ISSN:Issue 1081-8359 24 January 1999 The International Journal for Middle-earth Gaming I S S U E 24 OATHBREAKERS AND DUNLENDINGS 1 Other Hands ISSUE 24 JANUARY 1999 Editorial: In this Issue Emergency Duty! Editorial ............................. 2 Happy New Year’s on this, the first day of the reducing subscription costs). But I also believe last year of the millennium! The countdown to the concept has merit in its own right. You all Oathbreakers and the release of the Lord of the Rings movies be- will be the best judge of that. I’m also hoping Dunlendings ................... 3 gins... that one of you will step forward and volunteer to write-up next issue’s column. Anyway, for the The Infantry of Angmar .... 12 You may have been a bit surprised at this is- sue’s cover art, since the feature piece for Janu- inaugural column I’ve taken the Mannish sol- ary was advertised as being about the Dwarves diers of the Witch-king (all of them out of circu- Campaigning in the lation, “vintage” figures). The artwork may have Northern Waste ............. 18 of the Blue Mountains. Due to extenuating cir- cumstances, the author of that piece (and those very practical value for a GM running a cam- paign in Eriador. (“Your party runs across an Rastarin’s Log .................... 20 of other projected contributions) could not meet the submission deadline for this issue. Accord- Angmarean patrol, and they look like this...”) ingly, the burden to create content fell on my Bridget Buxton came to the rescue when I shoulders. discovered that there was a two-page gap be- tween my Oathbreakers essay and this issue’s C ONTRIBUTORS That’s OK. I always welcome an excuse to research a Middle-earth topic. It has also robbed episode of Rastarin’s Log. Being an accom- Bridget Buxton me of precious vacation time I had set aside for plished wilderness trekker, and anticipating the Chris Seeman preparing The Oathbreakers for publication. At the direction in which my current Middle-earth cam- very least, I thought, whatever I end up writing paign is moving, Bridget offered to write a short should be apposite to that project. The result is article on travel in an arctic environment— the rather long essay that fills up most of this advice for GMs who want to spice up the realism EDITING issue exploring Tolkien’s evolving views on the of their game. Great stuff. Dunlendings and their cousins in the White Let me round this up quickly with some news. Chris Seeman Mountains. Its scope is quite different from The only new development at ICE that I can Charles Watteyne Oathbreakers, which takes the interpretations of confirm is that the long-awaited MECCG expan- the MERP series for granted. The present essay sion set, Middle-earth: The Balrog, is finally in the does not; instead, it provides a basis for develop- stores. ing these two Middle-earth peoples in whatever On the Mithril front, Chris Tubb has just con- PAGEMAKING direction you, the GM, may choose for your own firmed that Prince August is definitely commit- Quentin Westcott campaign. ted to releasing 40 new Middle-earth figures this Next comes the prototype for a new regular year. (What these are is still under wraps, but I feature I’d like to propose for OH. (Its name has hope to give updates as I learn them.) Some of yet to be decided.) My hope is to create a bridge you may remember a few years back that an on- LINGUISTICS between those subscribers interested primarily in line Middle-earth journal was being planned. MERP and those who collect Mithril minia- This never materialized, but now another group David Salo tures—a crossover which would share the of people has actually gone and done it. It’s strengths but avoid the drawbacks of the called “The Guild Companion,” and it contains “Digital Hands” column that appeared in past materials for all of ICE’s product lines, including issues of OH. My basic idea is this: artistic ren- MERP. It can be accessed at http://www. RTWORK A ditions of figures from the Mithril series accom- guildcompanion.com/. Bridget Buxton panied by descriptive background information Last but not least, I’m pleased to announce derived from or inspired by the MERP modules. Quentin Westcott that our subscription base continues to climb. The exactitude and richness of Chris Tubb’s Last night it reached 80. miniature designs have a lot of potential for visu- ally enhancing the role playing experience. Chris Seeman (Often the Mithril pieces possess more detail than the textual descriptions of the MERP char- 1 January, 1999 acters they represent.) On the other side of the equation, there are the MERP modules, which often contain background information that influ- enced the design of the miniatures — informa- NEXT ISSUE tion which the Mithril collector