Which brings me to a point about these books. Fun reads! Almost entirely useless game aids. Most of the characters the books break down have pretty firm arcs and meeting them in game threatens to either derail established events or to turn your MERP game into Forrest Gump (which is a good justification for most MERP supplements being set 1000 years before the War of the Rings).

Another fantastic Angus McBride cover here, depicting the battle in Balin’s Tomb. Kudos for managing to squeeze all nine members of the Fellowship in the frame. Liz Danforth is on illustration duties and she is on fire. I love her take on orcs and trolls.

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As I mentioned yesterday, these books filled gaps in Tolkien’s writings. JRR only named one of the ring wraiths – Khamul the Easterling – and gives no real biography of any of them. That just wasn’t going to cut it for a roleplaying game, though, so herein you will find nine ring wraiths, boasting names and full histories. The Witch-King of Angmar’s name is Er-Murazor. It doesn’t get much more awesome than that. There’s a lady Nazgul, too. In a nice design touch, each wraith has a totem animal incorporated into their helmet (Er-Murazor’s helm is a kraken). And these aren’t short bios – most run two pages or more. So, yea, if you wanted Nazgul fan fiction, this is your book. I love it.

MERP cover art doesn’t get much better than this Angus McBride cover depicting the face-off between Eowyn and the Morgul Lord. Liz Danforth is the sole interior artist and I think her stuff has a bit more energy here than in Volume I. But maybe I am just a sucker for Nazgul.

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This three volume series is dedicated to the stats and histories of important NPCs, mostly, but not entirely, from Tolkien’s stories. Volume one tackles the elves, as well as the Maiar and Valar, two classes of divine beings. This is sort of a crash course in advanced Tolkien studies, drawing much from The Silmarillion and other secondary writings. The Silmarillion is a tough read and in a world before Wikipedia, this material was a good summary. 

It gets MERPy, though, when it came to filling the gaps in Tolkien’s narratives. For instance, we know that there are five wizards in Middle-earth, but we don’t know much about the two Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando. Rather than leave them only mentioned in passing, ICE fleshed these, and other characters out, which could cause a little bit of confusion when you crossed the hazy borders of MERP back into Tolkien’s writing. I’ll talk a little bit more about that tomorrow though. 

Interior illustrations are largely elegant portraits by Liz Danforth, though James Holloway and Stephan Peregrine sneak a couple in. It is serviceable stuff, but not overly exciting. The cover, though, is a rad painting by Angus McBride depicting the iconic battle between Gandalf and the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dum.  I appreciate McBride’s subtle wings of smoke, a clever hedge since no one can agree whether Balrogs are supposed to have wings.

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