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View Full Version : DM Help Two questions regarding LoTR lore



Pinjata
2015-07-02, 03:13 AM
... that came up during our sessions.

- What writings/languages are reasonable to be taught in Scribe school in Osgiliath 40 years after the fall of Sauron?

- How common were blades like Sting in Middle earth? Could a human "adventurer" posses one? After all Gandalf just found his sword among some troll loot.

thanks :)

Yora
2015-07-02, 03:27 AM
The two swords in the troll cave were a rather random discovery, but it seems to be implied that this was far from being an average troll treasure. Elrond was not only able to identify the general period of their creation and the likely place where they were made, but could pin them down to the personal weapons of specific people. Unless they had a name stamp on the blade, that implies them to have been pretty big deals. While the elves might have made quite a good number of them, the majority of them most certainly is in the land of the gods or at the bottom of the ocean.
My hunch would be that there are less than 100 weapons of this type in all of Middle Earth and the number might even be significantly lower. Also, most would probably be in Rivendell and Lorien, so if there are ordinary humans who somehow found one, I wouldn't think there to be more than two or three of them.

However, Middle-Earth is not a world about ordinary people and those who seem to start like that turn out to become heroes of global importance. It wouldn't be out of place for a Middle-Earth campaign to have the players characters discover that they do belong to the top 500 most important people in the world. And I think in the internal logic of the setting, legendary weapons have a tendency to find their way into the hands of such people.

Takewo
2015-07-02, 06:10 AM
- What writings/languages are reasonable to be taught in Scribe school in Osgiliath 40 years after the fall of Sauron?

- Obviously not Sindarin (I think it is Sindarin. If not, it is some other kind of Elvish) because it is one of their native tongues, but any other kind of Elvish.
- Rohirrim. After all, Gondor is good friends with Rohan.
- Dwarvish, maybe. I don't know how well dwarvish lore is appreciated, but it's an option.

And probably not much else. Pretty much all the lore of the Middle Earth is in one of those tongues. Well, or in Oestron. But, again, this is their native tongue.

hamishspence
2015-07-02, 06:35 AM
- Obviously not Sindarin (I think it is Sindarin. If not, it is some other kind of Elvish) because it is one of their native tongues, but any other kind of Elvish.
- Rohirrim. After all, Gondor is good friends with Rohan.

Assuming people were interested in the lore the elves left behind, I could see it being taught despite it being a "dying language".

Remember that the Wood Elves speak Sindarin, and they didn't cross the sea with the High Elves at the end of LOTR.

Quenya (Old High Elven) was learned in Gondor by the Numenorians, as "a language of lore".

Takewo
2015-07-02, 06:59 AM
Oh, no. I didn't mean obviously not because it is a dying language, but because it is a native tongue to them. People from Gondor speak Sinadrin as well as Westron. Whether it is all of them or just the fair people, I know not, but when Pippin lives in Minas Tirith several people talk to him in Sindarin.

In fact, I would remake my post as follows:

- Westron and Sindarin are their natives tongues. They can study further in them, but they won't be learned from zero.
- Any other Elvish is a culture language and there's a lot of lore in Elvish languages. Make a lot of sense.
- Rohirrim makes sense because they are friends with Rohan.
- Dwarvish depending on how well appreciated is Dwarvish lore. Probably there's not many people who speak Dwarvish around, but there might be someone.
- Tongues from the South and the East probably not. Although there might be one of those half crazy half dotard professors around who knows one of them.

Eisenheim
2015-07-02, 09:44 AM
Canonically, the dwarves basically never teach their language to outsiders, so that's unlikely. In addition to the other things mentioned here, though, there are also other languages of men, like those spoken by the haradrim, easterlings or dunlendings which a scribe might learn.

NRSASD
2015-07-02, 02:02 PM
Yora did a good job answering the sword question, so I'll just answer the second one.

They definitely teach:
Westron, cause everyone in the west speaks that.
Sindarin, because its a relic language from the times of Numenor, which Gondor is keen on preserving.
Harad/Umbar, because (if I remember right) Aragorn reconquered Harondor after Sauron died. Harondor is the lands just south of the Anduin, traditionally under Gondorian control but occupied by the Haradrim's many clans.
Rohirric, the traditional language of Rohan.
Dale Language, (couldn't find a name for it), because they are a major power aligned with Gondor.

They might teach:
Mordor Orc: knowing that language is very useful for spies and the like, but it might not be "kosher" for a scribe school.
Easterling/Rhun: The Gondorians know very little about the East, so they might not know this. However, Rhun is a major power.
Quenya: Not likely as the Elves are withdrawing from the world at this point, but they were allies in the past.
Sylvan Elven (not sure on the name): Not that fond of people snooping into their affairs, but they are a major power.

They almost certainly wouldn't teach:
Misty Mountains/Gundabad Orc: Gondor has no exposure to those groups, not to mention they're ferociously hostile to outsiders.
Lossoth: No exposure to the languages from that far north in Forochel.
Khazad (Dwarven): It was a secret language that Dwarves absolutely and utterly refused to teach anyone. They learned other languages to communicate with other races in. It was considered taboo to even speak Khazad in front of non-Dwarves (except for battle cries of course).
Black Speech: a. Corrupted Elven, so kinda rude. and b. the language of evil. When Gandalf spoke Black Speech in Rivendell, it physically hurt the Elves present and made everyone else very uncomfortable. This language is probably capable of corrupting those who speak it, so I would be very surprised if they teach scribes it.

Of course these are just suggestions. Hope this helps!