Reply To: The Taproom

Essentially, early on in MERP’s development, Pete Fenlon sat down and drew a continental map of Middle Earth.

Some people adore it (our own Master Tolwen has done some interesting work with it), and some people (like me) are not so fond of it. I personally think it looks like a big bushy head. Anyway, the big continental map was filled with place names, which didn’t really have a whole lot of context: places like Waw, the Isle of Dogs and so forth. Later, when ICE created their Lords of Middle Earth series, they created a back story for each of the Nazgul.

Some of those stories were decent – the Witch King of Angmar’s, Akhorahi of the South and Adunaphel. Others were less so: Ren the Unclean, Indur Dawndeath and so forth. Khamul’s was particularly lousy. (He’s the Easterling, so lets make him the easternmost of the poppermost! Whee!). Personally I’ve an idea to salvage Adunaphel’s story and have her as a Mouth of Sauron type minion, rather than a Nazgul.

The nazgul were described, and Mithril portrayed them, in their time of power – as dark kings during the middle of the Third Age of Middle Earth. Since that era, as described by MERP, owed more to traditional fantasy RPGing and sword and sorcery, their visualisation is pure fantasy (as in fantasy as genre). “Dragonscale” armour almost assuredly comes from one of the early 80s editions of Dungeons and Dragons, for instance.

So, me, I’d ignore a lot of that.

Gavin