Circle of Dar Janix

  This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.   This session was played on October 4, 2020.   15 Urui F.A. 15   Having dealt with the wights, the fellowship decided to finish with the bandits before returning to town. Unsure of how well Dirdan's Charm spell would work if asked to attack his friends, they jumped Eowic and tied him up.  Tulip peaked down the hole in Mound B and could see a few bandits standing guard below. Two of the bandits seemed to be trying to force a cell door open. The party decided that the best plan was to make a two-pronged attack with some attacking from above while another group approached through the underground from the south. The underground group descended the stairs in Mound D as Dirdan used his magic to boil a barrel of water on Mound B. Tulip yelled to draw a guard's attention and Dirdan dumped the boiling water on him as the others peppered him with arrows. Meanwhile, the group below...

  This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.   This session was played on September 27, 2020.   15 Urui F.A. 15     With Elyanis and Elwin having been carried into the depths of Mound A, the fellowship knew they would have to dispatch the two wights that had engaged them on Mound E quickly in order to save them. The characters managed to position themselves on the hill in order to engage the wights from all sides and Eowic had his men charge back from Mound C to take the wights in the rear.  As they were fighting the wights, they could hear the sounds of battle coming from inside Mound A. The fight was not easy, several of the group were injured and the bandits took heavy losses, but they were able to defeat the wights. They quickly made their way to Mound A to rescue Elwin and Elyanis. At this point, one member of the party raised the issue that Elyanis had seen four wights inside the mound and two more went d...

  This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.   This session was played on September 6, 2020.   15 Urui F.A. 15   The portion of the party below Mound C (Sindawe, Ardaer, Dirdan, Melvin, and Kelvin) were able to deal with the bandits not caught in Dirdan's sleep spell and then turn their attention to finishing off the unconscious ones.  They decided to make their way south and check their theory that the mounds were connected underground. Back on the surface, Elyanis took a quick look down the stairs the bandits had been guarding on Mound A. Sticking her head below, she saw four wights staring at a wall on the southeastern end of the chamber. The wights pivoted their heads to look at her, but then resumed looking at the wall. She did not have time to investigate this further as she and Elwin needed to move back to Mound C to join the rest of the group in the fight against the bandits charging from Mound B and the wig...

  This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.   This session was played on August 23, 2020.   15 Urui F.A. 15   As the fellowship reentered Bree, settling how the guardianship of Edrahil and the administration of the manor would be handled, in light of Hiraval's death, was foremost on their minds. They proceeded directly to Mayor Daisy Erling's office and arrived just as Eowic, the dark-haired fellow that had been sitting with Cormac in the bar, was being escorted out. When they questioned the mayor's secretary about Eowic's presence, he told them that Eowic was an archery champion and hunter who worked the woods to the east and north of Bree. Once in with Mayor Erling, the fellowship attempted to convince her that Elwin should be given guardianship over Edrahil. The mayor seemed skeptical about giving the duties of raising the young man and controlling his estate to a complete unknown, so she asked Edrahil what his thoug...

  This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.   This session was played on August 9, 2020. It is based on "What Lies Beneath", a scenario for The One Ring RPG found in The Ruins of the North.   11 Urui F.A. 15   The fellowship reached Hiraval's manor around noon without further incident. The manor was set against the wall of a valley and covered with vines. There was a fair amount of open ground between the manor and the lip of the valley where the fellowship was currently out of sight. There were some trees to offer cover, but they determined that it would be difficult to approach unseen in the daylight.   Dirdan used his invisibility spell to sneak up to the manor. As he approached he could see several figures in the manor's tower, they appeared to be armed with longbows. Once he reached the manor, Dirdan started by making a circuit around its perimeter. He spotted a stone covering the entrance to a crypt on the ba...

I continue to find MERP enjoyable to run, and quite a bit more playable than its reputation would lead one to believe. There is no doubt in my mind that the combination of the tools available through Roll20, and Scott's super-helpful scripts, increase the fun factor of this game quite a bit. The increased speed of play gained by eliminating the table searching allows the tactical detail introduced by those tables to really shine through, adding a layer of surprise to combat that other systems lack. On several occasions, the players have been forced to alter their tactics in a fight because of a result on the critical tables either going for or against them. The layer of detailed added by the adjustments to Defensive Bonuses based on positioning and stun also add to the tactical element. Even a multi-session combat (as we will see in The Battle of the Barrow Downs) can stay interesting and exciting to run, something I have never experienced in a D&D descended game.  I am also en...

