Bilbo's mithril shirt and the Elves of Mirkwood

There's a fan-theory that has cropped up in a few places recently (or, perhaps, it's more that I've recently become aware of it) that the mithril shirt that Bilbo obtains on his adventure, and that he subsequently gives to Frodo, was made in Erebor for Legolas when the latter was a child.

(c) New Line Cinema

This, of course, is an attempt to syncretise a throw-away reference in a book for children, with the lore that was then created to tie that children's book to a wider mythology. When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, there was no intention to write The Lord of the Rings; he did not have to think about how to tie the story to the world of The Lord of the Rings (which did not exist), nor to the unfolding and ever-changing details of the story of The Silmarillion. Mirkwood and its Elf-king exist in The Lord of the Rings because they exist in The Hobbit, rather than the other way around. It was not until the work of creating The Lord of the Rings was underway that references in The Hobbit acquired any kind of world-building significance. When The Hobbit was written and the mithril coat invented, Legolas did not exist. He was created during the writing of The Lord of the Rings. But once The Lord of the Rings was published, and with the further elaboration of the legendarium in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and the Histories of Middle Earth, fans (of which I most definitely am one) have attempted to see the whole thing as a complete whole and work out, from scattered hints that were never intended to 'mean' anything beyond establishing that these stories took place in a land that already had a history, what the histories of people, places and artefacts 'actually was'. And Bilbo's mithril coat is one of these.

(c) New Line Cinema

There are several theories about its origin. One ignores the references to 'some young Elf-prince long ago' (The Hobbit: Not at Home) and assumes that the mithril coat was made for one of the sons of Girion, Lord of Dale, who as far as we know was a human, given that his descendent Bard the Bowman was human, and the people of Dale are human; there is no suggestion in The Hobbit that an Elf-lord ruled over 'the Men of Dale' or that an Elf-lord of Dale had human descendants 200 years later.

It has been suggested that the coat was not made in Erebor at all, but came there as treasure brought by the Dwarves from Moria or elsewhere. It is true that it is nowhere said that the mail-coat was made in Erebor, and post-Hobbit writings say mithril is only found in Moria (among Dwarf-realms at least, it's also mentioned in some writings as being found in Numenor). If it is not of Ereborian manufacture, it may be that it was made in Moria for a young 'prince' of Eregion before the destruction of the realm of the Gwaith-i-mirdain, or even for a prince of the Galadhrim. If it was made in Moria, it could have been made at any time in the First or Second Age, and up to the sack of Moria in 1981 of the Third Age (LotR: Tale of Years). Perhaps Amroth of Lorien, or even his father, Malgalad/Amdir, was the intended recipient; maybe it was Elladan or Elrohir, the sons of Elrond. These were not 'princes' in the sense 'sons of a king', because Elrond never claimed the Kingship of the Noldor; but they are reasonably 'princes' in the looser sense of younger male members of the nobility. There is even a suggestion that it was made for Earendil when he was in Gondolin, at the behest of his mother Idril. Or perhaps the coat was intended as a gift for some more far-away realm of which we know nothing, it never having been recorded in the different versions of The Silmarillion, The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Of course, if it were intended as a gift from ruler of Moria for a prince of some Elf-realm, that realm might have been that of the Elves of Mirkwood (or Greenwood the Great as it was earlier known). Whatever anyone may believe about intended recipients of a 'Morian' (as opposed to 'Ereborian') mail-shirt, these theories may be regarded as theories of an 'early' manufacture (ie, before the collapse of the Dwarf-kingdom of Moria in 1981TA), as opposed to a 'late' (ie Ereborian) manufacture after 1989TA. It is not impossible that, if the mail-coat was made in Moria, it was made for Legolas; but he is perhaps not the most likely candidate.

One problem of course is that if it were made for an Elf-prince, why did it not remain with the Elf-prince or his family? Was it ever delivered to the Elf-prince, or did the Dwarves retain it for some reason? Was it returned to the Dwarves by the Elf-prince or his family? We might expect a gift to a young noble to stay with them. Why then is it found among the treasures of the smiths who (we assume) made it?

We do not know for sure when it was made, we do not know where it was made, and we do not know for whom it was made. 

However, there are some things we do know, or at least can be reasonably sure about.

The mail-coat is described as being made for 'some young Elf-prince long ago'. Ultimately the conceit is that Bilbo wrote 'There and Back Again' of course, so it is Bilbo not Tolkien writing here; but that conception hadn't arisen when The Hobbit was written. Personally, I tend to take Tolkien's word as an impartial observer, unless I think there's good reason not to. I don't think here there is any reason to doubt what he says. The intended recipient, at the time he wrote The Hobbit, was an Elf, not a human, was 'young', was a 'prince', whatever we might suppose that to mean, and it was made 'long ago', in the time-frame of 'The Hobbit' - before the Dragon descended on Erebor, obviously, and possibly some considerable number of centuries before that.

We know it was found in Erebor. We do not know whether it was made in Moria and brought to Erebor as a finished item; or if it was made in Erebor from mithril mined in Moria but brought to Erebor as ingots. I think it's unreasonable to posit that it might have been made at a third location from Morian ingots and brought to Erebor co-incidentally. Even more implausibly, one could argue it was made of Numenorean mithril at another location and only ended up in Erebor by accident, and had no connection to Moria at all. These conjectures would mean none of the possible dating evidence we could apply would be relevant, and nothing could be deduced about the mail-coat or its intended recipient. Likelihood (and Occam's Razor) says that it was either made in Moria or Erebor. On balance, I think the idea that it was made of Morian ingots in Erebor is somewhat more plausible than it being made in Moria and brought to Erebor as treasure, but I certainly do not see that as being settled - it's my feeling about what is more likely. So, I would favour a 'late' manufacture, while conceding that this essential fact is unprovable.

(c) New Line Cinema

We know that both Gandalf and Gimli considered it vastly valuable - as valuable as the Shire and everything in it (FotR: A Journey in the Dark); but this seems to me to be one place where the opinions of the characters (not Tolkien) do not fit what else is known about the mail-shirt or mithril. If the shirt itself is as valuable as a (small, but productive) realm, then the idea that it would be made into a mail-shirt for a still-growing Elf-prince seems unlikely in the extreme. The shirt would only have utility for a few years, before said prince had grown out of it. Elves seem to grow at approximately the same rate as humans from birth to their full height. Given how quickly human children grow out of coats and jackets, it would have had an effective life of no more than about two years. It fitted Bilbo and Frodo well enough as a mail-coat and must therefore have been made for an elf-child of approximately six years old. It would likely be too small by the time they were eight.

The creation of such a gift seems vastly unlikely. The return by its recipients of such a gift seems if anything even more unlikely. Mithril just cannot be as valuable as Gimli and Gandalf claim, it doesn't make sense. Gimli uses mithril to repair the gates of Minas Tirith after the War of the Ring - it is light and strong and beautiful, certainly; but if it is also valuable at the ratio of something like a province to a few ounces, it is a ludicrous thing to make either into city-gates or mail-shirts - especially mail-shirts for children that will only be of use for two years. So I cannot accept that mithril is as valuable as all that. I can believe Thorin's gift to Bilbo is princely indeed, but not that it is a sign of insanity. Nor can I believe that the manufacture of a mithril shirt by the Dwarves in the first place, nor its gift to 'some Elf-prince long ago', is the equivalent to giving a child a shirt worth as much as a country, as that too would be a sign of insanity; and then its return to the Dwarves after a couple of years would further be a sign of insanity. I realise we're dealing with pre-capitalist economy here, one in which conspicuous gift-giving might indeed be a feature, but even in a world of wizards and dragons and talking thrushes, such blatant disregard for economic necessity is still unbelievable. If Gandalf and Gimli are right, that one mail-shirt would buy whole armies for the Dwarves, and it would have bought armies for the family or realm of the 'Elf-prince' for whom it was made. Expensive, truly a luxury item, but I cannot believe that it would have been worth as much as a small realm.

