Play Report Summary: Darkening of Mirkwood

[Andrew]

Great write up Beckett. It's fascinating watching how different groups (and Loremasters) tackle Darkening of Mirkwood. In our campaign, the heroes were warmly received in East Bight (having aced their encounter rolls) and spent a season helping build Ceawin's hall. It was the start of them putting down roots and I can see the events that will inevitably come will turn on those first encounters. Whereas for your group, it seems their involvement in the East Bight is likely to be far shorter lived!

[beckett]

Great write up Beckett. It's fascinating watching how different groups (and Loremasters) tackle Darkening of Mirkwood. In our campaign, the heroes were warmly received in East Bight (having aced their encounter rolls) and spent a season helping build Ceawin's hall. It was the start of them putting down roots and I can see the events that will inevitably come will turn on those first encounters. Whereas for your group, it seems their involvement in the East Bight is likely to be far shorter lived!

Thanks, Andrew! It was an epic failure, especially considering that they all had at least two bonus die each from their Preliminary Rolls. It seemed they cashed out their good fortune with those extremely lucky Preliminary Rolls.

I thought this encounter would be a piece of cake. I was pleasantly surprise and very pleased with the way the players role-played the situation. What happens next will be very interesting.

[Rue]

Thank you so much for posting this! I love the LM asides as it helps me to see how the game works in practice. Can't wait to see what's next for your heroes!

[beckett]

Thank you so much for posting this! I love the LM asides as it helps me to see how the game works in practice. Can't wait to see what's next for your heroes!

You're welcome, Rue. I'm glad you found it helpful. What happens next depends on what they decide to do, and what they uncover. They haven't told me yet what they've decided to do. But we have time, the next game is August 2nd. Since the Rivendell pre-order is today (!!), I should have the PDF by then and plan on using the Eye of Mordor rules.

[Falenthal]

I like a lot the LM sidenotes and to know how you make dice-rolls and game mechanics into parts of the story.
Keep it up, mate!

[beckett]

I like a lot the LM sidenotes and to know how you make dice-rolls and game mechanics into parts of the story.
Keep it up, mate!

Thank you, sir!

[beckett]

In this session, we used the Eye of Mordor rules from the Rivendell supplement. I also wanted to try out the Magical Treasure rules, but the players didn't bite as you will see below.

The Company's basic Eye Awareness was set at 7 (1 point for each Hero and 1 additional point for Sandarr and Amras who have 4 Valor and Wisdom respectively.) The Hunt Threshold was set at 16 (the level for a company in an area deemed Wild Lands on the Loremaster's map).

The Return of the Shadow | Book One: Secrets Buried

The Fellowship of the North:

Sandarr, a Barding
Amras, an Elf of Mirkwood
Talia, a Woman of the Lake
Rabo, a Dwarf of the Lonely Mountain
Odovacar the Quiet, a Beorning

The year is 2952 in the Third Age. Having completed, Part One: The Sigil of the Enemy, this picks up shortly after the heroes arrived in the outlying reaches of the East Bight. They approached a ruined farmstead and were met by three armed guards. An argument ensued between them and the Fellowship was turned away.


Part Two: Many Dark Places continued...

The Company traveled south for one day with naught a sign of being followed, and then turned west to venture deeper into the East Bight. Amras, the look-out of the Company noticed a fox watching them from a distance. It turned and ran off when Amras spotted it. The Elf thought nothing of it and did not inform his companions.

Amras, the Look-out, wanted to ensure that they were not being followed by the guards they had offended. The player invoked her Keen-eyed trait to trigger automatic actions. This allowed us to dispense with the rolling and move the narrative forward. I told her that they were not being followed. However, her hero noticed a fox watching them from a safe distance.

As night fell on the third day, they came upon a small farmstead and ingratiated themselves upon the family who lived there. The farmer's wife made them a fine meal and they broke bread together and drank wine. The husband warned the Company away from the woods for it was said that at night the red fires came—two glowing lights that did a horrible dance among the trees. The farmer's wife added that the groaning voices of the dead echoed from those woods and the last thing a person wanted was to give the dead a reason to come knocking on your door. After the meal and conversation, the husband allowed the Company to spend the night in his barn. He gave them directions to the Sunstead, the main settlement of the Men of the East Bight.

The players did much better in their Encounter here than with the guards at the end of last session. Since the heroes were resting in a relatively safe place, several days from the eaves of Mirkwood, I allowed each player to recover 1 fatigue point. Some of the heroes were close to being Weary so sleeping in the barn on beds of hay was a welcomed rest.

