Westernesse: A Númenórean Colony Quest

You enter the forest at mid-morning, with the sun shining down between the leaves, following a certain winding trail you learned of from a helpful bluejay. The trees are clustered thickly together in that way which only old forests are, forests which have never known the axe or the fire, and thus grew wild without fear. Ancient elms and beeches twist and wind around one another, thick roots winding in and out like serpents across the forest floor. Titan oaks loom out of the shadows, the largest the size of three grown men across, their clawed branches scraping at your head as you pass. The forest is still, silent almost as a tomb save for the crunching of your feet on the undergrowth. The air is thick and musty, heavy with the scent of growing things that have grown too old. You walk until the sun is no longer visible through the thickness of the tree-tops, and then you continue to walk still, pushing through thick boughs and dark branches even as the forest slides shut behind you. You continue until the darkness and the silence becomes interminable, until they press down so heavy and hard on your skull that the forest itself seems to breathe.

And then, all of a sudden, you realize that it is breathing.

Hoom.

The sound ruffles the leaves as it passes through the air, whispering over your skin like dry leaves. You are not sure how long you have been hearing it, but now that you are aware, it is quite unmistakable. It is a sound like branches ruffling and bark snapping, like roots splintering and green things growing old and unseen in the dark. It rumbles and shakes and you feel it in your chest.

Hoom.

The sound grows closer, followed by an echo of dry wood heaving and cracking.

Hoom.

You turn searching for the source of the sound, or for the trail you were following, but all around you there is only darkness, and trees as thick and tight together as nets.

Hoom.

And then he is there. A tree bends it's branches and unfolds it's legs and rolls massive shoulders like oaken logs and you realize too late that it is not a tree at all. Trees do not have legs like yew trunks or arms as thick around as cypresses or a chest as thick and vast as any oak in the forest, a chest which rises slowly and languidly with a cracking creaking sound that shakes the air in your skull.

Hoom.

He is at least twice your size, tall enough that the horned branches of his head scrape the bottom leaves of the forest canopy some fifteen feet above, and each of his mighty footsteps sends tremors through the forest floor. His skin is old grey bark the color of metal, which snaps and shivers as he moves. Two bright points of light shine out from sockets in the aboreal skull, gleaming like torches. Beneath it all hangs a tangled beard of moss and heather that scrapes the ground. His breathing is like a thunderclap now, each breath battering at your eardrums and vibrating your bones.

Hoom.

There is a deep rolling sound from inside the mighty chest. After a handful of seconds, you realize it is a word.

"EDAIN."

The word is followed by a rustling of leaves and snapping of bark as the Ent -- for the tree-man could be nothing else -- looms down closer to you. You had heard the Ents to be tree-men, but there is more tree than man in that dark face, and those gleaming eyes seem clouded and distant. You know well that many of the Onodrim who remain in the forests of Arda are half-wild, raging things, less tree-herders and moreso particularly old and angry trees. Indeed, the lumbering tree-giant's voice is creaky and stilted, as if he has not used it in many years, and when he finally speaks again, it spills out as one long furious rush of air and crackling wood that takes you a moment to decipher.

"MANOFTHEWEST. TREEBURNEREARTHBREAKERLIMBHEWERSTONECUTTER. BACKTOTHESEABACKBACKBACKBACK-HOOM-GOGOGOGOGO."

You raise your hand in an ancient greeting of nature, taught to your ancestors by the elves long ago. "Hail, Onodrim. I mean no harm, and come as a friend and a neighbor."

"FRIEND?" The Onod stirs at that, bristling and rising to his full thorny height. His voice is slower and more deliberate when he speaks again, as if, with effort, he is remembering how.

"I SMELLYOURSINS ON THE SEA! THEY SCREAM STILL! YOU HAVE MADE BOARDSOFTHEIR BONES AND TIMBERSOFTHEIRROOTS, BUT I SMELL THEM, SHIP-MAKER!"

"Our ships are old, Master Onod, and were not cut from your herds. We have no need of more."

"NEED? HOOM, THE TALL MEN ALWAYS HAVE NEED. NEED? FROM NORTH TO SOUTH TO FARTHEST EAST YOU HAVE BURNT AND CHOPPED AND HACKED AND HEWED! NEED? NEED? YOU SPEAK OF NEED?!"

An unfortunate choice of words, it seems.

