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Has anyone done a scenario about the destruction of the Easterly Inn? I'm working on one for a local con. Bilbo hasn't heard from the inn and sends adventurers to check it out. The heroes find hobbit tracks going into Mirkwood, pursued by orcs. Any ideas for fleshing out the tracking scene or making the discovery of the burned in more dramatic?
Garrett

You could probably adapt this fleshed out idea by JamesRBrown:

viewtopic.php?f=56&t=8194

It has more hope than I wanted. I really wanted this to be the death knell for the inn, complete with a visit from a ringwraith at the climax.
Garrett

Bilbo sends them? That doesn't seem like his style. I'd imagine someone who has business with travelers who pass the inn would be a better choice.

Yeah, it does seem more like Gandalf's style.

Although I could see Bilbo asking a traveler to look in on his relatives.What you might try is to have the PCs going there expecting to meet someone and seeing smoke while still a distance aways. Then they could find the inn a burning ruin with some bodies about. Maybe there could even be some orcs doing some senseless vandalism, or beating up on the wounded. That could lead to a nice skirmish for the PCs and someone to rescue.

Once the fight is over, an injured/dying character could inform the heroes about the attack that so and so escaped during the fight, but was being pursued. So now the heroes have to track the pursuers.

If the PCs were going to the inn to meet up with someone about something else, you could have whatever info they need be on the character they are trying to rescue.

Depending on when you want to set the adventure, or how you want to introduce the Nazgul, you might want to cosider having this attack be part of the searching for the one ring/Baggins and or even Golum. For instance, Golum overhead about Hobbits at the inn and went there to look for "Baggins". In that case the inn was destroyed to get Baggins. The Nazgul could be seen giving orders to the orcs when the Pcs get at the inn, but he rides off before the heroes are noticed.

The thing is that would require a fairly late era adventure.

If you want the Nazgul to be involved in an earlier attack, then you probably need to come up with a good reason why Sauron wants the inn taken out so badly- and that would probably require some sort of task for Gandalf, and might be a good way to use Aragorn, too. Its' just that using the Nazgul in such a heavy handed way might be too open. If you drop the Nazgul things get easier. You could have a big orc cheiftain or a troll leader instead of the righwraith. You could have Gabdalf send the heroes off to meet with Aragorn at the inn about some task, and the attack could have been to wipe out some "Rangers" at the inn.

But it depends on just how late in the campaign you want to run this.

That's brilliant to include Gollum and Aragorn that way. I don't even need to explain the why in the original adventure but can have a secondary adventure where Aragorn reveals this information and sends the heroes on a followup quest. Hobbits being unable to be kept from secret meetings in Rivendell, the survivors of the Easterly Inn show up and insist on going on this followup quest to capture and interrogate the orc general who ran the Easterly Inn sacking. If the orc's gonna get what's coming to him, they want to be there when it happens.
Garrett