That in the end is about as much as we know about the mail-shirt and almost everything we know about mithril. It gets us very little closer to solving the problem of its manufacture. It is all a question of possibilities at this point.

(c) New Line Cinema

The theory about the mail-shirt being intended for Legolas relies on two conjectures. The first is that it really was made in Erebor. This would mean that the mithril would have been brought from Moria, during the period of abandonment around 1981TA (LotR: Tale of Years). Erebor, we're told, was first colonised in 1989TA, by Morian exiles. So this would be the earliest possible date of manufacture there. There is an outside possibility it was made in Moria as a gift for the Elves of Mirkwood and transported to Erebor by the exiles, which removes the problem of Ereborian manufacture, but introduces the confounding factor that there are other possible candidates (and frankly many much more likely candidates, as above) for the destination of a Morian production. If the mithril-shirt is considered of Morian manufacture, then the intended recipient was likely close to Moria, and its transportation to Erebor likely a factor of the abandonment around 1981; if it is considered to be of Ereborian manufacture, then the likely recipient was close to Erebor, and the closest Elves to Erebor are those of Thranduil's realm.

The second conjecture is that actually, Legolas is the only named Elf-prince whose birth may have been approximately-contemporary with the Dwarf settlement of Erebor. In turn, this relies on two lines of argument.

The first argument is that the birth-dates of known Elf-princes (such as Elrohir and Elladan, Amroth etc) are all far too early for a gift of an Ereborian mithril shirt. If the shirt is of Ereborian manufacture, it must have been made for an Elf-prince after 1989TA, and there are no known candidates for that Elf-prince that is not Legolas. So we can rule all of them out. But can we rule Legolas in?

We do not know the birth-dates of many Elf-princes; the information we have is very much centred on the line of the Kings of the Noldor, the children of Finwë, and especially the 'Golden House of Finrod' (or Finarfin, given the changes to the genealogy over the 50-something years the Professor was refining his mythology), the direct kin of Galadriel and Turgon and Elrond. Even some of them (poor Orodreth!) are moved about in generations and parentage and are never given a convincing home; and there are strange figures like Gildor Inglorion (at the time of writing, Inglor was the name given to the character later known as Finrod, and 'Inglorion' could mean 'descendent of Inglor') and Glorfindel ('Golden-hair'... when we are told that only the kin of Finrod among the Noldor had golden hair), who may be members of this House but are never given a place in the family tree. Others, outside this kin, are even more nebulous. Celeborn seems to begin as an Elf of Lothlorien, then his origin is removed to Doriath, then to Eldamar. Amroth hardly figures in the wider legendarium outside of his doomed love for Nimrodel, and his father is unknown (or rather goes by the twin names of Amdir-Malgalad, as his name was never formally decided and readers can decide which they favour. Personally, I prefer Malgalad, because I like the explanation that 'Amroth' is a nickname, and therefore find it unlikely that his father's name would have been chosen, before Amroth ever took to the 'long climb' of living in a talan out of love for Nimrodel, in order to alliterate with it). All Malgalad (or Amdir of one prefers) actually does is die in the War of the Last Alliance, along with Oropher, who also has little biographical information.

Oropher, and his son Thranduil, are crucial to understanding the case for Legolas's suitability for the mithril short. At the time of Oropher's death, Thranduil is already an adult. He accompanies his father to war, and returns as King of the Elves of the Greenwood, horrified by the blighted lands under the dominion of Sauron. What happens next is somewhat confused as different versions of the text say different things, but one interpretation is that for the first thousand years of the Third Age, the Elves of the Greenwood live in some kind of cultural and geographic continuity with the Elves of Lorien. The division is the river, that is all. At this time, we may imagine Thranduil and Amroth as both new kings - their fathers were both killed in the war - and near-neighbours - the Elves of the Greenwood lived in the south of the forest at that time, in the vicinity of Amon Lanc, that would become Dol Guldur. Thranduil and Amroth may even have been companions-in-arms; certainly Thranduil accompanied his father, and possibly Amroth did the same, in the War of the Last Alliance (Unfinished Tales: Celeborn and Galadriel).

Thranduil, it is hinted, may have been born in the First Age, and travelled with his father from Doriath. Certainly there are hints that the Elven-kings Halls, first described in The Hobbit, are an echo of Menegroth, Thingol's palace-fortress in Doriath; but by the time these are built (and this is crucial to the dating of Legolas) Oropher is dead. Who then remembers Menegroth? It can only be Thranduil. Of course, when The Hobbit was written, Tolkien used Beleriand as a basis for it. The Dwarves and Bilbo journey to the east in settled lands, somewhat troll-infested to be sure, meet some Elves in a hidden fortress, cross goblin-infested mountains, meet eagles and bear-men, cross a mighty river, then enter a guarded Elven forest where they are beset by spiders and eventually end up in an Elven underground fortress, before journeying on to a 'Lonely Mountain', near some Iron Hills. This is the geography of northern Beleriand; the Shire is near the mountains that guard Hithlum, Imladris is Gondolin, the Beornings and the Great River are analogues of the Edain of Beleriand and the Sirion, the spiders are those of the vales of Gorgoroth, the Elven fortress-caverns are Menegroth and the Lonely Mountain is the Hill of Himring, with the Iron Hills of Angband beyond. This then makes the King of the Elves Thingol not Thranduil. Tolkien may have used that geo-political framework, but he consciously sets this story millennia later; Elrond refers to Gondolin long-gone. The geography echoes Beleriand, but the story makes it clear that it happens long after the fall of Beleriand. The echoes are there for one reason (what we may think of as Tolkien's efficiency of setting) but in terms of the story, they are remembrances by the characters of a long history.

So Thranduil, who perhaps remembers Menegroth and must then have been born in the First Age, is King of the Elves of the Greenwood in the south of the forest that becomes Mirkwood. It is around 1050TA that evil begins to stir in this region (LotR: Tale of Years), leading to the creation of the dark power of Dol Guldur. This is when the movement of the Elves of the the Greenwood begins. They withdraw, and settle around the highlands known as 'The Mountains of Mirkwood' in later days. They then, after perhaps another thousand years or so, withdraw even further, into the north of the forest, and it is at this point that the 'Elven-king's Halls' of The Hobbit are established. This is around the same time that the Dwarves also arrive in this area.

So throughout the Third Age there is a gradual northward movement of Elves from the south of the Greenwood to the central regions and then to the north where we find them in The Hobbit.

So how does Legolas fit in? There are two clues as to his age using this chronology - three really but I do not rate one of them as being at all illuminating. The least important in my estimation is the aside that the trees of Fangorn make Legolas feel young as he has not since journeying with the 'children' of the Fellowship (Age is a curious thing in Tolkien's legendarium, with many races living much longer lives than normal humans. The actual ages of the characters are: Frodo is 50, Merry is 36, Pippin is 28, Sam 38, Gimli 139, Aragorn 87 and Boromir 40. Gandalf of course is co-eval with the universe and doesn't count). This, in my estimation, tells us absolutely nothing useful except that he is older than the other members of the Fellowship, which we might well have guessed.

A more telling statement is that he has seen oaks grow from acorn to ruin. Because Tolkien was Tolkien and always writing about trees, this is likely significant. He most likely meant 'English' oaks as the species he was most familiar with (though some species do grow older - but if he had meant something other than 'an oak which readers and indeed their children are likely to be familiar with', he would probably have described it), and therefore he likely had in mind a life-span of approximately 500 years. It may be that the 'oaks' Legolas saw grow up from acorns and die all lived at the same time and he is saying that he has seen many oaks simultaneously grow and die over the last 500-and-a-bit-more years, but then, he may as well have just said he'd watched one. A more likely interpretation, at least in my opinion, is that though there is overlap there are two or more complete cycles here; pluralising the oaks implies to me that he is saying that he is at least (roughly) one thousand years old.

