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Post by geneweigel on Oct 30, 2013 9:25:30 GMT -5
One of the things, that I've had going is a sense of this might not be a "local orc" and it turns out to be a band of Isengarders from Middle Earth or elaborate as a finding a standard fort built by the 11th legion out of Rome or even just hints that Hercules and the Argonauts are abroad somewhere lost in time and space. Now I've had Sauron "come back" as part of an amalgamated "Secret Wars" type world but that was an exception because it was kind of without time. If you were to have Sauron alive again and in recovery outside of Middle Earth on "your world". What would he be doing? Would he make another ring? Or is that avenue a big mistake like the Death Star port? Would he divorce the ring concept altogether and make something more scam worthy? What would some of his new policies be? "Kill all halflings!", of course. But would he lose the critters (as GT puts it. ) of ME and move on to other AD&D standards? WHat would a phase two rebounded Sauron do in an AD&D world?
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 30, 2013 9:52:05 GMT -5
I can't really imagine Sauron learning from past defeats. When Morgoth was defeated at the end of the First Age, Sauron slinked away and tried to reform for a while, right? But he just couldn't stay out of trouble. And when the big guns departed, it dawned on him he was the greatest Power left in Middle Earth.
So, he's either the lieutenant/strong man of an evil Power if it is clearly superior to him, or wants to be the ruler of everything.
In a strange new world, he could potentially assume something like the "Annatar, Lord of Gifts" persona again. Except, I think it was noted he lost the ability to put on the fair guise after his body went down with Numenor, and his spirit floated back to Middle Earth.
Hey, what happened to Sauron's Ring when Numenor sank?
Professor Tolkien bristles: ""I do not think one need boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended."
Telekinesis, Professor?
In a D&D world, I suppose Sauron would have to assess where he fits in the scheme of things. Equivalent to a lesser god? Demigod? Maybe until completing his assessment, he'd hang out with undead as a sort of super vampiric werewolf or something like that.
In the World of Greyhawk, I think he'd end up being similar to Iuz, and/or as a servant of Nerull or Tharizdun.
I think it is hard to quantify Middle Earth entities in D&D terms. In D&D, there really isn't any concept of "putting part of your life force into a magic item to make it stronger."
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 30, 2013 11:31:19 GMT -5
It seemed like he was really the LORD OF THE RECOVERIES going bigger and better.
The magic tied to crystal balls might be one angle where he comes through from the Astral Plane has some arch-mage make a golem-like body for him.
Instead of "ONE" item over nineteen items this time he's got plenty of back ups with extra master items over subjected magic items.
He checks out breeding something else besides orcs. Trolls?
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Post by Scott on Oct 30, 2013 12:08:57 GMT -5
It depends on how 'recovered' you want him to be. The Necromancer era might be a good angle to try. I see him as more Iuz-like once he has acquired the power. Being who he is, he should definitely have some items tied to him, and since rings were his speciality, even outside of the Rings of Power, I would definitely have a few of his top servants wearing them.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 31, 2013 7:43:56 GMT -5
Going with the idea that Sauron gets an arch-mage to make him a body, maybe Sauron goes for an Apollo-like "Greek god" stone golem look and then once again assumes a persona like Annatar, Lord of Gifts. His specialty in magic items seems to be the master/slave item which insidiously corrupts the user or brings it under Sauron's will over time.
Perhaps Sauron distributes "top shelf" magic items to low level PCs. However, they are all linked to him just as the Rings of Power were.
*
"So you're just giving me this Staff of Power." "That's right," the marble statue said. "I am the Lord of Gifts." "Is there any downside to this?" "Meh," the statue shrugged. "Meh? That sounds pretty non-committal..." "There's no downside from my point of view."
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Post by Scott on Oct 31, 2013 8:46:55 GMT -5
I thought of trying a Lord of Gifts type character on my cousin's PC Maylin.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 24, 2014 10:20:18 GMT -5
I try to get back into Greyhawk and get sidetracked into my "Christopher Tolkien is a fraud" schtick.
Seriously, I'm more certain than ever that if Tolkien's ghost communicated in the present, he would ignore Jackson and go straight after THE SILMARILLION.
So many references from post-Tolkien have an attitude that whatever is coming down the pipe is Tolkien's Middle Earth. Of particular concern is the mythology. Its too absolute.
How does this reflect on post-Third Age Sauron?
Its obvious. Sauron is more powerful the looser the background for Middle Earth. Before THE SILMARILLION there was an Elder King who is interchangeably anyone, there were no "maiar", so at best the details of THE SILMARILLION can be looked as negilible to a Middle Earth style campaign because as a value to D&D campaign its equivalent to the Simon Necronomicon! That is its a book in a book and the reaction of Tolkien buffs was a blind "UPDATE!" reaction in the late 1970's.
That said, can Sauron be considered a god? Yes. There is no instance where he is walking amongst people and doing any man-like things. I think to put it simple without all THE SILMARILLION canon the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy can be looked at as WAR OF THE ODINS. Aspects of Odin are represented in many characters Gandalf, Saruman, Theoden, Bombadil, Witch-King, and Sauron. Some interchangeably and some more direct. You're in the middle of a mythology so nailing down comparative certainties (DEITIES & DEMIGODS style) is going to pin all those clowns together and you've ended up with a box of rocks.
