Middle-Earth Role Playing Campaign

"It's early," she yawned.

"Good time to look. I wait." He closed the door flap.

Luinár dressed. Reaching for her sword, she saw someone had crept into the tent overnight and tied a note to the hilt with red yean. She opened it and read to herself.

I do not know how you cast your spells:
It is more than I can see.
I only know our paths have crossed,
And that is magic enough for me.

"Wonderful, simple Hobbit!" she thought bemusedly to herself as she stowed the note into a pack. Then she left the tent and joined Rhôn on his search, and together they found four bursthelas stalks and four doses of delrean. Some bark that would have produced taynaga poison they noted, but left alone.

At midday they met the road Luinár had seen in her spell the day before. It seemed quite out of place: a low, raised road running straight across an empty land. It appeared to have been built a long time before and had then fallen into disuse. Examining the grass that had claimed its surface, Rhôn and Luinár determined the Orcs had crossed over it and continued south. Their scrutiny also showed the road still saw some use: here and there they could see tracks left behind by a lone person or a small group.

"Luinár," asked Dennenor, "can you determine where this road goes?"

"Yes," she replied, and quickly removed her armour so she could cast the path lore spell. "The road crosses a river about two hour's journey to the east," she reported in due course. "West of here it starts to head north, and as it approaches the mountains it forks. One branch goes north-west, and the other east. The east branch appears to be the same trail we left two days ago."

"As for this river," asked Dennenor, "do we at some point want to be on the other side of it?"

Bauglir answered him. "We probably will have to cross it, unless we wish to go west to Cameth Brin and approach Rivendell that way. But Cameth Brin is a long way away."

"Our journey is long enough as it is, without having to take a detour west. A crossing is available for us east of here, and from there it is almost due south to Imladris," said Dennenor, referring to his home by its Elvish name. "It seems prudent to take it."

Luinár interjected. "Ah, this is interesting. I've done a path lore on this Orc trail. It goes south for more than a day's travel, skirting along a river by a large forest, then half a day's travel beyond that, it fords the river. It appears to be the same river the road crosses east of here."

"Then the trail is the better of the two to follow," said Dennenor, "for it goes the direction we must take and fords the river we need to cross."

"Then that way we shall travel," said Mîriel.

The Orc track led them south. The gentle rolling hills gave way to larger, steeper ones, but the trail ignored the lay of the land and ran up one hill and down the other. Something began to bother Rhôn. Sniffing at the air and watching the ground, he muttered to himself in his native tongue, but he did not relate to the others what it was that disturbed him.

Reaching the crest of yet another hill, they saw the forest: a great expanse of conifers carpeting the countryside in front of them. The river was there, too; whether it had cut a westward course or they had wandered east they could not easily say. At the edge of the forest, the Orc track turned east until it met an escarpment, then resumed its southward course. From the edge of the escarpment the land dropped precipitously nearly three hundred feet to the river flowing below. A narrow strip of clear land ran between the woods and the escarpment's edge, although at times the forest intruded upon it.

Late into the evening they set up camp in one of the odd groves that lay between the trail and the river. After a frustrating search for flowers, Bradlegar made do with the plants at hand and contrived a bouquet from grasses, berries, and subtly coloured leaves tied together with some of his red yarn.

"I tried to find you something pretty," he said, presenting the finished arrangement to Luinár, "but there isn't very much here in the woods. This is the best I could come up with."

"Thank you!" She accepted the offer with enthusiasm, then in full view of the others gave the Hobbit a big kiss on the lips. Bauglir watched this little performance and glowered.

They passed the evening around the fire. In the shelter of the forest, without the wind to chill them, it was pleasantly warm. Mîriel and Dennenor assumed the first watch after the others had retired to their tents. Still unable to shake his vision from the night before, Dennenor kept a nervous lookout to the north, while Mîriel watched south.

No sooner had the last person gone to bed than Mîriel noticed an animal no further than a hundred feet out, low to the ground, white against the dark of the woods. Peering though the trees, straining for a better look, to her dismay she recognized them as white wolves from Angmar. They moved through the forest like ghosts, five of them, perhaps more. Mîriel yanked on the rope that served as her link to Dennenor, then ran into the camp.

"Trouble!" she called to Dennenor as he came running in response to her urgent summons. "White wolves! Five of them, perhaps more!"

A curse issued from Bauglir's tent. Fortunate for them all, none of the others had yet fallen asleep. They barely had time to scramble out of their tents before the wolves burst in from the woods, jaws gaping and tongues lolling, their howls shattering the night time calm.

