MERP: Dawn of the Fourth Age Session 2

We met again this weekend to continue our MERP Fourth Age game. You can read a recap of the first session here. In addition to my recaps, a recap by one of my players can be found on his blog, 3PoS. We had a couple of players that could not make it this weekend, but we added a new player. The group make up was:

Banrim: Dwarf Animist
Dirdan: Sindar Elf Mage
Tulip Mugwort: Fallowhide Hobbit Burglar
Sindawe: Haradan Bard
Elyanis: Half-Elf Ranger



This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.

2 Lothron F.A. 15

When we left off, the party had just defeated a troll at the top of the steps leading down into the Vault under the Dome in Osgiliath. Dirdan was soldiering on after breaking his leg in a fall while scaling the side of the Dome. 

After catching their breath from their fight with the troll, they decided to investigate the chest in his lair. Tulip made sure that the chest was trap free and opened it to discover a magical sword that had once belonged to the Customs Master of Gondor, a tapestry, and a healthy pile of coins.

I am going to take a second for an aside here. I have been trying to insert Middle Earth Lore through the places they go and the objects they find, I plan to avoid any run-ins with "famous people". MERP encourages you to have magical items have a history, and there is a whole Treasures book full of magic swords with detailed pasts. In addition to keeping magic items special, I am trying to flesh out mundane treasure as well. They didn't just find a tapestry, they found a tapestry celebrating Turambar's Victory Over the East (T.A. 541). They don't just get coins, the get X bronze pieces, Y are stamped with the head of Valacar and Z are crudely made bearing the likeness of Castamir. I hope this will anchor the game with a sense of place and the immense weight of Middle Earth history. I think it is working so far, we will see.

After looting the chest, they decided to explore the rest of this area under the Dome and found a rune paper with Firebolt on a shelf. They descended the spiral staircase to the vault. At the entrance to the vault they were presented with a locked door, for which the High Seer had given them a key. Due to a miscommunication, Tulip decided to pick the lock and set off a poison dart trap. Fortunately, Tulip is a hardy hobbit and she managed to resist the poison.

Once inside, they found a room full of books and artifacts. There was a desk with a dried corpse sprawled over it in the center of the vault. They quickly determined that the corpse was not the victim of foul play and searched the desk to find the Vault's Inventory and the Vault Keeper's Journal. They spent some time reading through the Inventory to see if there were any notable items, and determined that they could translate the runes in the Journal, but it would take them hours.

Despite the High Seer's warning that the items in the vault were probably protected by magic or traps, Banrim and Tulip each tried to make off with one of the magic weapons. Both were thrown across the room by magic lightning.

When the emerged from the vault, the could see the sky had become a shade lighter; dawn was approaching.

3 Lothron F.A. 15

They used ropes to lower the lame mage down to the boat and started climbing down to make their escape. They had a few close calls while climbing down the ropes, but all involved were able to recover before suffering a similar fate to Dirdan. They took the southern route back across the river and did not encounter the strange creature again on the return trip.

As they made their way back to the ranger camp, they heard terrible screaming and the sounds of violence coming from the mercenary camp. They rushed to the scene to find Vacros, the mercenary captain, and several of his men being attacked by undead. Quickly surmising that these undead must have come from the tomb that the mercenaries had looted, the dove in to battle with Centril at their side. 

After a long and difficult battle, they defeated the undead. They were only able to save Vacros, the cold warriors cut down his men. The fellowship wisely decided to move the no longer animated corpses, and all their belongings, back into the looted tomb.  By the time they finished the sun was fully up and they headed back to Minas Tirith. 

4 Lothron F.A. 15

The next morning, still tired from the previous day's ride, they met with the High Seer in his chambers. The seer looked through the Vault Inventory, but did not see any items that were powerful enough to have drawn the attention of the Palantir. He did find the final entry in the Vault Keeper's Journal to be interesting though. 

The Vault Keeper wrote of the recent (to him in T.A. 1437) loss of Osgiliath's Palantir beneath the waters of the Anduin. When everyone else evacuated the city, the Vault Keeper stayed behind to guard over the items they were not able to remove and to make one desperate attempt to find the missing Palantir. He attempted to use an old spell meant to locate powerful items, but the copy in Osgiliath's Vault turned out to be imperfect. The Keeper mused that perhaps one of the older vaults had a more accurate record of the spell.

After reading this journal entry to the fellowship, the High Seer announced that this only strengthened his commitment to search the old vaults. When asked if he intended to use the spell to find Osgiliath's long missing Palantir, the Seer replied that while that might be an eventual goal, his immediate concern was the item currently causing a disturbance with his Palantir viewings and that he hoped the spell could aid with that. He also noted that the Osgiliath Palantir was likely buried under a significant amount of river bed after a millennium and a half, and there was no known way to retrieve it, even if he was able to locate it.

Dirdan raised the possibility of returning to the Vault in Osgiliath to liberate some of the powerful items to help them on their quest. The Seer was initially hesitant, reminding them that items of power carry some of the will of their creator with them, and can have unknown dangers. After one more discussion, he relented and agreed to find some items in the Inventory that seemed safe and provide the fellowship with a means to foil the protective lightning spells. 

The party procured some herbs to speed Dirdan's recovery and decided to wait the two weeks required for him to fully heal before setting out on their quest.

Thoughts on MERP

I continue to enjoy MERP, but I did make a misstep with the undead. I wanted the undead to be difficult, so I put them in chain mail. This was a mistake that bogged down the game. While the characters were never in immediate danger of dying, it took them forever to chip away at the undead. Chain mail significantly reduces the chance of landing the kinds of crits that we have become used to in MERP. This means that the fight will take longer, and that they cannot stun lock the enemies. Lesson learned for armor selection.