More MERP! This time, unified by the fact that Angus McBride did not do the cover art. First up, The Court of Ardor (1983), one of a handful of MERP products that predates the existence of the distinct MERP system (they’re keyed to RoleMaster). Worth noting that I thought I’d never own this one because it is routinely priced ridiculously high on the second-hand market, but I got lucky recently (and thus managed to complete my 1E MERP collection, hooray!).

Anyway, cover art by Gail McIntosh, whose cover for Hillmen of the Trollshaws is one of my all-time favorite pieces of RPG illustration. There is a lot to love here as well, particularly all the details in the stonework. Those snakes look real good too. Worth noting, too, that in this batch of books, I’ve noticed a surprising concentration of women contributors. Liz Danforth was a mainstay, of course, but I never noticed that cartographer and artist Jessica Ney would eventually become the line editor. Two of these week’s modules are written by women as well. That’s unusual, and cool, for the time, I think.

Anyway, Court of Ardor is delightfully weird. As with most of Iron Crown’s products that explore southern Middle-earth, it doesn’t feel like Middle-earth at all, really. I find myself saying “but it would fit into Shadow World” a lot in these instances and this is maybe why: Terry K. Amthor, Shadow World’s main creative force, wrote this. The other pre-MERP books are all identifiably Tolkien-esque, so I think this probably set the tone for all the future southern weirdness, and anyone familiar with Shadow World will look through this and detect familiar notes.

The book essentially puts forth a large villainous organization for players to contend with, laying out all the major characters and many of their strongholds. This is a good idea, since we know how Sauron goes down, which is sort of the problem with MERP at large. On the other hand, these folks, some of whom date back to Morgoth’s time, are clearly patterned after the ruling family in Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber. Right down to having magical tarot decks through which members of the court can communicate and channel magic. I don’t dislike this, but it is certainly an odd choice and I am unsurprised that the Court, to my knowledge, doesn’t appear again in the MERP line. Shadow World’s gain!

Beautiful illustrations by Charles Peale throughout (who, if I am not mistaken, also did beautiful illustrations for The Cloudlords of Tanara, which came out the next year, was written by Amthor, is part of the Loremaster line that would eventually become Shadow World and is structured very similarly to Ardor!