In War discussion thread

[Susan Delgado]

Welcome to In War, by Ransom! Here follows his proposal as accepted:

In War RPG

The Laws are silent in time of war.
[Cicero: Pro Milon IV.XI]

Basic Storyline:

The purpose of the story:

Story

The storm is coming. While the orcs of Sauron have been amassing in Mordor for as long as anyone can remember, the march of Mordors allies seem to indicate an assault on Gondor during the next campaigning season. Supplies and men begin to pour into Minas Tirith as Denethor and his generals begin to prepare for what will probably be the largest siege in the Third Age. While most of the infantry on both sides of the Anduin are caught up in feverish preparation, the war has already begun on several other fronts. The Rangers of Ithilien have begun to make a serious dent in the number of troops and oliphants coming up from Harad. The Order of the Black Rose, the front for Gondorian Intelligence, has been a vicious and brutal war with the Cult of the King, the spies of Sauron.

Recently, the Cult of a King has gotten their collective hands on a very important piece of information. Three Errand Riders with information on Minas Tirith's defenses will be riding between Minas Tirith and Pelargir in a week's time. Should Sauron get the information, the city of Minas Tirith would probably fall within a week of the first attack. A group of spies from the Cult of the King has slipped across the border and set up an ambush. All three riders left the White Tower on the appointed day, and not one arrived in Pelargir.

Denethor's temper was never very good in the best of times, and his fury when he learned that vital information would soon be in Sauron's hands knew no bounds. After appeasing the irate Steward, Lord Turgan, commander of the Order of the Black Rose, has begun plotting ways to recapture the information. Luckily for Gondor, a blizzard has begun to travel toward Minas Tirith, preventing the spies from traveling. No ferryman or fisherman would dare to risk their boat in the bad weather, so the ambushers are stuck on the western side of the Anduin River. Furthermore, the bloody interrogation of a captured spy placed one of Sauron's most skilled agents in the area. The intelligence war could quickly shift toward Gondor's favor if she is captured.

Sir Barak Mindalel, a childhood relationship of Turgan, has been given command of a mismatched team of soldiers and mercenaries. His orders are to recapture the information at any cost. Should the group recover the information, Barak will proceed to capture or kill the remaining spies.

This means the story will end when?

The information is recovered and Caitlyn captured or killed.

Starting Location:
Great Gate of Minas Tirith

Likely destination:
Arbrook, village where the Errand Riders were last spotted.

Timeframes:

i) This game takes place in the Third Age at around year 3019.

ii) The story itself or plot covers one week

iii) This game requires a time commitment of three months from me, the game owner and from the major players.

Characters
<PC Characters>

Scouts and Rangers of Ithilien

Decades of skirmishing on the eastern front has given birth to a whole generation of soldiers skilled in guerilla warfare. Most likely, you are skilled in wilderness survival, some knd of ranged weapon, and some sort of hand weapon. Sometime today, you received a note bearing the seal of the White Tower.

Sir-

You are ordered to report to the great gate of Minas Tirith an hour before sunlight tomorrow. An officer of the Citadel Guard named Sir Mindalel will be in the inside of the gate. Speak to him for more orders. Prepare for a week of riding in the snow and combat. Horses will be provided.

Denethor, Steward of Gondor

The note bore the royal seal, and it was a crime punishable by death to forge the name of the Steward on an official document. There is little doubt that you'll be presently taking a nice winter trip in the near future.

Agents of the Order of the Black Rose

Perhaps you are a mercenary who receives a salary from a mysterious employer in return for information. Maybe you were a criminal that was saved from the gallows at the last second in return for service. Your skills are not set in stone like the Hosts of Gondor, but can range from mastery in one weapon to the competent usage of many. Sometime yesterday, you received a note from the person or group you normally work for.