In the morning, the heroes said farewell and continued on their way. They came upon the Sunstead on the evening of the second day. Much like their Woodmen kin, these men built Sunstead on a defensible mound in the eaves of the great forest. The Company hoped to make up for their disastrous first meeting with the guards but as they approached the wooden gates, they heard groaning and creaking from the forest and saw two wavering lights in the distance moving between the trees. Suddenly, a horn blew and a man shouted, "The Armory is on fire!"

Amras and Sandarr ventured into the forest to investigate the lights while the remainder of the Company offered their assistance in putting out the fire.

An Insight Test from Odovacar revealed that the guards at the gate seemed weary from living in a constant state of alarm. Persuaded by Talia to let them enter (she passed her Persuade test with an Extraordinary Success, earning her first Advancement Point in the Personality Skill group) they opened the gate and the heroes quickly stood in the bucket line as the men passed buckets from the well to the armory. Meanwhile, Sandar and Amras had followed the lights to a clearing of dead trees and standing stones. A chill breeze blew through the wood and fear almost gripped the heroes but they steeled themselves for whatever came next.

Here the two heroes had to pass a Fear Test or risk being Daunted (meaning, they would not be able to spend Hope to turn a failure into a success by invoking an Attribute bonus).

The lights flickered far ahead of them and moved deeper into the woods, toward the Narrows of the Forest. While Sandarr kept an eye on the movement of the lights, Amras studied the standing stones.

Here the player invoked her Mirkwood-lore trait to trigger an automatic action.

Markings etched upon the standing stones noted a barrow nearby. The Elf knew that centuries ago the Northmen who first cut the East Bight out of the forest and settled these lands planted a yew tree above their barrows. Mirkwood has since reclaimed these barrows. The trees swallowed them whole and choked their narrow entrances with thick, gnarled roots.

"There is a barrow nearby," Amras said to his companion. "We should not linger."

The red lights in the distance were no longer moving deeper into the forest. They were now moving toward the heroes in the clearing. Amras and Sandarr quickly returned to the Sunstead where the fire had just been put out with the help of their comrades. They met Ceawin the Generous who offered them one his guest houses for as long as they planned on staying in thanks for their assistance. He then returned to his Great Hall and bid the heroes to seek him out should they find themselves in need of anything. The Company questioned the folk that had gathered around the armory to see if anyone saw something suspicious.

The player playing Rabo succeeded in his Riddle test and learned the following...

Andagis the Old claimed that he saw Otbert the Silent One gathering lamp oil and rags. Once this accusation was made, Hathus came forward to defend his younger brother. He attempted to intimidate the old man into admitting that it was too dark to see clearly who it was he thought he saw but Andagis remained steadfast. Hathus led his brother by the arm away from the crowd to the longhouses shared by the guards of Sunstead. Had the Fellowship achieved enough successes in the previous session during their initial encounter with Hathus then he would have taken them aside at this point and asked for their help for it was his brother who burned the Armory down and he knew not what to do. Alas, that is not what came to pass...

As the company continued their investigation, they learned that a boy named Jarl was very ill and near death. They spoke to the boy's bereft mother who told them that the night her son got sick he had been out playing with his friends, Euric and Grimfast. When Jarl did not come home for supper, his father went out looking for him and found the boy passed out in a clearing of dead trees. Having already won the hearts and minds of most of the people by helping them put out the fire, I dispensed with the formal Encounter rules here and went with a few simple Riddle rolls to learn about the sick boy and then Courtesy with the bereft mother.

The Company thanked the woman for her time and promised that they would do all they could to help her boy. Odovacar examined the feverish child. He had a swollen ankle, but that was not the cause of his sickness.

Here the player succeeded at a Lore test and invoked his Shadow-lore trait to know something of the child's sickness. I told him the nature of the illness. For the successful roll and trait invocation, I awarded him his second Advancement Point in the Vocation Skill Group.

Talia gave Jarl a healing salve to help with the fever (the player failed her Healing test but spent a point of Hope, adding her Heart Attribute to the roll to make the test succeed. This will help with the boy's Corruption Tests but whether he lives or dies is depends on passing those tests.)

Once the Company stood outside the woman's house, Odovacar turned to his companions and said: "I have never seen this affliction in my lifetime, but I have heard Beorn speak of something called the Black Shadow, an illness attributed in legend to the Black Riders. I fear this child is a victim of that malady."

