Tharbad

[Hermes Serpent]

The Rivendell supplement has mention of "deadly creatures are believed to dwell in the dark places of Tharbad, guarding submerged piles of old gold" and "a great monster that dwells in the pools where the waters of the Greyflood and Glanduin mingle, ready to hunt those treasure-hunters that would dare to venture too close to its lair".

As one of my sets of companions is likely to be pursuing a lead extracted from a certain Bill Ferny near Combe concerning why he was asking for news of a Hobbit named Baggins and thus heading south I thought I'd better read ahead and find out what they may be locating once they got as far as Tharbad. I know they are likely to be easily distracted by thoughts of hidden gold just waiting to be picked up (and there isn't a Treasure Hunter amongst them).

So what or who do you think is waiting for unwary travellers at Tharbad.

A Marsh ogre or some Marsh hags are one possibility but I'd rather ramp it up a bit if I can. Bog soldiers possibly, but they are a bit far from home.

[Glorelendil]

I'm picturing a distant cousin (twice-removed) of the lurker in the lake.

[shipwreck]

A pack for The Lord of the Rings the card game was literally just released dealing with the areas around Tharbad, and these some are the critters they came up with:



I'm at work so I can't get a better image (the card databases are blocked) but hopefully that will give you something to think about.

And here are preview articles:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_ ... ?eidn=5144
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_ ... ?eidn=4747

[Hermes Serpent]

Hmm Neeker-Breekers are included from the section on Midgewater Marsh so they should perhaps be a part of the fauna of the delta marshes. Rich H's Fennorm / Mereworm from his Dale material might fit the bill and possibly a reskinning of the Thing in the Well from Tales could be in-line for creature of the week.

Any more suggestions are always welcome.

[Hermes Serpent]

Thanks for people's thoughts on this. My players chose to do something else completely. Last time they had taken Bill Ferny captive and extracted information from him so I thought they would go after the Man from eth South who bought pipeweed from Bill and asked him to seek out a hobbit called Baggins.

Wrong! They thought about it to the extent of planning to truss up the party hobbit (who's player missed last night's session) and take him to the far south saying that he was a 'Baggins' but then discarded that for the simpler option of seeking out one Mad Ostley and finding trinkets from Old Cardolan. This involved a trip down the Greenway with a sharp right turn through a defile and on to the plateau of the Barrow-downs. There was much soul searching about the 'rightness' of breaking in to barrows before it was justified as defeating evil spirits sent by the Witch King (it helps to have Elves with lore traits who know about such things). They dug into a barrow (a smaller one to start with) and found a barrow-wight. The wight sang it's mournful song and got all but one dwarf and Mad Ostely. The dwarf held the passage in the tomb while Mad Ostley rushed back to wake the others. He managed one character per round of combat and the second dwarf joined his friend in striking the foul creature. The wight used it's Strike Fear to prevent most of the company from using Hope and beat on the two dwarves causing one to take a knockback to avoid being Weary. When the company had been fully woken the wight used his Dreadful spells to send them off again same as before. More combat ensued before the last PC to be woken, one Mungo Maggot, rushed in and struck the creature with his sword turning it to a pile of dust.

I have to congratulate the C7 team on providing another fine piece of work. The material in the Rivendell supplement I originally though didn't provide enough meat to hang a game on by focussing so much on the place itself but the background material in the various sections provides enough flavour to gives a very solid feel to wherever you are playing. I also noted that it's much better if you are playing with people who have more than a passing knowledge of the Professor's material as they don't need loads of infodumps and can help the LM a lot with maintaining the right feel for the game. I was having to provide background to the whole area of Arnor for one player while the others helped/filled in with their own knowledge of the canon.