One thing is certain. The more that you read THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE EARTH series the weaker Sauron seems. If you ignore all post-J.R.R. then defeated Sauron's legacy remains intact. Morgoth was a greater being easily replaced in potency to make a smashing trilogy so what relevance the persona of Sauron if the problem comes from scratch?
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 25, 2014 8:40:47 GMT -5
It's hard for me to separate them, because I read them successively: THE HOBBIT in 1980, THE LORD OF THE RINGS in 1981 and THE SILMARILLION in 1982, or something like that.
I often wonder how Tolkien would regard the published SILMARILLION. Appalled? Of course, but to what extent? Would he really prefer that his lifelong work, which was moreso THE SILMARILLION than the others, should never be exposed to the reading public? After the success of THE HOBBIT, the publisher asked for a sequel -- and Tolkien sent them an early draft of THE SILMARILLION. But they rejected it. So, we never got a polished version of it wholly completed by Tolkien himself. But, we can't really say it was his intention for it to never be published. So, the real issue is that what we got is a hybrid work because it was 'tampered with' by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay and so it is always to going to be of questionable value.
Gene, what is your interest in the "Sauron is alive" theme, anyway? Is it about running a D&D game in a Fourth Age Middle Earth setting with Sauron Returned as the big bad guy? Sauron in Greyhawk? Sauron in Bravesword?
I can't see you as a MERPer...
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 25, 2014 9:27:17 GMT -5
Mostly the interdimensionality of it. However, my campaign world has strong ties to Middle Earth not just as a separate world in the multiverse but Tolkien is an exemplary relay of real world source material to the sword and sorcery genre.
So its twofold. For example, orcs in my "world" are common but they are not exactly Tolkien types. However, literal Tolkien orcs are present (Orcs of the White Hand, Orcs of the Red Eye, etc.) imported into the world through magic like endless other things.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 25, 2014 9:57:46 GMT -5
Heh, the reason I started thinking about it was all these notes I have for Deities and Demigods Middle Earth Mythos that I was working on. One approach I have was a flat Silmarillion take which looked like shit in the thumbnail layout and then I was going for the way Cthulhu Mythos was presented with rude and crude associations (ala Derleth, Chaosium, etc.;Hastur is Cthulhu's brother, etc.) so those are definitely not the right approach. It has to be a pure Tolkien approach that automatically fits with D&D as it is with no "our orcs are like this" or its going to stink. Rather it must be something that would charm the Professor himself. Or otherwise what is the purpose?
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 25, 2014 11:05:52 GMT -5
Well, you have a good basis to start with -- D&D already has goblins, orcs, hobgoblins (for Uruk-Hai), ogres (for ME trolls), red dragons, balrogs (Type VI demons), wights, wraiths, treants and giant spiders. To get the Middle Earth feel, you'd have to tweak the spell lists and classes a bit, and possibly improvise some rules related to dread, hope, luck/fate, rightful authority, etc.
I've always wanted to play in a D&D version of Middle Earth. Not MERP, but a D&D game run by someone with a good grasp of LORD OF THE RINGS.
The friend of mine who introduced me to D&D wasn't above making use of other fantasy worlds... He had his own campaign world that had parts that were from fictional fantasy worlds he'd read about. For example, one part of a continent was Stephen Donaldson's "The Land" -- you know from "Lord Foul's Bane," that series, which I never got into. I remember thinking, why couldn't it be Middle Earth instead?
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 26, 2014 14:00:39 GMT -5
I think the baseline is to think parallels.
A good line of thinking would be: This is happening at the same time as Bilbo/Frodo and it can and will exceed that because Middle Earth is just Earth of the fantastic and the authors are the well meaning but ultimately mistaken ones about these worlds being separate.
Sort of like the revisioning for contemporary Earth that the dialogues and the names of the characters that Tolkien goes into at length in the ON TRANSLATION section of the Appendixes (APPENDIX F PART II). He uses, for example, Sam's name is not really "Sam" but "Ran" and the humanoid dialogue " Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or things; and their language was actually more degraded and filthy than I have shown it. I do not suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering, though models are easy to find."
In a way, Tolkien didn't write LORD OF THE RINGS as he imagined it but rather as he converted it for popular book reader's tastes. The same can be said about every aspect of it.
PS With this in mind one can also disintegrate every nerd who wants to speak Quenyan at the table by coming up with an equally annoying Westron "common speech" as a mish mosh of various human characters name's: "Theomer eoden grimling wynburr merwynden eodred fernbill!" and watch their brain explode.
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Post by Scott on Jul 26, 2014 18:24:34 GMT -5
If he was in recovery mode, and the real prize was Middle Earth, he wouldn't have much of a footprint. Maybe look around a bit, see what magic there was to be had. If transporting an army was possible, maybe set up as a Necromancer type in the Pomarj and forge a few items while putting his army together.
