The One Ring

Last time, I promised you in a facebook post a collection of music fit for the campaign in the lands of the Northmen. Here it… Read More »The Music of the Northmen

Imagine the Great River as if you were one of the mighty eagles that perch above it, high among the Misty Mountains’ peaks.

It’s a deep, dark winter night. From the clouded sky, the moonlight seeps only faintly. But the black ribbon of Anduin sticks out from the white of the snow. It winds down the valley between the mountains and the forest.

But from time to time, the cold, windy darkness yields to dots of light – quivering yet warm. These are the homesteads of the Northmen, as the Gondorians call them. Settlers in this yet-untamed land.

The Circle of Light

If you were to sit among them in one of their dim longhouses where whole communities spend long winter nights, you’d see little beyond the orange-glowing hearth. Shapes more than faces – of people living close by, repairing clothes and tools, carving wood, leather, and bone, tending to children or animals. For the livestock would also be there, plenty even. To keep warmth inside and to keep the beasts safe from wolves – or worse.
For if you, then, heard footsteps crushing the snow outside – or a loud knocking on the door – you would feel the air thickening in a heartbeat. “Are these brigands? Raiders from a dishonored family? Someone brought by a vengeance for a feud lost in time?”
“Or maybe those are madmen, driven by the ghosts lurking in the dark places of the Wild?” “Orcs,” dare you think, “Surrounding the cottage as a shadow of death that strikes at midnight?”
Or could it be just a lost traveler? Exhausted soul on the edge of freezing. The sacred law of hospitality must be kept. No one is to be refused the warmth of the hearth. Those capable take up their arms then – and head to the door.

Read More »Northmen of the Vales of Anduin

Read More »Sagas 1000 years before the War of the Ring