Tuesday 11 January 2011

Mysterious Relics

Today a mysterious new deed was opened — and if one doesn't want to be spoiled about the theme of future content they should stop reading now.

Basically there was a mysterious "official message" both on the US and EU servers from a bewildered hobbit, and several people doing their dailies in Enedwaith spotted a new black rock that starts a new deed. The deed is called Mysterious Relics and it requires you to find five relics scattered around Eriador.

I'm certain the newly appeared mysterious relics are representing the five gaunt-lords, "embodying death, pestilence, famine, war, and purest evil". There was a thread on the US forums some time ago, speculating their involvement in future content, but right now I can't find it - however certain quests in Enedwaith revealed the last, previously unnamed Gaunt-lord, so it's all becoming quite clear now. If anyone has a link to that thread I'd surely appreciate it, since I'd like to add the Gaunt-lords' names to this post but can't find them at the moment.

So here are my conclusions:


Thror's Coomb is most likely "purest evil", and it's probably linked both to the last Gaunt-lord (which appeared briefly in a quest instance nearby) and also the closed-off castle in the same region.

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Oatbarton is "famine", and fits with the whole hobbit&food theme (and the blighted pipeweed farm here could be a nod to Saruman buying pipeweed from the Shire). Also check out this official message: A Strongly-Worded Letter from Bungo Grubb.

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North Downs (William Peake's farm) is "war"; the farm where this relic appeared has been burned down. Probably also linked to the new town just around the corner.

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Forochel is "death", the dialogue speaks of "mounting sense of fear".

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Trollshaws (Laenan Caves) is "disease" and linked to the mysterious door, which apparently leads to an underground passage to an ancient temple where men of Rhudaur worshipped evil spirits.

Here's the tl;dr:


After completing the deed you get a nice title: Calm Before the Storm. Sadly, this deed gives no TP. But the excitement was surely worth it!



UPDATE: Many thanks to Anuhart for finding the right link; this thread from July reveals both the 'domains' of the Gaunt-lords as well as some very interesting bits from the original Volume 1 storyline. These are, as far as we know now, the five Gaunt-lords and their respective domains:

Drugoth the Death-monger, DEATH (Minion of Shadow)
Ferndur the Virulent, PESTILENCE (Minion of Plague)
Thadur the Ravager, FAMINE (Minion of Misery)
Ivar the Bloodhand, WAR (Minion of Battle)
Gortheron the Doom-caller, PUREST EVIL (his title is Minion of Plague as well, either it's a bug or he's a minion of Ferndur and we've yet to see the BBEG!)

This is what Gortheron tells the player during a quest instance in Enedwaith:
Gortheron the Doom-caller says, "How dare you disturb my work here! My brother was felled by the Free Peoples of this world, and I sought to return him to his proper place."
Gortheron the Doom-caller says, "Now he lies waiting and in rest. You seem to have undone some of my work here, but my forces shall lay waste to this place."
Gortheron the Doom-caller says, "Now I shall depart, but I will have vengeance for my fallen brethren. You shall rue to the day that you crossed paths with Gortheron the Doom-caller!"

So I guess it's fairly certain that the upcoming instance/raid cluster will be about the return of the Gaunt-lords, and I'd guess that the instances will be spread around Eriador near the places where these relics now appeared (the new town in ND, the temple in TS, the Ironspan in Forochel are all pretty good candidates for instance entrances). The locations also coincide very well with the regions we visited in Volume 3 Book 1, when we were gathering the Rangers for the Grey Company. Now that they're gone it seems all sorts of nasty things are returning.

Interesting times ahead!

11 comments:

  1. You got really nice close ups of those! All the ones I saw had this foggy smoke spewing out of them.

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  2. Nice pics, just going through and getting these on my char. This seems like a raid teaser to me, or at least that's what I'm hoping :)

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  3. Very well done post. :D

    You actually just missed the names in the link that you included to the lorebook:

    The five Gaunt-lords who have been revealed thus far are:

    Ivar the Blood-hand (Garth Agarwen Barrows, Lone-lands)
    Ferndúr the Virulent (Imlad Bachorth, Angmar)
    Drugoth the Death-monger (Dragon-wing of Helegrod instance, Misty Mountains)
    Thadúr the Ravager (in the Great Barrow - Thadúr instance -- you get the second half of the skull-key from him, Bree-land)
    Gortheron the Doom-caller (in Lhe Colvarn in the Lich Bluffs, Enedwaith)

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  4. Oh thanks Merric, I need to get thicker lenses it seems :D.

    That's the bit I was looking for (although the thread I'm still after had their proper titles as well, à la "Minion of Misery", "Minion of Plague" as well).

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  5. Sael check back to that US thread again.

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  6. This Thread? http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6a1pKdQXeqIJ:lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Monster:Gaunt-lord+gaunt+lord+lotro&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us'

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  7. Anuhart found the right thread I was looking for, http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?347447-the-secret-of-golodir-s-shield-other-volume-1-mysteries-*spoiler-alerts!*/page2 . Will update later today <3.

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  8. Awesome! Seriously, this is a great post. Thanks for updating it Xhii! :) I never realized that these gaunt lords had such a history/lore. I guess that flew right over my head!

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  9. I had never actually connected the dots with all the gaunt lords before now. Wow. I guess, much like the Nazgul, you can't keep them down forever.

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  10. so is could this mean we ahve to fight all the gaunt men that we killed already again? if so I hope they have some new tricks, last time I fought the gaunt men they died quickly and were easy.

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  11. I'm guessing that's exactly what we'll have to do. Thadur is ridiculously easy, Drugoth isn't much of a challenge, but Ferndur and Ivar are still rather hard to do on-level. Of course the last gaunt-lord's monologue can be interpreted so that we'll only get to fight him as he's trying to resurrect his buddies - which could be an interesting scenario: travel to each of those new locations, fight off Gortheron while he's bringing back a fallen gaunt-lord, and then in the raid itself we get to down the Big Bad.

    I do wonder how the Witch-king fits in all of this - the NPCs in Forochel mentioned him a lot and believed the Relic was his mark.

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