It is true that physical and mental infirmity from old age is a great evil, one that like most other diseases and hazards is an outcome of Arda Marred.
However, the Numenoreans are not afflicted by this in the fullness of their power; they do not become feeble and senile in their old age and it's even stated that the wisest among them can die at the time of their choosing by willingly surrendering their life. It is that exact same fear of death that will rob us of this, and make our lifepsans as short and troubled as those of other men.
If we keep trying to work with the king's men without joining them, they'll throw us under the bus at the first convenience. Not expecting betrayal from them would be unwise. The faithful will at least stick with us through thick and thin. And that's not mentioning the future knowledge that we have, which involves the king's men destroying themselves almost in their totality.
We need to pick a side sooner rather than later, and there's only 1 real option.
You are taking the words of the faithful quite literally, from their point of view this is after all battle between good and evil and in some ways it is but that doesn't mean that those two sides are all there is , i still believe that things aren't black and white as they are portrayed to be .
The best option for us is still to try and avoid the Slaughter that will destroy entire Numerian civilization and try to survive and rebuild. We know what happened to both sides after all and we should be wise not to give to the either one of them.
You are taking the words of the faithful quite literally, from their point of view this is after all battle between good and evil and in some ways it is but that doesn't mean that those two sides are all there is , i still believe that things aren't black and white as they are portrayed to be and that staying out of entire mess isn't an option.
Its not like we can do anything to prevent anything since we can not stop the kingsmen from capturing sauron (if they ever do but they will prob capture sauron) we have no real power in the heartland or with places like umbar so we should just focus on dwarfs, middlemen and elfs
Its not like we can do anything to prevent anything since we can not stop the kingsmen from capturing sauron (if they ever do but they will prob capture sauron) we have no real power in the heartland or with places like umbar so we should just focus on dwarfs, middlemen and elfs
And that is the point, we don't have any real power and thus we should simply try and stay out of it. Both faithful and Kings men will pretty much destroy each other's which doesn't seem that wise to me.
Best option for us is to try and not cause to much ripples letting the song take it's course .
I think it is safe to say, this discussion has gotten past what I was originally trying to argue about, in terms of the faithful and the kingsmen, to put it bluntly, both are in some aspects evil, both are imperialists, both are arrogant to quite a bit (though the elves can make anyone get there's money worth with that one I think), neither is the best or the worst (yet) the faithful demands that we need to side with them otherwise we ain't getting any large amount of help, and the kingsmen are death fear fools cranked up to eleven. The discussion about it should just stay at that, and for another day, my only reason why I brought up the death and Illuvatar is that, no matter how one looks at it, in some way, it is absolutely not a happy thing, and of course the disagreement that death is a gift, it is very obvious what I don't like. That and, Tolkien needs to make Eru in some aspects an unfriendly fellow to Melkor to start off the whole series of events is understandable, but from within the setting itself, we could probably blame most of the atrocities of Arda on Eru. So, lets just go back to discussing the kingsmen vs Faithful and the pros and cons for both. Please?
Personally I feel like trying to resolve the problem of theodicy may be a tad ambitious for an SV Quest.
More seriously, I would be down for a well-written LotR quest or fic which took a critical lens to some of its baked-in metaphysics. There is rather a lot one could critique in a world with an omnipotent and omniscient God who allows suffering because it makes for a more movingly bittersweet melody, and believe me, let's not even get started on the Orcs*. As a fairly staunch atheist and a less staunch transhumanist, this would obviously appeal to many of my ideological sympathies. Indeed, if there is a hit zone for a well-written story about trying to Attack and Dethrone Eru, which was written with real knowledge and love* of the setting, then I'm in it. There is a lot you could say in such a story, and I think some of it would be interesting, by using one of the bedrocks of genre fiction to interrogate current and pressing moral questions. All that being said, I don't think this quest is aiming to do that, and I think that's broadly fine.
As far as I can tell, this quest is written from a Tolkienic worldview, absolutely willing to re-examine some of the more dated aspects of his worldbuilding*, but ultimately inhabiting a similarmoral universe. Kindness and the love of artistry for its own sake or to bring joy to others are good*. Power and the pursuit of power for its own sake, and by extension, life for its own sake, lead us down a dim road at best. This is not a viewpoint I wholly agree with, but it's one which I can inhabit whilst I'm in a Tolkienic frame of mind. Ultimately, I think we have to do this a lot when we're reading writers from different moral vantage points to us, whether it's Ibn Khaldun or Jane Austen, and I think this is a valuable skill. We stand on a small island, amidst a great ocean dotted with historical worldviews, and it is very likely that people in the future will look back on us in at least some respects with the same judgement as we do on our forbears. It behoves a morally mature person to recognise that, I think, and exercise some humility in our judgements and in the confidence that we are right.
Which I think is a sentiment Tolkien would have agreed with, even if he might have disagreed profoundly with us about many other things.
*(As the article explains, this was an issue which vexed Tolkien himself, and he never found an entirely satisfactory solution for it. There are deep and unresolved moral fissures baked into the very bedrock of Arda.)
*(As opposed to say, The Last Ringbearer, which is interesting but really undermined by how hard it tries to turn everyone it casts in the opposite side into the most unflattering, Baen Villain light possible, in my view.)
*(This is why part of me wishes decided to go South, especially after the last update, I think @Telamon's take on that would be great.)
*(Commensurately, longer life can be a good thing if it means we have a longer time to develop our skills and create beautiful things- this is the justification Tolkien gave for why longer life could be a good thing, in moderation. He was never wholly against the concept.)
While the discussion going on is very interesting, I want to address a slightly related topic: several people have said that Men did not have a fear of death until Morgoth gave it to them. This is wrong.
Death, and the anger and confusion which it brought to men, and the inability of elves to perceive this anger which was fundamentally alien to them, is one of the greatest themes in Tolkien's work and notes, and a root of much of the gulf that grew between the two races over the Ages. Tolkien wrote a lot on death in his cosmology, and the answer, insomuch as there was an answer, did not simply lie in "death is a gift just accept it."
Probably his most complete and certainly longest work on the theme of death was the Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth, a long theological and philosophical discussion between the Elven King Finrod Felagund and the human wise-woman Andreth. Now, Andreth had had a brief and ultimately doomed romance with Finrod's brother Aegenor Fell-Fire, who remains ageless and unchanged while she grew into an old woman, and this fact colored all their discussions. Finrod, on his part, proves entirely unable to understand how to console Andreth for her grief — all Elven grief is fundamentally temporary, for death is but a passing to the west. He proves also unable to understand her anger at the Valar and Illuvatar, or to truly conceive of despair or dread as men have come to understand these things.
When he accuses her of only holding this anger due to the machinations of Morgoth, Andreth responds thus:
But already we had our lore, and needed none from the Elves: we knew that in our beginning we had been born never to die. And by that, my lord, we meant: born to life everlasting, without any shadow of any end.'
And those among us who have known the Eldar, and maybe have loved them, say on our side: "There is
no weariness in the eyes of the Elves." And we find that they do not understand the saying that goes among Men: too often seen is seen no longer. And they wonder much that in the tongues of Men the same word may mean both "long-known" and "stale".
'We have thought that this was so only because the Elves have lasting life and undiminished vigor. "Grown-up children" we, the guests,
sometimes call you, my lord. And yet—and yet, if nothing in Arda for us holds its savor long, and all fair things grow dim, what then? Does it not come from the Shadow upon our hearts? Or do you say that it is not so, but this was ever our nature, even before the wound?'
'I say so, indeed,' answered Finrod. 'The Shadow may have darkened your unrest, bringing swifter weariness and soon turning it to disdain, but the unrest was ever there, I believe."
Their discussion turns further to why this unrest exists — why are men dissatisfied with the world if it is all they have ever known? Their discussion continues for a very long time, but Finrod finally concludes that it must be because Men, alone of all the races of Arda, carry in their hearts a memory of Arda Unmarred, Arda-As-It-Should-Have-Been, Arda Deathless, and that this frail, crippled thing, this Arda Marred, is so fundamentally at odds with what men know should be in their spirits that they cannot help but feel unease, cannot help but strive to change it and fix it. They are not of this world, but of the world that should have been instead, and so cannot help but hope for it to be better.
This unrest, and the reason for it, is, Finrod supposes, the Gift of Men — the ability, being not of this broken world, to hate it, to aspire for it to be better, to change it through their own actions, and so doing to bring hope to the changeless Elder Races. Men are not of this world, and so their spirits must leave it forever, but Tolkien didn't leave his characters envisioning some vague afterlife — he tells us what some believe the Doom of Men might be:
'What then would you say is the supreme moment that Eru has reserved?' Andreth asked.
'Ah, wise lady!' said Finrod. 'I am an Elda, and again I was thinking of my own people. But nay, of all the Children of Eru. I was thinking that by the Second Children we might have been delivered from death. For ever as we spoke of death being a division of the united, I thought in my heart of a death that is not so: but the ending together of both. For that is what lies before us, so far as our reason could see: the completion of Arda and its end, and therefore also of us children of Arda; the end when all the long lives of the Elves shall be wholly in the past.
'And then suddenly I beheld as a vision Arda Remade; and there the Eldar completed but not ended could abide in the present for ever, and there walk, maybe, with the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting mountain-tops to throb like harps.'
To deliver all who dwell in Arda, the elves included, from true and certain death with the inevitable ending of their marred world.
Finrod proposes this with a grand flourish, explaining what he believes must be the master-stroke of Illuvatar, a race born to bring hope to a hopeless world born stained, to Heal Arda.
And Andreth begins to cry.
'Alas, lord!' she said. 'What then is to be done now? For we speak as if these things are, or as if they will assuredly be. But Men have been diminished and their power is taken away. We look for no Arda Remade: darkness lies before us, into which we stare in vain. If by our aid your everlasting mansions were to be prepared, they will not be builded now.'
How or when shall healing come? To what manner of being shall those who see that time be re-made? And what of us who before it go out into darkness unhealed?
"But why dost thou say "mere words"? Do not words overpass the gulf between one life and another? Between thee and me surely more has passed than empty sound? Have we not drawn near at all? But that is, I think, little comfort to thee.'
'I have not asked for comfort,' said Andreth. 'For what do I need it?'
They speak longer of hope, and of death and life and the vast differences between men and elves, and of the old Hope of men that Eru might come into the world himself and mend it with his own power, but here is the crucial thing. Finrod has no true reply for her. There is no final answer. At last, she wonders on her doomed romance with his brother, and wishes that Elves and Men had never met — too great is the gap between mortal and immortal. What love can the moth have for the candle?
He tells her that her brother left her because for the elves, memory is greater than all else — and when all else is gone, the elves being immortal, memory will remain. Unable to marry and unwilling to see her dwindle, his brother went into the north to die against the Dark Lord, that he might remember her always unchanging in the Halls of Mandos.
And what shall I remember?' said she. 'And when I go, to what halls shall I come? To a darkness in which even the memory of the sharp flame shall be quenched? Even the memory of rejection. That at least.'
Finrod sighed and stood up. 'The Eldar have no healing words for such thoughts, adaneth,' he said. 'But would you wish that Elves and Men had never met? Is the light of the flame, which otherwise you would never have seen, of no worth even now? You believe yourself scorned? Put away at least that thought, which comes out of the Darkness, and then our speech together will not have been wholly in vain. Farewell!'
Darkness fell in the room. He took her hand in the light of the fire. 'Whither go you?' she said.
'North away,' he said: 'to the swords, and the siege, and the walls of defense—that yet for a while in Beleriand rivers may run clean, leaves spring, and birds build their nests, ere Night comes.'
'Will he be there, bright and tall, and the wind in his hair? Tell him. Tell him not to be reckless. Not to seek danger beyond need!'
'I will tell him,' said Finrod. 'But I might as well tell thee not to weep. He is a warrior, Andreth, and a spirit of wrath. In every stroke that he deals he sees the Enemy who long ago did thee this hurt.
'But you are not for Arda. Whither you go may you find light. Await us there, my brother—and me.'
I'm posting all of this to say that just as no one is precisely wrong or right in the theology of any real-world faith, Death is not a settled question in Tolkien's world, and all of the characters and beings which dwell within, the Valar themselves included, have had arguments and thoughts much like the one in this thread. Even if they can divine some small measure of the designs of Illuvatar, that is a small comfort — to elves, or to Men.
The Kings of Númenor know this. They have read, doubtless, the Athrabeth, and countless texts like it. Yet what is some greater purpose and higher calling? Why should they go houseless and dispossessed into the dark for some higher design, when the elves dwell always in bliss?
The folly of Númenor was not that most human of things, a fear of death, nor that most human of dreams, life unending, or misunderstanding some easily settled theological point, but rather the jealousy of all others which consumed them, the pride which told them that death (and all earth) could be conquered, and the selfishness which led them to believe that life unending could not only be won by blood and empire, but that it, and all the world, should be theirs — and theirs alone.
I like apple pie, and I dislike pumpkin pie. How many meat pies can a hobbit bake before breakfast?
Nonsense aside, I have little to nothing to contribute to, a lot of the discussion above, but personally, trying to bear the weight of such a heavy burden as "fixing" the Island of tall dark and brooding seems overly ambitious to me, and building up our little colony best we can, influenced by the wisdom of Imrazôr, the Sea-Lord of Târ Nîlon and his council has been quite enjoying. So I am glad the quest took that direction before I became a participant.
@Telamon Just wanted to say, I found this quest during it's hiatus, and added it to my watchlist, hoping it would pick back up. My birthday is on the 24th of Christmas, and with your updating your quest this monday, I've cherished it like a belated birthday gift.
As a fan of The Hobbit, my father having read it to me before bed when I was young, and shaped my love of fantasy. Reading over the information screen, and each threadmark, has put a great deal of warmth in my heart. Thank you! I am excited for the next update!
@Telamon, you as always are a great orator and discipline of tolkien. This has somehow convinced me (in part) to come around to what rolkien added in death in the way it was.
Edit: yeah, it wasn't my intention to bring much of actual religion into this sorry. Oh, and thank you for the clear up on the details on melkors purpose it never really clicked in to me with that, All I got was well that he never has any purpose of creation. That and the stuff he did to remedy that. Sorry for bringing up this whole mess sorry.
@Telamon, you as always are a great orator and discipline of tolkien. This has somehow convinced me (in part) to come around to what rolkien added in death in the way it was. But, I also did talk about another thing, not just of death, but how Illuvatar and Melkor and the relationship that it was.
Because, back in the beginning of the Ainur, when all of the great music sang the song of creation, only Meljor, the strongest of the valar was denied any aspect to hold, and when he thus sang, discord and disharmony spread. No matter how many times he sang, nothing of himself was made, only the corruption of others works. This made Melkor jealous and thus seek the imperishable flame. Eru in all of this, never answered why he was like this. And when melkor tried to make his own work with the flame, Eru taunted him by saying that the flame and he were one in the same, and which was why Melkor could never find the thing.
This led to Melkor while being the strongest of all of the Valar and maiar, also made him the loneliest of all of them. This led to jealous and bitterness brew within himself until he could no longer contain himself, and Like any 7 year old, lash out, such as during the making of Arda he constantly ruined or destroyed whatever they made. Until, Manwe came in at least, but that never stopped him from trying again and again to break their toys and creations, as why was one like he never given a purpose save to ruin and corrupt since his creation? Now, while the talk about the gift of man, in terms of death has answered in part that question, why did at any point did he do this?!
This is what really has me in a stump and a rage, because if tolkien made Melkor as a in-universe version of lucifer, than how the hell did he bungle this up? The reason in the old testament was because, with the creation of man as God's representatives on earth, we were formed in his image and thus made holy. Lucifier as God's greatest of all angels in terms of beauty disagreed in part, and which led him to thinking of someone else to worship instead. He new in his heart that such a thing was wrong, but after long enough time he gave in, and in so doing turned a third of all of the angels in the heavens against the Lord.
The reply for why he didn't try and stop Lucifer and his corruption and the rest of his angels is that, every single angel new his words and
His being as holy, and that they did this of their own free will. Which, God has always tried to give up to others as their is scant less horrible things than robbing oneself of freewill. So, when Lucifer began to think of those thoughts, he new exactly what he was thinking was wrong. He believed however, that since he us such a beautiful thing, surely he could best his maker, the Lord let him make up his mind as nothing short of ordering him to not rebel wouldn't have worked as this would be the type of person that knows murdering someone is wrong, but still doing it because he knows he is evil.
At that point, the Lord was more interested in seeing how many of his servants actually had faith of him of their own free will, as even if every one if his servants rebelled, they would never have had a chance in million of doing it. Lucifer lost, tried to convince Adam and Eve to disobey God to eat of the forbidden tree and succeeded. The lord let the original pair chose to either obey it or not, once they did not obey his word and ate of it, causing the first sin in creation and damning themselves, he promised that justice for them against the foe responsible would pay, and made it so that he would have himself fight him in the world of man in his own backyard and crush him, like the skull of a serpent against a man's foot.
So yeah, I do have that as a legitimate question in my eyes about why this was done, outside of needing a action of sorts to make the whole thing come together in the first place. Honestly, I would have preferred if instead of Melkor it was the things in the void that were so prominently their to be the foes instead. But, I do still love the guys work and am genuinely curious as to why he made what he made outside of that whole "He needed to have a story happen Rokafella, of Course!"
You have the order of events in the published Ainulindalë wrong, along with a few details. Melkor was created to be the strongest and the greatest of the Ainur, and their lord. That was his purpose — to be the first and foremost of the Powers of Arda, Viceregent of Eru, the Elder King.
Melkor decided for himself that he was dissatisfied with this lot, and desired instead the Flame Imperishable which creates life — which Eru implies is literally himself, and not a gift to be given. He was not cursed to sing only discord and destruction during the Music — he chose to. He chose to scar Arda in it's making out of spite. In Tolkien's cosmology, all evil that followed, then or after, was the choice and doing of Melkor, who dedicated himself to the destruction of the world if he could not be it's sole master.
Incidentally, while Tolkien was an ardent Catholic, he disliked drawing direct or allegorical connections to the real world faith which he believed in (though, like, he definitely did lmao) and out of respect for him (and out of desire to have a thread that isn't on fire), I'd ask we keep the IRL religious discussion and comparison to a minimum. It's not really the place for it.
@Telamon Just wanted to say, I found this quest during it's hiatus, and added it to my watchlist, hoping it would pick back up. My birthday is on the 24th of Christmas, and with your updating your quest this monday, I've cherished it like a belated birthday gift.
As a fan of The Hobbit, my father having read it to me before bed when I was young, and shaped my love of fantasy. Reading over the information screen, and each threadmark, has put a great deal of warmth in my heart. Thank you! I am excited for the next update!
Wild to think that this Quest has technically been going for two and a half years now. It was definitely a very pleasant holiday surprise to see it updated.
Of course, just when you start to think @Telamon has abandoned a Quest for good...
Really wanted to go for a sort of northern alliance built between Târ Nîlon, Tharbad, and Lond Daer, and this really throws a spanner into the works. Which was perhaps some fraction of the King's object in doing so.
The Gimilkarasai are to steward Lond Daer for no fewer than twenty-five years, after which they may be re-contracted, or may be contracted elsewhere, or may be left free to wander the wilds as a company of venturers. But there isn't much spoil to be had in Lond Daer, so if given the choice they would probably rather be anywhere else, especially the south whence they came. If need be, we can wait them out (or, after their term of contract is up, hire them ourselves and then send them far away!). In the meantime, they can be bypassed if we put our minds and our hands to building the north-south road direct to Tharbad early.
The Gimilkarasai are to steward Lond Daer for no fewer than twenty-five years, after which they may be re-contracted, or may be contracted elsewhere, or may be left free to wander the wilds as a company of venturers. But there isn't much spoil to be had in Lond Daer, so if given the choice they would probably rather be anywhere else, especially the south whence they came. If need be, we can wait them out. In the meantime, they can be bypassed if we put our minds and our hands to building the north-south road direct to Tharbad early.
Honestly, my concern is less how long the Gimilkarasai are going to be here so much as what they're going to be doing while they're here. Galpazath pretty much states that his mandate is putting the fear of the King into the Faithful community of Lond Daer:
"I question again, my lord, what has brought the sons of Aurenion to this end of Middle-Earth. Last I heard, the master of this city was Talantur the --"
"Dead. And with his dying, the King has called me here from the sunlit lands. Ar-Belzagar has greater concerns than this city, but make no mistake, he has tired of his subjects cavorting with the elves under his nose. So he has given this city to the Nardū̆, his swords of the south."
The major silver lining here is that Galpazath apparently does not think Tharbad is very important, and does not seem extremely interested in our colony either.:
"And yet they have heard no word of you in Tharbad, and we have seen no sails from Lond Daer. Indeed, we did not know a new lord ruled in the Haven."
The curious eyes flickered again, too-bright and too-knowing.
"Why should I sail down the river to pass words with halfbreeds? The tower is held. That is the king's only concern, and so it is my only concern. And it seems there is enough of Númenor left in them for that, at least, to not require my attention. And as for you and yours, well..." Galpazath paused to take a long swig of the wine-cup in his hand, then lowered it, licking his thin lips. "...you are here, are you not?"
My feeling is that he may be feigning some of his professed disinterest in our colony. It seems awfully convenient that the Shapers decide to make a major outlay in sponsoring a colony, and then shortly afterwards, coincidentally a mercenary company with a mandate for enforcing royal authority arrives in the next-closest coastal colony. However, his disinterest in Tharbad is genuine, I think, and I hope we can maintain that for as long as possible whilst we build a strong alliance with them and the Middle Men.
The silent woman who stood in the background also seems like someone we might want to urgently investigate. Is she a noblewoman, exiled here after losing a political struggle? Or some sort of intelligence agent or fixer? And what is her relation to Galpazath? Is she his wife? Concubine? Neither? Arrived with him, or here before him? She could be a potential ally, or even more dangerous than Galzapath. We don't know, and I would like to know.
It's crazy to me how some people have more knowledge about the Tolkienverse, and have studied it to such depths and ability to interpret it, than I have about something I went to tertiary education for.
It's crazy to me how some people have more knowledge about the Tolkienverse, and have studied it to such depths and ability to interpret it, than I have about something I went to tertiary education for.
So, it's amusing you both mention the tendency for LotR discussions to get a bit in-depth, as I was actually thinking about Lond Daer and the settlement patters of Eriador the other day, and one thing kind of lead to another and I had a cool thought.
Right now, we have very few named settlements of the Dúnedain in the North, other than fading Lond Daer and Tharbad*. The impression is that the North is a pretty thinly populated region. In fact, "Eriador" quite literally translates in Sindarin to "lonely land"*. However, we know for a fact that after the Downfall, Elendil arrived near Lindon, founds a city Annúminas, as the capital of his northern kingdom, Arnor. This implies there must have been a kingdom to rule, and a kingdom requires a people. Which leads to a bit of a paradox.
On the one hand, we know Arnor was a powerful kingdom. On the other hand, it seems pretty uninhabited, and the Dúnedain population centres it may possess are nowhere close to where Elendil chose to build his capital.
Even if we assume that Elendil was a generous father and willingly gave Isildur and Anarion the more populous colonies around the the Anduin for their patrimony, it makes little sense that Elendil would choose to rule over a totally uninhabited land save the ships he brought from the Downfall. What would be the point of doing so? It would make far more sense to rule in Gondor, dividing it if need be. Furthermore, other events strongly indicate a considerable population residing in the North.
In S.A. 3429 when Sauron attacks pre-emptively, we know that Isildur leaves his brother to hold the fort and goes north to his father to call on their allies and raise armies; armies which will become the Last Alliance. The Last Alliance is stated to be one of the mightiest forces under arms to have ever existed in history up until that point. The time between Elendil's landing* and the northern armies of the Last Alliance marching across the Misty Mountains* is about a hundred and ten years. Even assuming some truly Catholic population growth, it's a pretty tall order to go from several shiploads of refugees to a nation-state capable of fielding a large army in that time.
What about mitigating factors? Was there a large population of Middle Men already resident in Eriador, who could have formed a subject population? Did the Last Alliance conscript a high proportion of Arnor's Dúnedain population, thereby reducing the number needed in the first place to recruit an army? The answers to both these questions are yes. The native population of Eriador is actually mentioned offhand when discussing the ruined demographics of Arnor following the War of the Last Alliance and the Gladden Fields, in a passage which outright states a sizeable fraction of the able-bodied Dúnedain citizenry marched south and never came home.
Yet even assuming essentially a noble class of Dúnedain warriors who rule over a larger population of Middle Men farmers*, there still have to be sizeable population of them assemble and supply a large expeditionary army. Elendil reached the North with only four ships. The Last Alliance marched out of Rivendell with one of the greatest hosts the world had ever seen.
Furthermore, the placement of the capital is odd if the founding population of Arnor was just four ships of refugees, Lond Daer and Tharbad. With such a small population, you would expect Elendil to choose a coastal location for his capital; giving easy communication and trade links to both Gondor and Lindon. Lond Daer itself would be ideal, and already has some ruined infrastructure to repair.
Instead Elendil founds Annúminas on the shores of Lake Neunial. This is not a terrible place for a city, to be sure. Annúminas is adjacent to the source of the Brandywine, and it's very close to Lindon, but it's about as far inland as you can get, which is inconvenient for transport and trade. To get to the sea, you either have to navigate six hundred miles down the entire Brandywine, or go over some hills and get to the source of the Lune, then go via the Havens. Why such an out of the way location?
The solution I would propose is the simplest one:
(1) There were other Dúnedain living in Eriador at the time Elendil arrived, besides those in Lond Daer (if it was still inhabited) or Tharbad.
(2) They were already living in the north in the vicinity of Annúminas, and more broadly on the Lune and Brandywine rivers.
Accepting that this is the case, the question then is why are there a bunch of Faithful in the far interior of Eriador in 3319? The answer I'd propose is also pretty simple.
We know that conditions for the Faithful started to get increasingly terrible in the last century or two before the Downfall. Intolerance and persecution have always produced exoduses where there is a hinterland to flee to, whether the Americas for religious minorities in Europe, or sometimes simply the nearby hills* if you were an oppressed serf*. So suddenly, a huge and "empty" hinterland starts to look very attractive as a place to flee with your family and avoid being burned alive. The interior is actually more attractive than the coasts despite its economic disadvantages, because power of the King's Men's would reach along the coasts, especially if you are a small refugee community and not an established colony. Crucially, the course of the Brandywine is also close to Lindon and the protection of Gil-Galad.
The precise location of Annúminas is actually ideal if you were a community of the Faithful looking to found a redoubt. It is close enough to two navigable rivers, and we know the climate is temperate and mild because the Shire is described as such. There is ample room along the Brandywine to found many settlements, and still feel far enough from the coast or Tharbad to be outside the King's Men's easy reach. So by the time Elendil arrived, there already would be a proto-nation waiting for him - many small communities of the Faithful, who had fled the worsening persecution at home. The "founding" of Annúminas was most likely Elendil and his flood-beaten survivors taking leadership of a community which was already there and happy to welcome them.
So, what implications does this have for us?
Right now, nothing. Possibly not even for the entire lifetime of this game, given we're the best part of six hundred years away from the Downfall.
However, as conditions for the Faithful worsen over the coming years, decades, and centuries, I think it is very likely we will see further Faithful colonies fleeing the Gift and settling in the North. Frankly, we are probably too close to the coast and to the bigger colonies in the South to be an attractive location for a hideaway - but if we survive and prosper, Târ Nîlon may well prove to be a point of contact and trade for these communities. And if Tharbad also becomes a Faithful-friendly community in the coming decades, as we might hope, then perhaps the course of the Greyflood will also become a safe hinterland dotted with exile communities. The map of Arnor at the end of the Second Age might look rather different.
TL;DR: There are probably a bunch more Faithful small communities coming in the centuries after us to settle in Eriador, and our presence may have a significant butterfly effect on them. The "founding" of the Kingdom of Arnor was probably more like Elendil and his storm-tossed refugees being welcomed by the Faithful communities and Middle Men who already lived in what would become Arnor, noticeably further inland than one would expect if purely economic forces had their sway. The royal city of Annúminas is basically Númenorean Salt Lake City.
*(It is not entirely clear, of course, if either were inhabited in 3319 or not. Tharbad was certainly kept manned as a line of communication between Gondor and Arnor until the seventeenth century TA when the Great Plague hit, but might have spent some time uninhabited. But they are at least potential sites of some population and infrastructure in the region.)
*(Of course, given that Eriador is characterised by large expanses of moorland, and has remained so even millennia after its deforestation, being uninhabited does not entirely make sense. Perhaps some people are herding sheep and practicing swiddening agriculture, people who the Elven and Númenorean chroniclers consider largely not to be the protagonists of history? )
*(S.A. 3319)
*(S.A. 3434)
*(Who may not have even noticed the "collapse" of Arnor overmuch in areas not directly impacted by violence, if we are to get all James C. Scott about this.)
*(See also: Against the Grain. The James C. Scott train has no breaks.)
*(Which is to say, a serf.)
As in depth, as this discussion of Eriador is and the settlements in it, I think it should be good thing to ask now rather than later. Telamon, how long are the turns because the way that the quest seems to be set up turn wise, even if we regularly had turn updates 4 times a month, it would still take the better part of a decade! Which, leaves me with an uncomfortable quest, are we eventually going to have time skips in the quest, or will the turn system be changed up to a certain amount of time after like the proper founding of the colony. Presumably, once are Numerorian Iron shipyard is up and running, I hope?
So, it's amusing you both mention the tendency for LotR discussions to get a bit in-depth, as I was actually thinking about Lond Daer and the settlement patters of Eriador the other day, and one thing kind of lead to another and I had a cool thought.
Right now, we have very few named settlements of the Dúnedain in the North, other than fading Lond Daer and Tharbad*. The impression is that the North is a pretty thinly populated region. In fact, "Eriador" quite literally translates in Sindarin to "lonely land"*. However, we know for a fact that after the Downfall, Elendil arrived near Lindon, founds a city Annúminas, as the capital of his northern kingdom, Arnor. This implies there must have been a kingdom to rule, and a kingdom requires a people. Which leads to a bit of a paradox.
On the one hand, we know Arnor was a powerful kingdom. On the other hand, it seems pretty uninhabited, and the Dúnedain population centres it may possess are nowhere close to where Elendil chose to build his capital.
Even if we assume that Elendil was a generous father and willingly gave Isildur and Anarion the more populous colonies around the the Anduin for their patrimony, it makes little sense that Elendil would choose to rule over a totally uninhabited land save the ships he brought from the Downfall. What would be the point of doing so? It would make far more sense to rule in Gondor, dividing it if need be. Furthermore, other events strongly indicate a considerable population residing in the North.
In S.A. 3429 when Sauron attacks pre-emptively, we know that Isildur leaves his brother to hold the fort and goes north to his father to call on their allies and raise armies; armies which will become the Last Alliance. The Last Alliance is stated to be one of the mightiest forces under arms to have ever existed in history up until that point. The time between Elendil's landing* and the northern armies of the Last Alliance marching across the Misty Mountains* is about a hundred and ten years. Even assuming some truly Catholic population growth, it's a pretty tall order to go from several shiploads of refugees to a nation-state capable of fielding a large army in that time.
What about mitigating factors? Was there a large population of Middle Men already resident in Eriador, who could have formed a subject population? Did the Last Alliance conscript a high proportion of Arnor's Dúnedain population, thereby reducing the number needed in the first place to recruit an army? The answers to both these questions are yes. The native population of Eriador is actually mentioned offhand when discussing the ruined demographics of Arnor following the War of the Last Alliance and the Gladden Fields, in a passage which outright states a sizeable fraction of the able-bodied Dúnedain citizenry marched south and never came home.
Yet even assuming essentially a noble class of Dúnedain warriors who rule over a larger population of Middle Men farmers*, there still have to be sizeable population of them assemble and supply a large expeditionary army. Elendil reached the North with only four ships. The Last Alliance marched out of Rivendell with one of the greatest hosts the world had ever seen.
Furthermore, the placement of the capital is odd if the founding population of Arnor was just four ships of refugees, Lond Daer and Tharbad. With such a small population, you would expect Elendil to choose a coastal location for his capital; giving easy communication and trade links to both Gondor and Lindon. Lond Daer itself would be ideal, and already has some ruined infrastructure to repair.
Instead Elendil founds Annúminas on the shores of Lake Neunial. This is not a terrible place for a city, to be sure. Annúminas is adjacent to the source of the Brandywine, and it's very close to Lindon, but it's about as far inland as you can get, which is inconvenient for transport and trade. To get to the sea, you either have to navigate six hundred miles down the entire Brandywine, or go over some hills and get to the source of the Lune, then go via the Havens. Why such an out of the way location?
The solution I would propose is the simplest one:
(1) There were other Dúnedain living in Eriador at the time Elendil arrived, besides those in Lond Daer (if it was still inhabited) or Tharbad.
(2) They were already living in the north in the vicinity of Annúminas, and more broadly on the Lune and Brandywine rivers.
Accepting that this is the case, the question then is why are there a bunch of Faithful in the far interior of Eriador in 3319? The answer I'd propose is also pretty simple.
We know that conditions for the Faithful started to get increasingly terrible in the last century or two before the Downfall. Intolerance and persecution have always produced exoduses where there is a hinterland to flee to, whether the Americas for religious minorities in Europe, or sometimes simply the nearby hills* if you were an oppressed serf*. So suddenly, a huge and "empty" hinterland starts to look very attractive as a place to flee with your family and avoid being burned alive. The interior is actually more attractive than the coasts despite its economic disadvantages, because power of the King's Men's would reach along the coasts, especially if you are a small refugee community and not an established colony. Crucially, the course of the Brandywine is also close to Lindon and the protection of Gil-Galad.
The precise location of Annúminas is actually ideal if you were a community of the Faithful looking to found a redoubt. It is close enough to two navigable rivers, and we know the climate is temperate and mild because the Shire is described as such. There is ample room along the Brandywine to found many settlements, and still feel far enough from the coast or Tharbad to be outside the King's Men's easy reach. So by the time Elendil arrived, there already would be a proto-nation waiting for him - many small communities of the Faithful, who had fled the worsening persecution at home. The "founding" of Annúminas was most likely Elendil and his flood-beaten survivors taking leadership of a community which was already there and happy to welcome them.
So, what implications does this have for us?
Right now, nothing. Possibly not even for the entire lifetime of this game, given we're the best part of six hundred years away from the Downfall.
However, as conditions for the Faithful worsen over the coming years, decades, and centuries, I think it is very likely we will see further Faithful colonies fleeing the Gift and settling in the North. Frankly, we are probably too close to the coast and to the bigger colonies in the South to be an attractive location for a hideaway - but if we survive and prosper, Târ Nîlon may well prove to be a point of contact and trade for these communities. And if Tharbad also becomes a Faithful-friendly community in the coming decades, as we might hope, then perhaps the course of the Greyflood will also become a safe hinterland dotted with exile communities. The map of Arnor at the end of the Second Age might look rather different.
TL;DR: There are probably a bunch more Faithful small communities coming in the centuries after us to settle in Eriador, and our presence may have a significant butterfly effect on them. The "founding" of the Kingdom of Arnor was probably more like Elendil and his storm-tossed refugees being welcomed by the Faithful communities and Middle Men who already lived in what would become Arnor, noticeably further inland than one would expect if purely economic forces had their sway. The royal city of Annúminas is basically Númenorean Salt Lake City.
*(It is not entirely clear, of course, if either were inhabited in 3319 or not. Tharbad was certainly kept manned as a line of communication between Gondor and Arnor until the seventeenth century TA when the Great Plague hit, but might have spent some time uninhabited. But they are at least potential sites of some population and infrastructure in the region.)
*(Of course, given that Eriador is characterised by large expanses of moorland, and has remained so even millennia after its deforestation, being uninhabited does not entirely make sense. Perhaps some people are herding sheep and practicing swiddening agriculture, people who the Elven and Númenorean chroniclers consider largely not to be the protagonists of history? )
*(S.A. 3319)
*(S.A. 3434)
*(Who may not have even noticed the "collapse" of Arnor overmuch in areas not directly impacted by violence, if we are to get all James C. Scott about this.)
*(See also: Against the Grain. The James C. Scott train has no breaks.)
*(Which is to say, a serf.)
The other, and by no means mutually exclusive, possibility is that there might have been a few migrants from the south further down the line. We don't have numbers but the numbers of Black Numenoreans during the Third Age does not seem to have been that high, especially considering how big some of the southern holdings of Numenor in the Second Age probably were. Hell, I would argue that the result of the War of the Last Alliance make it unlikely he would have had access to such a large pool of high quality troops even as early as the tail end of S.A.
So what would have happened to most of these Southern Dunedains, the last of the King's Men or their descendants? Obviously we don't know for sure but IMO the most likely possibility is that between Numenor being sank, Sauron's fair appearance being no longer available to him and him declaring himself their king many might have started to be less cooperative...
Obviously, some of them probably died at the hands of the Sauron and his servants but I do feel it is perfectly plausible to imagine that others launched themselves in a migratory wave of their own when it became evident that their current homes were no longer defensible. If it was so, the Realms in Exile and confessing their mistakes would have been an obvious option, just as Elendil and co would have a pretty good reason to take them in, as they knew they would need all the manpower they could get with Sauron still at large...
Various migrations between the colonies in the immediate aftermath of Downfall do seem very plausible, I would definitely agree. For one thing, you would expect a lot of the more far-flung military outposts which not really capable of supporting themselves to have disappeared pretty quickly. Sauron may have also gone after some of the more isolated southerly colonies first - he was disincarnate, but his armies and servants certainly were not.
One reason I might not expect southern refugees to be a majority component of the founding population of Arnor is simply because if there were a lot of people coming from coastal colonies in the South, by sea, you would naively expect them to settle in other coastal locations - and the population structure of Arnor is weirdly far inland. (If the Southerly colonies were more aligned with the King's Men, you might also expect them to be fearful of living so close to the Elves.) Gondor being filled with a flood of refugees from collapsing southern colonies, however? Seems extremely likely to me.
There is also a lot which can happen in three thousand years, which is another factor, I think. Our knowledge of events and peoples in the South is really, really sketchy. Certainly one of the major enduring Black Númenórean strongholds was Umbar, which changed hands a few times - and Gondor waged various campaigns along the southern coasts attempting to bring her recalcitrant sister colonies to heel*. There is also a mention of cruel Black Númenórean lords being overthrown by their subject populations at one point, I think? It might be that the reason why a population held on in Umbar whilst other colonies faded away is because they did a better job of integrating with the locals - something the King's Men were uh, generally not great at.
One could also make an argument continuing along this line that the Black Númenóreans were still around in significant numbers in the Third Age.
After all, we know the colonists and princes of Umbar intermarried heavily with the nobility of Harad, and by the end of the Third Age there had been roughly four and a half thousand years of Númenórean/Gondorian presence in Harad in some form. Consider that Gondor, which by the end of the Third Age is actually a heavy composite of the original Dúnedain population and "Northmen"* immigration, still very much consider themselves to be "Númenórean"*. For all we know, a lot of the Haradrim nobility might consider themselves equally Númenórean. Hell, perhaps they considered themselves more Númenórean than the Faithful breakaway states of Arnor or Gondor, whilst the noble successor state of Harad was effectively founded by the Kings of Númenór*!
Sadly, in the books, they are never able to speak for themselves in their own words, so we don't know.
*(With there even being a marriage alliance between a Gondorian prince and a Black Númenórean queen, at one point. So they seem to have stayed a significant force for quite a while in the Third Age.)
*(Yeah, the Late Rome inspirations really aren't that subtle with Gondor.)
*(Not dissimilarly to how the medieval Byzantines called themselves "Romans".
*(As a massive staging post for their armies to invade the interior, but never let fact get in the way of a good bit of dynastic myth-making.)
[X] Plan Laying the Foundations
-[X] Construction
--[X] Build A Shaping Hall.
---[X] Ûrîphêl
--[X] Build A Shipyard.
-[X] Options (8)
-[X] Defence
--[X] Scout Gundabad.
---[X] Barazîr
--[X] Search For Signs of Gundabad's Influence.
-[X] Diplomacy
--[X] Send An Envoy To Rivendell.
--[X] Send An Envoy to Brun Gledd. (Write-In, see below.)
--[X] The Lord of the Tower.
---[X] Write-In: (Imrazôr) ---[X] The League of Enedwaith
---[X] We will attempt to broker a lasting peace settlement between Tharbad, the men of Brun Gledd, and the local Middle Men, To do so, we will create a league in which all of the major stakeholders have representation, and can resolve disputes, raise concerns to be decided mutually. We shall form a League of free Men.
---[X] Tharbad will end the extractative tributes it levies from its subjects through fear and main force - they shall become League members, subordinate but with rights.
---[X] The sentinels of Tharbad may still ask for less penurious contributions for the defence they provide - official League contributions.
---[X] As Tharbad helps us to fight Gundabad, Târ Nîlon will pay League contributions also, in coin and also through lending our skilled crafts, and our ships. We will also pledge rebuild Tharbad's wall next year, once they have joined the League.
---[X] Through trade with us, and through us the rest of the North, Tharbad should be no worse off and will in time actually grow far wealthier by trade, as we shall do also.
---[X] Brun Gledd will join the League, agree to provide at least some token contributions for its common defence as a show of good will. In return, they will remain independent, their brothers will gain in freedom, and in years to come we will trade together and girt their warriors in steel.
---[X] Braelor of the Enedwaithrim and the Warden of Tharbad shall swear a binding oath of peace, for themselves and their heirs unto the tenth generation, under our gaze and in the sight of Eru and the Vala.
---[X] Raise the rising spectre of Mt Gundabad, sharing Barazîr's findings, and that free Men standing together for the common defence is the only way forward now that the thread from the Shadow is greater than it has been in a millenium.
---[X] Make it clear to both sides that this is the best deal they are likely to get. For Tharbad, raise the fear that we will go to the King and negotiate with the next Warden, as well as of Mt Gundabad. For Brun Gledd, focus their minds with the prospect that this is their best and only chance of a settlement which does not end with them as the feudal subjects of some Westron prince.
---[X] Try to negotiate firmly, but don't play such hardball that if a lesser settlement is possible which is still in the spirit of this, we can't agree on it.
-[X] Exploration
--[X] Explore Enedwaith
--[X] The Gwathlo
-[X] Seafaring
--[X] Plan An Expedition
---[X] Inzilbeth Seastrider
---[X] The Pillar of Heaven
---[x] Gather a Volunteer Crew
---[X] Elf-Friendly Colonies: Pelargir to Edhellond, to Lond Daer. (Costs 1 supplies)
---[X] The Three Jewels: Forlond, Harlond, and Mithlond (Costs 1 supplies)
---[X] Trade & Diplomacy: (Trading Stone with Lond Daer, building ties with all, and investigating what they might like to trade on future trips.)
The City-Under-The-Stars
At the mouth of the black river Angren, on the shores of the Belegaer, lies the Númenórean colony known as Târ Nîlon. Founded by Imrazôr the Shaper in the eighteenth year of the reign of Ar-Belzagar the Conqueror, it stands as Númenór's premier outpost in the middle lands of the continent, straddling the wide land between the great wilderness of Minhiriath and the eastern sprawl of Rhovanion. Though small and newly-founded, the city burns star-bright in the shadow of the Misty Mountains, a dim glimmer of the glory which is Númenór.
Population
The city's population is diverse, drawing from across the vast breadth of Númenór. The greatest bulk of the initial colonists hail from Andustar, in Númenór's west, bold Faithful stout of heart and strong of spirit who have settled along the spine of the Angren, near the running waters of the black river. Large numbers of Romennans, born seamen, have settled along the shores of the Angren, where they may gaze out across the sea. An enclave of Hyarrostari, the small and shrewd men of Númenór's south, have settled on the outskirts of the city, helping to tame the thick woods around the river. Scattered among these are a number of Forrostari, stout workers hard of body who have thrown their backs into the development of the city proper. A handful of Mittalmari round out the colony, hardworking King's Men whose experience tilling the soil has proven valuable in the colony's early days. All together, these number some one thousand, six hundred and fifty-four.
The colony is little over a year old, and some disputes have begun to emerge among them, though no clear factions have formed. The colony is politically organized into divisions of a few hundred each, each of which is represented by an elected Speaker who informs the Sea-Lord of the views of his constituents. There are currently 7 Speakers.
Military
The 'army' of the colony is small, but growing daily, and consists currently of some eight hundred that could be raised to the colony's defense in an emergency. This militia is roughly organized and semi-trained, and many of it's members are equipped with weapons of brittle bog iron. There exists also a small scout force of Rangers, lightly armored scouts equipped with bows who number some sixty-odd men and women.
Your fleet consists of the fourteen ships which carried your people and supplies here, though they are not built for combat, and of Inzilbeth's pride and joy, the Pillar of Heaven. A fully crewed Númenórean warship with bristling masts and a gleaming hull, the Pillar is more than a fair match for any other ship upon the seas.
Guild Influence
The Guild of Shapers have the greatest influence over the city at the moment, providing most of your backing and resources. They have poured a great deal into this venture, and stand to lose much should it fail.
The Guild of Venturers has little direct influence over the colony currently, though the foundation of a colony by the Shapers has greatly angered them towards you, causing them to place an embargo on all Guild dealings with your colony, harming your trading potential greatly. Dealings with them will be sour until you make steps towards appeasement.
The Guild of Workers has no influence on the colony at the moment. Their power in the continent is weak, and your colony does not even have a large enough workforce to currently even merit a guild representative.
The Guild of Striders has no influence on the colony at the moment. There are mercenary companies and exploratory groups across the continent, and they trust you will have need of their services sooner rather than later. The Nardū̆ are patient.
The Pharazarim have no influence over the colony at the moment. There is no wealth to be found here just yet.
Heroes
Imrazôr, the Sea-Lord of Târ Nîlon
Yourself. A distant descendant of the royal line of the Kings, you are a studied Shaper and a skilled loremaster, an expert in many arts. You are counted among the Wise, a master of old songs and secret words, studied in the deep secrets of the world and the old songs of the elves. The colony is yours, and by this right you are not only a master Shaper, but a Sea-Lord of Númenór, a lord of cave and cove and shore.
Ûrîphêl, Lady Shaper
A brilliant, cold, and ambitious Lady Shaper, Ûrîphêl is one of the greatest students the Houses of Learning have ever produced, and the youngest Lord Shaper in the history of the Guild. Despite all this, she abandoned a prestigious career and a life of luxury in Armenelos to accompany you on this colonial venture, for reasons as yet unknown to you. She brings with her her household, her retinue, and her own unmatched mind. Inscrutable to say the least, she is an enigma even to those close to her.
Inzilbeth, the Seastrider
Inzilbeth, called the Seastrider, is the famed captain of the Pillar of Heaven, who for years served as a renowned warrior in the fleets of Númenór, and afterwards continued to serve the Blessed Isle as an explorer and a venturer. She has seen the furthest corners of the world, and has earned herself a legendary reputation among the mortal men of the continent, whose grandfathers' fathers have for generations passed down awestruck tales of the Pillar of Heaven and it's captain. One of the most accomplished mariners to ever grace the western seas, she has joined your decidedly land-bound venture out of obligation for your old friendship.
Barazîr, the First-Ranger
Barazîr, captain of the Rangers of the City and foremost among your hunters, is an odd man to define. He is short of stature and dark of hair, speaking little with others and preferring instead to spend his days in the wild far from friends or companionship. The only time his icy heart stirs, it seems, is when the hunt begins. He has strange old eyes, and it is said among his followers that he fears neither death or doom, and laughs --harsh and terrible, like the baying of the hounds-- only when the hunt is on.
They tell many tales of him in the wild, and he is beloved of the Middle-Men.
The Realms of Middle-Earth
Numenor is mightiest among the powers of the world in the Second Age, but they are not alone among the realms of Middle-Earth. The Elves and the Dwarves survive and persist still, in their golden forests and their iron halls. Here are listed those who would claim to be peers of the Blessed Isle:
Lorinand: The Land of the elven King Amdir, and his son Amroth. Beneath these golden eaves are gathered many of the Sindarin Elves, but also many of their cousins, the Noldorin Elves who survived the war with Sauron in the early Second Age, and so hold much of the knowledge and power of the dwindling Elven Race. The warriors of Lorinand, known as the Amdirim, are matchless in war.
Edhellond and Dor-en-Ernil: In the lands between the Anduin and the Gwathlo have settled a great host of Silvan Elves, the wood-elves of bough and birch, at mighty city called Edhellond, the Elf-Dwelling, ruled by the Lady Galadriel and the Lord Celeborn. Their settlement on the shores of Belfalas coexists with a settlement of Numenoreans called Dor-en-Ernil, and it's inhabitants are elf-friends who share land and love alike with the elves.
The Woodland Realm: Beneath the eaves of the mighty northern forest of Greenwood dwells Oropher the Elvenking, and his people, the Sindarin elves. Reclusive, isolated, and powerful, the Sindarin Elves dwell in relative peace in their sprawling northern forest, and deal little with Men or other Elves. Brun Gledd: A place of dwelling of the Middle-Men of Enedwaith. Built into a warren of caves in a hillside some miles north of the Isen, this eminently defensible location is, it's residents claim, the last free town of the Enedwaithrim.
The Fisherfolk: In the swamps of Enedwaith dwell a long-limbed people with sharp eyes. They are an odd and surly people, given to shadow and water, but they speak the tongue of the Men of the West, and so are reckoned among your people as Men of the Twilight.
The Hillmen: In the northeast of Enedwaith, in the high and hilly lands at the feet of the Misty Mountains, there dwell small men with dark beards, who speak no tongue of the West, who are clever and cruel, who attack Numenoreans on sight -- and so must be Men of the Darkness.
The Kingdom of Lindon: Known as Ossiriand in Elder Days, the land now called Lindon stands beyond the Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains, far to the north of Minhiriath. Here are gathered the last of the High Elves of Elder Days, who once brought ruin and fire upon the world. Their High-King is Ereinion Gil-Galad, greatest of the Elvenkings.
Khazad-Dum, the Dwarrowdelf: Beneath the Misty Mountains in the heart of Middle-Earth, the Longbeard Dwarves have tunneled a vast and mighty kingdom under the stone. Richer and more beautiful still than even the spires of Armenelos in Numenor is the Dwarrowdelf of Durin's Folk, greatest of all the mansions of the dwarves, that few men living have ever seen.
Rivendell, the Last Homely House: In a valley in the north of Minhiriath lies a mighty mansion fair and great in the wild, a place of learning and brotherhood unlike any in the world still. This is Rivendell, the Last Homely House, where dwells the Elf-Lord Elrond Halfelven and his people.
Mordor: In the east of Middle-Earth lies the Dark Land, Mordor, ruled by a spirit of horror and terror out of elder days: Sauron, the Dark Lord, called by men the Enemy and the Wizard. In centuries gone by, he tricked the elves of Eregion into forging the Rings of Power, and created the One Ring to rule them all. His armies are vast and mighty, and though Numenor has grown to become a match for him, the Dark Lord is yet a force to be reckoned with. Gundabad: Once called the Mountain of the Dwarves, Gundabad was among the most revered sites of all the dwarven race. Orcs rule there now, goblin-princes and uruk-kings who dwell in the defiled halls of stone and tunnel their vast empires in the dark under the world. A power has arisen there now, a Master with dominion over the squabbling orcs, a Power whose hand might soon stretch out over all the west. Gundabad stirs.
The Great Northern Expedition set out on a sunny winter morning early in the second year of the colony. Forty-eight tall men and women in cloaks of grey and earth green departed with great fanfare through the newly-raised Northern Gate, bearing on their tunics the sewn sigil of the sun-and-tree. At their helm was the First-Ranger, Barazir. Many in the colony had cause to celebrate their going, though some few grumbled. It had been decided to send a mighty expedition of woodsmen and diplomats over the Gwathló into the unexplored lands of Minhiriath. They would map long-forgotten paths, explore forgotten forests, and make their way far into the north, to lone and storied Rivendell, there to meet in friendship with Elrond Halfelven. When they returned, it was promised, the north would be a mystery no more. They went now into lands which had been unspoiled by Númenorean hand or eye for nearly five generations, and the colony thrummed with anticipation to see them leave.
But that was not the whole truth.
Unknown to many, the First-Ranger and his Expedition had been given a third, secret purpose: to fan out across the wide lands of Minhiriath and Enedwaith in search of signs of the influence of whatever power now arose in Gundabad — and, if possible, to penetrate even into the utmost north and scout the Black Mountain itself.
The task brought many among the Rangers no small amount of apprehension, but Barazir found himself focused and tight. He felt many things on the hunt, but fear was not one of them. While many had kissed their loved ones farewell and spent precious time with their families the night before departure, Barazir had no family on these shores, and no friends of which to speak. Instead, he walked alone in the woods along the great river. Many in the colony feared those woods, and the faces which seemed to stare back from the tree-bark, and the darkness of those old branches which seemed to blot the sun and moon.
But not Barazir. Even before he had been made captain of the hunters, he had taken to spending a night beneath the eaves of the forest before his company set out for a hunt, for ever since the ships had landed on the shore of Middle-Earth (and maybe, he wondered to himself awake in the dark, long before) the trees had called to him. He imagined almost that he could hear them whispering. It was a creaking, shifting thing, slow and subtle like roots under rock. They spoke -- he imagined -- of old things. And sometimes -- he imagined -- they sung. If they sang, he felt, it was an old music, and they had been singing it for a very long time.
He walked alone in the dark and listened to the trees, and the First-Ranger felt no fear.
So north he went out the gate of stone, and the rangers rode with him. North he went, through wood and fen and over hill and dell, until they came to the black tower over the city on the river, where tall men with their fathers' eyes ruled with a heavy hand over their cousins and sisters. Many in the company muttered of halfbreeds and mongrels, and felt either hatred or pity — but Barazir himself cared for little but the hunt.
Yet, on a dark street on a dark night in the city under the black tower, a youth of the Baradhrim was being beaten for some insolence by six men, all at least a century his elder and four times his height, beaten until blood ran glistening in the gutters. The tall figures stood over the small and kicked and kicked and kicked and Barazir, watching in the dark, said nothing. He said nothing, but he stood in the pouring rain and placed himself in front of the small figure motionless on the stone. He stood, one against six, all taller than he, and his hand was on his knife.
He could not say what he felt then, but the First-Ranger did not feel fear.
That same week, the company split. The Speakers and diplomats who had accompanied the Rangers went northward on great boats from the docks of Tharbad, bound for the Homely House of Elrond Halfelven.
But that duty was not for the rangers. They left north from Tharbad by foot or on horse, small groups and packs of them, three or four a company, each with enough provision and supply to last them months in the wilderness. Barazir himself went on past the river with only one other: a small figure on the back of his horse, a boy who could not read or write, a boy with a face mottled black and blue.
And so the First-Ranger walked Minhiriath alone — or nearly alone.
He rode over great and fenceless plains of waving white grass. He made camp in the shadow of old hills and looming mountains. When the need was great, he communicated with his men through signals in smoke, or through the sounding of the great horns which they all carried. They were horns of brass, worked by the Shapers to project a man's voice ten leagues or more, and there were months where all he saw or heard of his company was the unmistakable echo of those hornblasts in the hills. But though he was alone - or nearly alone - the First-Ranger did not feel fear.
At night, around the campfire, he would scratch symbols in the dirt. A small figure would watch, and mouth them, and scrape out copies with tiny hands. Sometimes, in the mornings, he would point out animal tracks and wood-paths, and smaller eyes would watch, and smaller ears listen. One afternoon in summer on the shores of a great silver lake, he stooped and picked up a choice branch of wood. A few days later, he sat and wove thread and twine from one of his spare sacks, and strung a small bow he could have nearly held in the palm of a hand.
Sometimes, the small figure would point to berries he was about to pluck, which looked similar to those he knew and trusted from Númenor, and pull faces. He did not eat those.
Other times, they would come to villages, clusters of wood and straw in the wilderness, and men with wild eyes would run from him, or, if they were brave, brandish trembling weapons — and the small figure would make odd signs with it's hands or shout a word he could not understand, and they would leave the village with fresh bushels of fruit or heavy and delicious jugs of milk.
He was a stranger in a strange land, but the First-Ranger did not feel fear.
Even when, one twilight when the leaves were growing old, he found clawed footprints in mud, too small to be human and too large to be any beast, he felt little save a cold elation — certainly not fear. He left a small figure sitting by a roaring fire, and came back as the dawn broke. His sword was dark and wet, and his eyes were ice. Then the small figure smiled — and he did not know what he felt.
Word began to spread, here and there across the wilderness-lands, that the tall men in the grey and green did not come to take daughters or gold or grain, but that they made maps and marveled at old things, that they had bows of killing steel which rang in the hills like thunder, and that they sought sight or word of the orcs of the black brand. Their captain, it was said, was slight and dark-haired, almost of a height with mortal men; yet he had terrible eyes and could run in wood like a deer, he was a slayer of orcs and cruel men — and he knew no fear.
And wherever he went, hither and far across the trackless land, behind him there followed always a small figure, watching, and learning, and sometimes smiling.
He walked through a dark valley filled with great black stones ten times the height of a man, a valley wreathed always in mist, and a small figure followed him in the dark. He saw shapes moving silent in the mist, and he knew in his bones they were the shapes of no men living, and yet Barazir the First-Hunter felt no fear.
He tarried a time with many peoples and in many villages. He walked among those men in the shadow of the Misty Mountains who spoke the dwarf-tongue and traded mutton and wool for diamonds and precious things, and whose chiefs had great longhouses of gold and silver, and torcs of mithril pure. He met a race of men who dwelt in a silent village around a great hill, and kept watch over the dark valley with the dark tall stones, for there, they said, lay the bones of their fathers and the fathers of their fathers. The Barrow-Men of Braen they called themselves, and held that their watch had lasted a thousand years and more, since before Hador Goldenhead had gone into the west.
On the shores of the wide and sterling lake where he first made his companion a bow, Barazir met a dark-haired and rude people, who told tales still of a time when an evil spirit walked among them in fair shape, and gave gifts to their chieftain that seemed at first fair, and one gift above all others that they remembered in their tales. Their chieftain lived still, the men of the Great Lake said, though he could be called a man no longer, and they hung wards about their homes to keep his fell spirit at bay.
He heard these things, and thought of a dark land far away, and nine men who are men no more, but Barazir the First-Ranger knew no fear.
And after many months the air grew cold and land tight, and the sightings of orcs and orc-work grew rarer and rarer, and so when the time was right Barazir sent up a plume of black-red smoke, a signal agreed on long ago, and turned his feet further north. They had to hunt to eat then, the small wooden bow and the great steel one moving silent in the snow. One thundered and one whispered, and both arrows always found their mark.
Up into the utter north they went, until the mountains rose high and sharp and close like the spine of an ancient beast. One day, they saw the ruined towers of the elves rising in the distance, dark cylinders against the horizon, and wondered at their height. Later, in the stillness of a tent, Barazir spoke softly of a land called Eregion, and of an elvenking who had trusted too deeply, and of a wicked wizard who fought tall men under a black tower long ago. He spoke, and small eyes turned wide.
And then finally, one morning in midwinter, when the snows had piled high, so high that the tall figure carried the smaller either in his arms or on his shoulders through the heaviest of the snowdrifts, Barazir saw through the mist and the snow a jagged edge on the horizon, a scar against the mountains, a black dagger breaking the sky, scraping at heaven — and he knew the journey was at an end.
Barazir the First-Ranger came to the Black Mountain, and he felt no fear.
He found a deep cave where the snows were light, deep enough no light could escape within, and made a fire. He left the small figure there with food and water, and, after a moment's hesitation, the knife from his belt. Then he hefted his great steel bow and shrugged on his dappled grey cloak and strode out into the winter.
Out he went to the Mountain of the Dwarves. He noted the orcs who clustered here and there into camps and settlements as one approached it's base, memorizing the banners and sigils of them. All bore stamped on their skulls the brand of the Mountain. Great tunnels opened in the Mountain-face, dug by the dwarves long ago, and from which orcs now issued in multitudes, roving out across the land. They filled the old dwarf forts which studded the mountain's face, and patrolled the old dwarf-roads which ran between their outposts in the lands about Gundabad. At each of these encampments flew that wretched banner: the name of Gundabad in the tongue of Mordor. Mighty war-chiefs bellowed and snapped at troops of orcs as they marched here and there across the land, building and moving and digging and…
…working, he realized with trepidation one morning. Working together. They fought and bickered and snarled as orcs always did, but they were working together to dig great trenches or raise high palisades or tame the white wolves that prowled the northern waste. More issued from the gaping mouths of the tunnels every day, and he wondered darkly how many more must there be working and worming away beneath the earth in the halls the dwarves had made so long ago. What purpose drove them so?
Eventually, he felt, he knew enough. He alone could do nothing more here save be caught. So he turned and retraced his steps, avoiding Orcish patrols and moving silently and swiftly over barren land, his grey cloak fading in with the snow and the dark earth. As none had seen him come, none had seen him go.
And Barazir the First-Ranger felt no…
Felt no…
The cave was empty.
The fire-pit was still warm, nearly cold. A rabbit, half-skinned, lay trampled in the dirt. A small knife lay on stone, slick with blood. Orc-prints stamped the dust.
Barazir the First-Ranger felt…
Barazir the First-Ranger raced from the tunnel mouth, all secrecy forgotten, all subtlety abandoned. The prints led towards the Mountain, and so he ran for the Mountain. He did not sneak or hide. Where he met orcs, he killed, and blood splashed bright on snow. He imagined maybe that he screamed as he slew. He slew and he slew and he slew, and the snow turned to crimson mush at his feet. Soon they began to run from him rather than at him, entire troops and bands fleeing into the growing twilight as he came on at them, something wordless on his lips and something nameless in his heart.
He might have stood there a century slaying, and forgotten his purpose and his name to rage, but they say that as he stood panting upon the blood snow, a wind arose from the west, and on the wind was a song, a music older than the sun and the moon and the stars, and in it was the slow caution of the roots and the soft rustling of the leaves, and it moaned on the wind as he killed and killed.
And as the song whistled in his ears, Barazir remembered, and turned his eyes to the earth. The tracks remained, even in the blood snow. Heavy, deep -- orcs, with prisoners. Orcs, carrying something small, and light, but something struggling all the same.
He could have followed those tracks to the ends of earth, but they led him instead up along a side road into a door dug into the Mountain's sheer face, and so into the Mountain he went.
It was dark, but his eyes were of the Gift, and were almost as elf-eyes, and so he saw in the dark as in the day, and in the dark as in the day he slew. The orcs howled and screamed and screaming fled into their tunnels, shouting as they ran that an Elf-Lord was upon them, that he was bathed in death, that his eyes were alive with a terrible fire, and that his blade was a killing scythe, and his bow a killing thunder.
Tunnel after tunnel he went, the Mountain swallowing him as he ran, and finally he came to a high chamber where many men and women sat huddled silent and shivering in the darkness, naked and weeping. Without breathing he slew the orc that guarded them, and then cast his gaze about the room for - for…
A figure smaller than all the rest, that huddled in the corner yet did not weep, but instead stared with clear eyes through the dark, at him…and smiled.
For many lifetimes long after, the legends of the men of the north would say that Barazir of the Tall Men — the First-Ranger — did not know fear. He did not know fear even as he led some four hundred shaking souls to sunlight through the dark warrens of Gundabad and lost not a one. He did not know fear as he led them across the ice waste and the orcs fled before him and his mighty bow of steel, which was a killing thunder. He did not know fear when the Warg-hunters sounded on their trail but a week later, and he did not know fear when, by use of signals in the smoke, he called his Rangers to him and set an ambush for the orcs and their captain, an ambush which set a mark of terror on the hearts of the orcs of Gundabad so deep that it is said they shudder still and always to hear the sound of the thunder.
He knew fear only once, the storytellers said — only once, and then never again.
In the wake of his return, the story of Barazir's deeds in his year in the wild begins to spread like wildfire among the people of the colony. They quickly become part of the founding mythology of the city, the first of the great legends of the Men of Tar Nilon. In after times, long after these days and years were memory and myth, one particular thing in the city would stand as a living reminder of these first days, and of Barazir the First-Ranger who knew no fear:
[] Hundrehtar, the Killing Thunder: The great steel bow of Barazir, nearly the full height of a mortal man, passed down through the long years as an heirloom. Due to his slim stature, it is actually slightly smaller than the average Númenórean bow, a fact which only adds to the legend. According to tradition, it is only ever borne by the greatest of the city's hunters. When the sound of it's firing echoes crashing in the hills, it is said to make the orcs wail, for they call it Rattler, and remember well it's cracking in the halls of Gundabad. The elves of far Rivendell call it in their tongue the Hundrehtar, the Killing-Thunder, and it became in later days among the most storied of the weapons of the north, so that whoever bore it might find respect wherever he went in all the wild lands between the mountains and the sea. [] The Gate of Barazir: In after times, the gate through which the Great Northern Expedition embarked became known in legend as the Gate of Barazir. All warriors and expeditions venturing northwards forever after would pledge their mission and it's success to the first First-Ranger, and it became a popular belief in the city that all adventures and travels so sworn were more assured of success and glory. Under Imrazor's instruction, the Shapers later wrote many great words of power into the stone, and so the men of later times held also that the city might fall before the gate did. [] The Hunting-Oak: Long years later, when Barazir of the tall men had gone to his final rest, he was lain outside the city on a hill that was known ever after as Amon Faroth, the Hill of the Hunter. On the night of his dying, a wind arose in the forests around the city, and men were said to hear a great moaning on the wind. In the morning, when they woke, they found a sapling atop the hill, growing from the spot where the heroes' tomb lay. It grew with time into a tree, sturdy and tall and fair to look upon, which dominated the hill on which it stood, and men called it the Hunting-Oak. Many were the stories that sprang up of that noble tree, which wove ever after in and out of the legends of Tar Nilon, and became as beloved in the hearts of the men of that land as the White Tree in the Blessed Isle. The Middle-Men came from many long leagues away to honor that great oak, for they told among themselves that it sheltered any who touched it from misfortune or ill deeds. And always in the north-lands thereafter, Númenorean warriors on journeys of great import would spend a night asleep beneath it's branches, in the hope that the trees might whisper to them as they had once to him, and they would dream of becoming stories themselves. (Only becomes active on Barazir's death)
[] The Men of Sunlight: A great many of the Middle-Men that Barazir rescued followed him back down across the Gwathlo. The Lossoth were they, men of the ice-plains of the utter north, whose lands were put to much suffering by the Orc-hordes. They were hardy folk, born amid the cold and snow, and while some returned to their wasteland homes, many went with the First-Ranger back to the City Under The Stars, joined as they went by men of Minhiriath who heard their story as they passed. They settled there, and grew prosperous and strong and fair of arm, and if they did not match the race of Númenor in height or strength, they equaled and outmatched them many times over the long centuries in bravery and daring. They said of themselves in later years that they were the Glewellhoth, the Men-of-Sunlight, who had come behind Barazir out of the twilight and the darkness. Their chieftains were noble men with dark hair and clever eyes, who shot arrows unerring and could walk guideless in the north, who hated always in their hearts the black tower on the Gwathlo, and who could trace their ancestry with long and stubborn pride over the many Ages back to a small figure who once sat and scratched words in the wild. [] Nothing: Though he was beloved in his time, in the years after his passing, men let the stories of Barazir First-Ranger slip from legend to story to the stuff of wives' tales. Nothing survived down through the long ages to remind the descendants of the first colonists of that cold year long ago when a killing thunder sounded in the deep halls of Gundabad, not bow or gate or tree or folk -- and so their hearts turned instead to other tales...(Barazir is forgotten, but the next Legend received is twice as strong)
The colony's second year begins with an ill omen. Just days after the great expedition departs, a young man working on construction is caught in the collapse of a building. Though he is pulled breathing from the wreckage, his legs are smashed and his ribs a ruin. He lives only a day longer.
A foul mood settles over the city, a pallor of fear and anxiety and something blacker yet.
Death has come to Tar Nilon.
Death. The word runs coursing through the streets. It is hissed in the shadows and spat in the night. Death. It is not right, many whisper, that the dead man should be lain into the earth as a beast or a mortal. He was a Númenórean, one of the High Men of far Elenna-norë, and death is but a burden cast unwillingly at his feet, a passing sleep from which he must awake when mortality is overcome at last. He cannot be left to rot, to be eaten by time and worms as lesser men are.
And if he is, the unspoken words follow, then what of me? What of we?
The people are afraid. Terrified, even if they will not speak it aloud. The tall men have conquered all the shores of the sea and the secrets of the world, yet one thing alone they have not overmastered, and one thing alone they fear, a hunter slow and certain, whom the fathers of their forefathers feared in the dark of the world long ago.
You smile and console them, but a black shudder runs down your spine when you are alone, and the long years shrink away before you, and something wordless seizes your heart and closes your throat.
The Doom of Men walks the streets of your city.
The first death in the colony has occurred. Above all desires of the colony now rises one concern to master all others: We refuse. We are the Tall Men of the Gift. We shall not, will not, cannot go into the dark. You must make a promise to allay your people's terror:
(Pick at least one. The more you pick, the greater your chances of reducing the terror that has seized the city.)
[] Life, Unending: You promise your people that you will see to the immediate construction of a House of Life within city's walls, and send to far Númenor for one of the great scholar-surgeon-priests of that revered school. The masters of the House of Life may mend the broken and the bleeding, may banish rot and prolong old age. Such is their skill that of old, before her population grew too great, long years passed on the Blessed Isle without a single dying. They are high and noble, and they have one purpose alone, at which they have never succeeded in twenty hundred years. With them comes the athelas: the fabled leaf of kings which grew wild in old Beleriand in Elder Days, the healing plant that cures all wounds and banishes illness. It is among the most prized of the possessions of the King of the Númenóreans, which he tallies and tracks and measures with jealousy, loving greatly all those who foster it in their lands. (All other construction in the city is stopped.)
