The One Ring - Season 6 -The Passing of Beorn

The End of Season 6

We finished the sixth season of our One Ring campaign run by Paul Mitchener tonight. After a quiet fifth season, this saw our fellowship of four hunting down the Werewolf of Mirkwood, and entrapping its spirit in the body of our Wood Elf.

We travelled to take advice from Beorn, as a shapechanger and ended up travelling high into the Misty Mountains where the shapeshifting spirit of the Werewolf was taken away by the Hunter as he crossed Middle Earth. Unfortunately, Beorn disappeared at the same time (Eye of Sauron), sacrificing himself to free the world from an ancient evil.

We started back down to tell the Beornings the sad news, and quickly stumbled into a large patrol of orcs, led by an Orc Captain, two Uruk-hai from Mordor, a Mountain Troll and about two hundred orc soldiers and archers. On the plains below we saw a Nazgul riding towards the Beornings. Improvising, we split the vanguard from the main body by means of an avalanche (stonecraft use) which partly blocked the route down from the High Pass. My Dwarf despatched his Raven friend to warn the Beornings and we prepared to fight a desperate battle. We killed the orcs, but constant arrow fire and the Troll battered us back, and our Ranger collapsed unconscious from his wounds, to be saved by our Woodswoman. The whole fellowship was weary by now and had very little endurance left.

Fleeing down the mountain, we hid and rested in a cave, securing the entrance and then breaking into the orc tunnels behind as the troll broke through. A challenging scramble through the dark got us outside on the Eastern side and we made it to the resting house by the Old Ford. Use of Courtesy and Song inspired our Beorning hosts, and drove off the dire influence of the Nazgul. We rested our weary bodies, drinking ale and filling our pipes. The Raven returned, having warned the Beornings and also travelled to inform Radagast, who was on his way...

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We really thought we were going to have character fatalities tonight. Far too many Eyes of Sauron! The troll was nearly our undoing. This season felt really epic.

The good news is that the campaign will return in October, for Season 7. We're really loving the Darkening of Mirkwood...

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 July 2018

Dark Albion: The Rose Wars
This is RPGPundit’s take on the War of the Roses, effectively giving a Dark Fantasy Game of Thrones type setting for D&D. I’ve been impressed because it walks that line between too much and too little detail. It does need a good proof read and perhaps some light editing, but I could easily imagine playing or running this. There are some subtle jokes in the text as well, but they don’t harm the feel. It’s presented with a minimal of unique rules and could easily be run for any version of D&D.


A Brief History of Time (Professor Stephen Hawking)
I had never read Hawking’s book, having started with Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps but decided that I need to correct that after the announcement of his death. I picked up a copy on my Kindle, and then the audiobook from Audible as a cheap upgrade, so I listened to the unabridged edition on the commute. It was fascinating; initially, I was let down by the delivery of the narrator but eventually started to appreciate his style which fitted the book. Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t dipped into it.


Bridging Infinity (Ed. Jonathan Strahan)
The fifth in the Infinity short story collection, this one presented views of the future for humanity. A number of them were climate change scenarios, but there was a good deal of variety. I only found one story that was a struggle but it was worth it once I pushed into the main thread. I’d definitely recommend this sequence of books.


The Storm before the Storm (Mike Duncan)
This was the unabridged audiobook version of the book covering the period of Roman history from the Gracchi Brothers through to the death of Sulla by the presenter of the History of Rome podcast12. It is read by the author, so feels like a more formal version of the podcast. This is a deep dive into the Roman politics and the conflicts that set the stage for Pompey, Crassus and Caesar’s wars and then the collapse of the Republic into an Empire. There are really scary parallels to some of the things happening in politics in the UK and USA right now. I enjoyed this book a lot. It would be a good period to set a historical RPG scenario in with chaos, conflict, confusion, greed and rivalries both individual and political.


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1 Run, do not walk, to listen to the 170 odd episodes of this. It is truly excellent.
2 As is the Revolutions podcast series he has followed The History of Rome up with.