It shouldn't have ended like this.
It shouldn't-
You gasp deeply in the cold as you stumble through the dark forest, the sounds of distant fighting behind you.
It was only a cow raid, a stupid
simple cow raid!
But it hadn't been the first, nor even the fifth.
Cadoc and the others had been growing greedy, growing too proud of what they were taking.
Taking back.
What they were taking
back.
"The Straw-Heads take our land!" Cadoc had said to a chorus of boos "So why not take what our land gives them?"
Cadoc was a fool. A desperate,
greedy fool.
Too little food to spare in the Dunland, too few who would share their own with a band of wolf-heads in the midst of winter.
The men had been hungry, the women cold and the children ill.
And all of them were upset with Cadoc, the fool wolf's head who had himself thrown out of Isengard for spilling the sorcerer's wine, then made himself outlaw by raping some chieftain's niece.
Fool Cadoc.
And all the more fool were you for following him.
You the fool and your uncle the craven.
Bad luck, ill omens... perhaps the elders had been right, been more right than your father to marry your mother and sire you.
"Bad blood flows through his veins," some old crone had said the day you were made a wolf's head "Cursed blood. His presence will harm us all."
"Toothless old hag," you'd shouted back "Your bad breath is what's harmful!"
Sadly no one else had seemed inclined to agree, and quickly thereafter you'd been seen off with what little your uncle could spare and what good advice he could offer.
"There's wolf-heads both north and south of the Dunland," he'd said to you then "Go south and you'll only find Straw-Heads. Go north and you'll only find goblins. I know what's easier to fight, boy."
And so you'd gone south, found your way somehow to Cadoc the cattle-thief.
He'd almost dismissed you, sneering at your pale and sickly form as he did. Still, a wolf-head chief could not be picky for recruits, so he had taken you in, made you scrounge for roots with the women and knit what clothes you could patch.
And now he and all the others were dying, dying on Straw-Head spears in an ambush that had been bound to happen sometime soon.
And here you were, running hard-
Darkness took you.
--
You woke up to see a man's face looming over you, his face formed in a pensive frown, as dark hair hung down from his temples.
Dark hair.
Not blond.
Not a Straw-Head.
You might still have a chance-
"He's alive," called out the dark-haired man beyond you, leaving you helpless as the sounds of heavy boots trod into the tent "Though alive and well might be too much to ask."
Speaks Westron. Tree-
"Perhaps you should have killed him then, Thorongil." Came a booming voice from behind you "Else we would not be arguing over how best to deal with a Wildman when the decision ought be
clear."
"A Dundlending warrior would have died on his feet wielding an axe, Bran. Not shuffling away in the dead of night. As it was, I did not see him carrying a weapon before I knocked him senseless. It would have been as bad as if I had killed one of their woman."
"You do not wish to start that argument with Bran," came a softer voice, a slight wheezing quality to it "For my nephew would very happily have seen to them as well."
"Let the women live, uncle? Let them give birth more Dunlending hillmen, raiders to trouble our sons and grandsons, to rape our daughters and granddaughters? Or kill them, and free Rohan of their miserable existence? You come from the north, Thorongil so tell me this: What treatment do the goblins and orcs find in your lands? Grown or not, how do you treat their young?"
"I have never ranged so far as to find orc young," said the man looming over you softly, his eyes seemingly judging you "And I must confess that I would not know what to do should that day come. But I do know that a Man is not an Orc, and that the Dunlendings never served the Enemy as other Men did. I even know the bloodlines from which they come, the great heroes from which they spring."
"And the great traitors. Isildur did not lay his curse upon the Men of Dunharrow for idle amusement, Thorongil. They were treacherous, and their cousins here to the north are no less so."
"Perhaps that is so, Bran." said the Straw-Head's uncle "But the boy
is Thorongil's prisoner, and his alone to deal with."
"Uncle-"
"We have spent a season's turn trying to find these wolf-heads to no avail, and it is thanks to our friend that they have been found. The boy is his to deal with, however little that might please you."
Though you could not see him, you could feel the anger in Bran's voice, as he stood there for the longest time, struggling to control his temper. In the end his self-control won out over his temper, and he turned to your captor.
"So be it. May you not live to regret your mercy, ranger."
And with that he left, sending the door clattering as he went.
His uncle sighed at the disturbance, nodding to Thorongil in lieu of a verbal apology before leaving himself, far more dignified than Bran had been before him.
"So you're awake," said the man to you, addressing you directly at long last "And you understand Westron, which tells me that you are not from a family too deep in the Dunland."
"We have had merchants before," you say slowly, unsure of his meaning "Both sorts of the little folks. Tinkerers and that like."
"But you speak Westron with an Lamedon touch," said Thorongil with a curious look "And we are
very far from Lamedon."
"... My mother hailed from the White Mountains. She taught me Westron as she herself learned it."
"Did she now? How curious."
"And how can you tell?" you asked boldly in turn, not pleased with his tone "I do not hear my mother's words in your voice, so you are not a son of Lamedon yourself."
At that the man only smiled, the polite smile an elder might give a child.
"I have had occasion to meet people from many different places. Among them was a scholar born from Lamedon, come north to study under elves. An intelligent fellow, but much given to idle chatter."
"Elves?" you say in slight trepidation "The north?"
He looked normal.
He didn't look at all like the foul yet fair-seeming lords that the old women would sing of at night, who they would warn of to the children in their tales.
The sea kings from the west, who had come with
fire and
iron to the lands of your fathers, and taken what they wished when they willed it.
The sorcerer-kings, who had
cursed the blood of your mother for oaths of loyalties forcibly taken yet left unfulfilled.
Straw-Heads were one thing, horrible as they were. But the
Burners...
"Tell me," asked Thorongil softly, noting the slight flinch you make at his words "What is your name?"
Choose One:
[] Aeron ap Aeres
[] Caradoc ap Aeres
[] Cathal ap Aeres
[] Iorwerth ap Aeres
[] Owain ap Aeres
GM Note: So... yeah. A LOTR Quest, set in the decades prior to the War of the Ring. This will be character focused for the most part, before transitioning into various elements of nation-building as it goes on. Don't expect much for months out of this quest, as Leech Lord and ADOTN are top priorities.
