I went out to search for the corrupted plants, and almost made it to Lintrev in my travels – where I found Nerys, who told us that no goblins or Uruks were seen anywhere near Lintrev, and that I was a fool to trust anyone from Glyd Helyn. It seems the three hobbit villages have a bit of a sibling rivalry going on.

While I was searching the corrupted plants, I decided to help out a few of the nearby villagers – and Nerys even gave me a necklace for scaring off the nearby Shrews eating her apples, only to then afterwards give the Shrews a basket of apples to “appease” them. These hobbits are good folk, trusting in the base instincts of animals to keep them away from where food is clearly coming from – and rewarding their insistence.

Another hobbit wanted some wings from the nearby Crabans, that were eating the seeds of the fields – and then he was missing a curiously tied-to-stones handkerchief. Turned out that he wanted to create some contraption that would make him fly – a very adventerous hobbit indeed. I humored his request for materials, but in the end he unfortunately got cold feet, and did not want to proceed with his “groundbreaking” innovation. Probably for the best – I would not have enjoyed watching off the cliff in blind belief he could fly like a bird.

As I walked around the little village, I heard some troubling rumors of orc fortifications in the east, and the construction of catapults. This does obviously not bode well – though I would have hoped Nerys had told me about this – so as to not waste time on idle musings of hobbits. I decided to go scout the rumored orc fortification – and it was very clearly not just rumors. Among the rickety barricades walked dozens of orcs, with multiple finished siege catapults. I decided to infiltrate their makeshift fort, and dispatched a good number of both warriors, archers and captains, while stealing the pins from their catapults – all at the behest of the hobbit rumormongeres in Lintrev (one of who was the Mayor, Eirlys).

I decided to report on the corrupted plants on the way back – in Glyn Helyg, which in turn lead me again to Lintrev, straight to Nuddo – who was knowledgeable in this area. He spoke of Black Riders passing through, and tasked me with investigating the nearby spider breeding ground of Cobshollow, and thinning their numbers. A nearby elf by the name of Coruwen overheard, and wanted me to gather plants from the area to make a draught to cleanse the land.

After finding both plants and dismembering a dozen spiders, I returned to Lintrev. The draught was made, and I went to spread it in a nearby waterfall. Nuddo was worried that the spiders I had killed were not the source of the recent corruption, and tasked me with finding and killing their corrupted queen.

All of this bodes ill, and I will return to Clegur to see if the others have found any clues as to these troubling developments.

This was a weird session. The main quest clearly states that the interviewed hobbit says nothing is wrong, but all the ambient quests in the area indicate the other way. I don’t know if this is a pacing issue, where I am outpacing the level of the area – but several of the quests were only unlocked by completing level appropiate sidequests in these towns.

Also, I accidently wandered a bit wide exploring once, ending up in Enedwaith – giving me a helpful popup that this area was “probably” harder than I was used to. I looked up the level range, and found it to be in the sixties – a bit more than my measly 11 levels can handle.

Christian