Entwives campaign idea

[kdresser]

https://www.quora.com/After-Lord-of-the ... e-entwives

I'm copying and pasting some answers to a Quora question about possible fate of the ent-wives, sourced from Tolkien himself. Could help inspire a fun campaign.

"Pip Willis
My father went to visit JRRT in 1971 to show him a map of ‘Part of Middle Earth’ my father had drawn, but far more embellished than the ones previously seen or published. The map was about a square yard in size and around the border were miniature paintings of various places, things etc that appeared in the Lord of the Rings. The map now hangs on my father’s living room wall. It was and is a wonderful map and I always gaze at it when I visit (I live in Sydney, my father in Sussex). I can remember my two favourite drawings, the Hornberg and Orthanc. JRRT had a huge fan base at that time and refused most requests to visit. So my father was thrilled to have had his request for a meeting accepted, ostensibly about the map, a copy of which had been sent to the great man! (My brothers and I clamoured to be taken too, but were tersely denied, because my father had spent the previous year slowly reading the Lord of the Rings, a few pages at a time, as an incentive for bed.)

Anyway, at the meeting, my father asked about the Entwives and Tolkien, taking a pencil, marked on the map ‘Here be the Entwives’, just beyond the northern border of the North Farthing, half way to Fornost.

Later Dad inked over the pencil marks, keeping the hand-writing style. And I didn’t think much more about it, until I happened to mention the Map to one of my older brothers, who recalled the above anecdote and I realised how significant it may become - or not!

(I was the youngest of my brothers and only 5 years old in 1970 and used to sneak in to listen to Dad read Lord of the Rings to my older siblings. I didn’t really understand what was going on and I was only tolerated on the condition of silence and it was generally pretended I wasn’t there! But, these are some of my greatest and fondest and thrilling memories, of my father’s deep welsh lilt reading of things such as ‘The Fog on the Barrow Downs’! He even looks like Gandalf!)

Edit.21st May 2017. 10 p.m. AST So, I’ve just put down the phone to my father, from our weekly call. Firstly the good news. Two bits. One, all this did happen and Dad confirmed it. Second, he will try and take a photo on his iphone of the map in general and Tolkien’s reference specifically, he’s 85. The actual words were in fact ‘Here may be the Entwives.’ [My italics] But the bad news, for which of course I take full responsibility and apologise to all, is it is not where I said it was above, but in fact… on the east bank a southern bow of the Carnen River, flowing into the Sea of Rhun. Fully apologise, I should have checked my sources before publishing! (When will I learn!)"
Looks like I was misled by Hal and Ted Sandyman was right - blast him!
3.7k Views · 255 Upvotes ·


And a follow-up to this answer
"John Young
I am still feeling chills after having read Pip Willis’ response to this question (comment \U0001f609) - it’s got to be the best news I have heard in 2017 to date, maybe longer!

Ever since I was a child reading the Lord of the Rings, I have mourned for the Ents and their lost Entwives. I dreaded the implication that the Entwives had been massacred during their wanderings to the East. Even as an adult, this prospect has horrified me.

Now, however, thanks to this account of an extraordinary meeting between Tolkien and Pip’s father, we know the Entwives almost certainly live. I always hoped they were safe in some secret valley east of the Sea of Rhun, and according to Pip’s edit of his account, they “may” in fact be on a tributary of that sea. <3

In context of the conversation, I believe it’s safe to say that by “may,” Tolkien meant they may have moved since he ‘visited’ them last. If he meant ‘no, they’re all dead,’ then he would not have volunteered a probable location.

The time sense of the Ents being far slower than our own, the Entwives no doubt planned to return to Fangorn to find their Ents once all this Sauron commotion had died down. Being the optimist I am - and delighted that Tolkien himself wishes for them to still be alive at the end of the Third Age - I believe we are safe in surmising that the Entwives are eventually reunited with their Ents.

Just imagine - they will be discovered by Aragorn or Arwen (or their son!) using the Palantir…. or by a traveler, probably someone we know or their relative who knows the story… then they will return across the plains with an escort of Rohirrim to give them safe passage. That, or the Ents will go to them, and there we have the basis of the great forests of Siberia that endure to this day!

Either way - rejoice with me! The Entwives are alive!"
943 Views · 30 Upvotes ·

[Otaku-sempai]

Hmm. Straight north from the Shire? or more to the northeast. Halfway to Fornost suggests that the Entwives settled down somewhere directly north of Bree-land. However, maybe you mean some vale in the vicinity of Nenuial/Lake Evendim.