The forest cracks around you, vines rippling and tugging from the earth, whipping snakelike into the air. The undergrowth writes threateningly under your boots, and you become aware of how close and how heavy the branches of the forest hang to your head. The whole wood seems to echo and rattle with that word: Need. It shakes in the leaves and whispers in the bending bark, hissing violently in your ear from all directions.

The Onod leers down at you, his eyes like furious stars in the darkness. You are not sure if one such as he has need of air, but nonetheless, his chest heaves with rage.

"I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THE LAND WAS WOOD, AND ALL THE EARTH WAS UNDER-BOUGH. THEN THEY CAME OVER THE WATER, CUTTING AND BURNING AND BREAKING! WHAT NEED HAD THEY THEN?"

The Ent's voice is more solid and stable than ever before -- and more threatening, too. The forest looms dark around you, and you know with a grim certainty that if you turned and ran now, you would never see the sun again. You have a century of knowledge in your skull, and you rattle through it desperately for knowledge on the Ents. What little there is, even in Numenor, is sparse. The tree-men have walked this land since before the time of sun and star, and were already ancient when the first men awoke in the utter east. They are old, so old that when they first walked alone they had no tongue, for there was no speech in all the world: they learned to talk from the first elves, who sang with the trees when the world was young.

Ah. There.

"Len suilon, i cherdir galadbavron. Man i eneth lîn?"

The elvish words roll over your tongue like water, and the very woods shudder as they leave your lips. The forest air seems to lose of it's leaden quality, and the darkness that had rushed in around you shrinks back. The looming branches hesitate, seeming for a moment less like claws and more like simple wood, sure and true. Nature knows the tongue of the elves, for it was the First Speech ever heard on Middle-Earth. It was the tongue with which the elves sang to the trees in the years before the sun.

It was the tongue with which they brought friendship to the ents.

The tree-titan pauses as if struck. The moss-beard trembles. The starlike eyes shine bright. The forest is, for a moment, still.

"I HAVE NOT...hoom, I have not heard that tongue in a long time."

The massive ent shakes, and perhaps it is merely a trick of the light, but he does not seem to loom half so large, or look quite so fierce. The creak of his breath is less the bellowing of a dread forge and more the whistling of wind between leaves.

"Hoom. Forgive me, master Elf-Friend. Pah! I have wandered long alone in the darkness, and it seems I have forgotten my own manners. There were others in the woods, but they are long gone and I am alone and very old. I have begun to forget myself in my age, and my temper win the best of me."

He bends the great head to peer down into your own eyes, stroking the tangled beard. A wood-vole scampers up one of his shoulders, then vanishes into an ear.

"To answer your question, little one, I had many names when these woods stretched from sea to sea, in tongue of elf and bird and man as well, but I have long since forgotten them all, save one. Angalpar, I was named by the elves when the stars were new. In your speech it would be...hoom hoom...Ironbark. You may call me by this name, if you must call me any name. Mae Govannen, Tarcil."

Tarcil. High-man, in the Elven tongues.

You bow. "You have no need to apologize, Master Ironbark. We all stray in old age. I am Imrazôr, Belrubên's heir and Zainabeth's son, steward of these lands in the name of Tar-Calmacil the King. It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance, on behalf of myself and my people, and I greet you in friendship. Mae govannen, Angalpar."

The ent stares at you for a long, curious moment. "You are a strange one, to speak the elf tongues so freely and cheerily, and to bow to ents in friendship. Long has it been since I heard the voices of men sing in the speech of the elves. Your people frown on old things now, on ents and elves and trees alike, and on the tongue they share. It has been lifetimes of your people, Tarcil, since men would call me friend."

"Not all of us have forgotten the old ways, master Ent, or the old words with them. There live some still on Numenor who are friends of all that is old and kind."

The ent lets out a loud bark, an echoing laugh that rings in the forest. "Ironbark, the old and kind! Old perhaps, but I fear I am too old now for kindness. Fair words fall from fair lips, but do fair deeds follow, I wonder? Steward, you name yourself, but these lands have had stewards long before you, Tarcil, and though many are now gone or forgotten, one at least remains."

"I am a steward of men, and yourself a steward of the earth. Our charges not need conflict, nor come to odds."

The Ent snorts again. "Would that it could be so, Tarcil."

"It may," you insist. "The Ents were friends to the first men, and sheltered us when we were young and fled the dark. Stands there any reason why they cannot share the same goodwill with the Numenoreans they shared with our ancestors?"

