Mordor Mischief 11: in which Gryfflet enters the Dark Tower and resists being flung into any abysses
6Gryfflet has been waiting outside the door to Barad-dûr and true to form his first impulse on entry is to study the architecture. When he finally takes the plunge he is excited to spot one of the Shadowed Pages that he has been seeking, along with scratches on the wall that indicate one of his targets is in the vicinity. He encounters more members of the Order of the Eye and proceeds to defeat them soundly while spotting more scratches. His joy at finding another Shadowed Page is diluted by puzzlement at the rubble which keeps flashing at us despite the relevant quest being complete but he presses onwards and downwards. He discovers a dungeon and frees numerous Stout-axe prisoners: it turns out that this is the area in which Stout-axe player characters start their LOTRO journey. Further exploration reveals more scratches and some footsteps leading to a different target and then the chamber in which Narchraw, the creator of the scratches, must have been imprisoned: he has gone but his jailer arrives to investigate the disturbance and Gryfflet is forced to defeat him. His guards show up but Gryfflet defeats them also only to discover Váskmun, the Dwarven king, in the middle of his own breakout from a neighbouring cell. Rather than thank us for our help, he requests Gryfflet's help seeking some of his missing belongings. Our search leads us to our final target, one Sapakár—known as the Cleaver—who also tries to gives us a job: his confusion does not last long, nor does he. Neither does Gryfflet when he bites off a little more than he can chew, having found the deepest level of the dungeon, but he revives and goes about his business, finding more guards to defeat as he goes in search of Váskmun's gear. It turns out to be relatively easy to find the food he requested, but there is no sign of his lockbox and his armour proves trickier to track down than predicted. We jump back to Váskmun who is happy to accept what we were able to find and transports us back to Lûghash to rejoin his kin. Pausing only to update his outfit Gryfflet joins the celebrations which include some rousing tales from recent history by himself and Gimli. The king is roused by the retelling and even more by the gift of a battle-axe from his smith Sversting, and then Spakorth asks for a private word. It turns out that Váskmun has a key that will enable him to recover his missing Dwarf-ring, Manthríf. Gimli is naturally disturbed by this but not as much as we all are when a fell spirit erupts from Spakorth and attacks us. The enraged Váskmun leads us to the top of the tower to confront Zôreth, their erstwhile mistress. After a few angry words they discover that the box which both thought contained the ring is empty so Váskmun kills Zôreth and banishes us from Lûghash while renaming his people "Firehorns". We arrive on the road outside Lûghash with Gimli and Spakorth at which point we run out of time.
"It's like a breakfast nook for Cargûl!"
"Don't think we're wasting your time or anything, because we're not!"
"I thought that box was full of doughnuts for a minute but now I realise it's full of snakes!"
"Hark! Rubble!"
"Man, sure needn't have worried about running out of torturers!"
"They have umbrella stands in the torture chamber?"
"Don't you 'die scum' me! I've been 'die scummed' by better mobs than you a dozen times over!"
"I've seen more impressive abysses!"
We were too busy for any Lore discussion this week.