Woo-hoo!!! We played our first session of Lord of the Rings today, and it rocked!
The setup is ominous in it's simplicity. Years ago when the Witch King was still a mortal man and had raised the kingdom of Angmar as his bastion from which he warred against Arnor. He controlled orcs, hill men, the walking dead. In time Angmar fell and the Witch king became the Lord of the Nazgul.
What history was unaware of, though, was that the Witch King had a secret apprentice: a power-hungry man who gave himself over to the Witch-King in exchange for the secrets of sorcery. For decades the Witch King revealed his secrets to his apprentice, all the while blinded as to his follower's true nature. When the apprentice eventually rose up to usurp his master, the Witch King was faced with the chilling truth: his seemingly youthful follower was actually one of the unaccounted for Wizards of the Istari who had sought to learn and master the foul arts of Sorcery and Necromancy that were forbidden to his kind. The wizard was far too powerful for the Witch King to destroy, so he magically imprisoned him deep beneath Angmar. When Angmar fell, the wizard remained imprisoned beneath the earth for thousands of years.
Then, during the end of the War of the Ring, the Lord of the Nazgul was slain by Eowyn. With the Nazgul's spirit finally gone forever from Middle Earth, the wizard was no longer bound. He escaped from his confinement, wasted in body, but still powerful in mind, and slowly gathered the orcs and hill men that still resided in the area to him and began to rebuild Angmar anew. With the wizards and elves gone, and magic on the wane, the wizard plans to restore Angmar to it's former position of tyranny. As a side effect of his return, the pent-up powers of dark sorcery that had kept him alive all these centuries have been drifting across the countryside causing the dead to rise and instilling wrath and black hatred in the hearts of all that surround Angmar. Small towns and villages have come under the shadow and the people literally turn upon their friends and neighbors in fury, killing those who they had loved and leaving only mangled bodies and silent buildings.
Of course this is all happening in the North. The people of Rohan and Gondor have no idea what is happening as of yet. In the heart of Gondor, King Elessil has finally won his wars against those who had once served Sauron. After forty years of battle, Gondor and Rohan have a shaky peace with Rhun, Umbar, Harad, and the neighboring territories. The king has established outposts in many areas of Middle Earth, and there is one in northern Rhudaur that he has not recieved any reports from in over three months. He sends a scouting party (the group) to investigate and to bring tidings that the war is finally over. In an effort to establish peaceful ties amongst all the kingdoms, he asks each territory to chose an ambassador to take part in the mission. Leading the expedition will be a prince of Harad, glorious and deadly. Along with him will ride a horseman from Rohan who has never known a true home, an Easterling witch-woman, the son of an Umbar corsair who was hanged for acts of piracy against Gondor, a dwarf who had distinguished himself during the war against the East, and a sharp-eyed Gondor sentinal to act as the King's representative. A mysterious elf who has chosen to stay in Middle Earth for her own reasons asks to be taken along, saying she wished to stop at Lothlorien upon their return to see if any of her kin still dwell there.
On their way, they are ambushed from the river by Dunlending bandits angry over Rohan's new position as trusted allies of Gondor. The elf calms them with music and kind words, avoiding a potentially deadly conflict. When they make it to the outpost, they find the soldiers and merchants all dead, slain by orcish hands. From the keep they see an orc tribe coming towards their postion, alerted by their fires. They battle the orcs with arrows from inside the keep, not realizing until it is too late that the slain men have risen as walking dead. Caught between the undead in the keep and the orcs outside, the party seeks to take their chances with the orcs. The dwarf, Kosit the Fell-Handed, takes it upon himself to divert the walking dead from the rest of his companions and engages them himself. Once outside, the rest of the group battles the orcs and wins, though many are gravely injured. it is then that they notice that their dwarf companion never made it out of the keep. They make for Korj, a small town a day's ride East of the Old Forest, and berate themselves for acting like cowards. they vow to return to the keep and reclaim their companion's body for an honorable burial. After preparing magics and fiery arrows, they take the keep, only to discover that their friend has become a wight who seeks their heads for their perceived betrayal of him. They burn the dwarf, averting their gaze in shame as their one-time companion goes up in flames. They reclaim his armor and weapon, and head East towards Erebor, the home of the valiant warrior-dwarf Kosit the Fell-Handed, to return them to Kosit's family.
People, PLAY THIS GAME!!!
