Return to the Marsh Bell

[Hermes Serpent]

After a fair bit of adventuring around Mirkwood (not in it) and a single early trip along the Old Forest Road to take the message to the Eagles my FTF company has decided that all that treasure sitting in the Old City is their's for the taking. Now when I ran Marsh Bell originally it was my first time running One Ring and I was very lenient regarding Corruption tests ( it was hard remembering all the other rules at the time) and they got off very lightly.

Now they're more experienced but no wiser and I've had eighteen months of running games (probably close to one hundred hours of playing time) so they won't have it so easy this time around. It's going to give me a chance to use the Treasure Rules from Rivendell (and I've done the Treasure Index for them already) and some of the other features of more recent publications.

While the basis of the trip has been the Marsh Bell as written now they've arrived at the Long Marsh intersection with the Rotting River I'm going to ramp up the tension some more. While they're wandering about enjoying the landscape I'll be mentioning the gorcrows sitting in the trees and the oppressive feel of the forest and unsettling them with mention of odd bird calls and the like. They polished off the already wounded monster guarding the city fairly easily last time they came this way and I hate to be repetitive so out goes that creature and in comes another possibility. There are four companions and a Woodman's Hound so a couple of Marsh Hags came to mind but rereading the description of the Wood-wight with the evocative mention of "shambling horrors composed of bones, leaf mould and fallen tree branches, and skulls that leered out of the darkness", I thought that would be ideal what with all the deceased travellers remains about.

The company has had a couple of Fellowship Phases so has some increased skills. The Elf is a bowman and virtually refuses to enter melee. The Woodmen, the Dwarf and the Lakeman all fight reasonably well so is one Wood-wight too much, not enough or just right for taking them on and giving them a difficult encounter. I'm thinking of putting the Wood-wight after a fight with some city dwellers in he underground chambers.

Some method of determining the relative values of a company and their adversaries would come in very handy now.

[Valarian]

Harsh Hags are great if they're still on or near the water. They can drag the PCs under the marsh. Imagine the sort of horror film where there's suddenly a splash from the rear of the company. They turn, then there's a splash to the front. Hey, where's Bob gone?
The wood wights are good also, unless you have a singing elf in the party with a large Awe score (sorry, in-joke). Intimidate foe, calling on the evening star and use of fire will undermine the encounter. I used two on my party. They escaped through the use of the tactics above, but didn't destroy the wights.
Plus, there's the Marsh Dwellers themselves. The room with the treasure is large and dark. There are a great number of the creatures in there. If the company get to the treasure chamber, they can hold the door area fairly easily as a choke point, but once past that the numerical superiority will negate the rearward stance. Plus, there's the lure of the treasure - a failure in Wisdom can result in a loss of concentration in battle as the pile of loot distracts the company. Strikes from the dark, with a number of Marsh Dwellers coming out of the dark in to the torchlight, then another group strikes from a different direction. They can see in the dark, the PCs can't (with penalties to hit/bonus to parry). Then there's the smell. If one Marsh Dweller smells bad, imagine what a whole nest of them smells like.

[Hermes Serpent]

The Marsh Hags option is something I'm pondering for the next session where they'll be wandering around the edge of the marsh looking for the ruins. The noises off stage left thing will certainly ramp up the tension. If I have one of the Lake-town NPC boatmen that have taken them there suddenly disappear in the 'weren't there five boatmen a moment ago' sort of way that'll get them double-checking behind them all the while as well.

Intimidate is going to be a problem as I don't believe any of them have any appreciable talent in the Singing line or the Awe stakes. The company are never going to be able to creep up on a Wood-wight as the wight has its AL doubled in Mirkwood and Perception is Favoured, 3D+10 - ouch. It'll be a TN18 test to even think of an ambush.

It looks like I'll have to do my usual thing of try a number and if the battle is going too easily add another or some different adversaries. I'm sure that when they are loading the boats with all 'their' treasure they'll be distracted enough to make it easy for a wight or Marsh hag to attack them later. Bats are a favourite of mine when near the eaves of Mirkwood. I might stat out Gorcrows or Crebain to add another nuisance adversary that acts as a sort of tripwire warning signal to keep the company on their toes.

'Cursed' treasure could be hard to shift even in somewhere as geared for trade as Lake-town. A visit to the tavern could easily involve a carelessly mounted pot or lantern tipping over resulting in a fire. The boat trip back could involve mishaps with ropes and slipping on wet boards. A myriad of instances that drain Endurance one or two points at a time