<Name of PC>-

Report to the great gate of Minas Tirith an hour before dawn tomorrow. An officer of the Citadel Guard named Sir Mindalel will be inside the gate. Speak to him for further instructions. Prepare for a week of riding in the snow as well as combat. Your normal wages will be tripled for the duration of your service. Further rewards will be forthcoming should you perform well. Horses
will be provided.

<Name of employer>

If nothing else, the raise certainly caught your eye. You know that your employer rewards his or her workers greatly for efficient work, so you ignore the falling snow and begin to pack. This job couldn't be that hard.

Secondary character types likely are:
Gondorian soldiers, villagers, bandits, cultists, and a few merchants.

Character types that would not belong:

Hobbits have not arrived in the lands of Gondor. Indeed, first cultural contact will not take place for a few months.

Most elves of Lorien or Rivendell would never accept employment by humans.
However, if you can make a very, very, very good case for why your PC is employed, I might accept it.

The game owner will play 3 character(s) and a few passing secondary characters as needed.

++Protagonists++
<Order of the Black Rose>
Sir Barak Mindalel
Age: 28
Height: 6'5"
Birthday: February 28, 2991
Hair color: Black, shaved close to his head.
Eye color: Grey.
Notable possessions: Worn suit of partial plate, Lochaber axe, saber bought during exile in Harad

History/Personality:
Barak was the born to the second son of a minor noble that lived near Dol Amroth. Because the possession of the family lands would pass to his elder brother upon his father's death, Barak was sent to train as a priest at a young age. During the training, the young man showed a particular aptitude for using his brain more than his brawn. The Order, ever in need of competent members, approached the young man and his family. His father, unable to pay the high cost to make his son a knight, jumped at the chance.

The training was even more vigorous than normal knights. Not only did the initiates learn the art of war, but also learned the arts of spying, thievery, philosophy, etiquette, deception, and downright murder. Over three fourths of the initiates were eliminated by the age of fourteen, leaving only the cream of the crop. These men were then placed under the dual care of a knight and a clergyman. The knights further instructed their pages in the various arts of the Order. The clergyman cared for their faith, protecting their souls from the snares of Saurun. The end result was a man who could feel equally at home at a fancy dinner with the nobleman and in the slums with thieves and murders.

Barak preformed reasonably well during his training, and was knighted at the age of eighteen. He married his childhood sweetheart, a peasant girl with brilliant red hair and hard emerald eyes, despite the howls of outrage from his family. They lived together for four years. Barak rose through the ranks of the Order, attaining the rank of Exarch at the age of twenty-two. In due time, his wife conceived. Their daughter was born in winter, but perished shortly afterwards. His wife, crushed by the turn of events, passed away after a brief illness. Stricken with grief but still bound to his duty, Barak applied for and was granted permission to relocate to Harad to oversee the Order's activities there.

Harad taught the young knight far more about survival and spying than the best teachers of Gondor. Because of the difficulty infiltrating Mordor, most of the information on the Dark Lord's activities was obtained in the dusty land to the south of Gondor. Throwing himself into the service of Gondor with reckless abandon, he turned the small office into a wide-ranging network that provided no small amount of information for the betterment of Gondor. It was here that he met and subsequently emancipated Mara from the clutches of one of the depraved
overlords of the criminal underside of Umbar.

The upper echelons of the Order recalled Barak and his companion as the threat of war with Saurun intensified. Sir Barak and Mara have been serving their country abroad for a year before the War of the Ring begun.

Barak is the flower of Gondorian nobility mated with the darker realities of life. His dedication to the interest of Gondor is overwhelming to the point that he truly believes that the ends justify the means. Most of the people he worked with found him fairly amicable, though not entirely outgoing. His dedication to his work masks his grief at the death of his family. The knight's relationship with Mara, while strong, is somewhat awkward because of the fear that he is dishonoring his late wife's memories.

Mara
Age: 18
Height: 5'3"
Birthday: January 3001. Exact date unknown
Hair color: Bright red hair. Usually worn loose.
Eye color: Green

Notable possessions: Various articles of clothing with hidden compartments for
all manner of dangerous and possibly illegal implements. Collection of sharp, pointy, and dangerous objects. Schlaeger (Heavy fencing sword) Chain mail shirt.