Ironbark rolls his neck with a creaking sound like the sighing of branches. He is, you realize as he moves, so very very old. You and all your years are a single blink of those gleaming eyes. "There were many Ents then, and so few men. You were naked and small and afraid. You are naked no more, and taller and taller, and your fear has made you cruel. That first foolish kindness has been repaid with steel and smog and fire. There are Men on every shore under the sun, yet where have all the Ents gone, and where are all the Entwives?"

You frown. "They were waylaid by the Enemy, and driven from their lands. It was not men, but the Power that rules in Mordor that has wrought such evil on your people."

Ironbark chuckles again. It is an old laugh. There is no humor in it. "Do they tell you so little, on the Blessed Isle? Not all evils done under the sun can be laid at the feet of Mordor's master. Run back to your tall king, and ask him why there are no tree-sheperds left in all the north."

You open your mouth to speak, but the ent cuts you off with a sigh like oaks splintering. "Go. I was angered before, but now it has settled, and I am...hoom, I do not know what I am. I am old. I am so old and I have changed so much, and yet you and yours remain the same. Have you learned nothing then, in four thousand years? Go, Tarcil, before I remember my rage."

The great ent waves his hand. The undergrowth shrinks away, the tree-branches fall back, and as if remembering itself, the old trail you followed through the forest shrinks out of the darkness, winding away towards sunlit lands.

You consider your words, but find none. Instead, you bow deeply. "Aa' menealle nauva calen ar' malta."

"Would that they remembered how." The Ent bows creakily, then turns away. In a moment he fades into the undergrowth, indistinguishable from the looming trees he shepherds.

You stare into the forest after him for a time, then turn down the way you came. The forest sighs as you leave, as if the trees themselves are whispering a farewell.

New Contact: Ironbark, the Tree-Shepherd

You are the first of the envoys you have sent out to Târ Nîlon's neighbors to return, and news of the tree-herder you found amid the eaves ripples through your colony. The Onodrim were legends in the days of the grandfathers of your people's grandfathers, and it has been long rumored in the Halls of Learning that there are none now left in the world, or at least not in lands where men dwell. You keep his final, cryptic words on the fate of the Ents of the north to yourself, making a mental note to investigate the matter when the opportunity arises. The Ent makes for an uneasy neighbor, at least at this early stage -- your farmers and woodsmen are more cautious at the borders of the wood now, and some on the fringes of the rapidly growing city, far from immediate aid, have taken to treating the trees with a wary reverence.

The recruiting and training of the militia goes better than you could have hoped. Though lacking in the martial tradition of the Hyarnustari, the men and women of your colony are stout and hale-hearted, and take with zeal to the idea of training to defend their new homes. They have quickly fallen in love with this land, and there is no shortage of volunteers for Inzilbeth's men and your own repurposed household guard to whip into shape. Old veterans and ex-soldiers among your people volunteer to assume leadership positions, helping organize the militia into location-based troops with a rough command structure. Though far from an army, or the dedicated mercenary forces of the Guild of Striders, your people are Numenoreans, the high men who have mastered the world. They are stronger, faster, and tire more slowly than other kindreds of mankind -- seven hundred of them in battle array are a formidable prospect, armed with farming implements or no. In just a matter of weeks, your impromptu militia has become a force in which your people may place their safety and their trust.

Critical result! The militia has been formed, and though lacking in any military traditions, their heart and morale more than make up for deficiencies in their training.

Some weeks after your venture into the forest, Inzilbeth returns, her neck adorned with strange jewelry and carvings of studded bone, bearing news from the wilds. She has been well-treated by the Middle-Men, who have taken her to meet one of their great chieftains, a man by the name of Braelor. The Enedwaithrim are wild men, and bold men, but they are long unchanged by the passing of the years. The wood-lord she was granted an audience with is not unlike his great-grandfather, whom Inzilbeth knew in younger days, and his pride and his concerns are much the same. She mentions that foremost on the wildland chief's mind was the specter of war. His people have known strife in recent memory, strife not with orcs or things of the enemy, but with other men. Oddly, he was hesitant to speak deeply on the matter. He and all his people have little love lost for the tall men and their tall ships, but Inzilbeth's persuasions have made them open to a meeting to discuss their relationship with Târ Nîlon. Should you wish it, the wild chieftain shall present himself at the city to break words.

