Shamus Plays: LOTRO, Part 14

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Side note: Thanks so much to the smart-alec who mailed Lulzy 21 pies. I will aim you for this.

Having fled Tuckborough in front there was sufficiency daylight for the locals to lynch me, I've since headed east and now find myself in the burgh of Frogmorten.

Let me tell you almost Frogmorten. If you were to…

1) Savvy a crater.
2) Set aside it to fill with moribund water.
3) Build some dilapidated houses at the bottom.
4) Fill the houses with looney masses.

…you would possess a place that – while not exactly a replica of Frogmorten – would be a place where existing Frogmorten residents would feel right at home.

The place is a soggy pit inhabited by strange-looking people that tend to stare a lot and verbalise precise little. The "town square" is a sinkhole. No more, truly:

The place smells like the armpit of an Orc who just got finished hand-to-hand struggle a wet skunk inside an outhouse for the last mildewed copy of "Stinkweed Farmer Quarterly."

I've been here twice previously. Once when I delivered their mail, and again when I took away their rancid pie. (I think they were using it as an air freshener.) Both times it was slay getting out of the town.

Really. This put together is a fort. Cliff walls connected single side of meat. Bog on the former. There are just few ways in and out of town if you'atomic number 75 delivering stuff, and those are watched intimately by hungry / curious Hobbits. (The secret is to cut through the sinkhole, which isn't deep sufficient to ruin your computer software. And thank you Much for that, lame designers.)

Thither's nothing going happening in the main part of town. People have nothing to say to me and zero jobs that require doing. In fact, I can't see whatsoever justification for the townsfolk active at all. They don't seem to grow or bring on any worthwhile goods. They could have built their homes virtually a bowshot to the south and had the same correct townsfolk, only drier. Apparently Frogmorten was supported when some Hobbits built homes in the mud so they could give themselves and their descendants to the topical anaestheti mosquito population. I mean, these populate have nothing going for themselves except for…

Ah. A tavern. That explains information technology. If you could manage to build a tavern in an erupting volcano, a town would outpouring up around it. This magical establishment is named The Floating Log, and is currently beingness renovated. Prole Hobbits are up on the roof, pounding away. I don't know what's wrong with the station, but I suspect it might have something to do with erecting a building in the mud, from mud.

I really have to fault Turbine for sloppy design work here. They have three Hobbits on the roof doing repairs and only two along the ground doing nothing. Everyone knows that in any given contract job, the ratio of "guys working" to "guys standing around scratching their nuts" give the sack never be better than 1:2.

Although, this is a fantasy setting. Maybe magic is involved?

Betting odds are the owner will have few sort of ale-brewing problem. Let's stop in and see.

Ponto the barkeep greets me. "Welcome to the Floating Log!" he shouts preceding the din of people instalmen a fresh stratum of mud along the roof. "I'm sure you'll atomic number 4 wanting a a blueprint of my Toad's Tongue brew, won't you?"

"Is this some forgiving of presume? I by and large don't drink satiate named later things from within of a toad's mouth."

A flash of recognition crosses his face, "Say, you're the one WHO's been helping people out around here, haven't you?"

I nod slightly. Now, this is only technically true. I did indeed "help" Adelard last night, but I did so at the expense of everyone in town and the better part of the wildlife population. Merely still, if you can ignore all that collateral damage, someone was indeed helped. (Maine. When he paid me.)

"You see, the quaternion farthings brewing-deliberate is coming-," I miss the rest of his sentence because I can't hear him over the construction noise and the rhythmical thumping of me hitting my head against the measure. When I find, he's asking me to get him some hop.

"Okay…," I say slowly, "So you want me to find a supplier and bring back or s surgery…?"

"We use a unscheduled blend of hops. 'Frog Hops' we call it. IT grows in the Marsh to the north."

"So basically you want me to invent husbandry for you?"

"What? No, I just want you to go and determine some…"

"Yeah, see. That's your trouble right in that respect. If you'Ra 'finding' crops, you'Re doing it unjust. A couple of grand years ago somebody came finished with the idea of planting stuff on purpose so you don't have to go wandering around in the wilds looking what you need. I'm actually a Fannie Merritt Farmer myself. Give me ten or twenty minutes and I'll grow you several."

Ponto gives Pine Tree State a dumbfounded look.

"The whole 'farming' idea seems to be working impermissible pretty cured soh far," I assure him. "And it's guaranteed to be more impressive than telling your customers nigh the horrible things you put away in their drinks before asking them to fetch you more."

I think I've made a pretty good case, and I'm reasoning perchance Ponto is going to check outgoing this whole agriculture concept. But past helium gets out his strike-purse and I realize I'm screwed.

"The hops you'atomic number 75 looking at for grow in the Marsh honorable north of here," he says As he counts coins into his helping hand, "merely you'll deprivation to be careful. The toads get mean when you perk the hops."

"You forage for hops in a swamp?!?"

"No," Ponto says, pouring the coppers onto the bar. "You do."

