Fall of Arnor on Through the Long Defeat

Fall of Arnor — Week 3: Hollow Men

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The wild country off the Greenway, the first hard frosts coming on.

For a few days the world was almost kind. They made camp in good ground, with water and a thorn-break and a clear line down the slope, and for once nothing came up it in the dark. They lived off the land rather than their thin purse, and a hunting trip brought in pelts worth a little silver — the small, unglamorous economy of people keeping themselves alive between worse days. There was a fire, and meat, and no one died, and none of them were fool enough to say so out loud.

Then they went and found the trouble the rumours had promised. The roaming patrols turned out to be deserters — men hollowed by too many years of a war no one was winning, carrying in their mismatched gear the badges of both Arthedain and Angmar, as though loyalty itself had worn through and left only the habit of taking. Hungry men with swords, eating a looted caravan down to the crates: fine wine, bolts of cloth, a cloak of elven make — and on some of the boxes a crest, weathered and half-scraped. Beregond looked at it a long moment — he had seen its like pressed into the wax of their own contract — and said nothing, and looked away.

The fight was brief and bloody, and they held the field, though they did not come away clean. The arguing came after, over the goods, and it ran along the old seams. To Beregond the matter was plain: the goods were the lord’s, and a lord’s goods go back to him. Thirwen saw a string being pulled — good men bled to recover one man’s wealth and call it the defence of the realm. To Calmion it was coin, and survival, and no use dressing it otherwise. Halros said little, and watched the badges burn, and thought of a land that did this to its own. Whose goods they truly were — the lord’s, or only passing under his shadow — none of them could say, and the road gave back no answer.

The last word of the week came as rumour, the way the important words do: the Rangers still walk these lands. To Beregond it was a veiled, bannerless way of making war; to Thirwen, the ghost of something already buried, a kingdom haunting its own roads. They did not agree on what it meant, and did not settle it. They took the knowledge, and the bloodied silver, and the unanswered question of whose goods they carried, and went on. There would be another week. There always was.

Behind the Screen — the Week's Ledger (Campaign Turn 3)

Preparation Stage

Local Event — Camped in a good location.
Upkeep — Offset by Live off the Land.
Gold Marks — +2 this turn.
Activity 1 — Live off the Land.
Activity 2 — Hunting Expedition (pelts → a little silver).
Research — None.

Adventuring Stage

Adventure type — Battle an Enemy Threat (the roaming patrols).
Detail — a band of deserters bearing both Arthedain and Angmar badges, beside a looted caravan.
Travel — required; Travel Event: Meet someone.
Battle — engaged the deserters; held the field, though bloodied.

Resolution Stage

News — The rangers have been scouting → +2 Adventure Points.
Threat levels — roaming-threat answered in the field (confirm on tracker; standing threats otherwise unchanged).
Notes — a Sociable Noble added as Friend; recovered caravan goods, crest possibly the patron’s (Carthan’s, unknown to the warband).

Lessons learned (rules I muffed)

Threat special rules. Forgot “The Slow Grind of War” and “Tattered Banners, Bloody Flags.” The latter would have made a material difference, turning the Craven Deserters Fearless quite quickly.

Combat bonus — ally within 1". Should they have been not engaged yet this turn? A Wounded warrior who has already fought this turn may not be as effective.

The tracker’s record ends here, at three weeks — three contracts honoured, and the question of whom they were truly honoured for still folded away, unread.

Fall of Arnor — Week 2: The Wandering Healer

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Cardir’s Crossing, late in the autumn of the kingdom’s twilight.

The healer came into the market town the way all news came now: on foot, alone, and later than anyone wanted. He set up under the faded banners of the toll-house — the white and the seven stars, gone the colour of old bone — and he laid out his herbs and his poultices on a cloth, and he waited for the hurt to come to him. None came. Not because the town was whole, but because the town’s hurts were the kind no poultice answers: a shuttered shop, a son on the northern wall who does not write, a square built for the commerce of two kingdoms and filling now a quarter of its stalls on a good day. The warband bought a little of his kingsfoil out of something that was not quite charity and not quite need, and watched him pack the rest and go on down a road that carried fewer travellers each year.

They earned their keep honestly that week. The town guard — thinning, grey, standing a wall it no longer quite believed in — was glad of four pairs of hands to patch the breach in the north rampart and drill the green lads, and gave the warband lodging and goodwill for the labour, which in a dying market town is worth more than coin. Thirwen turned his hand to harder work besides, mending what the guard could not afford a smith for, and brought in a few marks the company sorely needed. And word came down the thin web of old soldiers’ friendships that Edrig — Edrig son of Mallor, who had shared Thirwen’s trench and his hunger in the bad years — had sent aid up the road: supplies, a little silver. Thirwen took it and did not ask what it might cost him later, the way a man does not look too long at a gift in a lean season.