History/Personality

To the best of the combined knowledge of the Order of the Black Rose, Mara was born in January of 3001 to a pair of peasants who lived to the south of the city of Pelargir. That following summer, numerous raids from the pirates of Umbar ravaged the coastal region where the new family lived. Mara and her family were sold to Ul, one of the criminal lords of Umbar. At this point, Mara was separated from her parents and taught the tasks of a house servant. As she grew older, she frequently became the center of Ul's perverted attention. Reasoning that the mute girl could not gossip, the fat man used her as his personal servant. By the age of fourteen, he began to lend the redheaded girl out his friends-for a price.

Mara's parents died shortly after her fourteenth birthday, removing the only hold Ul had over their daughter. She became willful and troublesome, forcing her master to constantly beat her. Ul began to look for a buyer, preferably foreign, for his troublesome slave. Barak had met the merchant in an alley behind the local safe house, and invited him inside to continue their negotiations. Half an hour later, Mara had been sold to a new master. Three hours later, Ul's head was separated from his body by one stroke of Barak's axe. It took another two weeks of constant conversation to convince Mara that she was free, and that they could send her back to her home if she so wished.

Mara, ever the unloved child, absolutely refused. She adored the knights for the unconditional love that they showed her. Having no clue on the care of a teen-age girl, the knights shrugged their collective shoulders and took her under their care. Her first year under their care consisted of long days of exercise and training in addition to long nights of philosophy and theology.

Dismissing her wish to train in the use of his battle-axe, Barak secured the services of one of the local assassins to educate the girl in the use of lighter weapons. She became skilled with the Schlaeger as well as daggers, knives, and various thrown weapons. The next two years were spent in the field with Barak, learning how to survive and use her natural gifts for the good of the whole.

Mara is a complicated character, forever teetering between cocky and withdrawn. While she can be assertive and even waspish in the company of others, being in close quarters with strangers seems to reawaken troubled memories from her childhood. She loves the knights of the Order, earning the title of "little sister". Because of her small stature, she prefers to avoid open combat. Mara does disapprove of the harsher tactics of the Order out of respect for Nienna.

++Antagonists++
<Cult of the King>

Caitlyn Agramar, Mistress of Minas Morgul
Age: 24
Height: 5'11"
Birthday: 2995
Hair color: Black hair. Worn loose.
Eye color: Brown.

Notable possessions: Mace. Suit of chain mail.

History and personality:

Caitlyn, Priestess of Saurun and Bishop of the Cult of King, was born in Minus Morgul in the two thousand nine hundred ninety-fifth year of the Third Age. Her parents were true Gondorians, and Caitlyn's face has helped her evade Gondorian authorities on several occasions. She was taken away from her parents at the age of four and placed under the care of one of the senior members of the cult. Under the harsh glare of her master, she learned how to out-fight and, more importantly, out-think both her friends and foes.

Contrary to the theories of the Order of the Black Rose, it was not Saurun but the Witch King who oversaw the extensive intelligence operations carried out by the Cult. Unlike the Order, the Cult emphasized numbers and teamwork over training and independence. As noted earlier, this unusual mode of operation has limited the Witch King's operations to Ithilien and Minis Tirith. The Witch King was understandably enraged when the Order of the Black Rose threw a wrench into the Cult's activities after a childhood of only five years. To combat the better-trained and better-equipped knights, the Witch King began to train the most promising cultists himself before turning them loose on his foes.

Thus, Caitlyn was placed under the Witch King's care at the age of fourteen. While she could recite a butcher's list of crimes the Valar had supposedly committed and betray her friends with surprising skill, her actual experience in espionage and open combat was limited. The Witch King quickly corrected these oversights. She learned how to gather information by any means necessary. As King Theoden later learned, the Witch King was well versed in the use of maces and passed this information to his students. Her first mission onto Gondorian soil was in 3013, and she quickly climbed to the top of the Order of the Black Rose's hit list.

