Greetings from Shell Beach Eriador!

Again, look at these as snapshots from a recent vacation.
The first shot is from a few weeks ago, taken a few hundred miles northeast of the Shire, in the easternmost reaches of the north downs. It’s one of the passes into the mountains that leads (after quite a lot of winding and ambushes and scary dragon kin) into the southernmost reaches of Angmar, the Witch King’s seat of power. The statues framing the pass look a lot like Nazgul to me. The dark trail on the ground marks the passage of a massive army that went through not too long ago (now occupying the valley of Dol Dinen to the south).
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“… but the trees are actually quite lovely…”


This one isn’t really a screen shot — it’s just the current map for the game. As you can see, a lot of the ‘world’ isn’t in play yet — really it’s just the section of the map connected to the areas that the Fellowship ‘touched’ or referred to just during the first half of the first book. Click on the picture to go to an annotated version of the map.
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Rivendell. What more do you need to say? In this shot, Geiri pauses on the steep, steep path leading down into Imladris to take in The Last Homely House. At this point in the game’s timeline, the Fellowship is resting up after all the misadventures that got the hobbits there from the Shire; Gandalf and Elrond are in deep council; Aragorn ponders the reforging of Narsil; Boromir remains as far from Elrond as he can; Gloin hasn’t arrived yet, nor has Legolas; Frodo mopes; Samwise worries about him; Bilbo spends his time in the Hall of Flame, telling riddles… and Merry and Pippin smoke barrels of Old Toby don’t pay much attention to anyone else.


Geiri and Tiranor, somewhere in the inhospitable reaches between the northern Shire and Lake Evendim.


Geiri, at Tinundir — Dunedain-held ruins along the shores of Evendim, at sunset.


Geiri, facing off against one of the bestial gauradan, LotRO’s nod to werewolves while staying true to Tolkein. They’re very beast-like in movement and appearance (I had to work at getting a screenshot that showed me their human face under the wolf head for several minutes and numerous fights), and their tribal areas are very cool. I particularly like their facial characteristics; that lantern jaw and heavy brow really sets them apart from other Men.
In this shot, I’m doing what I usually do: smashing my shield into the bad guy’s face until Tiranor gets a couple arrows into them and they decide to have a lie-down.


And that’s it, for now. I tried to get a shot that captured us on our (new!) horses, riding through frozen Forochel, with the northern lights in the sky and our breath coming out in white puffs, but I never quite got it all in a good shot at the same time, so that will have to wait.