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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RobShanti" data-source="post: 6176058" data-attributes="member: 82745">For <a href="http://robertpetrone.wix.com/fateoftherings" target="_blank">my FATE of the Rings game</a> (set in Tolkien's 2nd Age), I have lately been using TSR's old "Keep on the Borderlands" module, with the kingdom of Carn Dum (what Angmar was called before it was Angmar) and the Witch-King (still a Man at this point) in place of the eponymous keep and its Castellan.  I've been waiting for my players to figure it out...they haven't yet.Anyway, they recently visited the Caves of Chaos (I called them the Caverns of Darkness...a thin veil, but the players still didn't figure it out) and they fought the goblins and hobgoblins, etc.  Anyway, the floor of one goblin lair collapsed, and the party fell into the depths of Angband, or at least what's left of the easternmost tunnels that didn't fall into the sea when Beleriand sank.And just like in Caves of Chaos, the big bad in Angband (for now) is an evil priest and his three acolytes, rendered in my game as an Easterling necromancer who gets his powers from worshiping Sauron.  His three acolytes are his three sons.  The PCs got embroiled in the conflict among the Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins and other denizens of the caverns of Angband (as in the Keep on the Borderlands module), and eventually subdued the big dog, the Orc king Boldog.  But he was treacherous...they asked him where they could get some water, and he led them to a pool in which lived a Watcher in the Water that dragged them down a submerged tunnel into a vast underground saltwater sea (an extension of the Belegaer).  They managed to slay the Watcher, but almost drowned.That's when the game became more influenced by the short story "Necromancy in Naat" by Clark Ashton Smith.  This is where it got "really creepy" as the players described it.  One of the PCs, an Elf who was drowning, got rescued by her son...who had died a thousand years ago in the fall of Gondolin.  He was a wight, and he dragged her to shore and led them into a dark castle in which resided many wights, ghosts and, finally, the necromancer and his three sons.The necromancer invited them to dine, and the PCs sat around the table with the necromancer and his three sons, served by wights.  One of the sons was a mummy who just sat there, almost immobile.  He just turned his head every once in a while, but otherwise, never spoke or did anything.The necromancer's wight servants escorted a savage cannibal to the table, and he sat and dined and drank with everyone...until the necromancer summoned a 4' long black mink that came out of a hole in the floor and killed the cannibal and drank his blood.  The necromancer seemed to be in a state of euphoria as the mink did this.  (The mink is the necromancer's familiar, so he was essentially vicariously feeding on the cannibal's blood.)  The PCs were treated as guests, but I kept describing the dark castle and the dark shore it was on as being really oppressively silent and isolated.  Since they were underground, there were no stars, and the air was fetid and steaming.  They languished there as guests for days, with the necromancers cloistered away doing their respective studies.  The PCs felt like they were prisoners there even though they were permitted to freely roam.  There was just nowhere for them to go.I think what they found particularly creepy was the constant description of the castle and shoreline, and my impersonation of the mummy son.</blockquote>

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