SD+SB in Middle Earth

[Ren]

particularly when humans arent known for their willpower.

Frodo never has to take the Ring out of his pocket, He would not be giving it to us, he would be accompining us, or if my plan did not succesed he would probably take it to a safe location anyways, Sauron would not get the ring.

Incidently how is the air defenses at the base. Remember that giant flock of birds Sauron had working for him?

[Sea Skimmer]

particularly when humans arent known for their willpower.

Frodo never has to take the Ring out of his pocket, He would not be giving it to us, he would be accompining us, or if my plan did not succesed he would probably take it to a safe location anyways, Sauron would not get the ring.

Incidently how is the air defenses at the base. Remember that giant flock of birds Sauron had working for him?

So suddenly Frodo will be willing to move hundreds of miles with totaly unknown people on a wim because we claime to have abilitys greater then those of Gandalf? I think not.

As for your other question, read the damn thread.

[Enforcer Talen]

why would birds attack us?

and why involve frodo? he's someone who might not go along with us.

[Robert Treder]

All right, aside from Ren, I think we've pretty much agreed that it would be best to seize the Ring ASAP. Any political problems this causes are insignificant next to the necessity of acquiring the Ring.

As Mr. Sorresso has noted, obtaining the Ring early on will achieve our objective faster than any other scenario. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm 18 years old, and I'm not going to spend another 18 years sitting around a military base waiting for some stupid sub-human and his friends to go on a hike. This should end quickly.

[Enforcer Talen]

so the question becomes, with base established and ring taken, what do we do next? both saruman and sauron are building forces.

again, I propose saruman taken down by a sniper - we can take a few weeks for him to leave his tower. then we can go inside, pick up nice things (palintir maybe?) and build up gondor in wait for mordor.

[Sea Skimmer]

so the question becomes, with base established and ring taken, what do we do next? both saruman and sauron are building forces.

again, I propose saruman taken down by a sniper - we can take a few weeks for him to leave his tower. then we can go inside, pick up nice things (palintir maybe?) and build up gondor in wait for mordor.

We already spent about 20 pages going over that. Startting fresh would be pretty stupid.

[Ren]

Then we don't try to take it by force. ( as a completely irrelevent aside Radagast is more likely to turn you into cats, Gandalf will probably burn you horribly ) What is the likelyhood of him being unreasanable, this guy is described as being very wise and probably will be so the ramifications are irrelevent, The ramifications of Sauron teleporting to the Shire and grabing the Ring are pretty bad to, but that's not likely to happen.

The better question to ask is "What do you define as reasonable if you were in his position? Giving a hugely powerful asset to people you just met because they claim they are visitors from another dimension with only good intentions, or not trusting them as far as you can throw them?" We're human. That means we're easily corruptible to Gandalf and that we're not to be trusted with the Ring.

Of course your not trustworhy with the ring, that is why we won't ask him to surrendur to us we ask him to come with us.
If he wont's to surrond the thing with hordes of Elves why stop him, just another line of defense for the Ring.

We prove our trustworthyness by stealing the Ring? I'm sorry I don't follow you.

We prove our trustworthiness by having possessed the Ring for so much time and not being corrupted by it, and in fact, encasing it in a block of steel.

How do we prove it is in said block of steel, and if that would show are trust wortheness while doing it somewhere else how would we prove less trustworth then trying to destroy it right in front of them and encasing it in a block of steel in front of them?

Yes we can. Having the ring is not the be all and end all of the mission, it would be nice to have it but even without it doing things like assisting with weaponary and defenses can still allow us to win.

Oh really? Winning is all well and good, but winning with zero casualties is always preferable. I can't make it any clearer to you: your plan has a higher casualty probability and a lower success probability than mine.

You keep saying that but from where I'm sitting it seems that your plan is based upon probablities of a situation you have very limited knowledge about. Additonally my short term casulaty probablities are zero, are you planing to have negative casulaty probablities? If you are talking about long term casulaty probablitys then you don't know what yours are so how can you tell there lower than mine.

Gandalf's possible relectance does not break the scenerio, we are still ahead because now he knows it is the one ring and that Sauron will soon know it and Sarumen is possibly not to be trusted.