The player playing Amras wanted to know if her character would know of this affliction. I asked her to roll Lore. She succeeded, but not well enough to get a third Advancement Point in the Vocation Skill Group.

Amras said, "If this is true. The boy does not have much time. Lord Elrond is a master of healing. Perhaps he could help the child but we are far from Rivendell. The boy would die before we crossed Mirkwood."

Mistrustful of Hathus, Talia decided to keep watch upon him while her companions decided to speak with Jarl's friends. Both Euric and Grimfast had been playing with Jarl in the clearing when the red fiery lights startled them. Jarl tripped over a tree root and twisted his ankle. He tried to get up, but he couldn't put any weight on his ankle. Euric and Grimfast were too frightened to help their friend, and so they left him there. As the two boys ran home, they saw Otbert the Silent One walking toward the lights in the forest. The following night the grain stores had burned to the ground. Euric's father informed the Company that Otbert hasn't said a word since the Ghost of the Forest paid him a visit shortly after Hywell, the Wood-goer, left with the Orc shield to seek the counsel of the Elves. Hywell, the Wood-goer is the name these people have given Aragorn.

Meanwhile, Talia had followed Hathus and Otbert to a seclude spot behind an empty longhouse and there she overheard an alarming conversation. Hathus did not know how much longer he could go on protecting his brother. He pleaded with Otbert to stop this madness. Talia rejoined her companions in the Great Hall where they shared all they had learned with Ceawin the Generous. He agreed to keep Otbert locked up and under guard, and he thanked them for their assistance. But he seemed none too concerned with their tales of a Black Rider for he believed that the ghosts of their ancestors haunted these lands and the only way to silence their restless spirits was to give the kings of old a great gift. "Come," he said. "I will show you." He pointed to the wall behind him where they had hung shields and weapons. In the center hung an old steel helmet with carved trees on either cheek-guard. The tree branches formed an arch over the brow and looked like they held the green gem that was mounted in the fore part of the helmet. "This belonged to my father and his father before him." He took the helm down and stroked the crest of horsehair. "As the chieftain of my people, I will honor our ancestors with this and they will finally rest in peace."

Their persuade rolls were enough to convince Ceawin that Otbert was a threat, but they needed an Extraordinary Success to change this mind regarding his plan for appeasing the ghost.

Suddenly, the horn was sounded for the second time that night. Once outside, Ceawin and the Company heard a guard on the palisades shouting that a man stumbled from out the woods. Atop the palisade, Amras informed her companions that Estel had returned. The men opened the gate and Sandarr, Talia, Odovacar, and Rabo went outside the walls. Estel approached, wounded and pale-faced, with yellowish spit foaming at the corners of his mouth. He muttered that he found the first tree, and that the Old Oak gave him a warning. Before falling unconscious, Estel then pressed a crumpled parchment into Sandarr's hands and said, "The Enemy renews the ancient alliances."

The parchment contained a hastily drawn map noting a tower in Southern Mirkwood near the Narrows of the Forest and Orcs gathering at Fenbridge Castle, an outlying fortification of Dol Guldur. Beneath the map was a strange poem scrawled in uneven handwriting:

Cold hands and hearts and bones
From three cold shadows this winter shone
Three great gems, cut and fashioned of old
Consumed by the three Children of terrible Shelob
And from ages past a beast yet revealed
tormented by light, a light to steal!


At this time, I called for an Awareness Test and most of the Company passed. The player playing Talia asked to make a Healing test on Estel and she passed.

At the edge of the forest, the Company noticed a fox watching them. When they spotted it, the animal turned and darted back into the forest. Talia recognized Estel's symptoms as spider poison. She helped carry the Ranger into the Sunstead but before they could close the gate, a group of six armed warriors with six snarling wolfhounds approached from the woods. They were dressed like the Woodmen who dwelled on the other side of Mirkwood, but they did not wear the colors of the four Woodmen houses.

Throughout this Encounter, I informed the players that an uneasy crowd was gathering. An Insight Test correctly judged that the people were weary and frightened, having lived under a siege-like mentality wondering when the Orcs would return or if the Ghost of the Forest would visit their loved ones as it had Otbert. It soon became apparent to the Company that the goal of this Encounter was to prevent the rule of the mob from handing Estel/Aragorn over to these strangers to avoid more trouble befalling their settlement. The Tolerance was equal to the highest Valor among the Company, and since these strangers were prejudiced against Elves, I reduced the Tolerance by 1 point for the Elf Amras.