The War of the Ring happens in 3018-19 of the Third Age. If this interpretation is valid, Legolas seems to be saying he was born before (approximately) 2019 of the Third Age, possibly long before, and very unlikely to be long after (though we may perhaps allow a little lee-way; 900 years does not seem to be stretching the point unduly, 700 years does, to me at least).

But how much before? This is where sketching out the history of the Woodland Realm becomes crucial. In the first chapter in Lorien (FotR: Lothlorien), Legolas and Haldir refer to each others' people in ways that suggest they are estranged. As we have seen, on what might be called the 'standard interpretation' based on the Tale of Years, until 1050TA, the Elves of Lorien and The Greenwood lived close together and were in regular contact. Legolas's statement about the strangeness of the Galadhrim implies (though it does not state directly) that he has lived only while there was no contact between the Elves of the Greenwood and Lorien (or at least, little: there must have been some, given that he knows the Song of Nimrodel, which cannot have been composed until 1,000 years after the Elves of the Greenwood separated themselves from the Elves of Lorien).

This implies that the earliest potential birth-date for Legolas is around 1050TA.

What we are left with using these two lines of evidence is the feeling that Legolas is born 'somewhere' between  c.1050TA and c.2019TA, which makes him between 999 and 1,968 years old at the time of the Council of Elrond.

The latest date here is 30 years after the Dwarves came to Erebor. It is a small but significant window of opportunity. If one accepts an Ereborian forging of the mail-coat, using ingots from Moria brought by the exiles, one cannot escape the possibility - and may even have to admit the strong possibility - that the mithril shirt that Thorin presents to Bilbo was likely made for Legolas, a young prince of the Elves of Northern Mirkwood, in the first few decades of the Dwarf-kingdom - between 1989 and approximately 2019, perhaps as late as around 2025 or 2026TA. No other possible known candidates exist for a 'late' manufacture, and Legolas cannot be ruled out. Again, Occam's Razor suggests that it was at least intended for (even if never one could argue it was never delivered to) Legolas - that in creating him for The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien accidentally supplied the only possible 'Elf-prince' that could fit an 'Ereborian' manufacture of the mithril shirt.

Starting a new campaign... as a player!

I've been invited to join a new campaign that's starting up. The DM and at least one of the other players are long-known to me, having been part of the Rift City campaign going back before Covid (and we've known each other for decades, it just took a long time to getting round to playing D&D together). I'm pretty sure I also played some 5e with one of the other players, under the DM that is running this campaign, but again, that was pre-Covid I think (a good few years ago now, anyway).

It's a 5.5e campaign, which is a new thing for me, but it seems pretty similar to 5e from what I remember (I first played 5e back in about 2016 I think, and then as I say maybe about 2018-19). It's all very complicated.

The setting is 'Wuxia'. I'm trying to get a handle on the world we're in, which mentally I'm pitching as being somewhere on a continuum from 'Kung Fu Panda' to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. I originally conceptualised this as 'Monkey' to 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon', then realised 'Monkey' is where I hope we end up, and you could instead run the line from 'no humans, everyone's flying about doing kung fu' to 'all humans, only a few people are flying about doing kung fu' (there is, beyond this point, 'The Water Margin', in which, as far as I remember, there are all humans, but no-one is flying about doing kung fu). 

Monkey - the original and best. Sandy, Monkey, Tripitaka, the horse (who is also a character in 'The Journey to the West'), Pigsy. Yes, I know it's a Japanese interpretation of a Chinese story about people going to India, but I don't particularly care, it's still awesome.

And then there's this one - the Monkey remake from 2019. Sandy, Monkey, Tripitaka, Pigsy. Yes, I know it's a New Zealand remake of a Japanese version of a Chinese story about people going to India. I thought it was not too bad - I liked the baddie (not pictured in this picture).

I figured I'd quite like to play a Monk. It's a bit of a classic of the genre. Obviously, apart from 'Monkey', there's a lot of things I can take as inspiration - 'Kung Fu', 'Bulletproof Monk', 'Dr Strange', 'House of Flying Daggers' and 'Hero' for a start that I can think of, I think I may watch some of them again (I have a few at least on DVD).

I'm playing about with an idea that I could play a 'shan xiao' - a 'Mountain Imp' (or perhaps 'Mountain Demon'). I came across them looking at this site to get information on Chinese folkloric monsters.

Mountain Imps and Household Goblins

In Chinese folklore, mountain imps known as shan xiao (山魈) are depicted as petty, misshapen demons inhabiting remote wild areas, often functioning as malefic tricksters that embody the dangers of uncivilized frontiers. These entities, likened to European goblins or Russian leshii, are bizarre creatures associated with affliction and mischief, such as leading travelers astray or pilfering tools in forested mountains. Regional tales from Sichuan portray them as dwarfish, horned figures capable of both guiding lost wanderers to safety and engaging in deceptive bargains for luck or protection, though betrayal of such pacts invites curses and misfortune....

Regional Variations Across China

In northern China, particularly in regions bordering Mongolia such as Inner Mongolia and the northern provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi, folklore features hardy mountain goblins known as shanxiao, depicted as mischievous spirits inhabiting remote peaks and steppes. These entities often embody the harsh environment, with tales where goblins serve as tricksters guarding landscapes, blending Han Chinese beliefs with steppe animism. For instance, shanxiao are described as beings that lure travelers into peril, reflecting the nomadic hardships and vast terrains of the north, distinct from more urban Han variants.

I definitely wanted my shan xiao to be Northern - just my prejudice. Both Northern and Southern shan xiao lure travellers from their path (or potentially put them back on it), so that's fine, I can go with that. A great description is 'malefic tricksters'; and a Goblin seemed a good choice for how to do that. Maybe a Kobold. But, neither Goblins nor Kobolds are playable races in 5.5e. They are described as 'petty' (which I took to mean 'small' rather than 'pointlessly argumentative and prone to grudges'), and the Southern varieties of shan xiao at least are 'dwarfish' (I assume meaning 'small compared to humans', and not 'bearded with winged helmets, beating metal and singing about gold'). That to me ruled out playing an Orc, because Orcs aren't generally considered smaller than humans in D&D, and I definitely wanted to go with something tricksy rather than brutish. I did consider playing a Gnome, but I find it hard to separate them from Western cultural tropes. But the Southern shan xiao are described as being horned, and that - along with their tricksy, perhaps demonic, nature - made me think of Tieflings.

Obviously, not being much of a late-editions player, I don't know very much about Tieflings (perhaps liberating me from the baggage I might otherwise have brought). From what I can gather, they're sort of Half-Demons in the same way that Half-Orcs are Half-Orcs and Half-Elves are Half-Elves. Of course, they've done away with Half-Orcs and Half-Elves in 5.5e. But they haven't done away with Half-Demons.

That's where I'm at currently - a Tiefling Monk. I put a bit of work into that and I'm fairly happy with how it's going. Character creation is a bit weird, though, I'm rather more used to rolling some dice and saying 'so what does that get me?' rather than going 'what do I want and how can I do that? Oh, and what do all these choices mean?' but I'm sure I'll get my head round it eventually. Not knowing what the end result is does make some of the choices seem a bit arbitrary though. 

I did make one roll (electronically, I couldn't be bothered to look for my dice, but have since remembered they're in a bag, inside another bag, approximately 4 feet from where I'm sitting). There is a d% roll you make to find a 'Trinket' during character creation, and I rolled 90. My 'Trinket' is a single ancient arrow of Elven manufacture.

