Relics of the Third Age: A Lord of the Rings Quest

Meeting of the Minds​

Thankfully the rest of the journey to Nurn passed largely without incident. We made it to the Gondorian fort on the ruins of Minas Morgul to drop off our wounded, and from there made the journey across Gorgoroth to Nurn proper. As I'd feared would happen, I developed an impressive and painful collection of bruises from my battle with the Orcish leader, and even the poultice the Gondorian healer offered me to bring down the swelling could only do so much. There was ultimately nothing I could do but endure the pain as our journey continued, biting back the occasional oath when the jostling of my steed caused a fresh flare of pain.

At least the battle had cooled some of the tension within the Gondorian camp. Tirndis seemed to have taken her brief lapse of judgment under the influence of fell magic as a sign of brewing trouble, and even if I still didn't care for her, I couldn't fault her manners. Scrupulous politeness and a measure of mutual respect significantly improved how matters stood between us.

Of course, that opinion might change if she learned of everything I did during that battle. I had wisely kept silent about the sword and ring I'd discovered, and what I suspected of their provenance. After all, I could hardly prove anything about my gear's origins, and the slightest hint of suspicion would undo any goodwill I'd managed to build with the Gondorians.

Thankfully none of them had commented on my newly acquired sword and ring. I wasn't sure what to make of that. Perhaps it was entirely innocuous: I doubt I would have noticed if one of the Rangers changed out their sword after the battle and I gave very little mind to what rings any of them wore. However, given my suspicions about both items, it was hard not to wonder if there might be some larger reason behind it. Could the sword and ring somehow be masking their presence from Gondorian eyes? It would hardly be that outrageous an effect for a bit of subtle magic. Pity there was no way to test it without drawing attention to the items.

I found Hamfæreld much the same as it had been when I left it. I might have enjoyed the nostalgia of my homecoming slightly more if not for the critical eye Tirndis cast across the town as we entered, and the way a frown slowly grew on her face the more she saw of it. No doubt her mind was on building up defenses, but I still didn't enjoy seeing a Gondorian look upon my homeland with any sort of disapproval.

Our approach drew a great deal of interest from everyone within Hamfæreld. The Rangers didn't stand out the way a company of Citadel Guard would've, and they weren't marching in a tight formation while carrying banners and blowing war horns like they were on a parade ground, but they were a large group of armed outsiders and plenty of them displayed the white tree of Gondor somewhere on their persons. It was only natural that everyone would be curious. The occasional patrol had come through Nurn in the years after Sauron's downfall, but never a force as large and grim-faced as this one.

We found Captain Tigkiz at the converted storehouse that served as the headquarters of Hamfæreld's militia, working some of the younger farmers through basic spear drills. The results were acceptable, given the circumstances. I wasn't sure how optimistic I felt about our milita's odds when I'd struggled in my own battle against an Orc, but a solid line of spears would probably fare much better against Orcs than engaging them in close-quarters combat. Not to mention spears were relatively simple to make and train farmers to use.

I came to a halt in front of Captain Tigkiz, snapping off a salute. I noticed several of the Gondorians shooting wary looks my way, and realized I'd saluted her the way my father's soldiers saluted him. Probably not the best impression, considering they likely associated that with Sauron's forces. "Captain Tigkiz, I have returned with aid from Gondor, as ordered. This is Lieutenant Tirndis, commander of the rangers Gondor has sent to aid us."

Tigkiz's one-eyed gaze swept over them. "We are, of course, grateful for any aid Gondor can send us in these difficult times." She stepped forward and dropped her voice so nobody else would hear it. "A single platoon of rangers? Are there more coming?"

I matched her volume. "Elessar's ambition has stretched Gondor thin, and Faramir knows that if he sends a large force he might as well include a Gondorian governor and tax collectors with them. The rangers are a compromise to render aid without stretching their own resources or undermining us. Plus the rangers can assess the scale of the Orc threat."

"Nobody on the council will be completely happy with this, so I suppose it's a good compromise on that front, at least." Tigkiz nodded to me, then stepped up to Tirndis. "Lieutenant, it's a pleasure. I trust Lieutenant Arphazêl escorted you here without trouble?"

"We encountered some Orcs, but I just see that as us getting an early start on our mission," Tirndis answered smoothly before turning to me with a raised eyebrow. "You never told me we shared a rank."

Mostly because this was the first I'd heard of my promotion. Thankfully Captain Tigkiz answered for me. "Until very recently there hadn't been much call to formalize a rank system. We're a volunteer farmer's militia, not a full-fledged standing army like Gondor fields."

"I see." Tirndis threw a critical eye over our forces. "And how precisely will this distinction impact our cooperation?"

"Don't expect a lot of bowing and scraping, but my soldiers will respect your expertise and defer to you in combat," Tigkiz answered her. "As long as you don't try to lock anyone in the stockade for not saluting fast enough, I don't think there will be any problems."

