Is it possible to look at the map above and not feel a wave of nostalgia washing over you like a tsunami?
Anyway. The Blue Wizards. Tolkien had different conceptions of them through his career. The version I prefer is from his letter of 14th October 1958 to Rhona Beare:
I really do not know anything clearly about the other two [wizards] – since they do not concern the history of the N[orth].W[est]. I think they went as emissaries to distant regions, East and South, far out of Númenórean range: missionaries to 'enemy-occupied' lands, as it were. What success they had I do not know; but I fear that they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were founders or beginners of secret cults and 'magic' traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron.
There is so much in that small paragraph: distant regions, vagueness about success or failure, how the wizards might have failed in 'different ways' to Saruman, what secret cults or magical traditions they founded and more besides. Plenty for a DM to get his teeth into, anyway.
I imagine the campaign covering the area beyond Mirkwood, encompassing the Iron Hills, the Sea of Rhun, and Rhun itself - and beyond. Ostensibly, the PCs would be going in search of the Blue Wizards, perhaps under the command or instigation of Gandalf or Elrond, but there would of course be much more to the campaign than this. There would be Easterling tribes of myriad types, some nomadic, some living in walled towns. There would be degenerate Numenoreans, perhaps something like the black Numenoreans of the South - the remnants of colonies from the Second Age - or undead ones (or only the ruins of the civilization they built). There would be agents of both Saruman and Sauron going hither and thither across the land, trying to thwart the PCs and find the Blue Wizards for themselves. There would be roving orcs and other of Morgoth's creations. But there would be elves and dwarves too, perhaps of unusual Avari types in respect of the elves, and perhaps of a more primal or wild nature in the case of the dwarves. And, naturally, there would be these "secret cults and 'magic' traditions" that Tolkien so tantalises us with.
The campaign would be a sandbox, but one which I think of as a purposive hexcrawl. There would be clues scattered across the map as to the Blue Wizards' whereabouts. But many of these would have to be red herrings or diversions, and of course the PCs might well be distracted by other things too, not the least of which being rival groups of Saruman and Sauron's servants. Crucial in all of this would be to start the PCs off already having several avenues to explore, and taking things from there - giving them options, and then seeing what pre-arranged clues are subsequently uncovered.
That line about secret cults in the East has always implied to me a world of mystics and hidden practices - with something of the Oriental about it. Thinking on it now, it conjures something of early Christians in the catacombs - as well as Gnostic or otherwise unorthodox offshoots.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, the Easterlings did have a hint of the nomadic about them, with their wains. Not necessarily the armoured footmen Peter Jackson (and Games Workshop) gave us.
I like the early Christian idea a lot. Mystery cults and whatnot.
DeleteI too have often wondered about the Blue Wizards and the blank side of the map.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the purpose of the Blue Wizards' journey? What if the Blue Wizards had turned on each other? Or what if one had been killed, only to return different, like Gandalf?
One trick would be to avoid orientalist tropes. Another would be for the PCs to find translators! They'd be far from the Common Tongue. Maybe some PCs would have to come from strange lands, perhaps offspring of parents from the East who group up in the West.
Let us know if your cooking produces a meal!
I think what Tolkien must have been envisaging with Rhun was much more Eastern European/Eurasian than Oriental. That's how I would think of it anyway.
DeleteI always rationalized it was like the Eastern Roman Empire. Turkish/Indian influences feel like they were being invoked, sort of like in Lewis's Calormen.
DeleteThis sounds like it could be a long and absorbing campaign. And great fun.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! In what year would you set the campaign?
ReplyDeleteProbably roughly contemporary with The Hobbit? So Sauron and Saruman's involvement would be cloaked - and there would be concern about the 'Necromancer' in Mirkwood maybe.
DeleteAbsolutely love this pitch. I have always found the Blue Wizards fascinating and always struggled to think of what an interesting campaign set in Middle Earth would consist of. I would agree that there could be some needle-threading to do with not making the men of Far Harad, etc. orientalist but I think there is a lot of really great and interesting stuff that could be explored here -- stuff that would build on Middle Earth, but not feel confined by established lore.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the issue with Middle Earth is that the standard D&D style "PCs as rogues" motif just doesn't fit at all. Another option I have thought about is to set a game around the timing of the Children of Hurin and have the PCs trying to do a bit of good against a rising tide of evil. Very much "points of light".
