Wolves in the Night, Session 3 part 2
(***Alright, let's try this again. I got lucky, and I've got about half an hour. Maybe I can get everything typed up again in that time. Quite likely this reply will be missing some of the detail I had originally typed...***)
Wolves in the Night, Session 3 part 2
With the wolves slinking around just outside of the firelight, Fosco scrambled to put all the firewood they had gathered on the fire, thus extending the radius of the firelight, and hopefully scaring some of the wolves off. As the light spread, Duiniel put some arrows in some of the wolves, and the rest held back for a little while. Soon however, they gathered in enough numbers that they were heedless of the fire, and they loped into the firelight to attack.
Duiniel continued trying to use her bow, but soon found herself in melee. Halbarad launched off a few arrows as well, but soon found himself surrounded by wolves, which he struggled to ward off. Hannar did somewhat better, hewing his foes without much trouble, and single-handedly clearing much of the field near Duiniel. Fosco hid in the tall grass, launching surprise attacks with his bow when appropriate (***using his Point Blank Shot feat***)
Just as the group thought they were about in the clear: most of the wolves were dead or fled, a new monster jumped into the firelight. It was the largest wolf any of them had ever seen: a great black monster with red eyes and a cunning gleam. He rushed forward to the nearest assailant (Halbarad) and rended him horribly with his jaws, bringing the stalwart ranger down. Fosco cried out in dismay and shot an arrow at the beast, and Duiniel also shot him. Hannar leapt forward with his sword and gave his foe a mighty blow (***critical hit: just what he needed to help the fight along before someone else went down...***) When Fosco came out from hiding and flanked the beast, it finally went down, but not before it savaged Hannar a bit as well.
With their monstrous chieftain slain, the remaining wolves slunk away for the evening. The next morning, no bodies could be found, indicating that the worst fears of the group were true: these were not ordinary wolves, but dread wargs, possibly in service with Angmar itself.
The group made every effort possible to revive Halbarad, but had to admit defeat in the face of death. The next morning, the somber group worked with chilled fingers to erect a small caern for their friend. Without his woodland skills, they estimated their chances of successfully making their way to Lord Falathar's estate were greatly diminished.
It was noon before they were done, but even Fosco had no appetite at this point, so they ate some quick hard-tack -- just enough to give them strength for their journey -- and left the cursed clearing.
They hadn't travelled very far, however, before they came across an extremely peculiar sight. In a tree near the road, not a quarter mile from their campsite, was a sleeping woman in her mid-twenties. She was short, yet strongly built with deeply tanned skin and long dark hair. She had a wool skirt or kilt, long leather boots and a leather tunic, but her cloak was made from wolf pelts. As they approached, her eyes opened and she hopped to the ground calmly to greet them.
She called herself Hedra, a woman of the hill-folk of northeastern Rhudaur who had left her home following the death of her husband in an orc-raid. Her goal was to find a lord of the Dunedain to whom she could report what was happening on the border. She had attempted to join their campfire last night and ask them which way she should travel, but was treed by the wolves and unable to do so.
The other three stepped aside to discuss this development. Hedra was a member of a race that was often at odds with the Dunedain, but she seemed to be in favor of helping them, and as best as they could tell from trying to sense her motives, she was on the level. She seemed to be handy with her bow, and carried her sword as someone who knew how to use it, and she claimed to have some wilderness skill. After a little debate, they agreed to offer Hedra the opportunity to travel with them to Lord Falathar, where she could enlist his help to clear her home of the fell creatures that had recently infested it.
To be continued...
(***Next time I post, I will give some more information on Hedra, who is -- as you've probably guessed -- the replacement character for the player of Halbarad. Hedra itself is a female Cornish name. Since Tolkien himself used old British Celtic placenames and proper names to describe the "indigenous" inhabitants of Arnor and Gonder, such as the Dunlendings or the Breelanders, this seemed like about as good as we could get with her name. To be perfectly pedantic, we don't actually know that Tolkien intended the hill-men of Rhudaur to belong to this same ethnic grouping, as other indications point to them possibly being descended (along with both the Lossoth and the other men of Angmar) from the same group of peoples that led to the Easterlings of the First Age. Anyway, since we know next to nothing about what kinds of names they used, we assumed this was the closest we could get. And Rhudaur was always an ethnically mixed locale, so we figured that a "Breelander" name was appropriate for her.***)
