Merry Brandybuck and the destruction of the Witch-king

I think it's very strange that, since the Peter Jackson films came out, a notion has arisen that it wasn't Eowyn that destroyed the Witch-king. The theory goes that Merry's short-sword, the dagger of Westernesse that Tom Bombadil gave him, was a magic blade specifically needed to disrupt the spell that allowed to Witch-king to keep himself together. Sometimes it's claimed that the spell somehow linked the Witch-king to Sauron and this what Merry broke. In this notion, it is Merry stabbing the Witch-king that is the important moment, and Eowyn stabbing him where his face should be is not important. Anyone could have done it, once Merry had stabbed the Witch-king with his magic dagger; this is what made the Witch-king vulnerable (I shall, from here, refer to this as the 'Merry's Magic Dagger' theory).

Personally, I think Tolkien is extremely clear on this point. The main evidence for what actually happened comes from the chapter The Battle of the Pelennor Fields, in The Return of the King. Different editions of course have different page numbers, but my most-consulted edition is the 1991 3-volume set, where the important stuff is on pages 138 and 141. Your edition may differ but it's easy to find. There are two passages on the death of the Witch-king about three pages apart. For me, p.138 is where Eowyn confronts the Witch-king, p.141 is where Merry realises what has happened to the sword. In the following discussion, p.136-7 of the same chapter - where Eowyn declares "I am no man!" - is also relevant.

P.138 has the following description of the point where Eowyn and the Witch-king are facing each other:

"... Her shield was shivered in many pieces, and her arm was broken; she stumbled to her knees. He bent over her like a cloud, and his eyes glittered; he raised his mace to kill.
But suddenly he too stumbled forward with a cry of bitter pain, and his stroke went wide, driving into the ground. Merry's sword had stabbed him from behind shearing through the black mantle, and passing up beneath the hauberk had pierced the sinew behind his mighty knee.
'Eowyn! Eowyn!' cried Merry. Then tottering, struggling up, with her last strength she drove her sword between crown and mantle as the great shoulder bowed before her. The sword broke sparkling into many shards. The crown rolled away with a clang. Eowyn fell forward upon her fallen foe. But lo! the mantle and hauberk were empty. Shapeless they lay now on the ground, torn and tumbled; and a cry went up on the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of the world."

Then on p.141 we read this:

"...And still Meriadoc the hobbit stood there blinking through his tears, and no one spoke to him, indeed none seemed to heed him. He brushed away the tears, and stooped to pick up the green shield that Eowyn had given him, and he slung it at his back. Then he looked for his sword that he had let fall; for even as he struck his blow his arm was numbed, and now he could only use his left hand. And behold! there lay his weapon, but the blade was smoking like a dry branch that has been thrust in a fire; and as he watched it, it writhed and withered and was consumed.
   So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will."

Tolkien repeats the same words - a bitter cry, a wound so bitter; pierced the sinew, his unseen sinews; mighty knee, mightier hand - to remind the reader of the earlier description. The two descriptions resonate to remind the reader what happened a few pages before.

Merry stabbed his blade into the sinew behind the Witch-kings "mighty" knee; the Witch-king "stumbled forward" because the dagger broke "the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will". The Witch-king stumbled; he didn't come apart, he didn't become vulnerable. He lost control of his body because he had been stabbed. It literally threw him off his stroke. 

As he stumbled, he gave "a cry of bitter pain", because the sword had given him a "a wound so bitter". Not deadly or fatal or anything like; bitter - painful and unpleasant. It was superlatively bitter, for sure. Even if "mightier hands had wielded it" no other blade would have given a more bitter wound. Or as bitter a wound... which is a problem in itself. But certainly no more bitter. Not 'a wound more deadly'; not 'a wound more fateful'; 'a wound more unpleasant'.