"The Rangers have never been the strictest adherents to formal protocol," Tirndis answered with a hint of wryness in her voice. The mask did make her frustratingly difficult to read sometimes. Part of me wondered if the mask concealed some hideous scar, deformity, or a comely face.

Tirndis continued, oblivious to my idle curiosity. "Now, to the matter of protecting Nurn from the Orcs. My rangers can start scouting for Orc nests to try and determine their numbers and organization, but there are other measures we should pursue while they do that. Your militia will fight more effectively if we can give them some kind of fortifications to work with. At the very least we should be able to set up a basic trench and palisade to make it much easier to protect your towns."

"More easily said than done," Tigkiz answered her. "Any ditch we dig that's deep enough to seriously hinder the Orcs will turn into a pit of stagnant water. It might protect us from the Orcs, but all the bugs that would spawn would be almost as much of a threat. Palisades need more wood than we can easily lay hands on, and it would be impossible to enclose everything. The Orcs are here for our food, and we can hardly wall off all the fields."

"I doubt the Orcs would have the patience to harvest and process all the grain in your fields," Tirndis countered. "They'll want to attack your storehouses and villages, not your fields. Crops can be re-sown, people cannot be replaced."

Tigkiz grimaced and shook her head. "The Orcs have been happy enough attacking isolated farmsteads to slaughter livestock and whatever crops they can make away with while burning what they can't. Our people depend on those farms for their livelihoods. We can't put walls around everything we need to protect, so the Orcs will simply target whatever we don't enclose. If all our farms burn, our people will starve even if no Orcs breach our walls."

"Forward defenses, then," Tirndis concluded. "We build forts along likely lines of approach to intercept the Orcs before they reach your farms."

Tigkiz nodded. "I hope there are at least a few passable engineers in your force. Nurn is quite short of people who know how and where to erect a fortress. Keeping them fully manned with volunteer militia poses a challenge as well, but hardly the most pressing one."

I was fairly certain most of our militia fighters would be happy to do their part to keep Nurn safe from the Orc threat if we had a solid line of defenses. However, if the Orcs ever found a way to slip past our forts half our fighters would immediately desert to protect their own homes, and keeping our volunteers manning defenses would be difficult if the Orcs simply held off attacking us for a few months and the threat appeared to have passed.

We needed a proper standing army of career soldiers to supplement the militia, but getting our ruling Council united in support of that would be difficult. Any army that was strong enough to hold off the Orcs would also be strong enough for its commander to demand a crown, and even if some in Nurn were warming to that idea, many of our people still felt that it would simply mean ushering in a new oppressor.

"I don't suppose Nurn has conducted a proper census and land survey?" Tirndis's voice cut through my thoughts. When Captain Tigkiz and I shook our heads she let out a resigned sigh. "Then I suppose that is where my rangers will start. We need some idea of what territory we'll need to defend, where to build defenses, and how many forts and soldiers it will take to secure Nurn's borders. Not to mention we'll need to make sure there are no Orc nests hidden behind our lines of defense, or else all those forts will be a waste of time. If you have any local hunters or woodsmen who know the area, we'll want to work alongside them. We'll also need somewhere to store our supplies and serve as a base of operations to..."

---

It was well into the evening by the time we finished hammering out all the finer points of our plan. Captain Tigkiz still needed to take it all to the Council to get their approval, but since they'd put her in charge of managing Nurn's defense that was just a formality. They wanted to be kept in the loop about what was going on, but as long as she didn't do something outrageous they would trust her judgment. It was hard to imagine anyone would object to simply scouting out the land and possible Orcish positions to get a better picture of the threat and our options to counter it.

It was an immense relief to finally be back home and sleeping in my own bed again after a month away, even if part of me couldn't help noting that the simple straw mattress and plain linen bedsheets felt a bit more drab after my brief return to noble living standards while I was a guest at Faramir's manor. It was still a marked improvement over all the time I'd spent camping out in the field, and even if it wasn't quite as fine as a proper noblewoman's bed should be, it was home. I certainly felt far more at ease here than I had anywhere else.

Sleep came quickly and easily, but alas not dreamlessly. If you can even count what happened after sleep took me as a proper dream.

At first, I thought I'd woken up in the middle of the night. I was back in my room once more, in the dark of the night. Except it shouldn't be this dark, the moon had only just started waning and there weren't enough clouds to blot out the stars. After several moments of confusion, I realized someone was sitting at the small desk I used for any letters and records I needed to write for Captain Tigkiz. I couldn't make out any features of the intruder, just a shadowy void in the rough shape of a human being. "Who are you?" My hands instinctively scrambled for my sword, but it wasn't where I usually left it.