Taking quick aim, Bradlegar let loose an arrow, but it flew past its target. Swiftly the wolves ran into the camp, skirting around the warriors, heading for the spell casters and horses. Araquenval was ready, blasting a wolf with a fire bolt he had earlier stored. Two wolves jumped Bauglir, pushing him backwards into the camp fire. He cried out, then retreated cursing into a tent.

"Two more are coming in!" cried Mîriel, attempting to dodge a wolf homing in on her. She quickly cast a animal mastery, but the wolf was not affected: it lunged forward, biting her savagely. Mîriel scrambled into a tent. Seeing her in trouble, Bradlegar fired an arrow and Araquenval attempted another fire bolt, but the spell sputtered and barely affected the wolf. To escape a potentially deadly attack, Araquenval cast leaping and soared high into a tree. Dennenor strode over and killed the wolf.

Inside the tent, Mîriel quickly took a mirenna berry to clear her mind and crushed an arlan leaf to help her leg, becoming strangely numb with a creeping cold.

Another pair of wolves targeted Luinár, one successfully landing a bite through a gap in her leg armour. Its teeth tore through calf muscles and a fierce numbing cold gripped Luinár's lower leg. Her mind reeling, she gulped down three suranie berries and a zulsendura mushroom. Dennenor fared no better, taking a bite from an attacking wolf, feeling the numbing cold wrought by its teeth, and ate two of his suranies.

Now Rhôn-Hari-Rhôn took a zulsendura and waded into the battle. With two lightning strikes from Trollfist he broke both front legs of one wolf and killed another. Bradlegar fired another arrow, striking one of the wolves attacking Luinár. Then some movement caught his eye, and he suddenly realized one of the wolves Mîriel had warned them about was now in the camp and nearly upon him. "Luinár!" he cried. Desperately he fired an arrow, but the shot was wide and hit only air. The wolf nipped him as he scrambled to get out of the way.

Luinár heard Bradlegar's cry. Slowed by her injured calf, she ran as best she could to his aid, but managed only a light blow on the wolf. Hearing a curious noise behind her, she turned to see Bauglir. He had just emerged from the tent and looked in quite a state; jaws clenched, eyes fixed, clearly furious at being pushed through the fire. Unheeding of the danger, Bauglir marched directly to the wolf that had attacked Bradlegar and placed a hand upon its back. There was an intense blast of heat and light, then smell of burning hair, and the wolf fell in two pieces to the ground.

Araquenval called out from his perch in a tree. "Bradlegar! Run for a tree and climb it!" Although still somewhat awed by Bauglir's pyrotechnics, Bradlegar heeded Araquenval's call and ran for one of the pine trees that surrounded the camp. At the base he stopped: the lowest branch was six feet above his head. Not really knowing why, he squatted down and jumped, and to his amazement sailed upward to the high branch, assisted by Araquenval's leaping spell.

"Animist!" called Bauglir as he retrieved his sword. "I need some help here!" Mîriel poked her head out of the tent, looking around. A wolf snapped at Luinár and Dennenor jumped to her aid, but in the dark he stumbled and fell. The wolf turned on him, biting hard but drawing no blood. A few feet away, Rhôn swung Trollfist at a wolf, but the animal jumped free and Rhôn struck himself instead. But his zulsendura was still working, and with amazing swiftness Rhôn devoured a suranie berry and struck back, killing the wolf that had just evaded him.

Now Luinár noticed to her dismay a wolf that had run in among the horses and was harassing them. Ignoring Dennenor's plight, she ran to their aid, but the wolf was already on the ground when she arrived: her horse had kicked it. Luinár attacked the stunned wolf, then suddenly Rhôn was beside her, and with one quick blow killed it.

From his new vantage point, Bradlegar realized the wolf Araquenval had initially blasted had not perished and now was trying to escape. "There's one still alive!" he called. Luinár heard Bradlegar's warning, then a yelp from the wolf when the Hobbit's arrow struck. She ran over and dispatched it. Her ears caught the whimpering of the wolf that had suffered two broken legs at Rhôn's hand. To this one she now ran, arriving just before Dennenor, and together they killed it.

It took Mîriel half an hour to heal the wounds suffered by the fighters in battle. For Bauglir and Luinár she boiled up six rewk nodules, but Dennenor was in worse shape and required gefnul to mend his wounds and prevent further frostbite damage.