Defenders of the 'Merry's Magic Dagger' theory claim that the barrow-blades were uniquely enchanted to harm the Witch-king, to break some protection on him or sever his connection to Sauron. But that is not what this passage says. The barrow-blades that the Hobbits got were forged by the Witch-king's enemies, yes; but so were all of the weapons (swords, daggers, axes, spears and arrow-heads) forged by the Arnorians in their 700-year war with Angmar; so were all the weapons forged by Gondor in their 1,000-year war with the Witch-king (who was, after fleeing Angmar, Lord of Minas Morgul and the slayer of the last Gondorian King). Whatever Arnorian or Gondorian weapon was used to harm the Witch-king, we can be sure the smith who made it would have been pleased. In this, the barrow-blades were no different to literally millions of other weapons forged in nearly 1,700 years of war.

As for Sauron, he has not been mentioned for at least 5 pages before "the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will" is mentioned. It does not refer to Sauron. The Ring-wraiths are agents of Sauron, not his puppets. They may have no desires that are not his, but they have the independent capacity to carry out his instructions - "his will" means the Witch-king's will, not Sauron's.

But, the argument goes on, "no other blade" would have done as much hurt to the Witch-king.

This is, I fear, one of the places that Tolkien is just wrong. "No other blade" must include the swords of Pippin and Sam, as well as Frodo's sword that broke at the Fords of Bruinen. And yet, there is no differentiation at any point between any of these blades. We do not even know if Aragorn or the Hobbits knew which blade was which, when he returned them to Merry and Pippin at Isengard, having carried them from Parth Galen. In that passage (The Two Towers: Flotsam and Jetsam - p.209 in my edition) they are described as "the two sheathed knives" and nothing more. Not 'Pippin's sheathed knife and Merry's extra-special sheathed knife like no other'. They are exactly the same. That 'no other blade' could do such a thing makes Merry's blade unique and therefore unlike Pippin's and Sam's swords. But nowhere else is such a distinction made.

Unfortunately Tolkien does make mistakes. The number of times Gwaihir the Windlord carried Gandalf, for example - at least four, possibly five, and yet "thrice shall pay for all", apparently. It seems Tolkien forgot about the Eagle-journeys in The Hobbit when he wrote that line (The Return of the King: The Field of Cormallen, p.274).

Back to the blades... I firmly believe the line should read "No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound more bitter..." - not Aragorn wielding Anduril, not Eomer, not Faramir, not Theoden, not Gandalf with Glamdring, not Legolas or Gimli; and whatever sword they had used, they could not have done more than Merry with the barrow-blade. And equally, if it had been Pippin instead of Merry, the same sentence could have been written. But is this because of the blades themselves?

They are certainly in some sense 'magical' (though some of the magic of them may be because of transference). When they are found, in the chapter Fog on the Barrow-downs in The Fellowship of the Ring, we are told "... [w]hether by some virtue in these sheathes or because of the spell that lay on the mound, the blades seemed untouched by time..." (p.199).

Later, Aragorn finds the daggers at Parth Galen in the aftermath of the Orc-ambush, where they have been thrown away by the Orcs. Aragorn says that the Orcs discarded the daggers in fear, because they are "wound about with spells for the bane of Mordor" (The Two Towers: The Departure of Boromir - p.14). This sentence is often referred to by supporters of the 'Merry's Magic Dagger' theory. When it is, it is invariably misquoted. It does not say they were made with magics for the bane of the Witch-king or even of the Nazgul. It says Mordor. 

The Orcs throw them away because they fear them. Why would the Orcs fear them if they were specifically magicked to harm Nazgul, or only the Witch-king? Yes, bound about with spells for the bane of unnatural evil things, the work of Mordor - Orcs and Nazgul both, we can conclude. Not bound about with spells to harm Nazgul or the Witch-king specifically, that does not make sense. Again, though, there is no differentiation between the daggers. Merry's and Pippin's have the same spells for the bane of Mordor. Merry's is not more special than Pippin's, or the other two blades that Frodo and Sam bore. They are all "wound about with spells for the bane of Mordor." Making Merry's blade unique so that "no other blade" could inflict "a wound so bitter" does not make sense in context. Indeed, in Letter 210 (written about a draft script for a Lord of the Rings film, not closely dated but placed in June 1958), Tolkien says clearly that Sam cannot stab the Witch-king at Weathertop with his barrow-blade, as if he did, the result would be the same as a reference to Bk. III; "... the Wraith would have fallen down, and the blade would have been destroyed". In other words, not 'no other blade', but precisely, 'other blades' (at least the other three barrow-blades). As a note in the same place (Note 4), Tolkien says his reference to Bk. III is to "the slaying of the Lord of the Nazgul by Eowyn". Not by Merry. Not because Merry removed any defences. Just straight up, "by Eowyn".

