Mordor Mischief 19: in which Gryfflet jumps out of one frying-pan into another
5Gryfflet has been waiting for our return in stealth mode to avoid getting attacked again by the inhabitants of Fushaum Bal North. He immediately sets to creating havoc with a view to improving his reputation with those living to the South pursuant to a convoluted scheme which seems designed to irk his patience. He finally locates the bridge wherein dwell the guards he is supposed to defeat, and a bit more judicious violence brings him to the point where he can hand in his quests. Thâng and Mâlatuk, the leaders of the southern faction, are sufficiently pleased with his progress that he attains the required reputation, although they do want him to carry out more tasks if he wants. He is happy enough to count their treasure but balks at repeating the tasks he already did. He therefore sets about destroying their tents in order to curry favour with the northern faction so that they will give him something proper to do. On advice from the peanut gallery he visits the ever-helpful Wenda Cranesbill who is happy to provide him with the means to access his vault, in which he has a supply of useful gear including something that will speed up his accumulation of reputation. On his return he reports to Harthalin who recognises the name of Urudani Stonemaiden: she can also deduce where we might find her, so we arrange to meet up once Gryfflet has satisfied his completionist tendencies. To that end we plunge back into Fushaum Bal and set to the required slaughter and destruction, filling in the time with some Lore discussion. Khirgi, the leader of the northern faction, finally deigns to give us some tasks to raise our reputation and our discussion continues. We report to Khirgi on completion and he responds by calling a conference with Thâng and Mâlatuk at which things go downhill when they discover that we have been working for both sides. They attack Gryfflet who soundly defeats them and Mâlatuk, the only survivor, decides to head for his home in the East. Back at Magh Ashtu, Thurindol the Ranger is well pleased with our progress and gives us a list of more places to scout. Our discussion continuing as we make our way to the first, we decide to dispose of the weapons we confiscated a while back: this takes a couple of tries since said disposal requires the use of fresh lava and we get too close on the first attempt. He arrives at what seems to be the first venue where one Párgrub, a goblin scrap-monger, offers to help him in his scouting mission. This involves once more donning orcish armour and infiltrating the arena of Thorzhaf where Párgrub wants him to enter some kind of tournament. It takes several attempts before Gryfflet hits upon the correct approach: stealing an orcish blade to improve his disguise, he talks to Maukatish the supervisor who sets him to some menial tasks to test his resolve. We continue the Lore discussion while he does so, and we are still going when the end of the session arrives.
"That kind of seems unnecessarily obnoxious!"
"You guys are entirely too perspicacious!"
"I'm sure it's going to be awesome!"
"I do like those shields, guy looks like a turtle!"
"Now I can take out dudes and tents like I mean it!"
"Seriously, what happened to the flammable tents?"
Lore discussed this week included the frame story from "The Book of Lost Tales" which didn't make it to the published "Silmarillion" and how JRRT might have treated it had he completed the latter in his lifetime.