Once healed, Luinár and Dennenor carefully checked the horses; to their relief found only Luinár's had been bitten, and the wound was not serious. Then they began pitching the wolf bodies over the cliff. It was an unpleasant task, for even in death the wolves managed to exude an ominous presence: the image of a tower had been branded on their chests, and a lingering smell of rotting flesh persisted about the bodies. As they dragged the largest one through camp, Bradlegar called for them to stop, then ran over to it. From its studded collar he released a small metal tube.

"Do not open it!" cried Bauglir. "It may be full of poison gas, just waiting to kill anyone stupid enough to open it!"

"Here, Bauglir," replied the Hobbit, handing it to him, but he shied away from the object.

"I'll take it," said Mîriel, picking it up from Bradlegar and turning it over in her hand. It was a brass tube sealed with a cap, and to Mîriel it seemed heavier than it looked at first glance.

"The olorkorna will be useful here," said Araquenval. He pulled out the blue stone and stared into it for a minute, then said, "All I saw was me opening the tube and extracting something like a piece of parchment. A message was written upon it, but the vision did not show the words to me."

"Then we will have to do it for real," said Luinár.

Araquenval plucked the tube from Mîriel's hand, twisted off the cap, then reached inside and extracted the scrap of parchment.

"Now that you hold the parchment in your hands," said Dennenor, "perhaps you should again use the olorkorna to see if this time you can read it. The parchment may be trapped or cursed."

"Precisely what I was planning to do," the other Elf replied, and again looked into the blue stone. "I was successful this time," he reported. "On this parchment written in a strong hand in Morbeth is, You can run, but not far enough."

Mîriel laughed. "Somebody's having fun!" she said, and the others laughed with her.

"There may be more to this message than meets the eye," said Dennenor. "If this parchment carries a curse, it may be bound within the material and not in the words written on it. Those who can cast spells should do so, to determine if this carries any magic or curse."

"Are you being perhaps a bit paranoid?" asked Mîriel.

"We are dealing with the Witch-King here--" Dennenor began.

Mîriel interrupted. "We have already dealt with the Witch-King!" she snapped. "We have already left Angmar, and probably angered its ruler, but we're beyond his reach now!"

"That is not what the message says," Dennenor retorted, "and you would do well to note that its bearers came out of that land!"

"Calm down," rejoined Araquenval. "I can cast a spell to detect essence magic; it is a simple one and will not strain me. Mîriel, you can cast a similar spell to see if the parchment contains channeling magic, and I believe you can also detect if it carries a curse."

Mîriel was unmoved. "The way I see it, the Witch-King or somebody high up sent these guys down here to bother us, and also sent along a taunting message just in case we killed his pets. That's all really it works out to."

"Well, there is no essence magic on it," said Araquenval. "I just cast the spell to check for it, and it shows nothing."

"We might as well check for channeling while we're at it," said Mîriel. Then a strange look crossed her face, and she said nothing.

"Is there something wrong?" asked Luinár after an anxious silence.

Mîriel replied, haltingly, "There's nothing there ... I can't feel the spirits ... I feel as through I'm completely cut off from the magic." Her voice betrayed a sudden, intense anxiety.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing! I reach out to touch the channeling, and I can't feel it ... it's like trying to find a wall in a dark room ... there's nothing there."

"Dennenor, is that a self satisfied look on your face?" asked Bauglir. The Elf did not even bother a reply.

They discussed this sudden new predicament earnestly for some time, trying to discern what had happened to Mîriel and ways to restore her. Even Dennenor offered suggestions, but the warrior's ignorance of magic was painfully obvious, and after a third ridiculous comment from him Bauglir curtly told him to be quiet. Luinár cast a spell to check for a curse and found nothing.

In the end they concluded they could not really determine the cause of Mîriel's malaise, and decided to wait for the morning to see if her situation improved. Mîriel hid her anxiety and assured the others things were not as bad as they seemed. "Most of my healing skills come from the herbs and plants I carry with me," she said. "I use my magic more for gathering information than anything else, so without it I am only slightly less useful to you than I was before." But inwardly she felt very alone and scared.

On the chance the parchment was to blame, over Bauglir's strident protests they returned it to its tube and gave it to Bradlegar to carry. Then they threw the last wolf body over the cliff and retired to their tents. Disquieted by the long arm of Angmar and its apparent effect on Mîriel, they had trouble getting to sleep.

Despite her loss, Mîriel insisted on sitting up for the remainder of her watch with Dennenor. Araquenval relieved Mîriel in due time, and later Bradlegar came on watch in Dennenor's stead, but aside from their thoughts and anxieties nothing intruded on them for the remainder of the night.

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Based on events played to March 13, 1998. Accesses since September 30, 1998: