Last night was our second session, and it went as well as the first. bearing the arms and armor of their fallen dwarf companion, the company travels through Mirkwood where the elf Erinel is overwhelmed by the silence where once an entire clan of elves dwelt and begins to hallucinate, seeing the elves of old. Prince Tamar brings her back to reality by asking her about the elves of her homeland and as she talks and remembers, she becomes more grounded and comes back to reality. They are set upon by restless phantoms and Tark, the man of Gondor, recieves a premonition of his own death that leaves him nearly helpless. The phantoms are driven off when Erinel invokes the names of the great Elf lords of Mirkwood's past.
Finally making it to Erebor, they present their dead companion's regalia back to his family. the dwarves are incensed that their kinsman stood and fought bravely while his companions fled like dogs. They renounce their ties to Elessil's kingdom and retreat into their mountain, sealing the gates behind them for all time.
Heavy of heart, they travel across the Brown Lands towards Rohan. They notice that in all the villages they stop at there seems to be a malaise, as well as a strongly hostile distrust of all strange-folk. Prince Tamar confides that he feels as if dark times are returning and that the king needs to know what is going on as swiftly as possible. Auric of Rohan leads the company to his family's farmlands just North of Emyn. From there, he rides alone to Gondor, his horse's hooves given added flight by the magics of the witch-woman.
While at Auric's compound, the witch Ain-Ain recieves a prophetic dream about the Dead Soldiers of a past time, but the dream is vague. She says that the answers to her dream might be answered within the vaults of Isengard, where Saruman wrote down and collected the histories of all that he had seen in his milennia-long lifetime. She sets off to the ruins of Isengard despite Prince Tamar's admonishments. Kogali of Umbar, enamored of the mysterious Easterling beauty, goes with her. After a long argument Tark also agrees to go, his status as a Gondorian agent beeing needed to get them past the Ents. In the end, Prince Tamar is unable to resist the idea of reading the hostories of hos own people before they chose to throw in with Sauron and so agrees to go, although he still has misgivings. Milo, being no damn fool, stays behind at the Rohan compound.
Several days later, they come to Isengard and enter the catacombs of what was once Saruman's bastion. In the depths, they find countless tomes written in long dead languages. Erinel recongizes them as a very ancient form of Noldorian and says she may be able to translate, but it will take time. As they are lost in study, the entire chamber begins to shake and groan. An Olag-Hai, powerful and cunning far beyond it's brutish lesser cousins, had made the dark catacombs his lair following the defeat of Sauron. Ten feet tall, wrapped in armor and brandishing a great spiked mace of black iron, it advances towards them.
Back at Auric's keep, Milo awakens in the middle of the night with the odd feeling that his new friends are in mortal peril. He chalks it up to too much raiding of the larder and goes back to sleep.
That's where we left it for next week.