Moréna: Session Zero

Lena is someone that I knew from my time at Benedictine College. She and I had played in a few games together, particularly one of the best games I've ever been in, a World of Darkness campaign called "Unspent", GM'd by Andy. Her family and mine had met up at a park so the kids could play together, and we got into talking about RPG campaigns and whatnot. I told her about my late-night games and how much I wished others would be up at 10 PM and on so I could play with them. Lena said she was a night owl and she missed playing! After a few logistical hoops were jumped through we decided that we wanted to eventually get to a 2nd Age Middle Earth Burning Wheel game. I flat out refused to do it as of now, mostly because I'm already GMing two Burning Wheel games already and the strain would probably kill me.

So I suggested Bleak Spirit, which is so intensive it might kill me anyway!

So this is what we've drawn up. Lena, being a huge LOTR nerd (there is no "k" in Evlish) wanted to play in the First Age of Middle Earth. We decided it would when the Trees were bringing light into the world, before the sun and moon, so everything is in a perpetual twilight. Melkor, enemy of the world, is still grabbing random elves, who haven't gone West yet and are terrified of the darkness that is their world. We're putting the game on the Gelion River, near the area that eventually becomes river, in a town named Gelionunci, a mostly abandoned town.

The Wanderer we made is The Umbaran, a revenant human from what eventually became the mysterious land of Rhûn. An undead on a special mission that only he knows about, The Umbaran dresses in worn fine elvish clothes he probably picked off an elven corpse from somewhere, and wields an enormous zweihander called Moréna. This blade is the source of his power. It increases his physical strength, anger and focus. For his part The Umbaran is a very focused personality, chasing his goal with uncompromising vigor. Distracting him is a bad idea, for The Umbaran has a bad temper and will not stop until he gets what he has been chasing this whole time.