We’ll now be going through all five remaining chapters of the adventure. It looks (to me at least) like the adventure from now on has really overstayed its welcome for no good reason at all. I feel like adding more layers/depth to the previous chapters would have been a lot more profitable than this endless sightseeing tour that we get instead. Honestly, I think someone on the writing team decided that they had to use as many previously published sourcebooks as possible and include them in this adventure in some fashion, no matter how cumbersome it was to do so.

Anyway, Palantir Quest is too much of a railroad and as hinted in the title it has some very questionable design choices but there’s also some good bits here and there. Read on!

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Having survived the frigid north, the player characters slowly get back to civilization on foot. Empty-handed to boot, as the two palantiri they barely had time to see are now in the possession of an Easterling named Vacros and his hired band of smugglers.

When they reach Tharbad to report their failure what they get is an hostile greeting. In fact Commander Cilis is « bitterly angered by the news of his lost men.  » And the PCs « are not encouraged to dwell long in Tharbad. » YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED THE COMMANDER! Well, I’m all for roleplaying and it could be an understandable reaction from this NPC but it’s not like the players could have done anything differently!

Now, based on the flimsiest of clue that they got weeks ago in-game ( before their very strenuous arctic ordeal), they’re supposed to push on and investigate the Juggler’s Hall in a desperate bid to find a way to restore their honor.

Upon reaching the Juggler’ Hall (again) they find that the place isn’t open to visitors at the moment, they’ll have to find a way to get in. A frontal assault is unlikely to succeed, what the player characters have to do is to infiltrate and investigate. Or, a nice alternative that is provided by the book is to talk to the ambitious wife of the « Master Juggler » whom could be persuaded to betray her husband and give information to the PCs. Eiher way, if they’re competent about it they’ll learn of the rendez-vous point of the smugglers, as stipulated in the delivery contract by the yet to be seen true villain of the adventure.

This leads them (after some minor events) to the Wold, right on time to be participants in a big four-way fight. It’s a great setup, somewhat lessened by the usual flaw of this adventure of forcing things too much.

What begins as a fight between the smugglers (Jugglers) and opportunistic bandits is soon complicated by the simultaneous arrivals of the PCs and an orc raiding party! There’s a fully statted roster, an okay map (below) of the site, several steps to what each sides are doing, all good. Less good is this advice: « The Gm should attempt to manipulate all of the PCs into the lair. » Because as written the adventurers have to get into that nearby cave, huh, in order for a landslide to happen automatically, thus forcing them onward to explore the (linear) underground system.

I’ll note on the plus side that there’s a very nice cursed sword to be found in the lair, a potent weapon that has the significant drawback of animating any nearby statues with hostile intents towards the wielder. Great item!

Stashed in the cave are two heavy boxes containing the palantir!. All the PCs have to do now is to bring them to the king to get their well-earned praises and rewards…

Except that NO! Once in Minas Tirith and upon closer examination by the royal seer it is revealed that those artefacts are fakes! YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED THE ROYAL SEER! YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED THE KING (Aragorn)!

How do you feel about that? Damn, I really hate these GOTCHA twists… And what’s that about, guilt tripping the players?

Anyway, The PCs are arrested and then subsequently released after it is established that they really are innocent, just a bit oblivious. Get back on the plot thread will you!

« It is recommended that the GM award a bonus of 10,000 XPs for the recovery of what the characters believe to be the true Seeing-stones, but then retract 80% of that bonus when they find out that what they have recovered are fakes. They should regain this 80% when they recover the real Stones (in addition to a bonus for achieving their goal). »

As the greatest glass makers in Middle-earth are right here in Minas Tirith and they’re the most likely to have crafted somewhat convincing fakes, the PCs can get on their path to redemption immediately and investigate the Glassworks. And the next part is actually quite well-made I’ll say. There’s three clues to be found, they make a lot of sense in context without being too obvious and, more importantly, it is up to the players to piece it together. No dumb spoon-feeding this time around. Hurray!

They should be able to discover a lead on someone called the « Green Man », and their next stop in order to find him is all the way north to Lake-town.

