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The Darkness in the Marshes, 2nd part

Today we played the final part of DitM, with the addition of a third player, the Mirkwood elf.

I'll just explain the changes I made to the adventure to adapt it to the new situation:
1) As I explained before, the group had been detected (they killed an orc patrol and a slave escaped) before leavint towards Rhosgobel. So, priorizing a low profile, the inhabitants of the Dwimmerhorn abandoned the place in a hurry. When the group returned in the company of Radagast, the place was empty... but an evil presence was felt inside the temple, even though the green light had vanished.

2) The company of heroes decided to split: Radagast and the beorning would explore the temple, while the elf and the woodman would explore the outer buildings. We all know the first rule of the players: never split the group. They didn't heed the rule, and the inevitable happened.

3) The outside group just managed to find a sketch of a map in Ghor's quarters, with an X marking somewhere in the northern parts of Mirkwood. The group couldn't discover what it meant. (In my campaign, Ghor stole a map of Greydelve in the first adventure, Blood in the Waters. He has used it to buy the help of one of the exiled dwarves that live in Mirkwood (see The Questing Beast. The X marks the hideout of the exiled dwarves. Frár doesn't know anything about it, and he wouldn't agree to work with orcs in recovering the Greydelve). This is just a secondary plot that maybe the players will never discover, but I have it there in case it's needed sometime in the future.

4) Meanwhile, I used the Secrets Buried plot from DoM to explore the temple, as if it where Dol Guldur. A dark presence was inside (a Nazgûl, Unclad and Unseen), was as they entered, Radagast detected also a faint presence of pure light...
In my campaign, I changed the clues found during the exploration to a pair of dead members of the Erringmen (the Wandering People) (HotW 48). The group had already encountered them in the past, so I felt it interesting to make them appear again. The plot behing this was that they had learned of the great group of orcs and slaves escaping the Gladden Fields and had send this two guys trying to recover some abandoned treasures. But Ghor and his bodyguards had returned just in time to find them, in their way to the dungeons of Dwimmerhorn.

5) Once in the dungeons below the temple, Radagast and the beorning found the presence of a creature of pure evil (a Nazgûl), which forced a Fear test before disappearing shrieking a menace. Ghor and two Uruks, who were manipulating someone in the back of the dungeon, that shimmered with a faint white light, turned to attack the intruders.

Sadly, our beorning couldn't resist the attack of such strong creatures (and some nasty rolls on my behalf helped speed up the heroic death: twice I rolled an Eye AND a tengwar, for 10 base Damage + 5 by spending a Hate point and using Horrible Strenght, plus Injury. One of those rolls was during a Called Shot, activated by a failure with an Eye from the beorning.)

Just for your information, the way I handled Radagast during combat was by making him roll an automatic Rally Comrades every turn. He couldn't be engaged with any adversary, but at the end of every round he rolled 4 Success dice plus Attribute of 9 to recover Endurance as per Rally Comrades.

Also, I made Ghor not enter combat and focus on retrieving the luminiscent prisioner. He could only use the Commanding Voice every turn if needed.

Another ad hoc rule that I made for this situation was to keep track of the number of Gandalf runes rolled by the heroes. If 3 runes were rolled, I'd make the prisioner free herself (yes, herself) and make Ghor escape empty handed.

6) The companions managed to get in the temple and fight the Uruks to death, but his companion was already dead with a coup-de-grâce. This time, the luck of the rolls turned, and I failed a lot of the attacks while the heroes managed many Gandalfs and the subsequent Injuries.

All in all, the exploring of the Dwimmerhorn ended up with the beorning hero dead, Ghor escaped through a secret tunnel, and the rest of the group managed to rescue an elven lady of otherworldly beauty and presence, who introduced herself as Lady Irimë, who was trapped by an evil wight of great power on her way to the Elvenking's Hall, carring a message from Lady Galadriel herself.

Now, I have to prepare Those Who Tarry for the next campaign year: 2950. Just one year before Sauron reveals himself.

Wonderful stuff, as always, Falenthal! I love how you've weaved in the various stuff from the books to make your own distinctive campaign!

Majestic wrote:you've weaved in the various stuff from the books

Thanks!

In fact, when I was wondering how to make an incursion in an empty fortress interesting for a gaming session, I was reading through Ruins of the North. Without giving away spoilers, Feredrûn from Harder than Stone gave me the idea that ended up being Irimë in chains.
And the Company of the Wain motivated me to introduce, once again, the Erringmen. In case the players want to follow that lead ("What the hell were two Erringmen doing in Dwimmerhorn?!"), I will use the adventure from RotN as base material for my own campaign.