And yet we're not in control of the Ring and have to trust that everything will work out in a now-altered timeline. You just don't get it. Our presence there affects how things work out. Therefore, we have to control the Ring because the books will no longer be a reliable guide for how things will work out.

That is the plan. We altered the timeline in our favor, sure it may not be as good as Gandalf and Frodo coming with us, but it is alot better than what can happen if your plan fails.

As for the make and break point of your scenerio you rest everything on aquiring the ring and being completly untracible. If you fail that your mission is hosed no matter what you do unless you are able to take on the whole of middle earth by yourself.

Except that we have bargaining power because we have the fucking Ring. A special commando unit could easily be in and out of the Shire before anyone even knows they're there and be long-gone by the time everyone else gets their thumbs out of their asses. You severely underestimate how effective these people are. So what if the rangers track them? Just plug them with some tranq darts and leave. Furthermore, where were the rangers when, oh, I dunno, a bunch of guys on black horses started decapitating Hobbits?

How are you going to be bargaining with the Ring. giving it to them if they work with you? Why not let them keep it. Threaten to use it? That makes you look like the Bad Guys.

As for the Rangers tranq darts wear of and they start up again. And if you didn't notice the attacks took place far away from the population centers. I don't remember any decapated hobbes, can you provide an example? And as for were they were, Strider is a Ranger.

As for time you seem to be emphasising the importance of acting quickly but advocate a plan that could take years longer than mine. If we have years to wait in aquiring the ring through covert methods we also have years of trying to preuade Gandalf.

By doing what? Jesus Christ, don't you get it? We have to control the fucking Ring so we can be sure what's going on. Why the Hell should we waste time trying to con Gandalf into giving us, a bunch of humans, the fucking Ring?

We should we waste time planning a commando raid when we could just convince him to give it to us? If he doesn't trust humans with it then let him surround it with a bunch of elves. Even if my plan fails it is still in allied hands if your's fails we have no allies.

[Ren]

why would birds attack us?

and why involve frodo? he's someone who might not go along with us.

Because Gandalf doesn't trust us? I thought that was one of your arguments.

I was just wondering about the birds, I was thinking of the eagles and Radagast and it sort of popped into my head.

[Ren]

particularly when humans arent known for their willpower.

Frodo never has to take the Ring out of his pocket, He would not be giving it to us, he would be accompining us, or if my plan did not succesed he would probably take it to a safe location anyways, Sauron would not get the ring.

Incidently how is the air defenses at the base. Remember that giant flock of birds Sauron had working for him?

So suddenly Frodo will be willing to move hundreds of miles with totaly unknown people on a wim because we claime to have abilitys greater then those of Gandalf? I think not.

Gandalf will be coming to, Frodo trust gandalf.

As for your other question, read the damn thread.

I did I never saw a defense against this mentioned. What page is it on?

[Ren]

All right, aside from Ren, I think we've pretty much agreed that it would be best to seize the Ring ASAP. Any political problems this causes are insignificant next to the necessity of acquiring the Ring.

As Mr. Sorresso has noted, obtaining the Ring early on will achieve our objective faster than any other scenario. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm 18 years old, and I'm not going to spend another 18 years sitting around a military base waiting for some stupid sub-human and his friends to go on a hike. This should end quickly.

I am fully support obtaining the Ring early, where have I stated that I didn't? I just object to the seizing it part.

[Ren]

so the question becomes, with base established and ring taken, what do we do next? both saruman and sauron are building forces.

again, I propose saruman taken down by a sniper - we can take a few weeks for him to leave his tower. then we can go inside, pick up nice things (palintir maybe?) and build up gondor in wait for mordor.

I prefer poisioning him, his supplies of tobacco would make an excelent target. Of course If he is ever outside I also fully support the sniper rifle idea to, but does he ever leave Isenguard?

[Knife]

Ren, you seem to place high reguard on Rangers ability to track and attack our people. Why then, would you not put such a high reguard on our own troops that would be training for this very mission. We have people with the knowledge and will have people after training that will be more than up for this mission. Drundal's plan is rather quite good and will minimize all threats.

You make three or four good recon passes on the Shire. Each squad will have people observing from the outskirts of the town and have others go into town and pose as travelers. Maybe have a couple drinks, listen to local gossip, inquire alittle about famous locals and events. Once you have a visual on Frodo and his pad, you will do some more detailed recon work on the house. A couple of night missions to peek in the windows and so forth. After each recon mission, you compile your intell and formulate the plan to take the Ring.