[] Death, Overmastered: You promise to your people that you shall have a space cleared in a spot in the colony where nothing shall be permitted to grow. The earth will be salted and treated with the nineteen oils of the ancient ritual, so as to banish the worms and the eaters-of-flesh. There on the dead earth you will raise a black hall of black stone, cold and high, where the dead of Tar Nilon may lie forever, incorrupt in the darkness until death is overcome. A black ship may come from Númenor in the months after, though you will not call it. On the ship will be many tall men in black robes, and they will have no names, and some will have no eyes or tongues, and the House of Death shall come to Tar Nilon. (All other construction in the city is stopped.)
[] Fear, Overcome: You promise that you shall see to the raising of a great dome upon the city's highest point. It will face westward, across the sea, and it's great ceiling shall open to the sky. A quenchless flame shall be be set at it's center, and you will set it with the old magic to burn in rain or snow or blackest night. Words will be written on the floor of that building that are written atop the peak of the Meneltarma in distant Númenor, and bloodless offerings will be left for eagles as they were left in older days on the Blessed Isle. In the days after you say these things, Venus is said to rise brighter than ever before. (All other construction in the city is stopped.)
[] Doom, Unerring: You tell them nothing to allay their fears or still their hearts. All men must die, and the tall men also. This is not Númenor, and your people will not cower in the dark from that inevitability which the men of twilight go laughing and singing to face. The words are wise, and strong, and they are ash in your own mouth. (Incompatible with other options)
Some months into the year, you send many surveyors and explorers out into the fenceless lands of the Enedwaith, to ferry out the many things which this land holds. They wander out across the plains of the great wilderness, mapping landmarks and noting long-forgotten paths. For many long years these lands have been unwalked by Númenoreans, and even in the time of the Elf-Lords of Eregion the region was shrouded in mystery.
Your people begin to cut that mystery away as time goes by. They mark the tributaries of the Isen, and where they run down from the mountains. They find in the east a ring of old black towers silent in the wind, high and dark upon the plains. A consultation of the old history books shows that these watch-towers must have marked the easternmost of those ancient fortifications raised during the War of the Elves and Sauron long ago. The positions they were meant to hold have long ago fallen to time, but the towers stand still, lonely in the wild. Your men take to calling them the BeraidRhaw, the Wilderguard, and there is idle talk that they might be manned should foes ever threaten all the north-lands. Many of your men note strange words carved in curving elvish script about the stones of the towers, and wonder at their meaning.
Exploration Option Unlocked:
The Wilderguard: Out in the fenceless wilds of Enedwaith stand ancient towers of the Elves scratched with words of power. Eregion is gone and the Ringmakers are memory, but something of them remains.
Ancient ruins are not all that mark this land. Your explorers find as they travel many small communities of strange men dotting the wilderland. They are small villages, the largest a few dozens in number, where men live in tents and huts of animal skin and straw. They shake to see the tall men come, and more than a few flee rather than speak to your scouts. Only one community your explorers find in their ranging does not shrink from the sight of them: a community of long-limbed, sallow folk with little hair and hard eyes, who live in the swamplands along the shore between the Isen and the Gwathló. They are wary of your people, but allow your scouts among them for a time. They report that these men of the swamp have sharp spears and walk silent through the marsh, hunting the creatures that live in the dark water. They keep always to the coolness of the swamp and the safety of the wood, seeming to hate the open plain. When they speak, it is in a growling and rambling tongue that your scouts can only barely understand — but understand it they do, and so they bear back word that the Men of the swamps of Enedwaith, the Fisherfolk, are kindred of the Edain and so also of the High Men. They are liminal and mortal and passing frail, but they are your cousins still, these death-doomed Men-of-the-Twilight.
You have discovered The Fisherfolk!
But your explorers find also fear, and foes. While riding in the dun and hilly lands far to the north-east of the River Isen, a scout is wounded through the leg by an arrow shot out of the dark. It is only by the swift intervention of his compatriots that he is saved from certain death. He is the first attacked so, but not the last. A pattern emerges: whenever your explorers stray too far northeast, they are attacked. Traps lie in wait to crack horse's legs, arrows soar from hidden heights, and spears are flung from the shadows. Sometimes, dark shapes are seen moving on the hilltops, small men with dark hair and cold eyes. They are unkempt and unshaven, but their aim, your scouts may attest, is true. One afternoon late in summer, your scouts return to their camp and find a chilling sight: a golden suit of Númenórean armor, stuffed and strung from a tree, twisting in the wind. The sun-and-tree upon the chest are flecked with dried blood. Your scouts avoid that land the best they can in their future rangings, and from that time onwards that region on their maps is painted with a warning: Here be also the Men of Darkness.
You have discovered The Hillmen!
As your scouts begin to trickle back in, you asses their discoveries and mappings. You do not feel you have uncovered all there is to be found in the wild-lands of your new dominion, but you have made an appreciable start.
Soon afterwards, the first part of the expedition to the north returns: the travelers who split at Tharbad and sailed up the Gwathlo towards Rivendell. They came after perhaps a week upon the river to a place where golden falls crashed into foam, where the forests opened into a silent valley, and where a lonely mansion stood high and bright above the wilderness. The sky was clear and bright, and the water ran bright and clear as it must have run when the world was young, and yet fairest of all, the travelers said, was the air. It was fresh and clean and tasted as if it had never before been breathed by any living thing. When the wind blew it was a summer wind always, and the wilderness did not seem so wild, or so lonely, or so cold.
The elves met them there in song, and laughing took them over the bridge to Rivendell, and up into the great mansion to meet the master of the home, and they came so into the presence of the Lord of Rivendell.
Tall he was, as tall as any among the tall men, and broad his shoulders and fair his eyes, and many in the company gasped and shook to see him, for his face was the very same which was stamped on their coins and which glowered from the statues of far Armenelos. It seemed the whole ruling house of Númenor stared at them from behind those eyes, and more than a few of their company knelt as one might before a Prince of the Star — and that handful of them who had seen the face of the King of Númenor did more still, and flung themselves to the earth as if they were in the presence of one royal. About his neck there sat a jeweled ring on a chain, and it burned like a cold blue star upon his breast.
So came Elrond. He greeted them as cousins and friends and bid them to rise, for none of his brother's people need kneel to him in his own house, for was it not their house also? He spoke with them each a little then, learning their names, and then talked with all of them together for a long period. He listened to where they were from, and why they had come, speaking little but nodding and smiling every now and then. His face grew grave when they spoke of Gundabad, and sorrow bent his features at mention of Tharbad.
He spoke with them a time longer, and then when the heavy business was done, invited them to stay a time in the Last Homely House. Only a few weeks they must have spent there, but they swore after that it felt like long months, that time lost meaning and the days came slow, so that they knew after not how long they tarried in Imladris, save that those were days of bliss.
A message has been sent with them down the river from the lips of Elrond. He welcomes you and your lordship of Enedwaith, and bids you glad greetings, and invites you to visit him in Imladris should time permit. There is old history in these lands, he says, and old wounds too, which might be mended by wise hands. Many in Imladris frown now to see the Númenóreans, and say aloud that they have lost their way in their fear of death, but Elrond was and is the Half-Elven. His ancestor Luthien was the only elf to ever die a mortal death, and his brother Elros went to the long rest of men long ago. A mortal blood runs in his immortal veins. If any among the Eldar understand the fear of death, it is he. And so, he writes…
He writes…
Death is not what consumes you.
That is it. Those words, in Elrond's own hand, are where the letter ends. You feel an uncertain chill when you read them, and it is not for the early frost winds that have begun to blow down from the mountain. Elrond must have written this letter weeks ago, with no knowledge or inkling of all that took place after the expedition's departure, and yet his words strike to the heart of a matter which has occupied your mind since the unfortunate man's death.
That night, you stand on one of the walls of the city and gaze westward over the great sea while the stars wheel overhead. You stand, and you think on the Halfelven's words, and you wonder long at their meaning.
On the eve of winter, you send two messengers riding out across the land. One rides north, to the black tower on the ford, and another makes east, for the town in the high hill. Both the chieftain of Brun Gledd and the Master of Tharbad are summoned to Tar Nilon, to break words with each other under your protection and with guarantee of safety.
The Middle-Men send back an envoy within the week. They will attend this meeting, they promise, their chieftain and the great elders all together.
The Númenóreans of the tower send no word back, but on the day before the meeting is to take place, a troop of tall men in golden armor emerges from the northern forests. At their head is Hazraban, wearing the robes and regalia of a Warden of the King, his youthful face set firm under a heavy iron crown.
Lacking any suitable facilities in the city itself, a meeting-place is chosen upon a hill outside the city. There the High Men and the Middle-Men meet, their breaths frosting in the first chill. Hazraban's eyes are dark and bright, and his armor shines with a cruel beauty in the morning sun. Braelor, for his part, is far different from when you saw him last: a dozen golden torcs sit about his neck, and the furs he wears are richly oiled. His beard is woven into an intricate pattern, and a sword — of Númenórean make, you notice — hangs from his hip. Behind him are a dozen or so men bent with age, some clutching walking sticks and others outright immobile, carried on litters by their sons.
"The Drugenti-Lûth are come before you," Braelor declares, his voice solid as an oak. He has to arch his neck to look either of you in the face, but there is nothing broken in his eyes, or anything indeed left of the man who but a year ago all but flung himself at your feet and begged for protection. "Why have you called us here? What would the great and puissant High Men of the Sea ask of the men of the twilight?"
Hazraban breaks in before you may reply. "Ask? Nothing. It is ye who should plead forgiveness. How many harvests have you burned, and sons murdered? It is orc-work you do, plain and simple, and if I knew you not for kin and kind, I would think you beasts of the Wizard."
Braelor does not speak, and merely motions with a hand. Behind him, one of the elders sits up on his litter. His old voice is like the creaking of soft bark, and all present must strain to pick out his words against the wind. "Our lives are not as long as your own, my lord, but our memories stretch back far enough to remember when we were not of these lands. The wise-men say that we dwelt once and long ago in the shadow of the Blue Mountains, on the shores of the great sea. But south we have retreated, ever south, over river and hill, and now the shores are lost to us, and even the mountains are a memory."
The elder slumps back, drained from the effort of his speech, and Braelor picks up where he left off. "I ask you, what forgiveness should we ask of the High Men, or of the Tyrant in his far tower?"
Hazraban sneers. "You pass down half-remembered tales in the dirt, and scorn that of which you know less and little. You would have nothing, in the north or the south or the lands between, were it not for we. Have you forgotten so easily the shadow of the Enemy?"
"But the Enemy is gone a thousand years," you break in. "And none of their woes may now be laid upon Zigûrun."
Hazraban looks at you, his face stretched with anger and confusion. "And why? Because of us! Our hand has sheltered them from the dark for thirty lifetimes. My lord Imrazor, I beg you, see their petulance for what it is: the complaints of children, unable or unwilling to understand--"
"Hold," you interrupt him. "The both of you. And listen."
You beckon behind you, and a guard brings a small table and a map, which he unrolls upon the table's surface. Many dark black points dot the map.
"Here. And here. And here again." Each time you speak, you point at one of the black dots. "Here, and here also. Each of these places, orcs bearing the brand of Gundabad have been seen abroad in the wilderness. There is a darkness gathering in the north such as these lands have not seen for many lifetimes of men — Tall or otherwise."
Neither Braelor nor the Warden speak. It seems you have their attention. You forge on.
"This is why I have called you here. A blade hangs over all our heads. The time for strife between our kindreds must be at an end."
Hazraban sours. "You cannot -"
"Silence, son of Algadar, and listen. A power comes over these lands the likes of which you cannot resist alone — which none of us might resist alone, absent allies. If the signs I have seen are correct, only the cooperation of all men between the mountains and the sea might be enough to deter what now rises in the north."
Braelor looks at the map, running a hand over it, then up at you. "What do you propose?"
"An alliance. A great alliance of the men of the north, by which the enemy that marshals in Gundabad may be undone."
"What need have we of alliances with these men?" Hazraban thundered. "If the orcs come, we shall deal with them as we have dealt with them before —"
"You are not your father, Lord Warden. Nor his father before him. Your walls are rubbled, and your numbers dwindled. You have strength enough to terrorize the Middle-Men, but how do you believe your garrison might fare against an army? Have any among your guard ever seen a troll? Or a dragon? Dare you even imagine what fell beasts lie within the Wizard's power?"
Hazraban swallows.
Braelor fills the silence. "What would you have of us, then?"
"All the north," you begin "was manned by forts long ago." You indicate a string of points along the Gwathlo. "These fortifications were made by elves and men alike in days gone by to defy a greater power yet than we now face. Tharbad alone remains. If any proper defense is to be made, this old guard must be restored.
Hazraban's eyes flicker to the map, interested.
"Númenórean forts," he said. "And Númenor's by right."
You nod slowly. "But there is no longer enough of Númenor left to hold them, not in all the north, and not enough grain in all of Tharbad to feed them if you could fill them."
His eyes widen as he grasps your meaning. "You cannot mean…"
"But I do! We of Tar Nilon shall put the work and knowledge of the Shapers to repairing not only the walls of Tharbad, but all the bastion-line in which she once stood. The fort shall be repaired and stand as it was in your father's time, and the Middle-Men shall man her sister-forts along the river. From East to West the river-wall shall stretch, and Gundabad will find the river held as it was held in the days of Tar-Minastir."
"But for all this…" you continue, "there must be peace, and concessions."
Hazraban scowled. "You do not imagine allowing these little men into the halls of our fathers to be concession enough?"
"I do not. You must stay your hand immediately. No more raids. No more retribution. No more thralls or vassals."
"You would have me give up all that we have built?"
"To save all else, yes."
You turn to Braelor. "And from you, I ask something more difficult yet. You and yours must now give freely what has been taken. Your herds and fields must feed the towers and their garrisons, or this defense of which we dream shall starve. In return, you will meet with us as an equal, in council to decide the defense and doings in the North."
Braelor knuckles his beard stubbornly. "It is your dream, Númenorean, and no dream of ours."
"Stubbornness will not avail you when the orcs come. Whatever terrors you begrudge the tower and it's master, worse terrors yet shall sweep out of the north in due time."