The leader of this band was a Northman woman with dark hair streaked with white. She stepped forward and said, “I am Dagmar, servant of Tyrant’s Hill. I am a free huntress of the forest, and follower of Mogdred, the Lord of the Hill and first son of the Great Mother of the Wood. My master claims the Narrows of the Forest as his realm, and is a Woodman born of Mirkwood. We are friends to the Woodmen.”

As an Elf of Mirkwood, I deemed that Amras would know that Tyrant's Hill was the name in the Common Tongue for Amon Bauglir, an ancient Orc tower.

Amras pointed this out to her companions. Once the introductions were over, Dagmar pointed to Estel and said, "That man stole from us. I demand that you hand him over."

The players rightly asked what this man stole and she replied, "All you need know is that this man broke our laws and he must face our Lord's justice." She then addressed the crowd that had gathered: "You have suffered greatly of late. Orcs raid your lands and the red fires come out of the forest at night and bring much fear and sorrow. Give us this man and the Orcs will trouble you no more. You have my word. We will see your lands free from the terrors of the red fires. Is this one man worth all your lives and the lives of your children?” A growing chorus of “No” and “Maybe she’s right. Give the stranger to her. Who is he to us?” brought a smile to Dagmar's lips. Ceawin turned to the Company and said, sadly, “My people are scarred and tired. I do not know if I can go against them in this. You must do something.”

Sandarr argued that it was wrong to hand the Ranger over. This man, a stranger from a distant land, had fought side-by-side with their greatest warriors and repelled the Orc attack when the snows had melted. He convinced the people that they could not trust the word of Dagmar who came not with the open arms of friendship but with snarling hounds and false promises of protection in exchange for one man's life.

Dagmar and her men left, but not before issuing a warning: "These woods are dangerous. Spiders and worse things draw near. You will never know peace so long as you are at odds with the Lord of Tyrant’s Hill."

The dice were with them this time and unlike last session's botched Encounter, the players aced this one.

Shortly after Dagmar and her men left, Radagast the Brown walked out of the forest. He went to Estel's side and placed a healing salve upon the spider bite, closed his eyes. His lips moved, but he spoke not a word. Then the Wizard turned to Ceawin and said, “He will sleep for several days. When he awakens, tell him I need him to watch over the Corpse-wood. Bring him with you for the folk-moot at midsummer’s. I should like to talk with him then… Now, where is the sick child and the man you call Otbert the Silent One?"

Amras asked him how he knew about the boy and Otbert, and the Wizard replied: “The hedgehog knows one big thing but the fox knows many little things.”

The companions tried to tell Radagast about the sigil on the Orc Shield and the mysterious presence in the forest, and he grew agitated: “There will be time for talking later," he said. "Now is the time for healing. I will see the child at once!”

That night, Ceawin went alone with his father's helm to the barrows in the Corpse-wood to appease the dead. Hathus barged into the longhouse where the Company sat in silent vigil with Jarl's parents as Radagast tended to the boy's illness. Hathus told the Company that Ceawin had gone into the forest alone.

"That man is a fool," Radagast said. "I warned him against living so close to the Corpse-wood." Then the Wizard asked the Company to aid Ceawin for the man was surely about to get himself killed. Haythus and several guards led the Company to the barrows. In about an hour, they stood among the ancient barrows of the Northmen of old Rhovanion.

"That would be a king's tomb," Hathus said, pointing to a mound covered in Evermind flowers. "In days of old, those flowers marked the graves of kings. That is where he would've gone."

As they approached the barrow, terror struck. Haythus and his men ran away in fear. Had the Company not failed their initial encounter with Hathus, he would have stayed and taken a Wound for one of the heroes as in the Protect Companion task related to the Defensive Combat Stance. All the heroes passed their Fear Tests except for Rabo the Dwarf. Rabo was daunted and could not spent Hope. The twisting trunk of an ancient yew tree blocked most of the tomb's entrance so that only one person at a time can squeeze through the narrow opening. The Company heard Ceawin from inside the barrow offering the honored dead his father's helm. Suddenly the air grew cold and fell voice spoke as if its words rustled among the leaves:

He came to the wood, where the yew trees stood
They gave a groan and summoned their own
For the trees closed about and he never got out
Of the wood, the wood, the deadly corpse-wood!