When the Ring is taken, there won't be any way to track it back to us unless the rangers at the Shire try and they can be dealt with. So there you go, high end casualties are a few rangers if that. Nobody knows who we are, and nobody knows where we are. We control the Ring and we can spend the rest of the time figuring out how to destroy it.

On a side note, it is inevitable that the time line is broken. The question is when we do it and to what advantage do we do it. The Ring is the key, the mission and the whole purpose we are there. We must take possecion of the Ring and Drundal's plan is the best so far.

[Ren]

Looking back over the posts the one thing that I seem to be arguing about is the reception that we will get from the Dwarves and Gandalf. Everyone else seems to assuming that they will just say 'Fuck You' and immediately start shunning us or activaly hampering us. This is not the impression that I got from them at all. These people seem to be willing to listen and seem to be fairly logical, even if they are somewhat untrusting at first, they by no means start out as hostile. One of the more skilled debater, for example Darth Wong, should be able to easly convince them to help us, even if it may not be to the extent we would like, simply because it is the logical thing to do. To me this is infinitly better than thinking that they would probably reject our offer and we should try and screw them over first ( this applies only to the seizing the ring part not the Dwarves.)

[Ren]

Ren, you seem to place high reguard on Rangers ability to track and attack our people. Why then, would you not put such a high reguard on our own troops that would be training for this very mission. We have people with the knowledge and will have people after training that will be more than up for this mission. Drundal's plan is rather quite good and will minimize all threats.

You make three or four good recon passes on the Shire. Each squad will have people observing from the outskirts of the town and have others go into town and pose as travelers. Maybe have a couple drinks, listen to local gossip, inquire alittle about famous locals and events. Once you have a visual on Frodo and his pad, you will do some more detailed recon work on the house. A couple of night missions to peek in the windows and so forth. After each recon mission, you compile your intell and formulate the plan to take the Ring.

When the Ring is taken, there won't be any way to track it back to us unless the rangers at the Shire try and they can be dealt with. So there you go, high end casualties are a few rangers if that. Nobody knows who we are, and nobody knows where we are. We control the Ring and we can spend the rest of the time figuring out how to destroy it.

On a side note, it is inevitable that the time line is broken. The question is when we do it and to what advantage do we do it. The Ring is the key, the mission and the whole purpose we are there. We must take possecion of the Ring and Drundal's plan is the best so far.

Durandals plan is essentially screwing over some of our biggest allies, this is why I don't like it. As for the rangers tracking ability I seem to remember Strider being able to find Golem years after he lost his trail. We probably would leave more of a trail than Gollem and I am assuming that they could probably track us and when they found us they would be upset with us.

As for the Time line I suggest we do it as early as possible by allying with the Dwarves at the lonely mountian, but regarless of where the base is the timeline is lost as soon as someone notices it.

I agree that the Ring is the key but directly controlling it is not so much of an issue as being able to direct it's movements. For me having it in the hands of a competent ally is just the same as having it in our hands, since anything reasonable they will agree to and we don't have to worry about corruption.

[Knife]

They are only our greatest allies if we alow the current timeline to continue. If we take the Ring, most of the major character become irrelevent. Gandalf and Aarogorn being the exeptions that I can think of off hand. Frodo becomes useless if we pocess the Ring and any future alliances with Dwarver, Elves, and Men will not be effected by us taking the Ring and no one knowing that we did.

The off chance of us being discovered is low and if we are, no one knows who we are. The only intellegence they will get is that we are there and thats about it. They won't be able to understand any of our tech, so any thing devulged in 'interogation' will not be of much help and who would believe the truth anyway.

As to the Rangers, they track using tracking skills not magic. Some amoung us have these skills (mine are rusty but it won't take 18 years to clean them off) and will be able to utilize them to either lose the Rangers or deal with them in other ways.

[Ren]

They are only our greatest allies if we alow the current timeline to continue. If we take the Ring, most of the major character become irrelevent. Gandalf and Aarogorn being the exeptions that I can think of off hand. Frodo becomes useless if we pocess the Ring and any future alliances with Dwarver, Elves, and Men will not be effected by us taking the Ring and no one knowing that we did.