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Post by Scott on Jul 26, 2014 18:37:36 GMT -5
On the other hand, I've just been inspired to put a gate to Middle Earth in my Greyhawk dungeon. A little1st Age adventure.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 29, 2014 8:12:29 GMT -5
Heh, a friend came over with a reprint of the 1979 Bestiary (I saw it before but I haven't went through it in years.) I looked up and said this is riddled with Post-Silmarillion Kay-Tolkienisms. Of course, he went into complete denial as I dropped my theory on him and didn't want to hear it. Too deep.
This reaction is why this is being perpetuated endlessly. Its like the ordeal of reading and absorbing THE SILMARILLION (1977) has created a generation who've accepted this arbitrary and quaint "mythos" as an appendix to a not so arbitrary and quaint books series. Tolkien's actual content of Bilbo and Frodo's adventures besides the obvious difference in narrative and descriptive travel is a multilayered jigsaw puzzle of real world Europe's legendary fantasia to which the content of THE SILMARILLION (1977) is slightly part of as a thin background in the text. The fans had cash bales waiting for anything "Frodo" and this was the money-making padded book answer to that demand. The original submittal for publication was most likely pamphlet-sized in comparison that featured material from the appendix about the valar but Tolkien's letters contradict the classifying of any "maiar" like Sauron equates balrog equates Istari, etc.. This is why using the 1977 Kay-Tolkien material weighs down the D&D Middle Earth campaign into this numb world where monsters aren't everywhere. If CHAINMAIL (1971) had come out ten years later putting Middle Earth monsters into a scale for a wargame would never have jump started a D&D game because magic units would be considered like having a "Zeus" unit and there goes the level concept down the drain...
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Post by Scott on Jul 29, 2014 15:53:47 GMT -5
I love the Silmarrilion. The first time I tried to read it was right after I finished LotR and I was expecting more of the same. I didn't get very far before I gave up. Years later, decades later, I knew what I was getting into, and I couldn't put it down.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 29, 2014 16:48:01 GMT -5
THE SILMARILLION (1977) is the Tolkien Version of AD&D Second Edition! Seriously, I might just expurgate the thing myself! Then perhaps add a few chapters and appendixes... CHAPTER 25 Of Morgoth Telling Sauron He'll Be Back When He Falls CHAPTER 26 Of the Robots Who Came To Middle Earth CHAPTER 27 Of the Secret of the Entwives in Hobbiton APPENDIX II: Bill Ferny's Guide to Half-Orcish Just kidding!
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 30, 2014 8:51:03 GMT -5
I've always wanted to know: (1) what parts of the Silmarillion are actually written by JRRT himself, (2) what parts are essentially from JRRT but just reworded or edited a bit to make it fit with the Silmarillion, and (3) what parts are wholly invented by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay, i.e., don't have any direct JRRT antecedents, i.e., rough drafts, fragments, outlines, etc.
My impression is that there is very little in the (3) category, but I could be wrong.
The entire HoME series seems to back up that the Silmarillion is, at least for the most part, legitimate JRRT.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 30, 2014 12:41:15 GMT -5
The weakest link is where are the desperate cries to creator Eru Iluvatar or his relay Manwe if Samwise is so familiar with the content of the in-the-book story of Chapter 19 BEREN AND LUTHIEN?
Once you disconnect Varda/Elbereth from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves she becomes this IP monstrosity that belongs in something post-Tolkien/post-modern S&S.
On the post-1977 Silmarillion scale, Bombadil makes no sense but pre-1977 we don't have to deal with holding him up to on a chart. He just is there and part of larger picture. Just like all the unseen elf-banes and Istari, if not quantified its a huge canvas for the paint of your imagination.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 31, 2014 8:52:32 GMT -5
Well, to be fair -- prior to his death, JRRT himself attempted to make better sense of his own legendarium by quantifying, ranking, and reworking things.
Just going by the LotR, it's never totally clear what the peoples of the Third Age know about Iluvatar, the Valar and the events of the First and Second Ages. There doesn't seem to be any organized religion, priesthoods, churches, etc. in LotR. We don't get any theology to speak of. So, I'm not sure why we would expect them to be calling out to Iluvatar or Manwe. Most of the characters just seem to know poems and fragments, if anything. And that is why the "Council of Elrond" chapter is so mind-blowing, because it is like: "Hey this guy Elrond really knows stuff." And it is such a contrast. And if the hobbits are told about Elbereth as a higher power who can hear them, and might be able to help them, then it might make sense for them to be calling out to her later in the story... the only 'prayers' we really see in the LotR, right? Or is it better to make an analogy to Catholics calling on Mary to intercede on their behalf?
I think Bombadil was an 'outsider' imported into the LotR story, and wasn't even originally conceived as being a part of Middle Earth. That is why he seems like such an odd fit on any 'chart'.
I don't have any problem with 'maiar' being a category of wildly open power levels and interpretations: essentially just 'nature spirits' or 'divinities' or 'demons' depending on their intentions. Didn't Ungoliant, a maiar, challenge Morgoth, a vala, who had to call on other maiar, his balrogs, to save him? So, not all maiar are on the same 'level.' There's still plenty of room for imagination.
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