(some minor events on the road: a pair of trolls under a bridge, an haunted tower – serviceable filler)

This part is unfortunately way less well-conceived. Nobody knows who the « Green Man » is in Lake-town but the adventurers will stumble upon/be offered a job that leads to his discovery anyway. Call it Fate if you will. The captured smuggler (there’s just too much smuggling NPCs in this adventure) can tell the PCs where his men (now missing) were bringing the fake palantiri (before they reached the cave where they found them) but he knows nothing useful of his mysterious employer. But they get UNEXPECTED ASSISTANCE in the form of an old woman who tells of this evil sorcerer Taladhan « He came out of them woods, he did. » Yeah, right, thank you old woman, onward we go.

Oh and this Taladhan hired an assassin who’ll most likely kill at least one player character while he sleeps at the inn in Lake-town. That’s it *checks the list of replacement*, here’s this new character for you, keep going!

The adventurers leave Lake-town and follow the smugglers’ trail into Greenwood (Mirkwood was renamed with its ancient name after the end of the War of the Ring). They’ll have to fight some giant spiders and, after about six days of travel, will reach the spot where the smugglers were ambushed by Taladhan’s half-orc minions. They’ll also encounter a Silvan Elf that will conveniently brief the players on the current situation, which is as follows:

• He has located Taladhan’s tower in the southern part of Greenwood.
• He has seen « ugly men » with two crates a few months ago (the fakes)
• He has seen another band a few days ago (the real palantiri)
• Elves attacked this last band and took off with the smaller palantir to their tree fort
• Those Elves are being attacked right now by the sorcerer’s minions (« ugly men » and Black Trolls)
• The defenders can’t last long

But despite knowing all this the adventurers, as written, aren’t expected to go help the endangered Elves immediately but, instead, for some reason to do so only after they’ve dealt with Taladhan at his lair. Talk about odd prioritizing…

I would hope the players would insist on getting out of the railroad at this point but if they don’t they’ll go to the sorcerer’s lair, a sort of Orthanc-type tower carved inside a stone spire, and a symbol of the times surely, whereas the villain is a pale imitation of Saruman who was himself a pale imitation of Sauron who as a pale imitation of Morgoth…

Conveniently for the adventurers, the 25th level sorcerer Taladhan is one obsessive dude and he will only intervene if 80% of the current garnison (25 half-orcs and 2 Olog-hai Trolls, nothing to scoff at) is killed, otherwise he’s too busy playing with his new palantir toy to even care. But then the tower « is reached only by air across the violent spume of the waterfall that engulfs its foundation. » It’s a very nice site by the way. But I have no idea how the PCs are supposed to enter the tower, across the waterfall and get past the solid black iron doors (closed by « huge metal bars » from the inside), or how the baddies themselves are getting in and out without any bridge contraption for that matter. Climbing the vertical 165′ up to the balcony doesn’t seem like a feasible option. A Trojan Horse-style ploy maybe?

It’s mini-Orthanc alright, impregnable, so unless the players are really clever about it (or have just the right spell available, that’s a possibility), maybe the GM will have to put in a Wormtongue lookalike to untie the tactical impasse…

Whichever way it is achieved, it leaves the tree-fort battle to be resolved afterward. Dozens of half-orcs fighters with some trolls and twenty Elves on the adventurers’ side (not included: what if they came immediately, are the defenders more numerous? if they come 3 days later, are they still alive?). A hard fight unless (also not included) a crafty player character shows the cut head of the dead sorcerer for his minions to see or something like that I would think.

The adventurers finally have the real palantiri in their hands and will get back to the King’s court after some minor events (giant spiders, bandits).

One last unnecessary scene happens whereas Vacros and his accomplice have kidnapped the royal seer. Whatever, let the royal guards deal with this I say.

With that, the adventure FINALLY comes to an end:

And that’s it, that was Palantir Quest, ICE’s Middle-Earth most ambitious adventure, too ambitious perhaps as in my opinion it couldn’t deliver true quality content within such a lenghty journey, all in only 159 pages. I have some ideas on what I would do with this book, there’s something to be done with it undoubtely – cutting two-thirds of the journey and removing the railroad plot (making it a sandbox, yay!) would be a good start, but that’s for another post (if I gather the will to do so).