2949 (Autumn) - Those Who Tarry No Longer

Just before the real summer, we had our last game session. We knew that with the end of schools in real life, gaming during the summer vacations would be impossible on a regular basis. So, we decided to make a closing for now. Only two players were able to come to play, but one of them was the Woodman player, and the other was the player of the recently deceased beorning. He decided to take the role of the sylvan archer for just this last adventure before doing a new character. As the adventure was about Irimë, and this were the two characters that had helped her and survived, it made sense to have only them.

The adventure was very true to the written in the Tales from Wilderland. I just ripped off the part about the orc ambush with the Eagles rescue. In my campaign the Orcs had been driven off from Dwimmerhorn and, therefore, there was peace in the Anduin Valleys for the time being. A great group of Orcs appearing all of the sudden made no sense. Also, I felt that the encounter with the Eagles could be saved for another adventure in the future.
In general terms, Irimë had delivered a message of warning to Thranduil from Lady Galadriel. After that, she was heading towards the Grey Havens and asked to be escorted through the safe lands of the beornings (from the Elf gates to the High Pass) by the adventurer's that fatefully rescued her.
The travel was all safe, with Irimë talking about the old times when she had roamed this lands, and asking the players about their lives.
The second change to the adventure was merely to make the Evil Spirit be incarnated by a Nazgûl, the one who had captured Irimë in the Dwimmerhorn in the first place. He had haunted the lands looking for her escaped prey and had a final chance of corrupting her.

Just a curiosity, the woodman was chosen to fight the Troll in the pit during the Dream. He rolled lots of lucky attacks (double 6s several times) while the Troll had lousy rolls. This lead to the woodman defeating the Troll single-handed!! What a shame his epic deed was just a dream that nobody in the real world had witnessed...

In the end, they kept their spirits high and managed to boost Irimë's Hope, allowing the High Elf to expel the Ringwraith from the Dream. Elladan and Elrohir thanked them the next morning, and the Woodman was granted the Elf-friend title.

After that, the year 2950 was a peaceful time, with no dangers or adventures in the land. This way, the real life summer hiatus was symbolized in the campaign by a year without adventures.

The group was to rejoin in Laketown in 2951, during the second Council of the North (I made one in 2946 and this second one 5 years later). Some of them where already important people among their cultures, and could act as envoys in the Council.

2951 (Autumn) - Muder in Lake-town and Crossing of the Celduin

First of all, since our Beorning had died in the last adventure, the player created a new character: a Hobbit coming from the Shire, curious about all the fuss with Bilbo's tales and money.
We made the character with my own house-rules for the Hobbit culture, and will be able to see how they work.


For this long adventure I mixed up the two published adventures mentioned in the title: the first part of the Adventuring Phase was about the meeting of the Leaders of the North mentioned in Murder in Lake-town. Our Woodman had a high enough status among his people to be sent as emissary. The rest could only attend to the open discussions and mix with the locals, getting to know Una (married last year to Bard) and Elstan (first knight of the Bardings, and personal bodyguard of Una).

The group was able to notice that the different Free People had grown conservative, wanting to protect and reinforce the lands they had before thinking about reclaiming new ones or cutting down potential enemies (Greydelve, the Viglunds, southern Mirkwood,...).

The meetings ended with the arrival of Saruman's emisary, announcing the coming of his master to stay in Rhosgobel, and inviting anyone wise enough to learn the ways of the Enemy.

I took away the part about the spellbound assassin from "Murder in Lake-town".
Instead, Lockmand (made into Esgaroth's Merchant Guildmaster) announced the great tournament from Crossing of Celduin, and played the whole part about the competitions and the Ill-made Party.

The poisoned surprise went very well, as my players expected another diplomatic adventure, like the ones we had in the first Battle of Five Armies meeting and the Woodmen Folk-moot, and the treachery was fully unexpected. Besides, I made Una be the one to deliver the gold chest, and therefore get seriously poisoned, along with Elstan who tried to protect her. Only a Heal test (TN16) by our Woodman allowed her to survive the numerous bitings by the snakes. Otherwise, the fair Prince-merchant of Dorwinion would have died in my campaign. (The benefits of using non-canonical characters... ).

After the meeting with Bard, to decide the course of action to take, the company agreed to travel south to the Crossing of the Celduin and hold on the orc army there.

They managed to convince the town-master of Crossing of Celduin to let them direct the defense, without any kind of interferences, and managed to gain a lot of bonus dice due to great rolls in their preparations (Explore to scout the incoming army, Battle to build barricades and reinforce the gate's doors, Inspire to rally all able men to fight,...).