Then, following Maeric’s directions, they went out to the thing the contract had paid them to find: an old watch-post on the Cardolan side, abandoned these long years, its garrison gone the way of all the southern garrisons. They found it half-fallen, and they found it tenanted — by Tiriel, a prickly hedge-healer living in the rubble, who remembered when soldiers had kept the place, and who said, with the flat certainty of a man who has decided not to forgive it, that both Faith and crown had let it go when the roads grew unsafe. Halros knew him at once for what he was: a fellow keeper of the small green lore, athelas and bitter herbs and the words that still answer out in the world where the cold archive’s words no longer will. They shared a fire and a grudging hour, and Tiriel became something like a friend — mercenary, thorny, bound by the one bond that still holds in the Marches, which is survival.

They did not go down into the ruin. Thirwen read the ground and did not like it; Beregond, for once, did not argue. There would be time, or there would not. They settled into camp under a sky going to winter, and in the morning the rumour found them: enemy patrols are roaming the wild. Something was moving out there that had not moved in a while — deserters, perhaps, or the long reach of Angmar testing the thinning watch. The healer with no one to heal; the wall mended for one more night; the ruin left unopened; and now a word in the wind out of the south. They banked the fire and set a watch.

One roll set the whole week’s mood. The News result (d100) came up enemy patrols are roaming — so the quiet turn ends on a drawn breath rather than a rest. Everything else below is the bookkeeping behind the story.

Behind the Screen — the Week's Ledger (Campaign Turn 2)

Preparation Stage

Local Event — Wandering healer. (No one injured enough to need him.)
Upkeep — Offset by Help the Town Guard (lodging + goodwill in lieu of cost).
Gold Marks — +2 this turn.
Activity 1 — Help the Town Guard.
Activity 2 — Hard Work (Thirwen’s [Crafting] adds to the take).
Research — Roll for Connections → an old friend (Edrig son of Mallor) sends aid.

Adventuring Stage

Adventure type — Explore a Location.
Detail — the Unexplored Location named in the contract (the abandoned watch-post; patron secretly Carthan).
Travel — required; Travel Event: Meet someone → Tiriel, hedge-healer, added as a Friend (Physician).
Battle — none. The warband judged the ruin too risky to delve and made Camp.

Resolution Stage

News (d100) — Enemy patrols are roaming → a new roaming-threat stirring in the wilderness.
Threat levels — unchanged this turn (Ruin Within 5 · Gnawling Horde 6 · Duskling Warbands 6).
Friends gained — Edrig son of Mallor (aid); Tiriel (Physician).

Next week: the roaming patrols come looking, and the warband must decide whose roads these are.

Fall of Arnor — Week 1: A Beggar's Errand

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Greenway south of Fornost, late in the autumn of the kingdom’s twilight.

They went south because south was where the work was, and the work was the only thing left that paid. Behind them the grey crown of the North Downs held up the banners of Arthedain over Fornost Erain, the last seat of the line of Isildur; ahead the land stopped being a kingdom by slow degrees and began to be a grave. The Greenway carried them down through it — the old north-south road that had once moved the wealth of two realms and now grew grass between its stones. They passed steadings gone to thorn, shrines untended, a standing stone with the King’s seven stars cut into it by some hopeful hand long dead and nearly eaten now by moss. The people they met on the road were hollow-eyed and few, and watched the southern horizon, because the southern horizon is where the trouble comes from.

It was on that road that the beggar found them. Maeric, he gave his name as — a ragged man with the straight back and ruined hands of a soldier who had been somebody once, before the wall and the hunger and whatever came after. He carried no alms-bowl but a folded contract, and when he held it out he held it with both hands, level, and waited — not offering it the way a petitioner offers a plea, but presenting it the way a courier presents orders: arms straight, eyes forward, the form correct and the ranks behind it entirely gone. Muscle memory from a life the road had stripped away, observing ceremonies no one had asked for, in rags on an empty road. He spoke for a lord: a watch-post on the Cardolan side, abandoned these years, was to be looked at, and there was coin in the looking. He did not say much about the lord, and what he did say did not add up to a great house — a man who sends a beggar to do a herald’s work is a man with no heralds left, keeping up the shape of lordship with nothing inside it but need.

The warband took the work, because the warband needed the work, and thought no more of it than that. Maeric named no master beyond a lord of the southern country, and named even that without warmth. There were such lords spoken of on the Greenway that autumn — men who fed the folk the King had forgotten, and were owed for the feeding ever after; one in particular, whose name the carters would give you readily enough by daylight and not at all once the fire burned low. Whether the folded paper had come from his hand, Maeric did not say and the warband did not ask. The coin was real, and the road was long, and a man does not hold a contract up to the light with winter coming on.

A letter overtook them on the road that week, from Edrig son of Mallor — a Cardolan man who had shared Thirwen’s trench and his hunger in the bad years, and who fights now for anyone with the coin, even, they said, for the Witch-king. He sent supplies, a little silver, the warmth of an old comrade; or the first quiet turn of a debt. Thirwen took it and did not ask which. So they went on south, a little richer and a little more beholden, and did not hold that up to the light either.