A few days after Inzilbeth's return, another of your envoys comes bearing news from the north. He has made the journey over hill and field and fen to the ford of the River Gwathlo, to Tharbad the fortress of the King, Numenor's lonely outpost in these lonely lands.

It is a fortress no more. Tharbad, the envoy reports, has overgrown it's walls. Thatch huts and longhouses sprawl out from the redoubt on the banks of the Gwathlo, and the ford itself is bridged, a great stone work in the Numenorean style, on the other side of which have sprung up yet more houses and halls. Tharbad might more properly be called a town -- or a city, as the Middle-Men reckon it. The streets are dirt, for the most part, but some are even cobbled, and the Middle-Men who walk them do not wear the furs and leathers to which their people are accustomed, but go clad in finer clothes yet, with brooches of silver and great golden armbands. Your envoy was brought to the castle itself, great parts of which lie now in ruin, and given audience with the Warden of Tharbad.

His name, your envoy reports, is Hazrabân, a tall man with eyes like dark rivers. He is the son of the son of the son of the first Warden, who was appointed to rule these lands nearly a thousand years ago, at the close of the War of the Elves and Sauron. He has inherited the remit of his ancestors, and the lordship of the river. Tharbad is his, and the Gwathlo besides. None may pass it whom he does not permit. At the close of their short meeting, your envoy questioned him on the state of Tharbad and on the dwellings about it, and his reply was simple:

'Numenor left. We, so few in number, made do. The Middle-Men came against us with fire and swords, and so we mastered the Middle-Men. The garrison remains.'

Your envoy marks caution. These men of Tharbad are wild, half-native men with the blood of Numenor. Their fathers passed on their tongue and their swords, but it remains to be seen if they have inherited their love for the land of the star -- a land many of them have never seen. He is cautious with his words, but some among your retinue are not, and a few among them even dare to mutter the word on everyone's minds, their voices thick with distaste:

Halfbreeds.

Diplomatic Opportunities Unlocked:
The Lord of the Middle-Men: Braelor, a proud chieftain of the men who have dwelt in these lands since time immeorial, has offered to come pay his respects to the Sea-Lord at the mouth of the Isen. Take him up on the offer, if you wish.

The Master of the Gwathlo: Hazrabân, the scion of the Wardens of Tharbad and the lord of the lonliest and northernmost of Numenor's military bastions, has called you to audience with him. If you wish to break words with this wild and lonely magistrate, or learn of this 'mastery' he claims to have achieved over the Middle-Men, or how, exactly, he and his have 'made do', you will have to travel to Tharbad yourself.

One final envoy returns last of all from the north, riding down from the Misty Mountains cold. He has met with the dwarves on the plain. There were...communications issues. He had to speak to them in a Mannish dialect of the east, and they to him through a series of translators. But he knows who they are now, and what they want. They are the Blacklock Dwarves, Vâr's people from the Red Mountains in the distant east where even the Tall Men go not. They have marched here six thousand leagues, over plain and desert and mountain and bog. They have marched for years. They have come to avenge the sins of Durin, and work fell deeds for the death of their ancestor Vâr, father of their race. They would not speak of his death, or of the wrong done to them, save to say that they swore long ago and far away that none among their kindred would ever walk beneath the earth or dwell in halls of stone until Var's bones lay right in stone.

Fascinated, your envoy reports that he asked them how they sought to make his death right. At that, their chief, a great dwarf-lord wearing a mighty black helm, laughed a laugh like the snoring of dragons.

The Blacklocks have come to win the Ring of Vâr. They have come to right the ancient wrong. They have come, above all, to lay waste to Durin's folk.

Opportunity Unlocked:
The War of the Blacklocks and the Longbeards: War is come to the Misty Mountains. Durin's Folk, the Longbeard Dwarves of Khazad-Dum, are assailed by their kindred out of the deep east, a strange and warlike race of Dwarves who shun cavern and cave, and dwell instead in the sun. Their grievances, it seems, run as deep and old as any mine ever delved beneath the world, and the mountainpeaks blaze with smoke as the dwarves make war on the dwarves. And at the heart of it all burns like a coal that word: Ring. The Rings of the Dwarves were lost long ago, or so it is said in the Houses of Learning. Perhaps the Houses of Learning do not know everything there is to be known.

The Shapers have sent apprentices and surveyors across the width of the land, searching all along the Angren for suitable stores of stone for your quarries. They have returned with four prospective options that require your input.