This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.   This session was played on July 26, 2020.   8 Urui F.A. 15   The fellowship arrives in Bree with the intention of finding and eliminating the bandits at their nearby base. They hope to get some help from the people of Bree while they are in town.   As they enter town, they see the black banners of mourning flying over the gates. Paladin Took II, Thain of the Shire, has died of the Red Flux. His son, Pippen, is expected to succeed him in the position. On hearing this, Tulip, a native of Bree, heads to find some local hobbits to get more news. He met Hob Gandry, a distant cousin and wily veteran of the war, who was eager to join them in their attack on the bandits and thought he could gather up another four hobbits for the fight.   The rest of the fellowship headed to the Prancing Pony Inn to get some drinks. Dirdan got a few too many and found himself in a semi-drunken con...

  This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.   This session was played on July 19, 2020.   24 Cerbeth F.A. 15   The fellowship left Tharbad and went to the sheep farm outside of town where they had left their horses. They left their horses outside of town because several were showing symptoms of the strange disease and they did not want to risk spreading it to the horses in town. They learned that Banrim, Dirdan, and Elyanis's horses had died, and all of the horses but Sindawe's were showing symptoms.    They secured some extra horses from Cilis and continued on to Bree.    25 Cerbeth   During the day, the fellowship noticed a column of horses traveling parallel to them quite a distance away. Dirdan used his invisibility spell to sneak closer to investigate. He determined that there were around 16 men in the column and that they appeared to be former cavalry from the way they rode. They were no l...

This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.   This session was played on July 5, 2020.   23 Cerbeth F.A. 15 The fellowship decided to return to the sewers from a grate they decided was closer to the entrance to the fortress. Tulip picked the lock and they headed below. They managed to make their way back up to the room where Banrim fought the frog man without incident.  Further exploration of the room revealed what they thought might be frog man prints headed down a hall. After following the prints for a short distance, they came across a door that appeared to be to a vault similar to the one in Osgiliath.   They entered the vault to find that it had been looted long ago. In the center of the room was a large pedestal situated on the lip of a muddy pool. They explored the water and determined that there were two large hemispherical objects beneath the surface. Ardaer pulled one out and had a vision as soon as he tou...

This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar. 12 Cerbeth F.A. 15 On the 13th day of their journey to Tharbad, the fellowship awoke to find that the horses that Rohan provided them with were all showing symptoms similar to those that the horse Sindawe looked at in the stables had. Concerned that the illness might spread to their horses, they decide to kill the sick horses. Ardaer and Tulip are unable to follow through with this and let their horses go. 16 Cerbeth F.A. 15 They are attacked by a bear on the road and are able to defeat it. 19 Cerbeth F.A. 15 They meet a wagon bearing four "hobbit harlots" (gotta love random tables) on the road. They learn that Tharbad is considered safe and warn the hobbit women that the road south can be dangerous. 20 Cerbeth F.A. 15 They reach Tharbad and question the gate guard as to whether Vacros has been seen. The guard tells them that Vacros passed through with several of his men, but they ran hi...

This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar. 22 Cerbeth F.A. 15 The fellowship entered the sewers with the goal of making their way to the chambers underneath the rubble of the fortress in hopes of finding a way into the ancient Great Vault that existed there at the time of the Kinstrife War. The sewer tunnels were about five feet in diameter and opened a few feet above the floor in the intersection chambers. The chambers all had two to three feet of water in them. There pipes and chambers were also intersected by many smaller pipes and occasional small grates above.  Early in their exploration, they encountered a twelve foot long eel that was very aggressive. They managed to stun lock it and defeat it, but Sindawe took significant damage early in the fight. After the battle, they headed north and reached a dead end. They returned to the room where they fought the eel and decided to search it before moving along. Ardaer kicked something ...