Other Hands #6 & 7 - October 1994

Yes, we are still here! After a summer of self-imposed linguistic torture, your editor has returned for a double dose of Middle-earth madness in this, our first double issue of Other Hands. A lot has happened since Issue 5 last April. Amor, the first of the new batch of Middle-earth ​“Realm” modules from ICE, is finally out, and the dreaded Kin-strife manuscript is at last complete (see ​“Frontlines” for more details on new MERP releases). More importantly, though, we’ve got a great issue in store for you right here and now.

Contributions by Dirk Brandherm, Chris Pheby, and Michael Saunders

This article is essentially a response to Andrew McMuny’s article from OH 3: 11 – 12, which suggested that all the peoples of Middle-earth were born with a certain innate, magical energy which they may, if they know how, expend during the course f their lives. We want to develop this theme within the frame- work of Middle-earth Role Playing in order to find an alternative to the rather unsatisfactory Power Point system currently in use. In doing so, however, we have chosen not to consider the implications, four proposals for magic items. Maybe in the future it will be possible for ourselves (or someone else) to do this.

Cults are an underdeveloped aspect of many Middle-earth campaigns. It is a relatively simple task for most referees to conjure up crazed fanatics in black robes worshipping Darkness around a blood-stained altar; but it is less easy to produce plausible motives for why otherwise reasonable denizens of Middle-earth would subscribe to such fictions. Still less attention is given to developing a concrete and unique history for a given cult most that have appeared in existing MERP modules are typically subsumed under the amorphous canopy of ​“the Dark Religion,” usually without further explanation.

This MERP adventure is spawned by a simple mishap, but presents complex problems into which the characters (preferably strangers) are thrown. The player-characters are given the chance to meet one another, gossip and pick up rumors. Very quickly, they will realize that there is evil afoot and that dark things have stirred in a nearby forest. Together, they must find a missing child, battle with Trolls, and even pursue Ûvatha the Horseman, one of the nine Nazgûl.

This article is not meant to be a comprehensive description of what my vision of Ar-Pharazôn’s monument is. It is instead a synopsis of my analysis of what Tolkien has written and how my researches have determined how I am incorporating the monument into my revision of the 1982 Umbar module. Contained in the following article is a lot of arguing of position, a little history, and a brief physical (and very general) description of the monument itself.

Minas Tirith is a city planner’s nightmare a big city on a hill with seven concentric walls and a very small number of gates (the outer wall has only one gate through which all traffic in and out of the city must pass), which creates a serious logistical problem. Due to the lack of primary source references, my reasoning in the following paragraphs is speculative, though it is based on sound historical and military facts.

The people of Umbar are generally portrayed as either pirates and/​or agents of Sauron, but little has been written about their role as principal maritime trading nation in Endor. This is a situation I am trying to rectify in my revision to the 1982 Umbar module.

With the publication of Arnor, ICE has gotten its new and revised ​“Realms” series off to a resoundingly solid start. This well-written and well-integrated module is a four hundred and sixteen page tour de force of all that we have come to expect of ICE’s MERP supplements and more, encompassing as it does all of the previously published material focusing on Eriador during the Third Age, with significant expansions of several areas.

This adventure was first assembled in the summer of 1992 for play-testing at the annual gathering of the Oxford Tolkien Society on a lonely isle in the Bristol Channel. In its current form, it was conceived as support material for The Kin-strife module, now in its final stage of preparation. In essence, it is a development and concretization of the views set form in the article ​“A Journey in the Dark” (OH 3: 13 – 18), though the figure of Berúthiel appears only as part of its background