That left me wondering. Not sure if there are any Elves in this setting, they're perhaps (qua Elves, anyway) a bit Western, but, I'm going to assume for the time being that there are some aethereal tree-spirits that might use bows somewhere in the realm. Whether they might sing a lot is currently unknown.

Anyway, that aside, that's what I ran with. We've been told that we're starting 5th Level. Cool, I get to pick a Monkish school for him to be involved with. I chose Way of the Shadow-Warrior as it seemed to go with my conception of his as being tricksy and somewhat sinister. Meet Shan-Linghun, Tiefling Monk of the Shadows, rendered in mini-form (or at least, illustration thereof) via the Hero Forge interface (here, in case anyone on the planet doesn't know what Hero Forge is).

Tiefling Monk with lots of gear, courtesy of Hero Forge

He's got a lot of kit. Given his Monk class he gets a spear and five daggers, as well as either a musical instrument or a tool-kit. I gave him the 'Guide' background (leading travellers astray, or to the right path) which gives him a Cartographer's Kit (so he had one toolkit anyway), so I went with a musical instrument as my Monk option. There's something Pan-like about him, so I thought maybe he could play songs in the misty hills, luring travellers with his haunting flutey melodies. Guides also get a shortbow and 20 arrows as part of their starting equipment. 

This, confusingly, is a weapon with which he has proficiency, but is not counted as a 'Monk Weapon'. As far as I can tell, this means that he's got a bonus to hit with the shortbow, but he can't utilise special Monkish skills like multiple strikes or using his ki-power. These have to be used with melee attacks. No matter, as I see it at the moment he can use the bow at some distance and if things get up-close and personal he can drop his bow and start leaping about and punching people, or using the spear and daggers I guess - he isn't an 'Open Hand' Monk, he's a 'Shadow' Monk, which means he's more of a sneaky, stealthy type, but I shall have to look into what that means exactly, all of this is new to me.

Anyroadup, that's where I'm at. Expect intermitant updates on this...

Military Organisation of the Keep on the Borderlands

Or, 'Can I do KotB for Oathmark?'

Part of the motivation for starting the Keep build was obviously to play more games with suitable terrain. The Keep is a framework for building some things - a Chapel, a Tower, an Inn, a Fountain as a kind of village centrepiece in the market square...

But also, wargames need armies. I started to wonder if the Keep could also provide a framework for troop organisation.

As with many things about the Keep, the 'force organisation chart' is very complicated. There are, listed for the actual compliment of the Keep proper (not including the guards of the Jewel Merchant or the fanatical Guild guardsmen or anything), 238 'soldiers' of varying kinds and 10 what might be thought of as 'officers' or heroes.

But my idea of organising these as Oathmark units was sadly dashed. Or at least, much more complex than it seemed at first thought.

40-42 of the troops (it's not quite clear what two 'men-at-arms' are actually armed with) are equipped with pole-arms. These, perhaps, could be organised into 'Linebreaker' units for Oathmark - Human heavy infantry with 2-handed weapons.

However, Linebreakers are equipped with 'heavy' armour; only 4 of the Pole-arm troops are wearing plate, and 12 definitely are not wearing heavy armour at all, as they are listed as wearing leather armour. The 24-26 remaining men-at-arms with pole-arms are listed as wearing chain. This potentially could be classed as heavy armour; in that case they could make up units of Linebreakers with the plate-armoured troops (30 all together could potentially be split into 2-3 units).

That would leave 12 lightly-armoured, pole-armed men-at-arms. That's not a unit-type that exists in Oathmark, unfortunately. The situation would be worse if chain is deemed 'light' rather than 'heavy'; in that case, only 4 of the (potentially) 42 pole-armed troops would be able to make up a unit - at least, if they kept their pole-arms. Most of these also have access to hand-axes or swords and shields, so could potentially provide 38 bodies for 'Soldier' units, with light armour (ie chain or leather) and shield, and sword or hand-axe. That would already be nearly two full units, which sounds like it would be a good start to an Oathmark Human army.

On top of that there are 54 chain-clad men-at-arms with crossbows and probably 46 men-at-arms with longbows (6 are just listed with 'bows' but all the other men-at-arms with bows have specifically longbows). This means there are 100 troops in chain with different types of bows.

If chain is heavy armour (see the Linebreakers above) then these 100 troops are not a legal troop-type in Oathmark. There are no heavy-armour Human troops with bows (there are no specific crossbow, longbow, shortbow units for Humans in Oathmark, just units of Archers with light armour and bows, and unarmoured, bow-wielding Rangers; all the various various crossbow and longbow contingents from the Keep would just have 'bows'). If the chain-clad troops can be classed as 'Linebreakers' (heavy) then the chain-clad 'Archers' (light) can't be legal for Oathmark, and vice versa.

Even if the chain-clad Archers are considered 'light', there are still 100 of them. This would give 5 units of Archers, as maximum unit size is 20. However, Oathmark has a limit of 4 units of any one troop type, so even accepting them as 'light' would disqualify 20 of them from being in a legal Oathmark army.

Whatever the classification of chain, the further 32 plate-wearing crossbowmen are automatically illegal under Oathmark rules, as there are no 'heavy' archers.

So, the best we can do so far is 30 Linebreakers and 132 disqualified bowmen in heavy armour along with 12 disqualified light-armoured pole-armed troops, or probably 38 lightly-armoured Soldiers and 80 (4 units of) Archers, also in light armour, and at this point only 52 disqualified archers, and a few 'heavy' troops that can't make a viable unit (the 4 actual plate-armoured, pole-armed troops).

After that, there are 32 men-at-arms with plate, shield and sword. These are a perfectly legal heavy infantry type, 'Warriors', the heavily-armoured version of 'Soldiers', and could make up two 16-man units of this type (or a 20 and a 12, etc).

That is (30+[12]+[132]+32=206) or (38+80+[52]+{4}+32=206) where brackets denote [illegal] or {probably unviable} units. Categorising chain as 'light' armour saves many more troops at the expense of dispensing with the pole-arms.

The remaining 32 troops are cavalry. 12 are heavily-armoured in plate armour, and carry swords and shields. In Oathmark, Human Heavy Cavalry is usually thought of as using spears or lances but their equipment categorisation is 'Hand Weapon'. It is perfectly possible to field these troops, though the maximum size for a cavalry unit is 10. Perhaps attaching three of the 'officers' and fielding three units of 5 Heavy Cavalry would be an option. Of the 20 remaining, 18 of the cavalry have chain and crossbows, but again there is the problem of armour and crossbows, but even more acutely than with the infantry - whatever chain is classed as, there are no mounted archers with any armour in the Human list. The remaining 2 cavalry troops are described as lightly-armoured couriers. It could however be reasonable to put these 20 cavalrymen together and make two units of Cavalry with light armour.

As it stands the troop-types in KotB are not a great fit for Oathmark but a relatively-simple solution would be swapping some crossbows or longbows for pole-arms, particularly, or sword and shield when not possible. Given that the maximum number of lightly-armoured archers is 80, the 'current' number of 132 archers is too high for a viable Oathmark force, whatever their armour type. The 52 unviable troops are divided between 32 plate-clad and 20 chain-clad troops. The 32 in plate could take up some of the abandoned pole-arms to become Linebreakers (with the four actual plate-and-pole-arm troops), and the remaining 20 could join their sword-and shield, chain-clad brethren to be another unit of Soldiers.