One by one, the heroes entered the tomb. At the bottom of the stone steps they stood in a long underground tunnel made of a large stone slabs. A torch light flickered on the ground at the end of the tunnel, some thirty feet away. In the wavering light, they saw a bony shadow looming over a dark figure standing beside a stone bier. As they moved closer it became apparent that Ceawin was in some sort of trance. The companions fought and won a pitched battle against the Wood-wight to save Ceawin's life. With the abomination defeated, Ceawin was released from his trance state and claimed with a confident smile that the ghost would not trouble his people again.

In the barrow, the Company found a treasure hoard but ignored it, stating that it would be wrong to take something from a dead man's tomb. Here my hopes of trying out the Magical Treasure rules were dashed by the Company's heroic nature! I was crossing my fingers for a cursed object at the very least.

Part Three: Horror in Halls of Stone

At the Sunstead, the Company wanted to know if Radagast knew Mogdred and his followers. The Wizard did not. They told him all about the map and its strange writings and the Wood-wight in the barrow. The Wizard looked very concerned and said, "When the forest retook the barrows, men started calling this place the Corpse-wood for it is haunted by the many troubled spirits of wood and men. Wood-wights they are called. But there is something else at work here, stirring the pot.”

Odovacar informed the Wizard of the Black Rider and the Wizard fell silent, stroking his long beard and looking off into the distance. Almost to himself, as if he had forgotten the Company were with him, he said: “I must speak with an old friend.”

When Odovacar asked who was this friend, Radagast looked up and said: “One of the River-maidens, the eldest and the wisest. Her name is seldom spoken aloud. But in the tongues of men she is called Duskwater." He fell silent again and sized up each member of the Fellowship and then said, “You must come with me to the Black Tarn… It might be a perilous journey, or not. It’s really hard to tell at these junctures.”

The Fellowship of the North and Radagast the Brown traveled seventy miles through the Narrows of the Forest to the Black Tarn. They triggered no Hazards on their three Fatigue Tests. Because they had moved from Wild Lands into Shadow Lands the Hunt Threshold was lowered from 16 to 14, but they gained a +4 for traveling under the Wizard's protection. The Hunt Threshold was now set to 18.

In eleven days, they arrived to the sounds of hammers as men and women worked feverishly constructing a settlement on the western shores of the Black Tarn. Once Radagast introduced the Company to Amaleoda, Sheildmaiden of the Black Tarn, the Wizard took his leave and instructed them that he was not to be disturbed. He walked along the shore for some distance and sat upon a large black rock. There he sat for many days, waiting. In the meantime, the Company fished and hunted and helped with the work around the settlement. One day, near the end of the week, they noticed that a dark-haired and dusky-skinned woman in a black robe sat upon the rock with Radagast. In a few moment, the Wizard stood up and returned to the settlement. The woman was nowhere to be seen.

"It is as I feared," Radagast said to the Fellowship. "I am sorry that I must ask you to do this, but our journey takes us to the very place in Mirkwood no one dare go, the Hill of Dark Sorcery, Dol Guldur. That is our road for a deeper shadow now rises and we must be a light in the forest!"

The Company now traveled with Radagast through the Narrows and into Southern Mirkwood. On the fifth day of their journey, they spotted the tower in the distance upon Tyrant's Hill. In five more days, they reached the hill. Two men guarded the entrance to the tower. Against the Wizard's better judgement, Rabo looked for and found a back entrance. He picked the lock. He used his burglary trait to trigger an automatic action. Inside, the Dwarf found barrels of wine and shelves of cheese wheels and grain. Twenty rowdy men or more feasted one level above them. The Company thought it best not to press their luck. They quietly moved on and continued south through the dank wood.

Since Southern Mirkwood is a Dark Land, I lowered their Hunt Threshold again to 12. But they still enjoyed the +4 bonus from Radagast so that brought it to 16. They had rolled several Eye of Sauron's on the Feat Die this session (surprisingly not on a Travel roll), so the Eye Awareness was now at 13. It would soon go up to 14 though as one of the players rolled an EYE on their Travel test and triggered a Hazard. I determined the Hazard was a Dangerous Meeting. I called for an Awareness test and they all failed...

As the Fellowship moved deeper into the forest and closer to the swamps of Fenbridge Castle, they were ambushed by an Orc patrol. A feverish battle ensued wherein Talia suffered a Wound but in the end, the heroes vanquished their foes.

To be continued...