You have also decided to expand the farmsteads, granting leave to the farmers to take more and more land in order to produce food. You are not exactly running on a shortage of clear, fertile land around the city, and so are far from having to micromanage who gets to settle where. However, as your colony grows, and it's stomach with it, you will either need to find a reliable source of food through trade, or expand the farms further still. It is not an immediate concern, but it is something to keep at mind.

As the city grows, the Shapers begin to build rudimentary forges, pale echoes of the great craft-halls of Numenor. They are eager to resume their work, and take to the task of constructing appropriate facilities with aplomb. The designs and locations for a wall are sketched out and mapped, and need only a reliable source of stone to begin construction.

Last among your concerns is the matter of the Rangers. Many of the men of Hyarrostar who sailed here with you have already become adept at living amid the wilds of this new land, traveling faster on foot through forest than others might on horse upon a road. Those who have taken to this skill feed their families by trapping and hunting, but they also provide eyes and ears across the wild lands you have come to settle. These scouts move faster and quicker than warriors in full battle array, and you imagine they might serve as an able warning system should danger threaten the city. You form a small volunteer force of these hunters, who, lightly clad and armed with bows, shall stalk the forests in Numenor's name.

They are established just in time. Two weeks after you first send them out, a young Ranger reports finding an odd footprint in her travels. Black claws in the mud along the shore, unmistakable to any with eyes to see.

Orcs.

Pick Ten (10) options. You may personally assign yourself and Inzilbeth each to any votes you pick, making them personal options. As you have 2 heroes, you may make two votes personal options. Specify which character you want to send on which mission in the plan vote. Uriphel will be busy until the next turn, and cannot be assigned to an option.

Growth: The city begins to grow, and with it's growth come a host of issues and decisions for you to make. These may be put off until later, but absent input your people may do what they will.

Defense: You are not alone in Middle-Earth, and Numenor the Blessed has many enemies. The defense of your fledgling colony is one of your foremost priorities.

Diplomacy: You are not alone in Middle-Earth. There are many realms and powers which dot the land, some more receptive than others. Making friends with even a few could ease many future worries in the days and years to come. Lacking a harbor and crews to man your ships, you must send all emissaries by horse and foot, limiting your immediate diplomatic options to those polities located relatively close to the City, in Eriador.

Opportunity: There are a variety of miscellaneous opportunities available to you which could benefit either yourself or the colony. You can also launch explorations of the surrounding lands and seas from here, but be careful -- Middle-Earth is not safe, nor is it tamed, and not all you send out may return.


QM ANNOUNCEMENT: No votes not in plan form will be accepted. There Is a twelve hour moratorium before voting can begin. No votes before this time will be accepted.

Reaction posts and Omakes are rewarded.

A new realm has been added to the informational screen and the World lorepost.

In the early centuries of the Second Age, the Dark Lord Sauron tricked the Elf-Smiths of Eregion into forging nineteen rings of unmatched power. He came to them in fair disguise as a teacher and a helper and friend, and under his tutelage first nine, then seven, then three rings they made, wrought with the deep old magic of the world that does not fade. But the elves were betrayed. In secret their Enemy made another, final ring, which would be master over all the others: the One Ring, called in later days the Ruling Ring. Taken altogether, these twenty bands were the Rings of Power, which brought great suffering to the world after their making.

Here are named these twenty, and their histories insofar as they are known to the Men of Numenor.