This would give something like the following list:

3 units of Soldiers - light (chain or leather) armour, sword or axe, shield - 58 (+1 officer)

4 units of Archers - light armour, crossbow or longbow ie 'bow' - 80

2 units of Warriors - heavy armour, sword, shield - 32 (+2 officers)

2 units of Linebreakers - heavy armour, pole-arm - 36 (+2 officers)

2 units of Cavalry - light armour, shield, hand weapon - 20

3 units of Heavy Cavalry - heavy armour, shield, hand weapon - 12 (+3 officers)

The majority of the officers or other 'heroes' in the Keep are unproblematic - seven of them, from the three corporals to the Castellan himself - are armed with swords and shields and wear heavy armour. There are also seven units with heavy armour in the proposed list. Perhaps the Castellan leads one unit of Heavy cavalry, a Captain the second and a Corporal the third; the Bailiff leads a unit of Warriors and a Corporal the second; and the remaining Captain the first unit of Linebreakers and the last Corporal the second. There are at least 40 pole-arms in the Keep, as 40 (or possibly 42) are armed with them in the original list, and I only have 36 'Linebreakers'. There are enough pole-arms for anyone joining the unit, such as the Corporal, to be armed with one. The Sergeant, who wears chain (and therefore, probably light) armour, could join a unit of Soldiers. 

But this is not the only possible way to slice the organisational pie - just a first, reasonable-looking pass. I'm sure I could tinker greatly with this list, if I ever get any games in anyway. One problem with it is that I have magicked up a few extra warhorses. There are only 30 in the Keep, according to the original list, along with some riding horses; I have somehow managed to conjure 15 Heavy Cavalry and 20 (Light) Cavalry without a problem, which is perhaps slightly cheating, given the constraints I have set myself. On the other hand, Human Cavalry in Oathmark are not noted as riding 'Warhorses' specifically, so perhaps it doesn't matter. The heavier horses are prioritised for the Heavy Cavalry and the last line of (Light) Cavalry has lighter horses, perhaps.

Though several of the officers and 'heroes' of the KotB garrison have magical weapons, this would not really be permitted in Oathmark. Oathmark has a system for unit officers that allows special characters to be the commander of a unit, but there are limits to how many of these special characters can be taken, and only these special characters can have magical weapons or equipment. It is likely that a standard Oathmark force-organisation chart would only allow 3 or 4 of these 'officers' to be special characters. The others would just be normal representatives of their unit-type. Perhaps the Castellan and Bailiff could be considered as 'Captains' in Oathmark terms and the two Captains in the Keep would be considered 'Champions'; or perhaps the Castellan would be considered a General, and the Bailiff and one of the Captains (probably the one leading the Linebreakers in the example above) would be Oathmark 'Champions'. The other two officer/hero-types that might be considered are the Castellan's Elven advisor and Clerical scribe; these may be considered as spell-casters in Oathmark terms (neither, I think, would be allowed to wear armour in this role). They somewhat stand outside the normal 'force organisation'.

This, of course, pre-supposes emptying the Keep and engaging an enemy on open ground. And what enemy? Well, in Oathmark terms, maybe the enemy should be the inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos. That would be an entirely different beast in terms of force-organisation, and will require much thinking about...

Not Building a Chapel

A while back (link here), I had an idea for trying to build some of the buildings in the Keep on the Borderlands. I started - at least, as far as trying to do a mock-up of one of the buildings. My idea was to start with the Chapel (building 17 on the Keep floorplan). This, I was certain, was a good start. I thought I could use it as a free-standing chapel or temple building if I needed such a thing for gaming. A chapel is always useful, right? My plan was to do it in a style that would more-or-less fit medieval Europe, a Warhammer-y fantasy early-modern Europe analogue, could be in Middle-earth with a bit of squinty side-eye, would serve as an old chapel in more modern Victorian sci-fi-ish gaming, or could even be a non-ruined building in the 41st Millennium, if they have non-ruined buildings. A generic stone hall-type building of vaguely religious bent - that could cover a lot of genres of gaming. Re-using anything to do with wargaming always seems like a good idea to me (I don't have infinite space or money, so anything has to be potentially able to serve a variety of functions), so, enthused with the idea that it would fit with almost anything I was likely to do, I embarked on the planning process.

It was not a good start. 

I'm going to quote from the description of the Chapel in the module:

"This building has a peaked roof two stories tall; the interior is one large room. The altar is located at the eastern end, with a colored glass window (worth 350 g.p. intact) above it; the window is 20’ tall and 8’ wide."

This was all fairly understandable, I thought. Looking at the map, the Chapel is 60' long and 20' wide, with doors at the west end. So far so good.

Excerpt from the plan of the Keep in The Keep on the Borderlands (c) TSR/Wizards of the Coast

I got into a bit of a flap about what a 'peaked roof two stories tall' meant however. Did it mean the roof was two storeys tall, atop a building of unknown height? Did it mean the building was two storeys tall including the roof? These speculations came back to haunt me later, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm pretty certain it was intended to mean, 'a peaked roof that makes the building two storeys tall at its peak' (the quotes obviously are in American English but I'm British, a 'story' to me is a told narrative, the floor of a building is a 'storey'). On this interpretation, I just need to know what 'two storeys' means. I decided that to keep things simple I would treat each storey as 10' (though I did flirt for a while with 12' - see below for 1:72 v 1:60).

This gave me the basic (in-game) dimensions of the building - 60' by 20' by 'two storeys' = 20'.

But what does this look like in practice?

I have generally applied a 1:72 or sometimes1:75 scale to my gaming involving miniatures. Both D&D and Warhammer use Imperial measurement, so I assumed that 1"=6' (one inch = 6 feet/72 inches). This after all was the scale of minis back in the day - if 25mm = 1" (it doesn't but close enough) then a 1" or 25mm mini represents a 6' (72") person. All well and good, that's 1:72. Later I decided that 4mm might equal 1', but as I never got round to building anything related to that scale it didn't matter. My D&D playing never really got to the 3rd Ed+ 'battlemat'-style of play (maybe that was 4th Ed, I don't really know) so I didn't do the 5' square thing that became very popular. I'm an old-school-10'-blue-squares-kinda guy.

So, how to convert 10' squares into terrain? It never bothered me before, I just made what I had and hoped it would kind-of fit. But now I was making a model to a pre-existing plan, based mostly on 10' squares, and occasional descriptions to fill in details.

I spent a lot of time going backwards and forwards between 1"=6' and 1"=5'. I should not have bothered. The sheer faff of trying to 5/6 or 6/5 everything was a baffling ordeal. I decided in the course of the planning for this build that from now on, 1:72 be damned, 1:60 is the way to go. 1"=5' and that's an end to it. I think this is the scale of the D&D battlemats so that's good... though the Keep in plan is 365' north-south - if I ever get the whole thing built, that will be 73", which is an inch over 6 feet; at 1:72 it would 'only' be a shade under 62", or 5-foot-2. But even though it increases the size by 6/5, it's so much easier to work with 1'=5" so that's what I decided would be the scale. And will be for all future builds I do that concern minis (and why would they not concern minis?).

So I decided on a scale, and started with a model-of-my-model. I have some foamcore - I bought it quite recently for building models, but have not used it yet, so thought I would use it for this build. But before I started hacking up my foamcore I thought I would plan out the build in cardboard just to see if it looked right. I can get cereal-box card out of the recycling, so I decided rather than jump straight in with the somewhat expensive foamcore (more expensive than 'free', anyway) I might as well build a test model to make sure I was happy.

