The One Ring - Season 4 - The Angmar Death March

The One Ring

Just restarted playing the One Ring game that Paul Mitchener is running on hangouts. This was 'the one where the party all rolled Eyes (of Sauron)'. Possibly our worst travel phase ever! It was fun. My Dwarf ended up in a completely unplanned argument with his Wood Elf friend... stereotyped but fun.

I’m kind of concerned that we still plan to go and beard the Gibbet King in his lair...


Session 2
The second session continued the general spiral towards disaster as we managed to offend the Hillfolk we met, and then ended up pursuing an Orc force that had kidnapped children. Now we find ourselves across the Misty Mountains, on the wrong side, with most of the Fellowship either weary or borderline weary from the hard pace through the wastes. I’ve no idea how we will face down 30+ Orcs in this state. Our doom beckons us on.

We rolled so many Eyes of Sauron over the last two sessions it feels that fate is against us.


Session 3
In tonight's session we finally caught up with the Orcs two days out from Carn Dûm. They unleashed wargs against us, but our archers prevailed. Then, we battled toe to toe with them. Several of the fellowship were injured, one gravely, but my Dwarf stood fast with the Axe of his Ancestors, cutting through the orc hordes. The enemy who fled were cut down by arrows, craven curs. Then we found that the had broken the legs of some of the children to stop them fleeing.

We rested for the day and healed, making stretchers from the weapons and then set on a hard march south towards the lands of our Ranger, Halbrog. We finally escaped from the cursed ash desert and then were intercepted by a party of Elves and Rangers, travelling north-west from Rivendell to find us, amongst them friends who had chosen to defy the Wood Elf King's orders. Our rescuers had been brought through messages carried by my Dwarf's Raven friend. We head south to Rivendell to rest and recover over the winter. Our quest to slay the Gibbet King a failure, for now, but we have saved the lives of 30 innocents...


Oh, and we keep on rolling eyes of Sauron...

(This entry is extracted from Facebook posts)

The One Ring image - By Xander - own work, (not derivative from the movies), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1953341

Books in August 2017

Marina (Carlos Ruiz Záfon)

A bittersweet story of death, romance and hope set against a backdrop of lost parts of Barcelona and the darkness of the human spirit. Oscar Drain, the protagonist, leaves childhood behind as he falls in love with Marina. CRZ says that this - the last of his young adult novels - was a big influence on his Barcelona quartet and it shows. Sadly, that's the last of his back catalogue that is available and I've read the rest. I just need to wait patiently for the fourth book in the quartet to be translated into English.

The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak)

I found myself very conflicted about this book by the time I completed it. It tells the tale of a young German girl fostered just before the Second World War and her developing relationship with books, all through the eyes of the narrator, Death. At times ham-fisted in its approach and style, and with a protagonist who feels like a cypher, there was part of me which didn't like the book at all. At the same time, there was something about the story that drew me on, that made me want to know what happened next, and showed beautiful little vignettes of humanity. On reflection, I don't think that I'll be looking for more from this author.

The Delerium Brief (Charles Stross)

Now this was like a breath of fresh air having read The Book Thief. The plot grabs you, sits you in the car seat and then puts the pedal to the floor. Of course, it is the 8th book in an ongoing series so it does help that I've read its predecessors and know the characters and set up. I really enjoyed the twists and turns with this and I'm glad that the next part has been brought forward to next year.