• The Three, or the Elven Rings. Forged by the hand of Celebrimbor, the greatest smith of the Second Age, and Lord of Eregion before his dying. They were made without the knowledge of the Enemy, and do not corrupt or manipulate as the others do, though the One Ring permits him to look unseen upon their bearers from afar. They grant their wearers great power to resist evil and the passing of time, for they were made to preserve and protect. Their names are Narya, Vilya, and Nenya, and all three are kept close by mighty lords of the Elves. Nenya, the Ring of Water, is held in the guardianship of the Elf-Lady Galadriel. Narya, the Ring of Fire, was given to the safekeeping of the High King Gil-Galad, and entrusted by him in later times to his steward, the Elf-lord Cirdan. The strongest of the Three, Vilya, the Ring of Air, was given by Gil-Galad to his herald and chief servant, the Elf-Lord Elrond.
• The Seven, or the Rings of the Dwarves, which are called also the Rings of Earth. At first hidden by Celebrimbor, he surrendered them to Sauron after torture, and the Dark Lord later gave them one by one to the seven chieftains of the Dwarven clans. Those who wear them came to possess wealth and splendor unrivaled, building for themselves mighty hoards under the earth. The dwarves are as stubborn as the stone from which they come, and thus their rings cannot twist them into Sauron's service -- however, they guide their wearers imperceptibly towards greed and ruin, as surely as stone is sanded by the sea. These Rings bear the names of the chieftains who bear them. Foremost of their number is the Ring of Durin, first borne by the greatest of all the Dwarf-Lords, Durin III of Khazad-Dum, and held after his passing by his heirs, who are kings under the mountains. It is said that also in their possession is the Ring of Bror, given once to the Broadbeam Dwarves, though it is not known how it came to be in their grasp. In the Blue Mountains, the Firebeard Dwarves hold the Ring of Uri, a great lord of their dwindling house, who slew two dragons in the dawn of the Age, and built their bones into his hall. Of the eastern dwarf-Houses and their rings, the fate of only one is known: the Ring of Rhaz, a king of the Ironfoot Dwarves, who it is said delved a mighty hall to rival Khazad-Dum deep in the Red Mountains far to the east.
• The Nine, or the Rings of Men, called also the Black Rings, the most well-known of all the Rings made by Celebrimbor, whose fate has been recorded the most thoroughly of all. Nine Rings Sauron gave in darker days to nine kings and princes of the race of Men. These Rings, of the nineteen made in Eregion, were the only ones who fulfilled utterly the wicked purpose for which they were made. They wormed their way into the hearts of men, brought down empires and kingdoms, and created for Sauron nine awful servants who would be his heralds and his captains forever after -- those Ringwraiths of whom much is written, the Nazgul that are forever undying, who ride on steeds of shadow and speak with voices of death. The Nine Rings glimmer on their fingers, the most ruinous and seductive of all the works and arts of Sauron...save one.
• The One, the Ruling Ring, the Ring of Power, the Master Ring -- the last ring, and the greatest. Forged in secret by the Dark Lord in Mount Doom to rule all other Rings, it is one of the mightiest artifacts ever created in Arda. It bears bound in itself the greater part of the spirit and will of it's maker, a piece of his hatred and malignancy made solid and real, and it amplifies his strength tenfold, making him a force unrivaled among the powers of Middle-Earth. The Ruling Ring permits it's Master to see and surveil unawares the bearers of the other Rings, to exert his influence over them, and to have mastery over their souls and destinies unto the end of days. While the One is with him, the Dark Lord cannot fall to mortal arms, and all the armies of all the world could not hope to stand against him. Even now it burns bright on his finger where he sits ruling on his dark throne in the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.
• The Lesser Rings, though not numbered or counted, are those rings made as essays in ring-craft by the smiths of Eregion, to prepare for the making of the greater Rings. They have minor powers of their own, making their bearers faster, stronger, or wiser, though not all three, and never to the same degree as the greater Rings might. The Lesser Rings are unadorned, bearing no jewel or gilt, and after the fall of Eregion, were lost and scattered across Middle-Earth. Some rest even now upon the fingers of mighty Numenorean lords, or in the vaults of the dwarves, or around the necks of Haradrim chieftains. Each and every one of them, from lesser to least, is still (even if dimly so) under the power of the One, though they cannot fully bend a wearer into it's service as their cousins might. Their influence is more subtle still -- an inopportune moment of rage, an uncharacteristic twist of jealousy, a loss of empathy at a moment when it might have been most needed.

All of the great Rings have certain shared powers. Uniformly, they unnaturally extend the lives of their bearers and amplify their natural strengths and powers beyond imagination. A great speaker will find that his voice is now immeasurably seductive, while a skilled warrior will become a warlord without equal in the world. All mortals who bear the Rings are stronger, faster, haler, greater in flesh and form and spirit than ever before. So long as they wear their Ring, they will never die, though they may become worse than death. All the Rings, but especially those under Sauron's power, pierce the thin veil between this world and the Unseen world of wraiths, allowing the bearers to perceive ghosts, to turn invisible by shifting their flesh into the spirit world, and to exert varying forms of control over dead and unseen things. The Rings have wants and wills of their own, being capable of impelling their bearers to protect and shelter them, and of inspiring ring-lust or even obsession in the weaker-minded. Despite their properties, it is said the elves do not wear the Three save in the most dire circumstance, for all the Rings of Power, no matter their making, are under the dominion and the desire of him who is Lord of the Rings.