The point, I think, of this sentence is not "no other blade"; rather it is "not though mightier hands had wielded it". The Lord of the Rings is not, on the whole, much concerned with 'magic swords'. Anduril is a symbol of power and authority, of a history and destiny; but it is not some D&D superweapon, a +5 Sword of Orcslaying. Eomer's sword, Guthwinë, and Theoden's sword, Herugrim, are named and described but nowhere does the text suggest that they are anything more than well-made heirlooms. Eowyn's sword is not named; neither are the swords of Boromir, Faramir and Denethor, or any of the lesser heroes - Elfhelm, Erkenbrand, Gamling, Imrahil, Mablung, Damrod, Halbarad, or even Glorfindel; none are named as having 'magic swords'. Sting and Glamdring are certainly magic swords, but these are inherited from The Hobbit which is much more of an 'adventure-tale' and less a philosophical treatise on courage and sacrifice, and even then, the magic properties of Glamdring are not mentioned in The Lord of the Rings. Where Sting's magic is much used, it is remarked upon over and over. Its property of detection of Orcs benefits Sam and Frodo many times; and in the events in Cirith Ungol, the provenance of the blade in Gondolin is much remarked - the giant spiders and spider-webs of Ered Gorgoroth are specifically mentioned. The ability of Sting to cut the webs foreshadows the wounding of Shelob. No such foreshadowing exists in relation to the Nazgul. They are not noticeably afraid of the barrow-blades at Bree or Weathertop, or even Bruinen. No-one mentions any power over the undead that the blades have, at any point. Just a general 'bane of Mordor'. Anglachel/Gurthang in The Silmarillion is certainly a magic sword; but again, the mode of storytelling of The Silmarillion is very different to The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbits do not talk to their swords as Turin Turambar does, and the swords do not talk back. They do not seem to have a will of their own. Few swords are named in The Lord of the Rings, and none are described as 'magic swords' in anything like the same terms as those in The Silmarillion or The Hobbit.

Merry's deed at the Pelennor Fields is saving Eowyn's life - plucking up his courage to attack the Witch-king just at the point when Eowyn is going to die. Tolkien makes it plain; and The Lord of the Rings is a tale of courage and sacrifice, bravery in the face of evil, not about magic swords. The significance of Merry's action is in him overcoming his fear, not in fortuitously holding the only (or one of four, later three; or one of one million) 'magic dagger' that can harm the Witch-king. The providence that guided Merry and saved Eowyn was not the providence that put exactly (or approximately) the right weapon in Merry's hand, it was the fact that he was in the exact place he needed to be to chose to be brave at the right moment. Aragorn, Eomer, Eowyn, Faramir, Boromir - mightier hands than Merry's - could not have done more.

Back to the deed itself...

In Appendix A II, 'The Hourse of Eorl', the note on p.436, we read that Eowyn's shield-arm "... was broken by the mace of the Witch-king, but he was brought to nothing, and thus the words of Glorfindel long before to King Earnur were fulfilled, that the Witch-king would not fall by the hand of man. For it is said in the songs of the Mark that in this deed Eowyn had the aid of Theoden's esquire, and that he also was not a Man but a Halfling out of a far country..."

The point here is that "in this deed" (ie the destruction of the Witch-king, when he was "brought to nothing"), Eowyn "had the aid" of Merry. Merry helped; and he certainly did. Without his timely and courageous intervention, Eowyn would have died. But Merry helping Eowyn does not mean he was "brought to nothing" by Merry rather than Eowyn. Eowyn is given the chief credit by Tolkien; and Merry is given a supporting role (and "it is said in the songs of the Mark" that Eowyn had Merry's aid, not 'Merry had the aid of Eowyn').