Behind the Screen — the Week's Ledger (Campaign Turn 1)

Starting resources — 3 Gold Marks · 3 Story Points · 0 Adventure Points.

Preparation Stage

No Local Event, Upkeep, or Campaign Activities this turn (warband on the move, not yet based).

Adventuring Stage

Adventure type — none resolved (a travel turn).
Travel — required; Travel Event: Meet someone → Maeric (table result: sociable beggar — read as: destitute ex-soldier, bearing intact).

Resolution Stage

News — An old friend sends you a letter → Edrig son of Mallor sends aid (+1 Story Point).
Notes — Maeric offers a Contract from a local lord (Explore Location): the abandoned watch-post. (The patron is, unknown to the warband, Carthan the Crowned — a thread the chronicle will pull later.)
Threat levels — unchanged (Ruin Within 5 · Gnawling Horde 6 · Duskling Warbands 6).

Next week: the warband reaches the border town, mends a wall for its supper, and goes out to the watch-post the contract named.

Five Leagues – Warband Creation

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Right, so I’m sitting down now to put together my first warband for Five Leagues by Modiphius orginally by Nordic Weasel Games. By the rules you start off with four heroes and two followers — not a big crowd at all, more like what you’d scrape together from a small village if the horn went. For now they’re all going to be Men ¹ — four humans — though I’m already thinking ahead about how I might tie this game in with the others. One idea’s handy enough: they’ll be wandering the same hills and valleys where the Warmaster battles were fought years ago, the old mounds and broken walls still about the place. Another notion’s to bring in an Elf later on — one from Lindon who’s been tracking Sauron’s agents for centuries and was maybe at those same Warmaster battles when the world was younger. The main book doesn’t have Elves, but the expansions do - so I’ll start off with the Men and let the story and my experiance grow a bit before bringing in more rules for me to misinterpret.

There’s a few human backgrounds to pick from, but I’ll try to get the most variety. There’s five if you count the Mystic, and I’m leaving out the Zealot for now — too fierce altogether for the sort of quiet courage that sits well in Tolkien’s world. So here’s the four that took the field: a Noble, one of those Arthedain “Faithful” that reckon birth is worth more than skill, filled with disdain at the lesser Men; a Townsman out of Cardolan, sharp enough to know that sometimes bending the knee to the Witch-king might keep your folk alive; a Frontier lad, lean and weathered, who knows the tracks of wolves and worse; and a Mystic, no grand sorcerer, but one who sees things sideways, through the corner of the eye.

It’s only a small crew, but there’s plenty of story in it already — a bit of duty, a bit of memory, a hard edge, and a hint of mystery. Like Tolkien never said, “Little by little, one travels far.” We’ll see how far these four get before things start turning dark.

Agility	Speed	Combat Skill	Toughness
1	4"/3"	+0	3

Each hero gets to roll on different tables for capabilities, mentality, possessions, and training to make them a bit unique.

Details

Your warband gets two quality weapons, two standard weapons, two sets of partial armour, two sets of light armour, a helmet, and a shield.

Noble	Frontier	Townsperson	Mystic
+1 Combat Skill	+1 Agility & +1 Combat Skill	+1 Agility	+1 Cast
+1 XP	+1 XP	+1 XP	+1 XP
Fine Weapon	+1 Gold	+3 Gold	+1 Gold
+1 XP	1 Skill [Crafting]	2 Skills [Wits], [Scouting]	+1 XP
Partial Armour	Partial Armour	Light Armour	Light Armour
Shield	Helmet	Long bow	Self-bow

Humans all get +1 [Speech] proficiency.

I’ve rolled a Wily Rogue and a Brave Villager for my two Followers and given them Light Armour with a Standard Weapon, and a Staff respectivly.

The first hero becomes my Avatar (so +1 Will and +1 Luck). My roll on Avatar History gives me a Friend. We get +3 Gold and 2x doses of Silvertree.

Commentary

One thing I’ve noticed — though we’ll see how it plays out over time — is just how much of Five Leagues hangs on that little d6. It keeps things quick and easy to grasp, but the steps are big. Each +1 to Combat Skill increases success odds by roughly 16%. A warrior at +0 wins an even fight about 42% of the time (with another 16% ending in draws), but with +1 he’s already winning nearly 60%, and by +3 he prevails in four out of five contests before any other factors come into play. Makes me wonder if warbands might end up too powerful too fast. Maybe the game balances that with how easily your folk can get hurt, or how often some mishap sends them to an early grave. Still, it’s a curious balance: the simplicity of a single die gives the game its charm, yet its very coarseness may hasten the rise—and fall—of heroes. One might imagine that using a d10, or even 2d6, could offer finer gradations, but that would also alter the odds landscape—flattening or curving distributions in ways that change the feel of every skirmish. For now, I’ll leave the dice as written, and see whether fate—or mathematics—proves the sterner master.

I’m using this in the more Tolkien / Anglo-Saxon sense as a autohyponym intended to be gender-neutral etc. ↩︎