Years of bribes to various nobles finally paid off when Caitlyn leaned that three Errand Riders would be passing through the village of Arbrook on the same day. Correctly deducing that their cargo could be immensely valuable to Mordor, she and four expendable cultists infiltrated the village a week ago. The operation got off to a fairly good start, with a member entering the village each day. Meanwhile, Caitlyn secured the services of various bandits to keep pursuers and the Order off her tail. As planned, the three messengers were ambushed and killed. However, the snowstorm has shut down the roads and, more importantly, the various ferries that ran across the Anduin. Not wanting to swim the river, Caitlyn and her increasingly nervous group is stuck in Arbrook for the time being.

While new to the game, Caitlyn is a shrewd player. Years of constant strife in Minas Morgul has embedded the idea that all mankind must change or die deeply in her mind. She never does the same thing the same way twice, a trait that has annoyed the Order of the Black Rose to no end. As a priest of Sauron, she can recite a list of charges against the Valar and Gondor. Her enforced delay is beginning to make her nervous and jumpy, and too much pressure could have unforeseen and fatal results.

History of the Order of the Black Rose

"Ecthelion II, son of Turgon, was a man of wisdom. With what power was left to him he began to strengthen his realm against the assault of Mordor. He encouraged all men of worth from near or far to enter his service, and to those who proved trustworthy he gave rank and reward."
-Appendix A, Return of the King, page 1030

Perhaps because of her national identity, Gondor always suffered from a dearth of information about her foes. While nobles, merchants, and even the Stewards had small number of personal spies, their efforts were largely devoted toward their political enemies. The only information about the movements of Gondor's foes usually came from merchants. This information, when obtained, was often embellished to a great degree. Ecthelion viewed the chaotic state of Gondorian intelligence a severe annoyance. His solution was extremely unconventional and
the howls of outrage from the nobles echoed off the walls of Minas Tirith. Ecthelion gathered two hundred men who had proven their loyalty to the White Tower both physically and mentally. On New Years Day of 2970, he knighted all two hundred and formed the Order of the Black Rose. Its organization was that of a religious order, with the members supposedly sequestered in a handful of chapter houses scattered throughout the land of Gondor. To further strengthen the false image of the Order, he attached half a dozen priests and priestesses
of Namo and Nienna.

In reality, the order was given control of the Steward's large but inefficient intelligence network. It took five long years of purges and training before the first pieces of reliable information began to flow in from such places as Harad, Laketown, and even Bree. The order continued to expand, adding more knights and spies with each passing year. Denethor II spent part of his youth with the knights, and its excellent performance greatly pleased him. He placed the order under his direct command, merging it with the elite Citadel Guard that held the White Tower.

History of the Cult of the King

To the best of Gondor's combined knowledge, the Cult of the King was founded shortly after the return of the Witch King to Mordor in 1980. The name of the original founder is lost in the haze of time, but the extralegal interrogation of several former members has given some insight to the group's twisted theology. Maintaining that the Valar have selfishly abandoned Middle Earth, the group believes that Saurun will become the new God after conquering the last of the fallen Valar's servants. While their theology is somewhat unstable, their dedication to the downfall of Gondor is unquestionable.

Unlike the Order, whose agents generally operate independently, the Cult rarely has less than five members in any given place. While group's leader is usually a member of their priesthood, their cells have been known to pose as anything from a family to a merchant train. This teamwork had the unexpected side effect of severely limiting the group's operational areas. While over three-dozen cells are known to be active in eastern Gondor, the cult shows no interest in any country besides Gondor.

They have a large amount of monetary resources, most of which is dedicated to bribing and subverting various nobles and merchants. Over the last three months, acts of sabotage and assassination have been attributed to the cult.

[ May 05, 2003: Message edited by: Susan Delgado ]