may be unaware of. DWARVES OF THE Naturally, my ulterior motive is to expand our BLUE MOUNTAINS subscription base so that eventually I will be able to take advantage of bulk mailing rates (thus 2 Issue 24 January 1999 OATHBREAKERS AND DUNLENDINGS Chris Seeman: PO Box 1213, Novato, of the hills in the Dark Years ere the coming of the Middle-earth, posthumously entitled “Of CA 94948, USA ([email protected]) kings (RotK.22).” Dwarves and Men.” Here Tolkien writes: Taken together, these two passages indicate a In his introduction to Appendix F of The Lord cultural dispersion extending from Bree in the The Enedhwaith (or Central Wilderness) was of the Rings (“The Languages and Peoples of north all the way to the southern coastlands of shared by the North and South Kingdoms, but the Third Age”), Tolkien writes: “...in the hills Gondor. Investigation of any one of these peoples was never settled by Númenóreans owing to the ofDunland a remnant lingered of an old people, should therefore take advantage of the available hostility of the Gwathuirim (Dunlendings), ex- the former inhabitants of much of Gondor information pertaining to the others, in order to cept in the fortified town and haven about the (RotK.405).” He refers here to the Dunlendings, more sharply define their commonalities and dif- great bridge over the Greyflood at Tharbad. the wild hillmen who joined the Orcs of Saruman ferences. Regardless of which sub-culture one is (PoMe.330) in the siege of Helm’s Deep because of their hatred interested in exploring, the Dunlendings will for the Rohirrim (Chapter 7 of The Two Tow- naturally play a key role, since, as Tolkien says, No explanation of the term “Gwathuirim” ers). At one point in that chapter, the origin of “Only in Dunland did Men of this race hold to is offered, but its form and etymology are this hatred u explained. The Dunlendings, says their old speech and manners (RotK.408).” They clear. It is a Sindarin compound: gwathui Gamling, once dwelt in many western valleys of are our main source for reconstructing their an- “shadowy” + rim (a collective suffix, fre- the Mark: “Not in half a thousand years have cestors’ lifeways. quently used in gentitlic names; e.g., Rohir- they forgotten their grievance that the lords of This essay is primarily concerned with illumi- rim, Haradrim, Onodrim, Naugrim, Fa- Gondor gave the Mark to Eorl the Young and nating the history and culture of the Oathbreak- lathrim, etc.). So, Gwathuirim would pre- made alliance with him (TT.142).” ers, the “Dead Men of Dunharrow.” While aware of the interpretations that have been given to this sumably mean “Shadowy Men, Men of the Yet Gamling’s statement seems to be of quite a 1 people by the MERP series (and having myself Shadow.” This epithet clearly relates to a different order from the claim that the ancestors of larger matter which Tolkien discusses in the the Dunlendings had inhabited “much of Gondor.” contributed to those interpretations), my purpose here is to confine myself to what Tolkien wrote. essay; namely, the Númenórean classifica- It is only in the Appendix that Tolkien establishes tion of Mannish races. Tolkien’s discussion a more ancient historical connection between the Inevitably, though, many of the questions I have posed to the sources have been shaped by (or in of this topic in “Of Dwarves and Men” was Dunlendings of the Third Age and the pre- prompted by a passage from Chapter 5 of Númenórean inhabitants of Gondor. reaction to) the MERP canon, so I will often al- lude to it. The Two Towers, in which Faramir tells Elaborating on his introductory note, Tolkien Frodo and Sam about Gondor and its peo- writes that the Dunlendings “were a remnant of ple. the peoples that had dwelt in the vales of the White NOMENCLATURE Mountains in ages past. The Dead Men of Dun- “In the foothills of the western side of the harrow were of their kin. But in the Dark Years ‘For so we reckon Men in our lore, calling them Misty Mountains,” writes Tolkien, “lived others had removed to the southern dales of the the High, or Men of the West, which were the the remnants of the people that the Rohir- Misty Mountains; and thence some had passed Númenóreans; and the Middle Peoples, Men of the rim later called the Dunlendings (UT.370; into the empty lands as far north as the Barrow- Twilight, such as are the Rohirrim and their kin my emphasis).” This statement, taken from downs. From them came the Men ofBree; but long that dwell still far in the North; and the Wild, the a discussion of the boundaries of Gondor before these had become subjects of the North Men of Darkness.’ (TT.287) and Arnor in the early Third Age (UT.369), Kingdom of Amor and had taken up the Westron implies that the term “Dunlending” was not tongue.