that could be ruins in the TOR era.

Grimbah has some excellent ideas, & if you decide to follow-through on them, you may want to look for Decipher's adventure Ghost Lights of Hightower in Issue No. 18 of their Hall of Fire webzine - it covers a vampire adventure.

http://halloffire.org/?s=issue+18

The whole vampire thing gets a bit tricky because they go beyond Thuringwethil or even the bats of TOR, but it's there if you want to tweak it.

Another source is ICE's MERP module Dagorlad & the Dead Marshes. You may be able to find the latter in one of their fan sites, as I'm afraid its out of print.

Neither of these are situated technically in the Brown Lands per se, but they get you to the ballpark .

Jefferwin raises a point that I've often wondered - has anyone worked on creating any of the forts along the Anduin? I've put together some brief notes & plans, but I'm just wondering if anyone has anything substantial?

In regards to the Taurefanto adventure, I do have a copy but don't know how to attach it to this forum??

In regards to forts along the Anduin, the best resource is ICE's "Northwestern Middle-Earth Gazetteer", which lists most of them.. (again, I have a copy but don't know how to attach pdf's & docs here!)

Robin S.

The original version named Taurëfantôwas published in the White Dwarf, Issue #87 (March 1987). The updated version (written by me with permission from the original author Graham Staplehurst) was called Taurinafanto (the title was linguistically fixed by David Salo) and was published in Other Hands, Issue #27 from October 1999. In Other Minds, Issue #10 there was a short article about the history of the electronic revival (PDF) of the old hardcopy OH Issues. The download page for both OM and the late OH (including the Taurinafanto one) can be found here.

Best
Tolwen

Tolwen,

I've always liked this adventure - thank you for posting the updated link for us.

Robin,

Thank you for the steer toward the Northwestern Middle-Earth Gazetteer - this is a great idea.