In any case, your father's map sounds marvelous and I hope that you can show us a good image of it. And this does sound like the makings for a Fourth Age adventure.

[kdresser]

These aren't my answers. Just copied and pasted from Quora

[Otaku-sempai]

These aren't my answers. Just copied and pasted from Quora

So you did. Still, I hope that Pip is able to post an image of his father's map.

But the bad news, for which of course I take full responsibility and apologise to all, is it is not where I said it was above, but in fact… on the east bank a southern bow of the Carnen River, flowing into the Sea of Rhun.

Okay, the east bank of the Redwater (Carnen), possibly before it mingles with the River Running. That might place the Entwives less than 80 miles from the Iron Hills, across the river from the Netherwood (see the Erebor sourcebook).

Tolkien did express some discouraging speculations about the Entwives in his 1954 letter to a Naomi Mitchison (Letter 144, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien):

I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance (Second Age 3429 – 3441) when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy and burned their land against the advance of the Allies down the Anduin... They survived only in the 'agriculture' transmitted to Men (and Hobbits). Some, of course, may have fled east, or even have become enslaved: tyrants even in such tales must have an economic and agricultural background to their soldiers and metalworkers. If any survived so, they would indeed be far estranged from the Ents, and any rapprochement would be difficult -- unless experience of industrialized and militarized agriculture had made them a little more anarchic. I hope so. I don't know.

The above does seem to give some support to Tolkien's notation on the elder Willis' map.

[Grey Seer]

I need to see this map... Like yesterday.

[Otaku-sempai]

I need to see this map... Like yesterday.

Ask and ye shall receive. But, first, an addition note from Pip Willis:

So below is a very small part of the map. My father inked over JT’s pencil (knowing my father’s hand-writing as I do, I think he went a bit heavy, the only bit which is definitely not his style is the ‘y’ from ‘may’). My father has yet to send a picture of the whole map as apparently the reflection from the glass is too much, so he will have to take the map down and the glass off etc. I know it sounds crazy, but my father did the map in black ink from a rotring pen and then coloured in with felt tip pens! Where he made mistakes he overlaid with new bits of paper and re-drew. It was a pretty big deal in the early ‘70’s! I have to apologise again for my first edit where I wrote ‘East bank’, but at least I have an excuse, as I’m pretty sure that’s what I was told!

I guess the third time's the charm! In terms of TOR, that would place the Entwives 60 miles northwest of the border of the lands of Dorwinion, and about another 60 miles south of the Running before it merges with the Redwater.

[Grey Seer]

Wow, that looks awesome. I bet that kid starred at that map for hours!

[kdresser]

Where do you think they would be in the timeline of TOR?

I need to see this map... Like yesterday.

Ask and ye shall receive. But, first, an addition note from Pip Willis:

So below is a very small part of the map. My father inked over JT’s pencil (knowing my father’s hand-writing as I do, I think he went a bit heavy, the only bit which is definitely not his style is the ‘y’ from ‘may’). My father has yet to send a picture of the whole map as apparently the reflection from the glass is too much, so he will have to take the map down and the glass off etc. I know it sounds crazy, but my father did the map in black ink from a rotring pen and then coloured in with felt tip pens! Where he made mistakes he overlaid with new bits of paper and re-drew. It was a pretty big deal in the early ‘70’s! I have to apologise again for my first edit where I wrote ‘East bank’, but at least I have an excuse, as I’m pretty sure that’s what I was told!

I guess the third time's the charm! In terms of TOR, that would place the Entwives 60 miles northwest of the border of the lands of Dorwinion, and about another 60 miles south of the Running before it merges with the Redwater.

[Grey Seer]

I forgot to say this, but I think and adventure to find the Entwives would be really cool. You could even do it epic and make the first couple of adventures about finding and meeting the Ents and then getting the quest to find the Entwives. Follow this up with a need to travel all over middle Earth to find clues and foreshadow a great threat... Someone else is also looking for the Entwives... Someone evil. You could then make your campaign about saving the Entwives... But Tolkien tragic as in order to save them, you must help them hide even farther away so that they can be safe until after the shadow passes...possibly requiring a hero to sacrifice themselves to save them...

[Glorelendil]

Of course, putting them north of the Shire would tie nicely to certain rumors being passed around at the Green Dragon.