Adventure Introduction Battle of Five Armies & The Third Age of Middle-Earth The current year for our Middle-Earth campaign is set during the year of 2946 of the Third Age. Inspired By J.R.R. Tolkien

Welcome to Middle-earth. The year is 2946 of the Third Age, and the lands east of the Misty Mountains are astir. From the cloud-shrouded peaks above the High Pass to the spider-infested gloom of the forest of Mirkwood, paths long-deserted are trodden once again.

Five years has passed since the events of the Battle of Five Armies outside of Erebor. We find ourselves in Wilderland, or as it officially know as Rhovanion, the region of Middle-earth east of the Misty Mountains and north of Gondor and Rohan. It includes Lake-town, Erebor (The Lonely Mountain), the newly rebuilt Dale, Rhosgobel, Woodmentown, Thranduil’s Hall, and the dark vastness of Mirkwood itself. Wilderland has a huge amount of territory and places familiar and strange to explore.

The dragon Smaug is dead, slain by Bard the Bowman, now King Bard of Dale. People all across Wilderland are finding new hope for the future. Trade routes are reopening, and the free folk of Wilderland are beginning to get to know one another again. Busy merchants carry their wares to new markets, messengers bring tidings from foreign realms, and kings send forth armed men to extend their influence and the rule of law. Some say that a new age of freedom has begun, a time for adventure and great deeds to reclaim glories lost in long centuries of oppression and decline.

But adventures are not really things that people go out and look for. They are dangerous and rarely end well. While it is true that a handful of valiant individuals set out to make their mark on the world, for others it seems that adventure chooses them, as though it is the path they are fated to tread. They are restless warriors, curious elves and rangers of the wild, always eager to seek what was lost or explore what was forgotten. Ordinary people call them adventurers, and when they return successful, they call them heroes. But if they fail, no one will even remember their names.

Our story, however, begins much smaller. Here in the western regions of Mirkwood Forest lies the sleepy settlement of Woodmen-town. It is spring, and the town is waking from Winter. Men and women drag rugs and blankets outside, and beat the winter’s dust out of them. Knee-deep ashes from fires kept burning all season long are cleared from the hearths, and the collection of firewood for next year begins. Here in this isolated settlement nestled within the tall pines of Mirkwood, a small collection of wandering destinies begin to intersect.

We begin in the early hours of the morning, a storm currently rages outside . . . in a messy room on the second floor of the Nightgate Inn. A bleary-eyed, rugged Dwarf slowly wakens from his lengthy slumber . . .