Many Mithril Pages @ Faerylands

When reading some of the ICE character write ups, you will come across terms that may seem unfamiliar. There is a reason for this. These terms were invented by Iron Crown Enterprises. Furthermore, these terms were created in the mid-80s before The History of Middle Earth books were published, before many of Professor Tolkien's express intentions and plans for his legendarium became public knowledge.

I've been searching google for a scan of the original high resolution map to show you all. I cannot find it. I have, however, found one of the revised maps.

http://fanmodules.free.fr/Map%20Making/ … on%202.jpg

Now that map has a whole history behind it. It is the work of a Mister Thomas Morwinsky, who occassionally posts on the Mithril forums and may post here. It takes the Pete Fenlon map and expands it to fix contradictions in some of the written history and open up the setting for further expansion. It also sets out to integrate the Columbia Games HARN setting. It's a beautiful piece of work, but I have my reservations about it. Like the MERP backstories for the Nazgul, it answered a question that didn't need asking. Moreover, we later saw the publication of Tolkien's Ambarquenta map, which rather firmly places the geography of Middle Earth in the ancient history of our world.  Personally, I prefer keeping the exploration of Middle Earth to the original Christopher Tolkien map. (Though if someone were to create a map of Middle Earth that reflected the geology and geography of earth 14,000 years ago and still worked as a map of Middle Earth in the Fourth Age, I'd be all over that!)

Anyway, if you want to know where the realm of Urd is, where Waw is, and possibly even where the Court of Ardor is (someplace near Tulwang, I think), go for it.

I'll say this much, however, I really, really wanted to loot back all the "makey uppey" Middle Earth modules as places for the Cyradon campaign.  They may not be at all reflective of Tolkien, but they have a certain gonzo 80s fantasy coolness of their own.

Gavin