More Adventures in Arda
Submitted Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - 1:09:08 AM by Klaitu
I'd better start off by explaining what Arda is. Arda is the name of the planet that Lord of the Rings takes place on. Some people say its supposed to be Earth.. maybe it is or isn't, but they call it Arda, so that's what I'm gonna do.
I was stopped over in Rivendell after turning in some hides from an elf who had requested them, and I happened to stop by the Last Homely House. That's Elrond's house, for you not-nerds out there. I walked by Aragorn and started up a conversation.. he looked like he had something to say, what with the glowing ring above his head and all.
Aragorn's got a problem, he wants to reforge the sword of Kings.. Narsil, the heir blade to his ancient ancestor, Elendil. Thing is, Narsil isn't just any sword, it's the king's sword, and it's not just made of metal, it's imbued with the power of silmarils.
A silmaril is kinda like a battery, it holds magical energy. There's a whole lore about they came from these trees and all that, but we won't go into that now.
Anyways, Aragorn has all these sword shards, but no silmarils. Elendil had one, but they buried it in his tomb. There's one guy who might know where it is, the leader of the Rangers of Tinnundir in Evendim.
So, I set out upon my trusty steed. Evendim is nowhere near Rivendell.. in fact, its very far away. It's past the shire in the other direction! Thankfully, I knew the way, and finally arrived in Tinnundir to speak with this Ranger leader.
Turns out that they've got a tomb raider problem. A tomb raider problem, and no Lara Croft around. Anyways, the Ranger would be glad to assist me, if only I would prove my worth by assisting the vsrious other rangers all over the place.
Rangers apparently don't get out much.
So, for two weeks I went around doing the work of the Rangers for the rangers. Collect some statue pieces, kill some trolls, kill the leader of the tomb raiders. Eventually I was sent to speak to the Blue Lady.
I don't know what you would expect when they invite you to see the blue lady, but she's a blue lady, and thats what she is. blue.
The blue lady told me that this Silmaril is underwater in Elendil's tomb.. she flooded it to prevent it from being robbed, but she'll let the water out and me in, if only I do some tasks for her.
So I put some statues together and killed a few salamanders, and before long I was ready to search Elendil's tomb.. but the Tomb Raiders got there first.
I needed some help to clear them all out, so I hung around the local campfire and recruited some friendly adventurers. A Minstrel, A Guardian, and 3 Lore-Masters. We set off for the tomb together.
The blue lady wasnt kidding about the Tomb Raiders, there were hundreds of them. They came at us 20 at a time, but we managed to beat them back. It helped to have our 3 lore-masters and their familiars assisting.
Now, it's one thing to say there were hundreds of Tomb Raiders, but there were LITERALLY hundreds of them. It took us hours to plow our way through all the bodies to their leader, who we figured had the silmaril.
She was surrounded by 15 guards.. some of the meanest looking guys ever. Fortunately, they were all trained in the Jackie Chan school of fighting and attacked us a few at a time. They were no match for us, but their leader ran away.
We chased her down to a statue which looked like it would hold a silmaril just fine, but it wasn't there. We went ahead and ran her through, just for giggles.
The blue lady showed up and told us the silmaril was washed downstream, and warned us not to awaken the monster below. This, of course meant that we would be unable to avoid waking the monster, but more on that later.
Trolls infested the lower levels of the tomb.. or more correctly, the areas under the tomb. Not easy to kill, those trolls. There were maybe 20 of them total, and eventually we killed them all.
We went down, down, down into a large chamber filled with a giant turtle, and a giant.. troll ogre thing. The ogre was in front of the silmaril. It glistened from beyond him.
The only way down was to jump, which meant there was no way back up again. Our Loremasters and the minstrel stayed up top while the Guardian and I jumped down to try to secretly get the silmaril.
Of course, what should happen? The Ogre woke up, so we thrashed him, but not before he woke up his turtle friend.
His giant turtle friend with a damage cancelling shell, 30,000 HP, and a nearly limitless supply of baby turtles to throw at us. We were doing pretty well considering all that. My guardian friend and I were healed from our compatriots up on the ledge, out of the turtle's reach. They were also able to cast fireballs and whatnot down on the Turtle, not that he noticed.. that shell was pretty tough.
One of the Loremasters ripped the soul right out of the turtle and absorbed it into his own spells!
Of course, that didn't phase the turtle, he just slapped the Guardian with his tell and threw her across the room, over a rock wall and into a pool of water.
That would leave me the only person with the turtle.
So, what did I do? I did what champions do best and kicked it into pwnage mode. I engaged my exchange of blows trait, which reflects damage done to be back onto the attacker. I used my speed trigger, which makes my swords twice as fast, and I went to town.
Oh, sure, he tried that "hit me with the tail" thing, but he just smacked me into a wall, and I ran right back up to him and wailed some more.
It took nearly 10 minutes of intensive pwnage to take down the turtle, but we did it!
The blue lady appeared and scolded us for waking the turtle.. It was okay though, we put him back to sleep.
So, I went back to the Ranger leader with the silmaril, and he had me take it all the way back to Rivendell. I met up with Aragorn again, and he took the silmaril. That's when the awesome part happened.
Aragorn invited me to attend the re-forging of Narsil with the fellowship.
We strolled to the forge as the moon rose high. Arwen, Elrond, Gandalf, Frodo, and Bilbo were there.. and of course, Aragorn and myself. I won't go into too much detail, as I don't want to spoil anything, but it was a pretty keen experience.
Now that I've written all that, please enjoy this picture of Rivendell!