So, I went back to the description. OK, questions about the exact meaning of 'two storeys' aside... peaked roof... well, that's pretty clear isn't it? It's not a flat roof; the roof is not a single slope from a higher wall to a lower; it's not a barrel-vault. Fine. I can work with a peaked roof (probably easier than working out how to do a vaulted roof). It doesn't say if it's a moderately-steeply-peaked roof, as in a more 'Gothic' style of architecture, or if it's a shallower angle of roof, a more 'Romanesque' style that you might find in Ravenna, let's say (which, though not so well represented on game-boards, is something of the model for Gondor, for example, both in Tolkien's imagination, and in terms of the visual language of Jackson's films). So I thought I would explore both. These are two of the potential designs I came up with for the west (entrance) end, based on 'two storeys' being 20' (bear in mind I've now gone from 1 square = 10', as in the plan, to 1 square = 5' = 1", for modelling purposes).

'Gothic' and 'Romanesque' (Classical?) west elevations

But the description also mentions a stained glass window, 20' tall in the east end. But the whole building is only 20' tall (ie, two stories) isn't it? Maybe I'm getting my storeys wrong. 2&1/2 inches? 3 inches? This moves my 10' storeys to 12'6" or even 15'.

I can't change the storeys that much. That would make everything far too tall, I think. Maybe I could make the walls of the building two storeys, with the roof on top of that? So I started playing about with elevations for the east end. There's no indication that there's any kind of internal differentiation; in fact, in the description it says 'the interior is one large room' - no mention of subdivisions or towers or anything. So my assumption is, the east and west elevations must match. Therefore, I need to find an elevation that works at the east end, with the window, then take out the window and add the doors for the west end. Simple. These are two of the elevations I came up with (there was a third intermediate form with a 45° pitch) - now abandoning any idea that 'two storeys' meant the total - it had to be the hight of the building without the roof... maybe... because I couldn't see how the stained-glass window could start at ground-level, it had to be raised somewhat, surely?

Potential east elevations

So, this is where I got to with the elevations. I took the (perhaps arbitrary) decision that the window would start 10' up the wall. Suddenly the building was not 20' tall, but 35' tall, in order to accommodate a 20' tall, 8' wide window. And, the Romanesque version at least looked like it would be 30' to the top of the wall - that was starting to look like three storeys, and that without the roof.

But it got worse. Consulting the plan again I realised that the Chapel butts up against another building at its east end - the end with the window. Checking against the description of location 4 - the Stables, which are the building immediately to the east - one finds this information:

"4. COMMON STABLE: This long building is about 15’ high, with a 3’ parapet* atop its flat roof, so that it can be used in defense of the gate. The gateside wall is pierced for archery..."

So the parapet (leaving aside the notion that it's only 3' high for now, that can't mean what it appears to mean) is used for defence, and is on the opposite side from the Chapel. But the whole building is still 15' high and has a flat roof. The side that is adjacent to the Chapel is 15' high.

Now there is no possibility that the window starts below the level of the building immediately to the east of it, that is absurd - unless the window predates the stables, and the latter was constructed against the wishes of the Chapel authorities... I could go with that but it seems pretty far-fetched, and I don't want to waste time explaining that the building 'mistake' isn't my mistake, it's part of the history of the castle. So the window must be at least 15' above ground level, and add a further 20' on top of that, and it can't go right the way to the roof, there must be some clearance at the top... and that would put the bottom of the window on the same level as soldiers fighting on the roof of the stable, risking them toppling into the window if they were injured up there...

The simplest solution to the whole problem is to assume that the building itself was 'two storeys' - that is 20' - and the roof was on top of that, and also, that the height of the widow was included in the roof and not the height of the building (ie, the bottom of the window was also at 20').

So I came up with the following elevation...

West elevation with 'tall' roof

Gone was any notion I could do a 'Romanesque' version of this. I could just about sneak a 'Gothic' arched window under a steeply-pointed roof; the possibility to do the same with a rounded window on a roof with a shallow pitch would have meant walls 40' (four storeys, not two) high.

So this is what I went with - a 45' high, 20' wide, 60' long Chapel, with the window taking up almost the entire height of the roof, starting 20' above ground-level. It was the only way I could see to get all the pieces to fit.

And it looked rubbish.

The whole thing was a daft, spindly thing that was far too tall (and long) for its width. I hated it.

I can only assume that Gary Gygax never build cardboard models of all of this (or maybe he did and he thought it looked OK - which is fine, we all have different appreciations of aesthetics). Either way... this was a success, in that I didn't waste the foamcore (it's still in the loft in its pristine state, and I'm still playing with cardboard), but also, a failure in that I didn't get a model chapel either for my 'Keep' gameboard or for anything else.

So I shelved the plans until I came up with a solution.

My favoured solution at the moment is, there is no stained-glass window. Maybe I will revisit this sometime and see what other solutions I can come up with but if - and it's a big 'if', now - if I build the Chapel, I will probably do it without the window. It's the only way I can see to make it work. And in that case, I might do it in a Romanesque style for two reasons. The first is that I like the look of it (I went to Ravenna on a college trip in 2010, it was absolutely amazing, architecturally and historically) and don't see it on many gaming boards; and the second is that I still have plans to drop the Keep into northern Gondor (as I first hinted at nearly a decade ago here) and see what happens. In that case, the Ravenna-ish feel of the Romanesque frontage might be more appropriate.

And that is where I left the Chapel, and for a while, the task of building the various locations in the Keep.

So, then, I tried to build a tower...

Creating a random world

I like random tables - even more so if the table has already been integrated into some sort of system that produces results with only the touch of a button or very minimal inputs.

I'm a big fan of the generators over at Donjon. There are loads of them - maybe 200 in all. Finding myself at something of a loose end, I decided to use some of them to start creating a campaign setting. I generally rely on some well-worn tropes myself, so let's see if Donjon can shake me up a bit.

I want to sketch out a region - something like the map of north-west Middle-Earth so beloved of us Tolkienists. A bunch of kingdoms and whatnot that border or are at least close to each other.

The first thing I want to do is generate some countries. Donjon doesn't have a country-generator but does have a 'Worlds and Planes' sub-head in the 'Locations' generator (here). All the location-generators produce a list of 10 outputs. That can be my stand-in for realms (or I guess occasionally smaller entities like cities); the first pass produced this raw output:

1. Ithon, an ancient world of wooded hills and storm-wracked seas, illuminated by a golden sun. The world is primarily populated by dwarves, with a few gnomes.
2. Tironde, an ancient realm of shadowed jungles, desolate wastes, and azure oceans. The realm is primarily populated by dwarves, with smaller numbers of other races. The dwarves of Tironde are ruled by a nobility of angels.
3. Briandoroth, an ancient realm of rugged hills, misty glens, and azure oceans. The realm is primarily populated by humans, with a few dwarves.
4. Ombalin, a medieval plane of broken hills, shadowed forests, and decaying swamps. The plane is mostly populated by humans, though with large numbers of other races.
5. Male, a malevolent plane of rough-hewn canyons and oceans of mercury, beneath a fiery sky. The plane is primarily populated by demons and efreet. It is also the location of the Fane of Eternal Night, a bastion of insane cultists and warlocks.
6. Falone, a primordial realm of smoldering hills and icy seas, beneath a sky of perpetual storms. The realm is primarily populated by demons and gargoyles.
7. Londolin, a primal plane of eroded hills, shadowed valleys, and desolate deserts. The plane is mostly populated by elves, though with large numbers of other races.
8. Cali, a walled plane of storm-wracked mountains and tangled forests, beneath an azure sky. The plane is the prison of an ancient gold dragon, bound by adamant chains.
9. Aris, an abyssal realm of volcanic mountains, dark canyons, and rusting battlefields. The realm is primarily populated by demons and ogres. The denizens of Aris are at war with invading devils.
10. Tirastir, a fallen plane of ashen forests, haunted mires, and seas of acid. The plane is overrun by vast armies of minotaurs and goblins.