Note 4 to Letter 210 has already been quoted: in it, Tolkien unequivocally says that the slaying of the Witch-king was at the hands of Eowyn.

On the prophecy of Glorfindel...

Glorfindel's prophecy is first mentioned in the narrative, by Gandalf. When Pippin wonders if the 'Dark Captain' of the forces of Mordor is Sauron, Denethor laughs, and talks about dead sons. Gandalf explains that the Dark Captain is the Lord of the Nazgul. He does not name Glorfindel, but says of the Witch-king "... if words spoken of old be true, not by the hand of man shall he fall..." (Return of the King: The Siege of Gondor, p.107).

This is foreshadowing, designed to increase the reader's sense of uncertainty about the coming battle; but we don't know what it foreshadows. Men, endlessly throwing themselves impotently at the Witch-king, as he laughs invulnerably? Some trick by Legolas and Gimli as 'not Men' to bring the Witch-king down? Some perhaps natural catastrophe that might destroy him? We do not know that Eowyn is riding to the battle under the guise of 'Dernhelm', so there is no easy way to bring her into our speculations. We just know there is some complication to destroying the Witch-king easily.

The prophecy itself is contained in the Appendices. Here, the report is of the conversation between Glorfindel and Earnur (soon-to-be King of Gondor) in the closing stage of the war against Angmar. "Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man will he fall", says Glorfindel (Appendix A I iii). 

A misinterpretation of the prophecy assumes that there is a protection on the Witch-king, and Merry broke it with his 'magic dagger'. But this misunderstands the prophecy the way the Witch-king misunderstood it. He thinks Glorfindel's prophecy protects him; but it doesn't. It just marks out when he was fated to be destroyed.
I think we can understand that Glorfindel saw the Witch-king's fall. He did not get a text message from Mandos or a telegram from Illuvater, there was no disembodied voice giving him information like a voicemail. We can be fairly certain that the information about the Witch-king's fall was not conveyed to him in words before he left Aman to return to Middle-earth; it must have arrived as a 'true-seeing'. He knew that at some point 'far off yet' (ie, far off in both time and space), 'someone, not a man' would accomplish the Witch-king's destruction. But because it is unreasonable to assume this knowledge arrived in verbal form, we must assume it was in the form of a vision. He saw the Witch-king's fall, and he knew it was not a man (and certainly not Earnur) who would accomplish it, because he saw who did (or, given the fact that he was seeing the future, who would) accomplish it.

All this being said, it was, ultimately, Gollum who actually, finally, destroyed the Witch-king. In Letter 246, Tolkien is talking about Frodo claiming the Ring inside Mount Doom, and says the following about the Nazgul: "The situation as between Frodo with the Ring and the Eight...", and here there is a note, numbered 6, "The Witch-king had been reduced to impotence". Not, that the Witch-king had been forever destroyed. The implication is that, as after the destruction of the bodies of the Ringwraiths at Bruinen, the Witch-king had become temporarily unhoused and, given time, would return. But he did not have time; ten days later, the One Ring was destroyed, and he was unable to ever return. Thus, his voice "was never heard again in that age of the world." Glorfindel's prophecy does not refer to the ultimate negation of the Witch-king; it refers to the fall of the Witch-king. His last moments as a force, a malevolent being, his last moments of threat, were seen by Glorfindel, not the last technical moments of his potential unlife. Glorfindel sees the point where the actions of others render the Witch-king's existence (or lack of it) temporarily untenable; and then, later events prevent his return, but these are not the subject of Glorfindel's knowledge.

The agent of the destruction of the chief captain of Sauron that Glorfindel saw was not, we can be sure, Gollum (and what's more, ten days after the event of his 'fall'); we can be certain Glorfindel saw his 'fall' and we must decide who was the agent of it. The choices are, either an unknown woman Glorfindel never met, or a Hobbit that he later met and spent more than two months with, in the context of being hunted by the Ringwraiths, without ever mentioning this fact to Elrond, Gandalf, Aragorn, Bilbo, Frodo, or Merry himself.

