Wassail, traveler, and welcome to The Gable Grey -- a place of retreat, of renewal, and of resistance: a tree-shaded refuge in Dark Times. Now pass the threshold, and rest from journeys! For a cold wind is blowing; and here, if you wish, you may hear tidings of the world without...

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

New Additions to the MERP Library


At last... after being MIA from my Middle-earth Role-Playing library for over a decade: the perils of the Gorgoroth Plateau are at my fingertips once again. Gorgoroth is a wonderful read, if the land it details is not particularly accomodating to adventurers. Just reading about the treasures on display in Sauron's Forge gave me goosebumps... not that any PC's (even Dwalin, even -- dare I say it -- the legend that is Roon Dorozhand, son of Roon, et. al.) would survive its traps to see them.

I also managed to acquire (at embarrassing cost) another copy of Minas Ithil, this time with its accompanying City Map. The city of the Tower of the Moon is profoundly valuable to adventures in and around Mordor, though without the City Map it is much less so. At any rate, I now have all the ICE publications that cover the Mordor area, with the exception of the small adventure module Gates of Mordor. I will skip that, though, because it looks boring.

What I envision -- among the other campaigns that will most likely never materialize -- is a series of adventures centered at Minas Ithil, circa. T.A. 1640 or thereabouts. Just the thought of adventuring in the lands most heavily under Sauron's direct influence gives an edge to adventures therein that other settings lack, unless they be Moria, the maze of warrens beneath Mount Gundabad, or Dol Guldur.

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Whiles carried o'er the iron road,
We hurry by some fair abode;
The garden bright amidst the hay,
The yellow wain upon the way,
The dining men, the wind that sweeps
Light locks from off the sun-sweet heaps --
The gable grey, the hoary roof,
Here now -- and now so far aloof.
How sorely then we long to stay
And midst its sweetness wear the day,
And 'neath its changing shadows sit,
And feel ourselves a part of it.
Such rest, such stay, I strove to win
With these same leaves that lie herein.

-- William Morris, from
"The Roots of the Mountains"