"All that aside, what you ask is not so easily done. My father was the Lûth-i-Lûth, king of all the northmen, and could have commanded such a thing with ease — but he fell at the walls of Tharbad long ago. The clans heed the call of Brun Gledd no longer. If they do not swear themselves to the Tower, then they have retreated into the mountains or the hills, and given themselves over to the gods who were before the sun."
Hazraban snarls. "Savagery and blasphemy. There are no gods save The One. Your wood-spirits will not avail you."
Braelor does not blink. "They are not of the wood. Spirits. Gods. Call them what you will. I hold Illuvatar as you do, and yet the fact remains. They were here before the sun, and before you."
Again you steer the topic back to the matter at hand. "Would these clans answer the call to defend against Gundabad?"
Braelor laughs, high and clear. "No. Perhaps my own people might, if I was of mind to beseech them, but the Carag-Lûth and the Draig-Lûth might go to their deaths before they bent to Númenor. Only the Lûth-i-Lûth, the High King, might call them to arms — and I am afraid there are no kings among the Gwaithurim any longer." Braelor casts an isolent look upwards. "The tall sea has taken them, and the long tide."
You knot your brow, intrigued. "And you cannot name yourself High King?"
The chieftain laughed again. "Are things so simple in far Númenor? It is not a thing of naming yourself. The Lûth-i-Lûth is raised by all the clans, as one, amid the barrows of his fathers. He stands high on the naming-stone and the dead who have gone name him true — or strike him low for the trying."
Hazraban has almost stopped listening. "Heathenry. My Lord Shaper, you cannot indulge this…witch-talk. The wildmen shake in fear of ravens and omens in the night."
Braelor's hand twitches on his sword, but he speaks still not to Hazraban, but to you.
"There you have it. If you want the northmen, you must have their king. But the crown of the Kings is lost, and while I have heard tell that the Barrow-Men keep the old places still, none of us who dwell below the Gwathlo have been permitted to venture over the river since my father's time."
Hazraban laughs. "The sheer gall. You are given everything you have ever wanted on a plate — treated as equals — and you demand we make you a king instead. Yours are a miserable people, and you would make a miserable king."
He turns to you.
"Do you see now, Sea-Lord? I tried to warn you. They are a grasping, shameless lot. They see the glory of Númenor and can only pretend at it. Kings. What kings could there be out here, in the wilderness?"
An old woman behind Braelor rises to her full height. Her eyes are stars of scorn. "Higher kings, my lord, and greater, than are thought of across the sea. Better kings than thine, that were conquered or ever your sires were born."
Hazraban scoffs. "It is folly to treat with them. I was inclined once as you are, to a high hand and open arms — but they are a viperous race, these men of Brunn Gledd, and their poison drips deep into the ears of all their kindred. Your plan is bold, and at the hearing of it I was first unsettled, but there is a wisdom in it, my lord. Many of these clans of which they speak are tributaries already to me. I could relinquish them, as you say, and —"
"They will not fight for you," Braelor breaks in. "For him, perhaps, but never for you."
A dry chuckle rings in response. "Is that so? My lord Imrazor, my offer remains open — and I add to it. Repair my walls and I shall relinquish those Middle-Men I have bound in tribute from their duties, should they agree to join this great alliance of yours. We shall restore Tharbad to her glory and fence the North against the Enemy. Leave this little king and his people to their own devices, but I warn thee — do not hope for word or sign of thanks when our blood and our steel shelters them yet again from the Shadow."
Hazraban bows to you and turns to leave, but a sharp call from Braelor stops him.
"Lord of the Tower. I have a sign of thanks for you."
The tall figure pauses, golden armor dancing with light in the sun. He looks down at the smaller.
"Yes?"
Braelor's mouth works a long moment. He says nothing.
Finally, he leans over and spits at Hazraban's feet.
"We are no children, Tyrant."
Braelor turns and walks down the hill. He does not look back.
Hazraban's eyes grow a sickly color. You think he is about to go for his sword, but instead he raises a gleaming fist into the air and calls after the retreating delegation, his voice booming in the winter air. You will remember for long afterwards that tableau: a golden figure, eyes twisted in rage, shouting down a hill at a small one, retreating into the gloom.
"And yet child you are, fool! You live and you breathe and you die and it is the blink of an eye! By the time my son is a man grown, the sons of your sons will be breathing their last! You will wither and fade and go into the earth, and we will live on after you! You are a passing wind, a folly and a suffering, agannâlu lo dubdam*!"
As the winter cold sets in for true Barazir the First-Ranger returns from the north, and legend follows after him. He has walked alone (or near) alone in the north-lands, and the deeds he has done and the things he has seen will live in legend after he is gone. He and his men bring back a swath of reports on the peoples and places of the north. Barazir identifies three major groups he himself encountered in his travels: a kindred of superstitious men who dwelt around a great blue lake, a clan of grave and sullen men in a hill-town called Braen, who call themselves the Barrow-Men, and a rich folk near Rivendell, who trade long and often with the Dwarves. Many of his men still remain out in the wild, searching for signs of Gundabad's influence, though he assures you they will return within the year.
You have discovered the Men of the Great Lake!
You have discovered the Barrow-Men of Braen!
You have discovered the Dwarf-friends!
You pace around the planning table, tapping a detailed sketch of a building with your forefinger.
"These struts," you say, "they should be reinforced. If the river floods the primary beams may not be enough."
A self-assured snort rings through the room.
"Of course, my lord." Uriphel glides from the end of the table to your side, shuffles some papers out of the way, and unrolls a scroll in front of you. Her name signs the bottom. "Reinforced like this, perhaps?"
You cannot hold back a grin. "Precisely like that, Lady Shaper. Good work."
She nods with false humility. "Your deep insights are ever appreciated, Lord Imrazôr."
You are in the cramped wooden building which has served your Shapers this past year as an impromptu Shaping Hall. Uriphel has scattered the tables with many sheets, plans, and schematics. Books and scrolls take up what little empty space is left. Around the room, Shapers and apprentice Shapers measure distances, sketch diagrams, and fiddle with tools. Your city is being built here, piece by piece and bit by bit.
At the center of it all, the Lady Shaper herself stalks the room like a great predator. Her crimson hair is done up in a great jeweled bun which resembles nothing so much as a tongue of flame bound above her head. It is a style that was popular in her youth, and you know she has not cared enough to update it since. Every now and then she stops to peer darkly over the shoulder of some apprentice or junior, and though not a word escapes those cold lips, the unfortunate student invariably begins to tremble.
Uriphel is at the moment occupied with the planning and construction of the Shaping Hall and the new shipyard, which have consumed her free time for the past year and will likely keep her occupied for some time to come. Yet you value her advice and her sharp eye, and so you have made your way here many times in the last year to take her counsel.
"So the boy has agreed?" She does not look up as she calls this out.
You stroke your beard. "No. Not yet. He demands his walls repaired."
Uriphel snarls, and a terrified apprentice jumps. "That old ruin is not worth the stone it will take to make it defensible again. Give me two years and all the Iron in the holds, and I will give you greater walls than are seen or known in Middle-Earth."
"Of that I have no doubt, my lady, but we must make allies here in the north."
She is silent for a moment, and when you are about to ask if she has heard you, her voice rings sharp in the room.
"The Dwarves. There is a strength in them."
"The Mountain does not take friends easily," you remind her.
"And well they do not. This stripling in Tharbad thinks he may make demands of a Sea-Lord. It is not right. At least the Middle-Man knew his place, and came alone upon his knees to beg your protection."
"Uriphel," you start, "we are not their masters-"
"Yes, yes," she snaps. "But they recognized you, can we not agree on that? They showed respect. This Warden has a measure of fear, but no respect. Teach him both. Steal the middle-men from under him, and make ties with the dwarves, and only then approach the fool again — from strength. It is the only language soldiers understand, and this halfbreed believes himself a soldier."
"And Gundabad?"
"I have been speaking with our First-Ranger on that subject. Quiet, that one, but there is a dark intelligence behind that crass face of his."
You do not, you remark to yourself, wonder often why Uriphel had so few friends in the Houses of Learning.
"He has told me what he remembers of Gundabad, and of those tunnels, and the formations of the orcs. Now, I did not study long in the House of War, but I believe that there may be things which we may construct to better defend our city from this threat. We cannot place all our trust in rotting Tharbad or the wildmen."
You nod. "I agree."
Uriphel smiles. It reminds you of knives glinting in the hands of hunters. "Good. I will need a sizable amount of diagrams from Númenor. A small quantity of Númenorean Iron. Some rakhū, but only a very small amount — fourteen or sixteen barrels worth. About a hundred good hands, as can be spared for ten or twelve months. And, of course, as much stone as you can supply."
As the year draws to a close, you look back over what has occurred. Work on both the shipyard and the shaping hall has begun in earnest, while your scouts have ranged far and wide across lands north and east, unveiling a rash of neighbors, potential allies, and seeming foes. You have broken word with the elves and set the building blocks of something which may unite all the North if you can only find a path to making it work.
Report from the fields says that the harvest was tighter than expected, and the winter may be a tight one. Your Shapers bear words of angry rumbling from many of the King's Men among your people — they dislike the affront you have shown the King by placing two of his representatives as equal to a lord of the Middle-Men. You will need to keep an eye on them in coming times.
As you think on things past and things yet to come, you wonder on Inzilbeth, and on the Pillar of Heaven, and what news the great ship and it's captain shall bring from distant lands.
Pick Eight (8) options. You may personally assign yourself or Barazîr 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.
The Speakers inform you that the issues which concern the people most are dealing with the tight harvest through trade, learning more of the Middle-Men of the North, and dealing with the growing fear of death. In a general sense, they seem eager to grow and expand into new industries, and any actions taken to that end will please them.
Many of your speakers also have suggestions for what actions you may take, should you choose to hear them out. (WRITE-IN VOTES OPEN)
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.
[] Begin Construction on the Harbor: Begin using your stores of Númenórean Iron to build a great harbor that will stand as a wonder of the continent. (Requires Shaper Hero, will take 10 turns/six years, whichever comes first)
[] Establish Pastures: Grain is well and good, but some among your smallholders have been aching to purchase sheep and goats in large numbers from the Middle-Men, that they might establish their own herds. Stake out plots of land where they may graze. (will reduce possible construction projects by one) A decent population of your people support doing this -- 3 Speakers are behind it.
[] The Wide Woods: The woods that ring the mouth of the Isen have already been pushed back in order to accommodate your growing colony. Push them back further yet, and gain valuable wood for sale and land on which to settle. There is another steward. He watches with bright eyes. [] Encourage Immigration From Home: Now that you are more than a cluster of buildings by a riverside, you may write home to encourage immigration from the Blessed Isle proper. You will need decent amenities to encourage Island-born Númenóreans to come live in the city. [] Encourage Immigration From The Southern Colonies: Encourage warlike southerners to make their way from the southern colonies. To entice the loyalist Southerners, you will need to be in good favor with the King's Men. [] Encourage Immigration From The Eastern Colonies: You encourage the wise and well-read Faithful to make their way from the eastern colonies to dwell in your city. Your proximity to the Elf-realms makes this easier, but being known as an open Elf-Friend would help matters further. [] Encourage Immigration From The Middle-Men: Let it be known wide and far that the doors of your city are open to any of the Men of the West who wish to dwell therin. The Middle-Men are unlearned, wild, and hold no love for Númenór, but they may still come in droves. [-] ????: Unlock further immigration options through gameplay.
Defense: You are not alone in Middle-Earth, and Númenór the Blessed has many enemies. The defense of your fledgling colony is one of your foremost priorities.
[] Expand the Militia: Enlist more volunteers to the defense of the city, should you think it necessary. A noticable population of your people support doing this -- 2 Speakers are behind it.
[] The Artifice of War: You have seen war in far Harad, and know something of the engines of killing and destruction, of the mighty machines your people have loosed in the southern Jungles. Some of these principles might be applied to the defense of your fledgling colony. (Requires Imrazor)
[] The Lady Shaper's Design: Uriphel has devised something which you can only call incredible — or terrifying. Schematics litter the floor of the Shaping Quarters. You will need to send to Númenor for supplies. It may cost a pretty penny. You look over the diagrams, and something between amazement and fear settles on your shoulders. (Requires Uriphel, Requires Successful Shaper visit)
[] Requisition Weapons: You have few weapons or armaments at the moment, but you could request a stock of such from the Shapers...putting you more in their favor. [] The Eye in the Mountains: Deep inside the white mountains, servants of the Enemy wait and watch. Men, but free and fair no more. Their hearts are turned to cruel things, and their minds to wicked deeds. Drive them out. Drive them back. You do not know their number or their power, but what does it matter? You are Numenoreans, and they are not. They shall fall. A small section of your people support doing this -- 1 Speaker is behind it.
[] The Men of the Hills: The threat of the Hillmen cannot be tolerated. They have attacked your people on their own land, without threat of violence. They are Men of Darkness and servants of the Enemy, and must be hunted as all the men of shadow were hunted long ago. A small section of your people support doing this -- 1 Speaker is behind it.
[] Orcs: Orcs. From end to end they scour Middle-Earth, leaving filth and ruin and woe in their wake. They are in the north and the south and the west and the east, more virulent and violent than any beast of earth or sky. They are everywhere. And now, it seems, they are here. Send scouts to pick the land apart for them. And then, hunt. [] Scout Gundabad: Beyond the Misty Mountains lies a mountain the dwarves mourn in their hearts. Evil stirs there now. Send rangers once more to scout the Mountain, and see what wakes in the north. [] Defense Write-In: One of your Speakers has a suggestion...
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. With a harbor now built, you may send emissaries by ship, significantly reducing travel time. However, lacking supplies, they cannot travel far. One diplomatic option unlocked. All envoys you send to places you've already established first contact with should have a purpose for the visit specified.