The first is unfortunate; to believe the second rather implies believing either that Glorfindel was spectacularly stupid, or he was working for Sauron. It does not make sense that Glorfindel 'saw' Merry destroy the Witch-king, and then did not make any argument, for instance to Elrond (who had to be persuaded by Gandalf) to allow Merry and Pippin to accompany the quest, nor, seemingly, ever suggested to Elrond that Hobbits might be part of the answer to defeating the Witch-king, despite Hobbits visiting Rivendell at least intermittently for 70 years prior to the War of the Ring and even the Nazgul themselves chasing and attacking Hobbits very close by. That this did not jog Glorfindel's memory about who he saw destroy the Witch-king can only suggest there was no memory there to jog. We can reasonably conclude that Glorfindel did not know that Merry was bound up with the Witch-king's fall. If Glorfindel had known it, it would have been mentioned. And yet, he saw someone well enough to know that they were not only 'not Earnur' but 'not any man'. I think we can conclude it was also 'not a Hobbit I shall spend around 74 days with in the future'. Just an unknown woman.

We can be fairly certain that the Witch-king finally realised the import of Glorfindel's prophecy when he was afraid of Eowyn. This happens in Return of the King: The Battle of the Pelennor Fields, on p.136-7, just before the passages quoted at the beginning. The Witch-king says, referring to the prophecy, "no man may hinder me". Eowyn replies that she is no man, but a woman, and gives her name. The Witch-king hesitates "as if in sudden doubt". This doubt makes no sense if the grammatical construction of the prophecy is that his fall would not come about through the hand of a human. It would not matter. The idea that 'man' must refer to what we (but not Tolkien in LotR) would call 'a human' is a linguistic trick intended to supply a dramatic reveal. It cannot be taken seriously. The fact that the Witch-king hesitates in doubt when Eowyn reveals herself implies full well that he knew he was on shifting ground. He had no fear of Hobbits; he had already attacked them (with their barrow-blades). His doubt on encountering Eowyn means that he was aware that he was not safe, two pages before he was aware of Merry's presence. So to argue that it was Merry who destroyed the Witch-king, on the grounds that Eowyn was 'of the race of Men' and therefore not the subject of the prophecy, is contradicted by the Witch-king himself. Furthermore, if he is somehow 'protected' and there needs to be a barrow-blade specifically to break some 'spell' on him, why is the Witch-king afraid of Eowyn at all? Even if she is 'no man', it would not matter if a barrow-blade was needed to harm him. His hesitation makes no sense - unless there is no protection to be broken, and he realises that the prophecy about his fall is ambiguous. But that ambiguity only makes sense if Eowyn, on her own, without a barrow-blade, is enough to destroy him.

The prophecy makes no sense if it refers to Merry; the Witch-king's hesitation makes no sense if an Arnorian 'magic dagger' is required to harm him; the fear of the Orcs causing them to throw the daggers away makes no sense of they are enchanted to harm the Witch-king; the spell that knit the Witch-king's unseen sinews to his will is more easily explained by reference to the momentary loss of control that is described, than in inventing some connection to Sauron or some spell of protection; Tolkien repeatedly says it was Eowyn who destroyed the Witch-king.

There was no 'rendering the Witch-king mortal', that's a weird misinterpretation that's only existed, as far as I can tell, for the last 20 years. Merry's sword gave the Witch-king the "bitter" wound that caused him to stagger. It clearly explains in the two passages in the chapter on the battle of the Pelennor Fields quoted above what happened. The Witch-king was about to strike Eowyn; Merry stabbed the Witch-king; the Witch-king stumbled and his stroke against Eowyn went wide, while he gave a "bitter" cry; Eowyn stabbed the Witch-king in 'the face'; the Witch-king gave another cry and vanished. The idea that Merry undid anything other than the Witch-king's concentration is just nonsense.

