Morgul Blade: The Darkening of Mirkwood

[Eluadin]

The thing about the topic of Morgul-knives is that it seems like such a small, harmless question, but it keeps gnawing at you, digging deeper and deeper into you, day by day, hour by hour, until it reaches your heart and you become nothing more than a wraith, lurking on internet message boards posting endlessly in thrall to your obsession...

[Woodclaw]

Just wait until I post my house rules for the Morgul Chainsaw. You guys are gonna love it.

I smell Shadowrun incoming.

[Shieldmaiden]

Nah, that'd be the Morgul Katana.

[poosticks7]

I kind of like the idea of a twisted elf slave-smith whose sole task is to make wicked blades for the Nazgul with fell propieties. Who is the old tormented elf, doomed to spend his days in Minas Morgul. Crafting Morgul-knives for his terrible masters?

[Mim]

"In the last years of Denethor I the race of uruks, black orcs of great strength, first appeared out of Mordor, and in 2475 they swept across Ithilien and took Osgiliath. Boromir son of Denethor (after whom Boromir of the Nine Walkers was later named) defeated them and regained Ithilien; but Osgiliath was finally ruined, and its great stone-bridge was broken. No people dwelt there afterwards. Boromir was a great captain, and even the Witch-king feared him. He was noble and fair of face, a man strong in body and in will, but he received a Morgul-wound in that war which shortened his days, and he became shrunken with pain and died twelve year after his father. "

Yes, this is an excellent find Hermes Serpent & leads to all kinds of plot possibilities. Morgoth used at least some of his thralls to work toward a variety of ends (which could have conceivably included weapons/armour), so I so no reason why Sauron couldn't have done the same thing. A rogue or enslaved Dwarf or Elf labouring in Minas Morgul or Dol Guldur provides a great villain - or a tragic hero, fallen or otherwise. Ditto for Saruman.

[DavetheLost]

Yes, the Witch King missed his mark and only wounded Frodo. The magic of the blade was that it (or at least a splinter) remained in the wound and worked its way inward toward the heart. Gandalf, at least, seems to have some experience with the wounds caused by these weapons when he speaks of many strong warriors among the Big People who would not have resisted as long as Frodo did.

As for the Tolkien "canon" even the two novels on which the game is based are according to the professor translations of the Red Book. Therefor even they are not primary sources in the original language, and are also the accounts of biased participant-observers not an omniscient narrator. Although the second novel breaks kafabe at least once and quite possibly twice, recounting scenes which none of the authors of the Red Book were awake to witness, nor in especially the first could they reasonably extrapolate the happening related.