[] The Blacklocks: You have struck up a certain rapport with Vâr (sixth of that name), chieftain of the Blacklock Dwarves. Her and her people, an odd clan of dwarves out of the deep east, make war on Khazad-Dum for an ancient wrong done to their forefather. Though somber and wary of strangers, she has not turned away the idea of Númenórean aid. Inzilbeth has reported that the Blacklocks have struggled to find a secure source of food in this corner of Middle-Earth, resorting to buying what they can from villages of Middle-Men they pass. Procuring them a surefire source of supplies would go a long way to winning their trust. (Requires 1 unit of Supplies)
[] The Doors of the Dwarves: As they have been for ten centuries, the Doors of Durin are sealed. None may enter the Dwarrowdelf. The westward gate of Khazad-Dum is shut. But it is guarded. You have made the acquaintance of that guard: Froin, Captain of the Gate, Lord of the Western Wall, who with his Gate-Guard holds back all foes of Durin's Folk. He denies entrance or words with the king to all who are not proven friends of the Dwarves. He has suggested you could begin to earn this friendship by filling the bellies of his Guard, or by some means easing the hardships of the men living in Eregion, of whom he has grown fond.
-[] Give Aid to the Gate-Guard (Requires 1 unit of Supplies)
-[] Give Aid to the Middle-Men (Requires 1 unit of Supplies) (There may be other ways to ease their hardships)
[] The Great Alliance: The Master of Tharbad has promised to participate in your grand diplomatic project should you agree to restore the walls of his tower. (Sends Shapers. All building projects delayed by one turn)
[] The High-King: The men of the north tell tales of a Lûth-i-Lûth who would gather all the clans under him — a High-King, in the Westron tongue. Many legends and tall tales surround this king-in-the-north, but from what you have heard, it is only such a one who could gather together all the disparate tribes, clans, and towns of the Middle-Men from the mountain to the sea. Such a host might dare stand against Gundabad. To raise a candidate for such a position, one would need to forge bonds with a majority of the Mannish clans of Enedwaith, and at least a few of those beyond the Gwathlo. A suitable candidate would need to be found, his or her capability proven, and then, at last, such a one might undertake the journey to the far north to be crowned in the ancient way of the Northmen — or die trying. (Requires hero)
[] A Council of the North: Repeating your earlier idea of a great alliance, you call together all the clans, tribes, and groups of men of which you are currently aware, and attempt to forge a league against Gundabad. Success will depend on your own skill, relation with the individual groups, and if you've managed to sway great swathes of them one way or another by a certain means. [] Send An Envoy to Brun Gledd: Several leagues north of the city lies Brun Gledd, a town built into and under six seperate hills. It was dug by the dwarves long ago, but it's first name is now long lost, and it is ruled by a clan of the Middle-Men known as the Drugenti-Lûth, and their aging lord Braelor. Send an envoy to break words with the Middle-Men. [] Send An Envoy to the Barrow-Men: Far to the north is a great valley where mighty barrows lie sleeping in the dark, monuments to ancient kings told of in no songs of Men or Elves. They are kept by a gaunt and sallow people — the Barrow-Men of Braen. [] Send An Envoy to the Hillmen: The Men of the hills of northern Enedwaith are clearly Men of Darkness, enemies of all folk good and fair and free — but that does not mean you cannot at the least attempt to break words with them. [] Send An Envoy to the Fisherfolk: In the swamps of Enedwaith dwell a wild and secretive people, a fisher-folk who live off the land and seek not the light of day. [] Send An Envoy to the Men of the Great Lake: In the north lands beyond the Gwathlo, there is a great and sparkling lake around which dwell a rustic and hardy people, who tell tales of an ancient evil that came upon their land in a time lost to memory. [] Send An Envoy to the Dwarf-Friends: There exists a tribe, or a confederation of tribes, who have grown wealthy trading food and supplies with the dwarves in the distant north. Send an envoy across the Gwathlo to meet with them. [] Send An Envoy To Lond Daer: Once the mighty harbor of Vinyalonde in days gone by, the port city now known as Lond Daer, sat on the mouth of the river Gwathlo, has declined since it's glory days. Tall men rule there now, with cold and hard eyes. [] The Men of the White Mountains: The wildmen who dwell amid the snow-capped peaks of the white mountains to the east are worshipers of the Dark Lord Sauron. They have given their hearts and minds to Mordor, and act as it's servants in all things. But they are not orcs or wolves, but men still, and they might be parlayed with, could you find them and break word with them. Númenór, in her glory, has turned many who toiled in shadow from the whip of their master -- but it may be no easy task. Still, you send an envoy to break words with them. [] Send An Envoy To Rivendell: Imladris, or Rivendell, is an elvish stronghold deep in the heartlands of Eriador. Founded and ruled by the Elf-Lord Elrond Halfelven, it serves as a bastion of wisdom and learning in these later days of the world, projecting Elvish might into all eastern Eriador. The elves of Rivendell are force to be reckoned with, and are great traders and loremasters besides. [] Send An Envoy To Lindon: Far to the north, beyond the Blue Mountains, lies the Elvish realm of Lindon, the mightiest realm between the mountains and the sea. Here rules undying Gil-Galad, the High King of whom the songs are sung and the greatest of all the elven-lords of Middle-Earth. Though their might has dwindled much since they warred with Sauron, the northern Elves are still great in strength and skill, a fading echo of the glory of Elder Days. [] Send an Envoy to Dor-en-Ernil: The sister-settlements of Dor-en-Ernil and Edhellond lie far to the southeast in the Bay of Belfalas beyond the Anduin. Populated by both men and elves, the greatest power in these lands are the Lord and Lady of Edhellond, the Elf-prince Celeborn and his wife, the Lady Galadriel. [] Send An Envoy to Pelargir: Far to the southeast lies Pelargir, silver city of the ships. A dwelling of the Faithful, it is among the greatest of all Numenor's colonies. Send a ship here and seek fair words with the city of the swan. (Takes two turns) You may also do this through an expedition.
[] Ironbark: In the deeps of the Iron Forest dwells an ent, an old thing with old eyes. He is no foe, not yet. But he is no friend of men, you do not think. Not anymore. Break words with him, and see if the strength of oak and yew might be bent in friendship. (requires hero)
[] Diplomatic Write-In: One of your Speakers has a suggestion... [] Trade Write-In: You have surplus stone and iron alike, and can trade for both of these. Trading by boat is faster and more efficient, unless your trading partner is nearby. Specify what you want to trade, with whom, and for what.
Exploration:These are vast lands, and wild. Venture into them, and discover things long forgotten. You may 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.
[] Explore Enedwaith: There is still much in the lands around your city that you do not know. Send searchers to find valuable natural resources or ancient treasures, and map your new home further. Some of your people support doing this -- 1 Speakers are behind it.
[] Explore Eriador: You have only begun to meet some of the men of the lands beyond the Gwathlo, and who knows what treasures await in the lands beyond Tharbad? [] Fulfill Guild Map Contracts: The Guild of Venturers has a permanent contract for any new maps of inland Middle-Earth, for which they pay lump sums to colonies and individuals who fulfill it. You currently have 1 map for sale, and could reach out to sell it, earning money and reputation with the Venturers. [] The Misty Mountains: The Misty Mountains which straddle the spine of Eriador are some of the tallest mountains in Middle-Earth. From the great outposts of the dwarves to the deep caves of the goblin-kings, there are many secrets to be found amid the snowy peaks. You send men into the high mountains to explore and map them further. [] The Land of the Ringmakers: Eregion, to your north, was once one of the great Elvish realms until it's destruction by the Dark Lord in the War of the Elves and Sauron long ago. Here dwelt the elf-smiths whom the Enemy tricked into creating the Rings of Power, and amid the ruins of their halls and cities lie ancient artifacts from the glory days of the Elves. You send explorers and riders into this land to map it further. [] The Wilderguard: Out in the fenceless wilds of Enedwaith stand ancient towers of the Elves scratched with words of power. Eregion is gone and the Ringmakers are memory, but something of them remains. [] Nargil-Dûm: A manse in the wilderness, built by the elves in better days for their friend Thain, a son of Durin III and a prince of the Dwarves of Khazad-Dum. Overgrown and dilapidated, it stands still imposing in the wild, a memory of a finer time. The dwarf-hall's doors were sealed, and, as far as your explorers can tell, have not been opened in a thousand years. (Hero Required)
[] Nelchrost: An outpost nestled in the spine of the Misty Mountains, Nelchrost was a great dwelling of the dwarves in the days before the making of the Ring. When war came to Eregion, it became a formidable redoubt against the power of the Shadow, from which the Dwarves and their friends struck against the Dark Lord. The fortress lies empty, but who knows what remains in the tunnels the dwarves delved below? (Hero Required)
[] Exploration Write-In: One of your Speakers has a suggestion...
Opportunity:There are a variety of miscellaneous opportunities available to you which could benefit either yourself or the colony.
[] Pay A Visit To Rivendell: You yourself have personally been invited to Rivendell by the great Elf-Lord, Elrond Halfelven. Paying him a visit may strengthen your relationship with the elves. [] Contact the Striders: Your scouts and repurposed mariners serve well enough, but opening a contract with one of the mercenary forces scattering Middle-Earth would both allow you access to professional explorers and a dedicated force of trained soldiers. [] Appease the Venturers: Currently, no Guild-licensed traders or explorers are permitted to visit your growing colony, stifling trade and travel from the mainland. If you have enough money, reputation, or believe you can make a go of it, appeal to the Venturers. If you offer enough coin, or your colony has grown too large for them to feasibly strangle it in it's cradle, they may pay you heed and stop their embargo. [] (Special) Reach Out To The King: Send an envoy to the king, informing him of the tribute taken by the soldiers of Tharbad and their failure to pay it forward. [] Research the Middle-Men: It dawns on you that migration and exile have forced many of the men of twilight from their natural lands. Those with whom you now parlay are neighbors with men who may be all but strangers to them. Middle-Men you call them all, but you imagine they must have names for themselves in their own speech.
Seafaring: At last, your colony is stable enough that your people might take to the seas once more. Sail the wide world, as your fathers did in years of yore.
Your people are the Numenoreans, the finest mariners who have ever lived, and no matter their leaning or beliefs, all of them, to a woman, love in their hearts the wave upon the shore. You can greatly increase morale and happiness by launching expeditions and building ships, or taking naval actions. (Warning: You have no ships and no supplies)
Ship:
-You have no available ships. -Captain: --[] Inzilbeth Seastrider
--[] Recruit A Captain Crew:
--[] Gather a Volunteer Crew: Fifty seamen will be roused from your harbors.
--[] Draft a Crew: Recruit fifty seamen from among your militia. --[] (Special) (Requires Inzilbeth) Reunite the Crew of the Pillar: Inzilbeth's old crew have been sailing the rivers and serving as an impromptu city guard. Have them trade the sword for the seaspray. (Temporarily disbands the Seastriders) Route:
-[] The Three Jewels: This route travels to the elvish harbors of Forlond, Harlond, and Mithlond, the 'Three Jewels' of the elvish realm of Lindon. (Costs 1 supplies)
-[] The Princes' Triangle: This route charts between the cities of Pelargir, Umbar, and Adûnayar -- the City of Ships, the City of Swords, and the City of Jewels. (Costs 1 supplies)
-[] The Mariner's Route: This path travels from Lond Daer to Romenna on the Blessed Isle, and finishes at Pelargir. (Costs 1 supplies)
-[] The King's Way: This route charts from Umbar to Adûnayar and finally to Sûzâyan, the great southern cities of the Kings' Men. (Costs 1 supplies)
-[] The Elf-Friend's Path: This route travels from Pelargir to Edhellond and lastly to the Grey Havens of Mithlond in the north -- the traditional 'pilgrimage' of a Numenorean Elf-Friend. (Costs 1 supplies)
-[] South: Sail southward, and explore the coasts of Harad. (Costs 1 supplies)
-[] East: Sail east and explore what lies around the Fang of Harad in the eastern corners of the world. (Costs 1 supplies)
-[] North: Sail northward, towards the lands of ice and snow, where the great islands that were once the mountains of Beleriand dot the sea. (Costs 1 supplies) Purpose:
-[] Diplomacy
-[] Trade
--[] Stone: You have a small amount of surplus stone left over. You have heard they hunger for it in crumbling Lond Daer and ever-besieged Umbar.
-[] Exploration (Must pick an Explore option)
NOTE: While expeditions are plenty modular already, they CAN be twisted a lot more -- say, a Diplomatic expedition that later becomes a trading journey in the second leg. This is simply not shown here since the Expedition section is complicated enough already, but can be set up if you wish to do so. If you have any concerns, feel free to ask, and don't be afraid to play around with it.
[] Build a Ship: Since you have in your employ a Shipwright, you may begin the process of building another ship to tame the waves. Colonies with sizeable fleets are a powerful force upon the waves -- and may even send their fleets to battle in service of the King for great rewards. -[] Cannibalize Ships: Having no Shipyard or permanant source of wood, you will need to break down some of the fourteen ships which brought you here (which are not battle-worthy and cannot hold enough supplies to travel far) in order to construct a proper Ship. It will take 5 ships to make one Ship. This will mean less ships to ferry future colonists or establish regular local trading routes. Cannibalizing will take a turn, and construction will take another.
QM ANNOUNCEMENT: No votes not in plan form will be accepted. There is a TWENTY-FOUR HOUR moratorium before voting can begin. No votes before this time will be counted.
The Hunting Oak and Men of Sunlight most tempt me I'll admit for our First-Ranger's legend. But I'm not entirely sure which one would be best. Though I can definitely see some problems with them, such as the Oak being something which Sauron would love to hack down. Or the Men of Sunlight being potentially susceptible to his stoking of their arrogance and pride.
As for the Death choices... I want to take Life, Unending and Fear, Overcome both. Fear, Overcome is something that will likely play well to the Faithful and Elves whilst also meaning we get in contact with the Great Eagles which could be quite useful. However, it does mean closer ties with the Faithful which can be awkward to keeping to the middle ground for the time being. As for Life, Unending? That gives us the best healers barring some of the older Elves, Valar and similar beings. Which will be exceedingly useful and something I want to keep preserved amongst the Men of the West once Numenor sinks. As it is, I suspect that more recent knowledge might be lost to a degree because I feel like it's something that has happened as the Faithful and King's Men diverged with the House of Life being rather aligned with the aim of the King's Men. Also, it get's us that healing herb which will be so damn useful once Numenor sinks. And until then, it gives us something which we can offer as tribute to the King which he will be exceedingly happy to obtain.
Does mean two constructions however which... Might not work out so well for other plans.
Heh. One of my two possible choices for the First-Ranger's Legend and the two choices I prefer to take for Death. Is your reasoning anything like mine for the latter two?
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