"You know who I am." The shadowy figure lifted my new sword in a hand that bore a single brightly shining ring. "You carry my sword. You wear my ring. Even if you haven't fully admitted it to yourself, you know the truth. You have tried to hide the truth from yourself, even as you entertained idle fantasies of throwing my possessions into what's left of Mount Doom. I am not in the mood to indulge you any longer. We will speak."

"Nazgûl," I could barely bring myself to whisper the truth. "I thought you all perished when Barad-dûr fell and the One Ring was destroyed."

"Near enough," the Nazgûl answered me. "How long has it been since the One was destroyed? Is there any word of the other Nine? Or eight; our lord already fell."

"A decade," I answered. "And I have heard nothing of them."

The Nazgûl seemed to take some time to consider my answer. "Khamûl led the others to the Morannon. Only I remained at Minas Morgul, to guard against any flanking maneuver by the Gondorians. To march their army so brazenly to the Black Gate might have been a feint. I judged it unlikely, but adding one Nazgûl to an army with none can turn a battle more surely than an eighth to a group of seven. If not for the destruction of the One I might have counterattacked and taken Osgilliath and Minas Tirith after the Gondorian army fell at the gate. Instead, you find the shattered ruins of my consciousness clinging to this pathetic existence." The Nazgûl let out a strange, bitter scoff that seemed quite out of place. "Less than wraith, even. If not for you, even that might have faded away before long."

"Oh." As if I didn't have enough reasons to regret taking the sword. "I see. Is there some method by which I can help your spirit find peace?"

"I have no interest in oblivion," the Nazgûl snapped back. "Now that you wear my ring and wield my blad I have already begun to return. I doubt I shall ever be more than a pale shadow of what I once was, but even that is a force to contend with. I offer you a bargain, Daughter of Numenor. You are my anchor to this world. If you perish I will lose that connection and find myself severed from Arda completely. Even if I do not, if you fall my blade and ring could fall into the hands of the Gondorians, or an Orc. Neither outcome is desirable."

The Nazgûl drew itself up, towering over me like I was a mere child once more. "I offer you my knowledge and my strength. It would be wise to accept, for you will have need of both in the days to come. While the great shadows have been cast out, lesser gloom remains. A few isolated farmsteads burnt to the ground and their inhabitants slaughtered will not make any great difference to the inevitable march of history. The time of the Orc is over, but in their death throes they can still destroy all you have come to know and love."

"So you offer me your knowledge and power." I crossed my arms over my chest and glowered at the shadow. "What would you require in return? Do you intend to take my body for your own, or insist that I ... how did you put it? Krimpatul."

"You awoke me from a decade-long torpor and dragged me back from the edge of oblivion," the Nazgûl answered me. "I was less ... aware then than I am now. If you make a habit of ignoring my advice without good cause, I will cease to offer it. It is unwise to trust the Gondorians, but I would no sooner trust the Orcs, and I doubt I could give you the strength to bind a significant number of them fully to your will."

"And what would happen if I drew on your power, or that of the ring I wear?" I asked. "Will I become a new Nazgûl?"

"The power of the Nine was linked to the One," the wraith answered. "It was the One that bound us and made us what we were. There will be no new Nazgûl without the One to command that they be made."

Of course, Lord Sauron could hardly use his ring to bind me to his will when he and his ring no longer existed. Though that begged another question "So what will having this ring do?" The Nazgûl's silence in reply to my question felt like as clear an answer as anything it could've said. "You don't know, do you?"

"No," the wraith rasped out. "Who can say what power remains in the Nine now that the One is destroyed? Less than there was, but more than nothing. Perhaps it's only enough to let me anchor myself to you, or perhaps it will carry a measure of its old strength without any risk of corruption from Sauron's influence. Whatever power there is, I would be willing to teach you to tap into it. I would sooner help you than risk oblivion."

Which also meant that the Nazgûl would probably do everything it could to stop me from destroying the ring. I frowned as I continued thinking it over. "What about if I just hid it away somewhere? Buried it deep underground and never spoke of it again?" As soon as I spoke the thought I realized it was folly. "No, I have a feeling it's not that simple. Any time things got difficult I'd be tempted to dig it back up, especially with you whispering in my dreams. When it comes to artifacts like this, once they're out in the world they don't just quietly disappear. Plus it could poison the land or draw Orcs towards its resting place."

Taking the middle path wasn't an option, then. I would either have to accept the Nazgûl's aid or destroy my new acquisitions. I wasn't even sure how to do the latter, though finding somewhere near Mount Doom with open lava seemed like a safe bet.

---

Does Arphazêl make a deal with the Nazgûl?

[ ] No. Bargaining with a Nazgûl, however diminished, is a bad idea

[ ] Make a deal with the Nazgûl.
- [ ] Write in any caveats/terms Arphazêl asks for in exchange for the Nazgûl's knowledge.