Stacked against that is one line: no other blade could have given the Witch-king as bitter a wound. But in Letter 210, Tolkien agrees another blade, Sam's, could have done, and done more; he relates it not to Merry wounding the Witch-king, but Eowyn destroying him. Tolkien does not differentiate the four barrow-blades. They are all the same. That sentence, which alone supports the notion that Merry's blade was uniquely suited to wound the Witch-king, is contradicted by others of Tolkien's writings. "No other blade" is simply wrong, as multiple other lines of enquiry show. And without it, there is no justification for the theory of 'Merry's Magic Dagger'.

Building a Tower (Part I)

I wanted to build a tower. Faced with the failure (or, in some ways, 'critical planning success') of my chapel model (as described in an earlier post), I rather lost heart in the project to make the buildings of the Keep for quite a while. 

Honestly the fact that the first thing I tried to build didn't work, in that I couldn't see a way to make all the details I had 'fit', left me wondering if the whole project was a goner. I thought I knew what I was doing with the Chapel, it seemed like it would be a relatively easy and useful start. But if the build I had identified as 'easy' (in design, not even building the finished thing from foamcore!) proved such a challenge, was I up for any of it?

But, Orc Minimus gave me an actual proper cutting-board for Christmas (not Christmas gone, the Christmas before, end of 2024). This was a couple of months after the chapel debacle, which took place in the second half of that year - I'd originally laid out the scheme in July 2024 (in this post) and around September-October, I did my experiments with the Chapel model.

Presumably, I'd spent so long swearing over bits of cardboard that the 'little one' (he's nearly 24) took pity on me and bought me the cutting-board. Cutting-mat. I dunno, whatever they're called. The green, slightly-floppy measurey ones with the grids and angles in a somewhat sci-fi way.

It's a marvellous thing. Much easier to see if things are square/the right size/the correct angle and all that. Light and easy to move and it doesn't hurt if I drop it on my foot, unlike the old wooden kitchen chopping-board I had been using to cut cardboard and whatnot on. A damned useful piece of kit.

If I have one criticism of it, and I do have one, it's that on one side, it's in metric, and on the other side... it's also in metric.

Now, I'm not crazy. I know, objectively, that measuring things in units of 100 is much easier than measuring them in 16ths of a dead Frenchman. Anyone from an Imperial country that disagrees, please explain why your currency does not use 4 farthings to the penny, 6 pennies to the shilling, 5 shillings to the crown, and 4 crowns to the pound. Metric, decimal, whatever, 100-of-these-make-1-of-those, is vastly simpler to use and much more flexible.

But... all of that time I spent messing about working out whether it's 6' to the inch or 5' to the inch... it doesn't matter. I can't really work in inches on the board anyway.

Of course, my steel rule has inches on it, inches on one edge, mm/cm on the other, but much of the utility of the cutting-mat disappears if you aren't using it for measuring. The old chopping-board I was using as a surface also 'didn't have inches on it' (nor centimetres neither), so if I wasn't using the mat for handy measuring, it would be hardly more useful than the chopping-board.

So; having agonised for far too long about it and eventually taken the decision that everything was going to be based on 1" = 5', I had to then convert that to metric.

Now, everything is going to be 25mm = 5'. Astute observers will know that 25mm does not in fact equal one inch, 25.4mm = one inch. But there's no way I'm working with that. It's going to be 25mm = 5', so 5mm = 1', and that's an end to it.

I don't even know what that makes my scale - not 1:60 (ie, 1"=60"/5'); not 1:72 (1"=72"/6' - at this scale, 5' would be about 22mm, I think) - it's just about 1:61, I reckon. My 'inch' (for this build, the whole Keep project, and I suspect forevermore, at least for terrain work, maybe not if I'm putting up new shelves) will be 25mm.

So, anyway, the mojo to build some buildings finally returned after the disappointment of the failure to successfully tackle the Chapel. 

I didn't attempt anything else as challenging for a while. What I did was print off a few downloadable cardboard kits and make them up. So it wasn't totally dead time. I still added a few bits to my 'village', if not to the project to build the structures in the Keep.