Delete== I imagine the campaign covering the area beyond Mirkwood, encompassing the Iron Hills, the Sea of Rhun, and Rhun itself - and beyond ... I think what Tolkien must have been envisaging with Rhun was much more Eastern European/Eurasian than Oriental. That's how I would think of it anyway.
ReplyDeleteThere are two opposing considerations here, the probable or *plausible* location of these two forgotten wizards, and the requirement that the wizards are as close to Tolkien's LotR map as possible to avoid the feeling your adventures have nothing to do with Tolkien's Middle-earth.
I believe it is most plausible that in Tolkien's mind the wizards were as far away, relatively, as Persia or India or Egypt. I believe they were distant or dislocated enough to become embroiled (or merely engrossed like the lesser Istari Radagast) in events sufficiently isolated and disturbing to prevent them from resisting Sauron in the NW. They may have been killed and spiritually migrated back home. That might not conflict with your 'search for them' premise.
However, if your players are not exploring even the edge of Tolkien's map they may become restless! So your creative mission as DM is to explain how the wizards are so close but uninvolved in, or at least disconnected from, Tolkien's narrative. This is a meta puzzle good players will wonder about among themselves.
Some other thoughts, Rhun looked like a desert to teenage me until I realised that Tolkien only mapped his novel; Rhun is as verdant as anywhere else. AD&D isn't like this because we don't know what is going to happen. This makes Tolkien even more brilliant to me, he did not waste time thinking vaguely about *anything*. It is an afternoon's work to detail a map. But if there is no content behind it you are dirtying geographical space you may use in the future, with ideas behind the location. As someone who loves creating maps, that for me is an unacknowledged flaw in the business of most AD&D DMs. Content should come *lockstep* with maps, not afterwards, and AD&D paraphernalia or knowledge should be irrelevant during the creative process.
The Easterlings who come from Rhun in the third age (not the same as the Easterlings relative to Beleriand in the first age) in my opinion are something like Magyars or at most Turks.
Yes, Magyars, or Alans or Huns, I think. There is a feeling in my mind that Rhun can be thought of as the land of Cossacks and Tatars - the steppes this side of the Ural mountains, with the Sea of Rhun being a little like the Black Sea or Caspian Sea.
DeleteVaguely related I've always thought that a setting based on the chaotic Ottoman/Christian frontier in the 15th-17th centuries would be cool.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uskoks
Have you read Black Lamb and Grey Falcon? Uskoks agogo in that.
DeleteYou might do something like this on a blank Judges Guild hex map, they are textured like watercolour cold press paper, durable and more pleasing to look at than white sheets. I picked up a bunch for $5 each.
ReplyDeletehttps://odd74.proboards.com/thread/8993/middle-earth-judges-guild-wilderlands
Very nice looking.
DeleteI am extremely excited about this series of posts. One possible source of inspiration are the MERP maps about Rhun/Harad. ICE produced a ton of content there--some Tolkienesque, some less so. It's at least worth pawing through to see if there's anything worth stealing.
ReplyDeleteI have MERP and some of the ICE stuff. I love it, but a lot of it is very "un-Tolkien". You have to be judicious with it, as you suggest.
DeleteI love this idea!
ReplyDeleteI have this vague memory (maybe from an old ICE supplement) that the whole continent is like 10 times bigger than what this map shows. There's a lot of unused space beyond the Sea of Rhun.
Yeah, there's a huge map. It has some basis in "reality" as far as I can recall, because Tolkien did apparently map his entire world at least in sketch form.
DeleteI actually thought of something similar to this as a game once. It never got out of half-baked conceptualization because I am not the biggest fan of Middle Earth nor putting a game in such a known setting. The basic idea would be playing characters in the War in the East and South, being native easterlings and southerners recruited by the blue wizards to fight against the influence of Sauron. Basically it would be a Middle Eastern/Asian-esque setting with some Middle Earth names here and there. (Think I was going to model it on Yoon-suin at some point.) I am not well read in Tolkien's mythology and that's one of the reasons why I never got it off the ground.
ReplyDeleteSome art for the idea:
https://www.deviantart.com/turnermohan/art/The-Blue-Wizards-502795594
http://hugenerdproblems.blogspot.com/2014/08/tolkien-wizards-two-lost-blue.html
I think later on Tolkien rewrote or rethought the blue wizards as being more benevolent and played a crucial part in the war of the ring behind the scenes within the East and the South and that was what I was conceptualizing when thinking of the idea.
Yeah, I think he did do that. I like that idea less than the mysterious melancholy of "They failed but I'm not sure how."
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