That very night arrived the first wave, composed of the warg-riders and their Chieftain. In my campaign Ghor the Despoiler (from TotW) had made some appareances, being the Orc-chieftain behind many orc's plots against the Free People, and took the place as the leader of the warg-riders. Ghor and his Horrible Strenght almost managed to get two heroes unconsciouss of a single blow, but the company managed to hold the vanguard and kill all wargs and orc soldiers, including Ghor. Twice were they hitted with an Edge (it was a long battle, but luckily for them I didn't roll spectacular), but both times their armors saved them.

Unwound, but Weary (with very low Endurance), they resisted the first night.

I decided not to follow up with the Troll, and save him and the last wave for the second night (next session).

Notes:
1) I described Ghor's shield as a tower shield with the marks and signs of some noble house of Dale (he's a despoiler, after all). It was just for flavour, but the Lake-town man took interest in it, and also he gave Ghor the killing blow. So I decided to allow him to roll the Feat die, as if it were a Magical Treasure... and rolled an Eye! For the next session he'll continue rolling to see if the shield has some magical properties and, if it's an Artifact, it might even include a Curse. It's funny how, sometimes, an innocent piece of atrezzo can be the seed of a promising plot.

2) The Hobbit, using my house-rules that downgrade their ability to inflict damage in combat, made himself useful by staying in Open position and Rallying Comrades nearly every turn. It was thanks to him that some of them weren't knocked out. I still have to make him see what other abilities he could use to be useful in battle, depending on how the tides go, but I prefer a Rallying Hobbit in my games than a typical melee fighter.

Next session: The day after the first wave will see the happenings of Part Eight of Crossing of the Celduin, only that the Final Assault will also include the Hill-troll from the Second Assault.
And, as I'm not using the Gibbet-King in my campaign, the Big Boss will be a Nazgûl riding a black horse...

I really love how you fold different parts of Tales in with Darkening. Well done, Falenthal!

I love the image of a Rallying Hobbit. Very fun, thank you for posting!

printing the 25 pages of the thread in WORD format right now. Will return when done reading to comment, but forst impression skimming through the posts is "Great Manwe!!!". Kudos to you.

Cheers,
Xavi

Elmoth wrote:printing the 25 pages of the thread in WORD format right now. Will return when done reading to comment, but forst impression skimming through the posts is "Great Manwe!!!". Kudos to you.

Cheers,
Xavi

Wow, thanks!
I hope you find it entertaining and useful!
Like Majestic said, the thing I'm proudest of is how new plots and twists arise from mixing Tales and Darkening.
Things like using the Viglunds in Kinstrife, or Secrets Buried and Irimë in Darkness in the Marshes, makes the development of the campaign very enjoyable.

Might any of those mixed plots be of your liking!

Rue wrote:I love the image of a Rallying Hobbit. Very fun, thank you for posting!

You know what? I played recently Francesco's (and Marco's and Roberto's) boardgame "The Battle of Five Armies" (not PJ's fake "Battle of the Five Armies ) and Bilbo's role in the game was that of a healer! His figure can "teleport" himself to positions where Free People's armies are (by using his Ring, of course) and reduce the damage they've taken in combat. Of course, I don't think Francesco & Co. imagine that the damage is reduce by casting healing spells or by using fragant herbs. I understand that Bilbo's role in a fight is that of rallying allies, so that the decision of house ruling that Hobbits are inferior fighters and need to take other roles in combat has an "official" precedent!

From the Designer's Notes in the Ares website:

Bilbo is the first character to enter the game with the Fate Track mechanic (normally on the first or second turn). It was very tricky to properly include him in the design. If we just look at the narrative in the book, we could have left him out of the game completely… He wears the Ring, he’s knocked out, he wakes up when it’s all over! However, this was very anti-climactic, and we well know Hobbits, given the right chance, can make their presence felt in the battle. Pippin and Merry definitely did. Perhaps Bilbo, with a little more luck, could also perform epic feats during the Battle of Five Armies.

Considering this, we decided to give Bilbo an interesting power, inspired by the Ring, and by Bilbo’s proven skill using it to distract enemies and help friends. Bilbo can vanish using the Ring, and by doing so, he deflects some damage from the army he’s with. Later, he can pop-up again, in a different point of the battlefield. This power is not overly strong – but is very thematic, if we look at the Hobbit storyline, and can prove to be very useful at key moments.

Falenthal wrote:I played recently Francesco's (and Marco's and Roberto's) boardgame "The Battle of Five Armies" (not PJ's fake "Battle of the Five Armies )

Now, to be fair, Tokien himself used both phrasings, especially when we look at where the battle is referenced in the LotR Appendices. PJ just chose the more formal version.