Because this is not in fact a generator of realms, I have to do some minor conversion-work. So... Ithon, a realm of Dwarves... Tironde, a jungle-waste realm also populated by Dwarves (probably to the south of the other, the climate seems very different)... Briandoroth and Ombalin, human realms... Male (pr. MAH-lay), a fiery demon realm with its own point of interest, the Fane of Eternal Night... another demon realm (probably northern given the weather) called Falone (pr. Fah-LOW-nay)... Londolin, an elf-realm... Cali, a small walled and mountainous pocket-realm, which is the prison of a dragon... Aris, a mountainous realm where demons war with devils... and Tirastir, a land under the control of Minotaurs and Goblins, which formerly belonged to someone else. That looks like a good start.

I didn't have a map in mind but this is more 'proof of concept' than anything else. I'll see if I can get them to fit on this blank version of the LotR map (from here):

Not my map, of course.

Just going by description, and resisting the urge to put an evil realm where Mordor is (of course I ended up putting a second evil realm there) produces a map like this:

Map with new country labels

That seems quite pleasing. Perhaps Cali should be limited to the extreme north-west of Mordor but for the moment I'm happy enough with that as a rough guide.

A new iteration of the location generator - this time, using 'Towns and Cities' in the Settings tab of Random Locations - produces the following settlements:

1. Elfeld: Population 8200, primarily human, some halfling. The city is a tangle of narrow streets and row buildings. It is ruled by a tyrant, the human lord Rewalt, though a consortium of guildmasters is the real power behind the throne. Elfeld has seen better days, and swarms of vermin run through its streets.
2. Badun: Population 1900, primarily human, some halfling. The town is defended by a strong stone wall and gatehouse. It is governed by a noble aristocrat, the halfling lord Chury Reeve. Badun is known for its monuments and shrines of long-forgotten gods.
3. Glaney: Population 1800, mixed elf and other civilized races. The town is defended by a series of arcane wards. It is governed by a consortium of wealthy merchants, known as the Jade Senate. The Abbey of Angels is a common destination for religious pilgrims.
4. Keford: Population 140, mixed human and kobold. The village is encircled by a crumbling stone wall. It is governed by a noble aristocrat, the human lord Wine. It is said that a gang of slavers works out of the Hunter's Cask.
5. Bilgunulb: Population 6500, mostly dwarf, some human. Most of the city is delved into the sides of a mountain. It is governed by a court of aristocrats. Many of its residents wear iron scale vests, a local fashion.
6. Alderklif: Population 9800, primarily dwarf, some gnome. Most of the buildings are constructed from massive stone blocks. It is governed by several wealthy merchants, led by a female dwarf named Nainarv. Many of its residents wear nightsilk cloaks, a local fashion.
7. Llantwy: Population 780, primarily elf, some human. The village is defended by arcane wards. It is governed by a noble aristocrat, a female sphinx named Lili. The most prominent tavern in the village is The Viridian Axe.
8. Idarbekkr: Population 720, mixed dwarf and halfling. The village sits upon an island in the middle of a lake. It is governed by a mayor, a male dwarf named Amin. Idarbekkr was recently struck by plague, and tormented ghosts haunt its streets at night.
9. Nutithorp: Population 74, primarily dwarf, some gnome. The thorp is dominated by a single tall tower. It is governed by a reeve, a female gnome named Rida. Nutithorp is the home of a legendary hero, a female sorcerer named Duri.
10. Khurukthol: Population 50, mostly dwarf, some gnome. Most of the village is delved into the sides of a volcanic outcrop. It is governed by the priests of the village temple. Khurukthol is the home of a legendary hero, a paladin named Tori.

There are a lot of Dwarf settlements (5 mostly-Dwarf settlements) here, and as one of the Dwarf realms, Tironde, isn't even on the map, I guess they're mostly going up in the North-West in Ithon. Then there are 3 mostly-human and 2 mostly-Elven settlements that can go in human and Elf realms. I left the generator on default but you can use drop-down menus to change the sizes, culture and race of settlements (and the castles I do in the next step) to only generate villages of Aztec Halflings or towers of Sumerian Monsters (and a huge variety of other potential combinations) if you want something specific.

So, those default 'Castles' from the Settings tab:

1. Caer Atangrod: This round tower has elegantly carved stone walls and a yellow tiled roof. The male lord of the tower is an elf named Ebor, and it is defended by elven warriors and fey creatures. The tower is overgrown with flowering vines.
2. Castow Castle: This tower sits in the fork of a river. The male lord of the tower is an old paladin named Swalda, and it is inhabited by an order of priests and monks.
3. Dewold Stronghold: This small tower has battered stone walls with defensive battlements. It appears deserted, but is inhabited by a poor beggar named Warder Gare.
4. Barad Caigri: This large tower sits upon the banks of a stream, spanned by a wooden bridge. The female lord of the tower is an elf named Hyana, and it is defended by a small company of mercenaries.
5. Kadu's Deep: This small walled castle has strong stone walls, engraved with runes of strength. It appears deserted, but is inhabited by kobold thieves led by a boss named Naidara.
6. Argarson's Deep: Most of this small walled castle is delved into the side of a mountain. It appears deserted, but is inhabited by a vampire named Vittela. The castle has several forges, and its courtyards are filled with smoke.
7. Minas Anthir: This fortress complex sits upon an island in the middle of a lake. The male lord of the castle is an elf knight named Anthir, and it is defended by expert elven archers.
8. Narvi's Hold: This round keep has thick stone walls, engraved with runes of strength. The female lord of the keep is a young dwarf named Narvi, and it is defended by tough dwarven warriors. A secret door in the cellar opens into tunnels and mineshafts.
9. Minas Matu: This small keep has thick wooden walls and defensive earthworks. The female lord of the keep is an elf mage named Matu, who secretly serves Aleon, an ancient demonic goddess.
10. Barad Comi: This square tower sits upon the banks of a stream, spanned by a wooden bridge. It is in disrepair, and totally deserted. The tower once belonged to a wizard, and its walls are engraved with runes of power and sorcery.

There's a good mix there and I can, between the settlements and the castles, see a bunch of potential plot-hooks developing. What are the secrets of Barad Comi, and who seeks them? What is Warder Gare's story? What are the aims of the monks of Castow Castle? What are the histories of the various strangenesses of the settlements? How do this fit into the greater stories of the realms I generated first, with their forgotten gods, wars of devils and demons, and invading goblins under the leadership on Minotaurs?

Afterwards, I generated a few more other settlements because the 10 I had didn't seem to be covering the map much. But they offer even more by way of hooks and mysteries.

1. Kefield: Population 6900, primarily human, some elf. The city is defended by a stone wall and a nearby castle. It is governed by several powerful sorcerers, led by a male elf named Ducio. Kefield is said to be haunted by the ghost of a wandering adventurer, cursed by a Goddess of Destruction..
2. Chaford: Population 570, mixed human and elf. The village sits upon a granite outcrop, accessible by a single road. It is governed by a council of elders, led by a male human named Amer Nere. Chaford was recently struck by a divine curse, and the air smells of blood.
3. Blidun: Population 770, primarily human, some other civilized races. A series of low stone walls divides and encircles the village. It is governed by an arcane sorcerer, a male human named Wulfa. It is rumored that strange shadows are cast in the village square at night.
4. Pegrove: Population 430, primarily human, some halfling. The village is defended by a wooden palisade. It is governed by the priests of the village temple. Pegrove has seen better days, and swarms of vermin run through its streets.
5. Miwold: Population 22000, primarily human, some kobold. The city is defended by magical constructs and wards. Two factions struggle for control of the city, a senate of elected representatives and a court of aristocrats. Many of its citizens are tattooed with a strange symbol.
6. Agag: Population 650, mixed kobold and other monstrous races. The village is built around the ancient ruins of a temple. It is ruled by a monstrous tyrant, a lich named Lurtzog. Agag is the home of an infamous villain, a female necromancer named Thildamerc.
7. Teestone: Population 10200, mostly human, some elf. The city is defended by magical constructs and wards. Governance of the city is shared by a consortium of wealthy merchants and several wealthy aristocrats. Teestone is infamous for its thieves' quarter.
8. Einond: Population 560, mixed elf and human and half-elf. Most of the buildings are constructed from living trees. It is governed by a council of elders, led by a male elf named Mosa. Druids gather at the circle of stones on the solstice.
9. Vididalr: Population 62, mostly dwarf, some other civilized races. Most of the buildings are constructed from massive stone blocks. It has no local government. Vididalr serves as a military outpost, and its citizens are armed.
10. Boobluff: Population 160, mixed human and halfling. The village is dominated by a single tall tower. It is governed by a council of elders, whose weekly meetings often turn into drunken brawls. Boobluff was recently struck by plague, and many of its buildings stand empty or in ruins.

