Forest of Tears (1989) features the most ridiculous MERP cover Angus McBride, or any other artist, produced. It features Tica the Birdman carrying off the head of a hapless forest traveler. Tica is actually a cool character, a human playing host to a bird god as a kind of sacred vessel of prophesy. But the prison of flesh, or the transformation of the anatomy drives the spirit insane and cannibalistic. It’s cool and it forms one of the central problems of the adventures in the book. But it is a daffy cover. And yet, even daffy, there are really lovely details, like the tower off in the brush.

This is one of the Southern Middle-earth modules, and it has the fantasy version of real world cultures thing I don’t love. In this instance, its a hidden tribe that seems modeled on a mix of Mesoamerican and Polynesian influences. They aren’t presented poorly, really, and the way their insular culture is slowly being corrupted by Sauron is super interesting. The main problem is that I don’t see how to resolve two of the three scenarios outside of killing everyone involved. That’s too easy, and neat, especially for outsiders. I feel like these should be more complicated. You could probably get them there with a little work.

The first deals with an herbalists foragers going missing because they are straying too close to a Honnin settlement. The second sees the players tasked with eliminating Tica, and with him the entire bird-cult. The third has players rooting out Sauron’s influence in the cult of Honnin’s forager god. As with most of the MERP Harad material, this feels like it would fit better in Shadow World.

Fab art by Liz Danforth throughouth. Love her bird priest and the dark yet dandy agent of Sauron. Some very nice maps, too, as is the Iron Crown standard.