Sauron, The Great Old One

 

I've never really looked at the Elder Sign from H. P. Lovecraft's mythos very closely before...

...oh crap, Sauron was a Great Old One all along.

No wonder it took him so long to reappear on Middle-earth after Isildur vanquished him–the stars weren’t right.

A Ring Thrice Blackened: Black Metal Middle-Earth

A strange confluence of influences: I've been thinking about the Lord of the Rings D&D that's coming out (and the odd lack of information about it), I watched the last Hobbit movie recently, I've been listening to Emperor's In the Nightside Eclipse a lot lately, and I've been having recurring dreams about the Nazgul.

All of this got my thinking about how I would run a game set in Middle-Earth, but with a bit of a "blackened" miasma clinging to the setting like a cloak of despair. Some basic guiding principles:

• set the game between the events of The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, emphasizing the rise of Shadow and the darkening of Arda
• clear the board of the major protagonists from Tolkien's novels; make room for a different fellowship to do the heavy lifting
• foster the atmosphere of a black metal saga

If you want to take a glimpse at what I've come up with, the pdf is here.

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Bonus mixtape to get you in the mood:

Love Song of the Nazgul

Gravelord Nito † Emperor - Into the Infinity of Thoughts † Satyricon - Nemesis Divina † Summoning - Nightshade Forests † Darkthrone - Under a Funeral Moon † Burzum - Black Spell of Destruction † Mayhem - From the Dark Past † Scorpioness Najka