Weathertop, Session 2 part 1
Weathertop, session 2 part 1
After quite some uneventful time on the road, the four reach a point where the large hill, topped with a tower is visible in the distance. Amon Sûl. Otherwise known as Weathertop. The tower itself is bright and strong, but as they near it, they see that the guard on the road is not. Two somewhat slovenly soldiers with ill-fitting uniforms sit beside a gatehouse near the road. Halbarad decides (against the better wisdom of the hobbit) to tell the guards the truth when they ask their business: they are delivering a message from a lord of Arthedain to his kinsman, a lord in Rhudaur. The guards don't challenge them beyond this, but wave them on and with that, and a few steps more, the little group enters the wildlands of Rhudaur.
At this point, Duiniel makes a startling and disturbing discovery. Glancing back at the guardhouse, she sees a familiar face peeking through a window, although it is almost immediately withdrawn: the Breelander who attacked her earlier! She whispers her discovery to Hannar and the others, and urges that they go back and demand an explanation. Halbarad counters that they don't really want to tangle with the guards at the gate. When Duiniel says "there's only two of them," he puts his foot down on principle.
However, the group thinks that something is definately "fishy" about the whole situation, and they decide some kind of investigation is in order. It is now mid-afternoon, so Fosco proposes they go on and establish a camp a league or so down the road, then he and Halbarad can sneak back and investigate the guardhouse after dark, and see if the Breelander emerges. Hannar suggests that Fosco establish a lookout position and not go down-road at all: Halbarad can join him in a few hours after camp is set up.
Finally, the whole group agrees to this, and so Duiniel and Hannar are left, after a few hours, at their new camp in a copse under a large tree about five minutes walk from the road, while Halbarad travels off-road back towards the gatehouse.
When he reaches it, the sun is nearly set. He finds Fosco hiding nearby with a somewhat grim expression. Fosco motions for him to follow him, and not far from the road, they find the murdered bodies, stripped of their clothes, of two Dunedain. After some whispered discussion
(**during which time Fosco's player had been able to put two and two together from the earlier clues! 
**) they decide that these must be the real guards, and the slovenly folks they saw at the gatehouse earlier in the day must be imposters. The sneak back towards the gatehouse, and after waiting only a few minutes, they hear horse hooves coming from the east. To their surprise, instead of the
faux guards, the Breelander comes out to greet the rider. Even more surprisingly, the man who steps off the horse to talk with him in hushed tones has an unsightly, almost goblin-like face.
(** Although Saruman developed the "man-orcs" much later in the War of the Ring, it says in Morgoth's Ring in "Myths Transformed" that Saruman had probably only rediscovered a secret that Sauron (who bred the orcs initially) had already known. Therefore, because I like the Uruk-hai and half-orcs, I decided that in Angmar, orc/men crosses did exist, and they were merely mostly killed and then bred out of the population in the years after the fall of Angmar. A bit of a departure from the official history, but hardly earth-shattering, IMO**) Fosco suggests that they hurry back to Bree and send a messenger to the king's reeve in that part. Halbarad says that as
he is an agent of the king (sorta) he is qualified to handle this problem. Fosco isn't so sure, but they both agree that they need to head back and recruit the help of the other two, at least, before they make any attempt to reclaim Weathertop for the king.
Meanwhile,
(**because this game was online, it was easy to separate the players and keep simultaneous story-arcs going. One of the few advantages to playing online, IMO**) Duiniel decided to keep a watch near the road, and finds something odd herself (she did see the rider, but just thought him another traveller.) However, she does manage to notice a company of men moving off the road. She cautiously approaches one of them moving in a scout-vangard position, and is horrified to discover that he is an orc! She manages to sneak up behind him and attack him, hurting him badly. However, he manages to knock her back a bit and Duiniel has a close, albeit quiet (for neither one of them wanted to be heard
(**I had both of them make move silently checks every round to avoid attracting either more orcs or Hannar**) fight. With few Vitality points left, Duiniel is able to dispatch this, her first ever, orc. She rushes back to camp, and finds the fire covered with dirt and two orc bodies on the ground. Hannar comes out of the woods as she approaches
(**his fight was relatively boring: he rolled high and killed both his orcs easily.**)
Duiniel and Hannar decide then that they better rush back and find Halbarad and Fosco. They are all in danger of being caught by the marauding orc company, and although Hannar and Duiniel don't know it, they are caught between the imposters at the gatehouse and the approaching orcs.
To be continued...
