043 - To kill a demon, a picture story.

Act 43, Scene 1 - The temple guards of Mulkan

Three Lossoth temple guards to the rescue of Elder Tiani.

After sucking Elder Tiani dry of his life force, the company left the previous session with a number of charging temple guards. The bad news was that their weapons were clearly visible in the shadow world and this meant danger for them. The wraiths, wrapped in cool flames, flew above the charging guards that didn't flee following Kasper's casting of the Panic spell.

Arnadil remained close to Tiani's body while the hobbits and Thannolf swooped from the guard's rear. The Lossoth used their hooked swords to attempt to disarm Arnadil, but managed to get grazed by the sneaking wraiths from behind.

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.