Then, my laptop decided to fry itself and I lost the files I had. I mean all the files. Everything relating to the project that wasn't already on the blog (that is, the 'mission statement' and a couple of draft posts about different aspects, with snippets of info - these were part of the post about the Chapel, and some musings about military organisation in the Keep (since turned into a proper post here) and the Caves, not even directly connected with terrain-building, that will appear as part of the project); also, along with much other stuff, I lost all the downloads of cardboard terrain I'd collected over the years, including a bunch of GW stuff that you can't get access to any more. 

That was a bit of pain I will admit. It did seem like the universe was conspiring against this project.

But, as I don't actually believe that, I eventually returned to it.

So, I decided to try and build a tower.

Now for some reason, I'd become confused (not helped by the fact I'd lost the pdf in the hard-drive disaster and didn't re-download it for a while, while simultaneously not bothering to check my tatty old paper copy of B2 - but the problem must have started earlier, I just took ages to correct it). I thought the tower I decided I would make - the Bailiff Tower - was this structure:

Structure 8 - a 30' square crenelated structure

I read the description of the Bailiff Tower - 30' square, four storeys, battlements; I looked at the map at structure 8 - 30' square, battlements, connected to defensive walls at east side, big doors in south wall. All good.

What I didn't realise was that I had applied description 6 (Bailiff's Tower) to structure 8 (the Smithy), and I was actually embarking on building this structure:

Structure 6 - the Bailiff's Tower

Same floorplan, same crenelations, just different connections to the walls and different doors (also the Smithy is only 2 storeys, but as I was building the structure from description 6 that lists 4 storeys, that wasn't a worry). Not a problem, once I realised my mistake, which came later in the planning process than it should have done. But it was at least before I got round to cutting anything, so no harm, no foul I suppose.

The parameters of the problem gradually revealed themselves to me when I started looking in detail at what the Tower was. There are two walls which connect to it; these, unlike in most of the towers on the circuit of walls, are not marked with doors. Conversely, the Bailiff Tower is not joined directly to the battlements the way some others are, so it isn't the same height as the walkway. This, quite frankly, must be a mistake; I can't see how it is not. The idea that the only entrance/exit to this tower is on the ground floor in the Outer Bailey, and that the tower itself is a massive block on moving troops around the walls, doesn't make any sense to me. There must be access from the walkways to the tower somehow. In defence of this thesis, the illustration from the back of the module bears this out, somewhat:

Original illustration by Erol Otus, (c) TSR/Wizards of the Coast

This illustration clearly shows the Bailiff's Tower protruding above the level of the walls to a considerable degree. But it makes no sense that it blocks access around the circuit of the curtain-walls (so, by my reckoning, there must be doors in the north and west faces of the tower leading to the walkways along the walls).

The question that arises first is 'where do the walls connect?'

The answer is - not surprisingly, perhaps - slightly complex. The information in the module is written for gaming purposes, it's not an architectural brief. The drawing is illustrative of the 'feel' of the Keep and is not necessarily strictly accurate (though honestly it's pretty good where I have checked details against the text). The height of the walls is not given anywhere in the description of the Keep that I've found, but I've extrapolated a height of 20' to the walkway, mostly from the description of the gate-towers at the Keep's entrance. These are listed as both "30' high with battlements" - by which I take it is meant "35' high including battlements" - and all also as having "three floors" - which I take to mean, apart from the ground floor, two more internal rooms, and then the fighting-platform on top (an easily-extrapolatable 10'=one storey rule seems to pertain here). These 'flanking towers' are described as being either side of a 'gatehouse' which is 20' tall. 

From the towers on the opposite sides to the gatehouse, curtain walls come out to further towers, and the Bailiff's Tower is one of these. My rationale for 20' walls is that they are likely shorter than the towers, and on the castle plan, doors from the 'flanking towers' to the walkways can be seen, suggesting that the towers occupy at least another storey above the level of the walkway. So if the 'flanking towers' are 30' (plus battlements) and 3 floors (plus fighting platform) then the walls are likely 20' (plus battlements). 