A very different mix of races - 7 predominantly human, 1 Elf, 1 Dwarf and 1 Kobold, which look easy enough to slot into the existing geo-political landscape (there are Kobolds mentioned in a few other places, perhaps they are on the borders between Goblin Tirastir and Goblin Ombalin... perhaps teh Kobolds were the previous inhabitants of Tirastir even). Again, hooks abound. What is the cause of the strange plague at Boobluff? Who is the goddess that cursed the adventurer of Kefield? What have the inhabitants of Chaford done to deserve their strange curse? Many things that the PCs can get their teeth into.

And that is the basis for constructing this new continent. 10 countries, 10 variously-sized castles, and 20 settlements. OK, I haven't got a whole world out of it, and I could only place 9 realms on the LotR map, but in principle I could just do something like this multiple times and populate greater areas. The least-satisfactory part I think is using the 'Worlds and Planes' generator for kingdoms and other realms. It's a bit clunky, but works tolerably well. It certainly require a bit of editing; descriptions of different sorts of suns etc. are not necessarily applicable to different regions of the same continent but there could be magical or just meteorological reasons why the atmospheric conditions might be very different across a large area (though in the output I generated I can't see anything too egregious). I'm not sure if there are any real alternatives. Not that I have found on Donjon anyway. But I'm pretty happy with it as a test-run of world-building.

Back to the Labyrinth with Labyrinth the Adventure Game

 Well it's a long time since I've been here... how are yous doing?

Inspired by a Facebook post from Dyson Logos about a Spirited Away-inspired game - Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast from Possum Creek Games https://possumcreekgames.itch.io/yazebas-bed-breakfast - I thought I'd say something about a non-D&D game I played a little earlier this year, and want to play more of.

As anyone who’s read the blog will know, I'm a massive fan of the movie Labyrinth (links to posts about Labyrinth specifically, and discussion of 'portal fantasy' where Labyrinth comes up, are here, here, here and here, and there are couple of unpublished posts too, which maybe I should look at...), so I decided to get my hands on the ‘Labyrinth – The Adventure Game’ RPG from River Horse Games - https://www.riverhorsegames.com/products/rh_lab_005. I'm going to do a little review of it here.

Dust-cover of the rulebook, (c) River Horse Games

 

First off, the book is very nicely produced. The illustrations are spot on, the maps are lovely (most of the book is the around 100 adventuring locations, mostly with maps and the occasional elevation drawing), the dice (there are 2d6 supplied with the book) have an owl in place of the one-spot, and for nerdy fans of the film like me the physical production of the book itself is a very pleasing Easter Egg.

The way the game works is that the PCs are an adventuring party and the GM takes the role of the Goblin King, who is forcing them to run through the Labyrinth, because they're trying to get something back from him. It doesn't have to be a kidnapped child, but almost anything else (in the rules there is an example party who are united in their desire to get a favourite hockey-stick back, but other suggestions include a fond memory or a singing voice) seems a bit anti-climactic after 'your helpless kidnapped sibling'. There is a time limit, as in the movie, and the PCs can fail by running out of time.

The Goblin King doesn't have to wear a wig and tight trousers, or do a David Bowie impersonation, but I plan on all three for my next attempt at running this (I don’t know if the wig or the Bowie impression will be worse, pretty sure I can manage the tight trousers).

The PCs can be one of a number of suggested races – human, Dwarf, Horned Beast (like Ludo, though not necessarily reddish-brown, and with the ability to control a particular sort of object, not necessarily rocks), Goblin, Firey (like the fire-spirits in the movie), Worm or ‘Knight of Yore’ – an anthropomorphised animal like Sir Didymus. Not necessarily a fox-terrier, you could be a monkey, a squirrel, a lizard, a blue hedgehog or Sir Reepicheep the Talking Mouse from Narnia, if you like.

Each of these character races is called a ‘kin’, and players are encouraged (once they have a little experience with the game) to experiment with creating other ‘kins’ in collaboration with the Goblin King. An obvious one might be a Fairy, as they exist in the movie, but it’s not hard to think of other potential kins, either imported from other games/properties or cut from whole cloth. Elf, Hobbit, Troll, Tinman, Wookie, Vulcan, Dralasite… I’m sure they’d all work, somehow.

Each kin has certain attributes, called ‘traits’ and ‘flaws’. As well as there being traits and flaws according to kin, such as Worms being very small (which can be either a positive or a negative, depending on circumstance), there are others that characters can choose, such as being good at running and jumping, or being forgetful. This more-or-less completes character creation – there are no ‘stats’ as such, no version of STR-INT-WIS-DEX-CON-CHA, no saving throws, no HP or AC. Just some things the PC may be good or bad at which effect the outcome of determinations.

It might be nice if the rules included some mechanism for establishing a party at the get-go; instead it's sort of handwaved, the party establishes itself out of a shared distrust for the Goblin King and the desire to get some thing or things back, and that's that - it's up to the players to add any more depth or detail.

It's not a crunchy ruleset, resolving around 'rulings not rules'. The mechanics only take up a couple of pages, and basically revolve around the Goblin King deciding the complexity of actions and either they or the player concerned rolling to see if the PCs accomplish them, using one or two dice, depending on whether there's any advantage or disadvantage - if no, roll one die, if yes, roll two and pick the higher or lower depending on advantage or disadvantage, if there are both advantages and disadvantages (someone is helping you climb but you're also clumsy, let’s say) then they cancel out and you go back to one die. The principle is very basic and pretty flexible and can be applied to multiple situations as long as the Goblin King is prepared to give everything a 1-6 difficulty rating.

There are also a bestiary and some tables that can be used to fill in extra detail between the main encounters or create unique scenes, but these don’t quite constitute a ‘dungeon labyrinth design kit’ – it would take a little work, I think, to make into a truly useful tool for extending the world significantly (or using this ruleset for other worlds of portal fantasy – Narnia I think is an obvious possible setting, or Wonderland, or Oz).

In many ways it’s a pretty gentle game (gentler than the variants of D&D I usually play anyway – obviously I tend very much to Moldvay Basic). The book has lots of quirky encounters with a really simple set of mechanics. It's great if you're a fan of the film; loads of things that evoke the setting of the movie, plenty of Easter Eggs. If you're not a fan, but are looking for an encounter source-book, it's also pretty good - you could just raid it for encounters and drop stats in for monsters from your system of choice (easy enough to find equivalents for most monsters I think). It is quite heavily rulings-not-rules so if that's not your way working you may not like that aspect. It’s not quite complete enough, I think, to use as a toolkit for running a million other games, and there’s a certain amount that has to just be taken as being settled without actually being settled (like how the party forms), but as a fan I think it’s great, and for the not-fan I think it could be a useful source of encounters. 9/10 for production and design, 9/10 for content, 6/10 for mechanics, because really I want a full game with enough tools to spin it off wherever I want.