I can't argue with coppers, so polish off I attend glean the soggy harvest.

Ponto is right. The normally docile frogs go into some sort of blood rage when you walk about outside with an intent to harvest hop. I don't know how they bed this, but they practise. As a result, I end up fighting a goodly numeral of them.

I coiffe rich person to doubt the wiseness of using this particular brand of hops in your ale formula. Obviously the secret factor is swamp?

Back to Ponto.

Nowadays this is realism. Contractors have been "working" on this renovation job for the ternion years since the game launched and they're still not cooked, but Ponto is desperate / jerky enough to believe the resound and expense bequeath end soon.

I turn in a bushel basket of hops and helium gives me 90 coppers. He also gives me a glaze over of his Toad's Glossa ale, which I don't drink. Last time I got drunk it ended badly. What is more, I'm not about to drink his filthy Gaul-flavored swamp water. It's not until I'm back away that I clear how badly I was just ripped off. A bushel basketful worth of of hops is Worth a favorable bite more than the coppers, and that's before you factor the combat-ready.

Then this isn't going very well. I should belik clear stunned of town straight off, but Milo Hornblower has some work for Pine Tree State. Maybe he can redeem this sad, soggy trip.

Milo explains, "That Lobelia Sackville-Baggins has been telling everyone that she doesn't think she should give taboo presents at her birthday party, that she thinks it more reasonable that she should be receiving them."

I gave you the foot race-down on Lobelia way back in part nine.

This birthday gift business is straight from the books: Hobbits give presents to everyone else on their natal day. At present, I would normally challenge the estimate that Lobelia would effort to overthrow this made-to-order. The Sackville-Bagginses were abrasive and unrefined, simply Lobelia was extremely traditionalist. In fact, one of the reasons she clashed and then badly with Bilbo was because he was so unconventional.

But really, this is like any former state of affairs where fanboys argue about how characters would behave in situations non covered past the book. Corresponding debating what gage console Harry Potter would buy out Beaver State what the movie Tron would have got been like if it had taken place in an Apple. It's not worth squabbling o'er it because this kind of fanboy wanking makes both sides look bad.

Anyway…

"See, my plan was to teach her a lesson. I've been raising this toad to give to her as a present."

"Frog?" I ask, rearing an brow.

Milo points to a scary huge cage he has sitting nearby. The door is open and the batting cage is empty.

Look the Cage I response in expressionless, "I can't hold off to find out how I can participate in that alarming plan of yours."

"Yes, well. I've titled the toad Lobelia, and the brute is quite as ill-natured as the master copy. She slipped unfirm today. I need you to go down out and regain her."

"Out?"

"Into the swamp!"

"Ah."

"Now, she's kind of afraid of the separate toads, thusly you might have to vivid a few of them out systematic to get her to record."

"You'rhenium suggesting I won't be able to settle a humongous toad frog unless I fight some smaller ones? And you think that once the place is littered with bludgeoned anuran carcasses she volition be more apt to show? And I reckon we're ignoring the fact that I was stunned there a a couple of minutes agone and already fought a bunch of the foul diminutive buggers?"

"Righteous chase her back into the Cage when you find oneself her!" Milo maize says unhelpfully.

I have to hand it to him: Disbursement years raising a huge chanceful animal antimonopoly to affront someone takes a dispense of courage and hard work. On the other hand, he's asking me to do the difficult part. This is supposed to be an insult against Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, but I birth a feeling I'm acquiring the worst of it.

I Wade out into the manure and begin stomping on toads. Eight messy croaking deaths late…

Lobelia the batrachian appears.

Come on girl, back into your John Milton Cage Jr.. This direction. That's right. That's a upright girl. Yeah. come hither. Don't worry. I South Korean won't smart-

Ow! Hey! What the Hell? Alright. I take it back. I am totally departure to damaged you now.

Lobelia mightiness be scared of these tiny puny toads, but she's not worried about Pine Tree State. She hop over and starts a shuffle.

This is bad. If I kill the anuran, volition Milo still pay high?

Thankfully, a fewer dandy smacks is all information technology takes to get Lobelia to back down and recall to her cage. Milo pays up and I am over again unemployed.

Nobody else is hiring. Apparently existence smelly and damp entirely day doesn't produce the openhearted of system Juggernaut necessary for hiring adventurers. Employment-wise, this place is a dry mess.

A deep muddy flood in is the lowest place, methinks,
for the finding of stuff to put in our drinks.

But in the town of Frogmorten, that's just what they serve.
You can endeavour it yourself. (If you've got the nerve.)

The barkeep is famous for his boggy old brew.
The patrons are asking, "Does this taste froggy to you?"

"Why did I come here?" I find myself grieving.
Wellspring, I came to get paid. Which I did. Soh I'm leaving.

Next Time: Anywhere but present…

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Shamus Young is the guy behind Reset Button, Twenty Sided, DM of the Rings, and Stolen Pixels.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/shamus-plays-lotro-part-14/

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