This means that the doors to connect the walkways with the Bailiff's Tower on the 2nd (for North America, read '3rd') floor of the tower: in British counting, 'ground' is 'floor 0' not floor 1 - the first floor is the 'first above ground', then 'second above ground' etc. So for a 20' high walkway (with another 5' of battlements) the door must also be 20' up (unless there are steps... no, I'm not putting random level-changes in, this will be done in as simple a way as I can). If the ground floor is 0-10', the next floor above that is 10-20', then it will be the floor above that, at 20-30', that has the door to the walkways on the walls.

There are four internal storeys to the Bailiff Tower - the ground floor (0-10') of offices for the Bailiff and Scribe; a floor above (10-20') is the personal quarters of those two; above that (20-30') is a storeroom; the uppermost (internal) floor (30-40') is a barracks-room for 12 soldiers; and on the roof is a fighting platform with 5' battlements. It's also described as a 40' high tower with a 5' battlement above it. I can't help but think that if I had started here, or with the Gatehouse, and not with the Chapel, I would have agonised far less about how high a 'storey' is.

The doors then likely lead to the floor that is the storeroom. I think that makes some sense from the point of view of organisation in the Keep, as that means that it could be used to easily resupply other parts of the defences if there was an attack (assuming there are doors, of course). Don't know if Gary thought of that when he was writing it, but it fits nicely anyway.

Bailiff's Tower, west elevation

The somewhat schematic diagram shows the lower door for entrance from the Outer Bailey, the hypothetical position of the southern wall of the Keep (the wall leading to the Bailiff's Tower in Erol Otus's illustration), with the proposed door as the entrance to the storeroom level, and the internal floors. On the north wall (which is on the left of this diagram), another door at the same height, and a similar wall-and-battlement structure, makes up the southern part of the east wall of the castle complex, leading to the 'flanking towers' of the Gatehouse. On my reckoning, the height of the Bailiff's Tower relative to the wall is slightly less than the illustration makes it, but I'm not taking the illustration as definitive.

This then became my basic plan for the Tower build.

At that point, I started to wonder if I could build the tower as a series of 'trays', one for each floor, and have fully-playable rooms. I did investigate this possibility: I built a card model of the ground floor (at least partly) and even drew some stonework on the side (I have some grey card I though would make a good stone surface), but have reluctantly put it aside, at least for the time being. I don't want to complicate things that much at the moment. Maybe, if I get a bit further with actual exteriors, I can start to worry about how I might model the interiors.

That all left me with a conceptual problem though. The point about these builds is supposed to be to try and get some playable terrain. What I am planning is a tower, which can be free-standing of course, something like a pele tower (also spelled peel tower... if you don't know about them, go and check them out, they're cool) from the Anglo-Scottish Border region.

However, a free-standing tower with a door in the corner at the bottom doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense if it also has two doors half-way up its walls on adjacent sides. 

It seemed to me there were three options. Maybe there are more, but these are the ones I came up with.

1 - model the tower as-is, with the upper doors, and add something to it to justify them. Perhaps there could be a gallery or some sort of porch-type structure to either cover them or utilise them;

2 - model the tower without them, but create some doors that could be attached somehow when used with the walls;

3 - model the tower without them, and attach the upper doors to the walls, rather than the tower, as the upper doors would only be necessary if the tower was used with the walls.

Of these, the second seemed like the system that would give me the greatest utility, without requiring a bunch of extra building. If I went for attaching the doors to the walls, I wouldn't be able to use the walls in a different configuration. If I attached some kind of ancillary structure, I would have to do a whole load of modelling on something that wouldn't work with the Keep. If I was going to do that, I might as well just build a pele tower, perhaps based on Smailholm Tower (link), one of my favourites, and not attempt to utilise the tower from the Keep at all. As the whole point of this build was to try to get some multi-use terrain with minimal building, the idea of building stuff that can't be used for the Keep makes no sense.

So I'll build a tower and worry about attaching doors to it later.

However, this post is now getting very long, perhaps I should leave it there and post Part II later.

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...