K39 - Shaking hands with a goblin

<confession>

I have been a naughty GM. The last session was on October 28th 2014. Life sucked fun out of everything, including gaming. But this is hopefully over now. And we're to resume Reclaiming Khazad-dum in a few days.

I didn't keep good notes from the last session although it turned out to be a very eventfull one. So, from memory... 

</confession>

This reports is a continuation of K38 - A Beard in Hell.
(Campaign home)

Shake hands with a goblin

Theomedonus was the son of the Snagaii king. The Snagaiis were goblins used as a food source by the other orc nations in Khazad-dum.  Bain, the viceroy, met with the emissary in an antechamber. There was talk of a goblin envoy speaking with him, so they thought best to keep things out of the gossip gallery. 

Theomedonus was forward with information. He explained that the Infernals had been released some three years ago (yes, the day that the Gandalf and friends killed the Kraken). He explained that the infernals were working to revive the Balrog and had conquered the most fierce of orcs from the depths: The Uruknais and the Trolls. 

Theomedonus proposed a treaty with the dwarves to help the dwarves to regain their old homeland, against a passage to the underdeep. Bain agreed for an alliance against the promise never to return once they left. 

Theomedonus also revealed that the Infernals were slowly winning against the Durbagash orcs on the 4th deep. That, the time for striking was coming soon or may never come back. 

This is when Lathmelen, the elf from Thrandhuil hall, entered the room and started to ramble about a key. Bain did his best to keep on track, dismissed the goblin and returned to other business.

K34 - and thus died the Kraken

This session is the conclusion of a side adventure with alternate characters that pitched the Kraken against Gandalf, Quickbeam, Elphir, Beorn and Gwaihir the Eagle-Lord. 

The setup

Time 0 for session 3

It all resumed with the Eagle-Lord lying face up under a yard worth of water, grappled by the Kraken. The Kraken had been lured in really shallow water after the lake was partially drained and Gandalf lured it from the depth using a blue sphere of light. The blow from the diving Eagle was harsh, but the Kraken was still a serious threat.

Quickbeam was then carrying Elphir of Dol Amroth on his shoulder while Gandalf was slinging anemic fireballs to the beast. 

Felling the beast

If you laugh at the GM's artwork, you won't be invited anymore.

While Quickbeam and Elphir were wading to the Kraken, Gandalf propelled Beorn (in bear form) halfway to the beast.  Gandalf then offered a reprieve to the Eagle-Lord by casting a spell to push away water around both creatures' head. This beached the Kraken which was embroiled with the Eagle. By then, Beorn caused much damage with its claws and disabled a basal tentacle. Quickbeam put Elphir on the ground so the knight let out a power-blow that tore a large gash in the beast's side. Beyond the gash, a void full of stars was sucking in air. Elphir was struck by horror at this sight and failed to prevent tipping over into the emptiness. 

By his side, Quickbeam tore an even bigger hole in the Kraken's side while Beorn knocked one of the large eye off its socket. The beast had absorbed by then well over 100 HP of damage to its head and became unresponsive. 

Quickbeam used a tentacle as a rope to climb down into the oblivion while Beorn simply jumped straight in to follow the listless Elphir. When Gandalf arrived, all that he could see was Quickbeam hanging over a bottomless void. His intuition told him to Jump!, and so he did. Quickbeam let go and all fell into a maelstrom.

K11 - The obsidian tower

Phew, is has been a month since the last session of Reclaiming Khazad-dum. We left our dwarven heroes in the midst of a magic attack on top commanders of the dwarf vanguard.

Diary from a Murik "tumbletorque", war drummer of the Ice Lot

An air of confusion and excitement had overtaken the camp. The rants of the sergeant major were overridden by the Attack-Lord's own monologue. People were digging holes and filing them back in. A bad scene.The victory to take the bridge had been followed by another to the north and vast amount of ale had been seized. The word on the lines was that the ale would be kept as personal loot by the brass. This rumor didn't please the dwarves. Our commander, Kalin "Stronghold", a noble from Aglarond had entertained us all in the afternoon with his antics. As the night fell and the orcs became restless, the commanders were all of a sudden nowhere to be found.

The Arthedain-tradition seer

Not all spell casters are Istaris. This is a fantasy world, after all. However, creating spell casters that are not too far off the Tolkien lore is a balancing act. Even the MERP system, dedicated to Middle-Earth, delivered wizards as if Middle-Earth was a suburb of the Waterdeep. These are not action wizards, but let see how we can bring sparkles into the campaign without making the PCs maiars.

Good, evil and magic in the world of the Palantir Commission

I realized after starting a Middle-Earth RPG campaign that the Middle-Earth universe, although very deep in some aspects, was also very shallow for anything that doesn't directly support the narrative of the canonical stories. The economy makes no sense, for example. The MERP universe merely has overlayed a D&D world over known names of places and beasts. I kept less than 10% of the content of the MERP module "The Palantir Quest": I'm redrawing maps, and essentially changing the nature of the adventure path altogether. The original module and adventure felt like an old Forgotten Realm module. This article is about reconciling fantasy and Tolkien's work.  Gelatinous cubes don't HAVE to exist in Middle-Earth, but there ought to be a way to have cool magic going on even when Galdalf isn't around.