The off chance of us being discovered is low and if we are, no one knows who we are. The only intellegence they will get is that we are there and thats about it. They won't be able to understand any of our tech, so any thing devulged in 'interogation' will not be of much help and who would believe the truth anyway.

As to the Rangers, they track using tracking skills not magic. Some amoung us have these skills (mine are rusty but it won't take 18 years to clean them off) and will be able to utilize them to either lose the Rangers or deal with them in other ways.

You only have one year relearn the skills and teach others what some of the Rangers have spent their whole lives learning, and you are neglicting to take into acount unique things in middle earth such as the ablity of some animals to talk and help track you and the potential perils of moving through an unknown country.

Gandalf is our greatest ally and he is the one you risk pissing off the most with this action and if you lose him many other's will become reluctant to deal with you.

This is the way I see it. You are engaging in an action with an unknown possiblity of success in order to secure the ring and that can have disasterous results if failed. While I am advicating a position with an equal or better chance of success that if it succedes, not only improves our situation over the other, but even if it fails still manages to improve our situation. Mine is win/win theirs is win/lose, since we are only going to have one shot at this I advicate the win/win one.

[Knife]

Yours is win or lose/lose. If we convince Gandalf that it is the Ring, he will still want to destroy it in Mordor and we will not have pocession of it and therefore we will not be able to dictate who, what, where, and why. If we fail in convincing him, we are now known and we lose any stealth and surprise advantages. All hinges on diplomacy in your senario.

The raid plan can fail by being discovered while stealing the Ring. At that point we can go hostile and still take the Ring. It can fail again by being discovered by the Rangers. At this point we can kill the Rangers and still have the Ring. Remember, to track someone you must follow their trail. This gives us the advantage in leading them to a point where we want them and then to ambush them using our ranged weapons. The raid plan can get messy but any situation that would completely make the mission fail like Gandalf being in the Shire, can be averted by postponing the mission by a few day's.

Reguardless, when it is all done, nobody still knows who we are and where we are. The worst they will have is a bunch of dead bodies, and the best they will have is a slightly wozzy hobbit that saw nothing.

We hold all of the advantage in the Raid plan. In the diplomacy plan, the only advantage we hold is advance knowledge of comming events and those will change once we revel them.

You seem to think that with a raid, we automaticly lose any support of Gandalf. This won't happen if we avoid being discovered as a group and the chances of that in this situation is small.

[Ren]

Yours is win or lose/lose. If we convince Gandalf that it is the Ring, he will still want to destroy it in Mordor and we will not have pocession of it and therefore we will not be able to dictate who, what, where, and why. If we fail in convincing him, we are now known and we lose any stealth and surprise advantages. All hinges on diplomacy in your senario.

Gandalf is not set on throwing it in the Cracks of Doom as the only way to destroy it. He knew no other way to destroy it, this does not mean he will not try a new way if it is presented to him. Our suprise is against our Allies as soon as the Ring is stolen then we lose the aspect of suprise anyways since they know someone stole it. They will be suspicius and harder to influence dilpomacy. Everything hinges on the military in your scenerio, I prefer diplomacy over the military especially when dealing with Gandalf who is very reasonable. Also I doubt Gandalf will go blabbing to every enemy agent that we exist, only our allies will learn of our existance from him.

The raid plan can fail by being discovered while stealing the Ring. At that point we can go hostile and still take the Ring. It can fail again by being discovered by the Rangers. At this point we can kill the Rangers and still have the Ring. Remember, to track someone you must follow their trail. This gives us the advantage in leading them to a point where we want them and then to ambush them using our ranged weapons. The raid plan can get messy but any situation that would completely make the mission fail like Gandalf being in the Shire, can be averted by postponing the mission by a few day's.

Reguardless, when it is all done, nobody still knows who we are and where we are. The worst they will have is a bunch of dead bodies, and the best they will have is a slightly wozzy hobbit that saw nothing.

Then powerful people will be on the alert and looking for you, others will start looking for you as well, you have lost the advantage of suprise on both our allies and our enemies.

We hold all of the advantage in the Raid plan. In the diplomacy plan, the only advantage we hold is advance knowledge of comming events and those will change once we revel them.

You seem to think that with a raid, we automaticly lose any support of Gandalf. This won't happen if we avoid being discovered as a group and the chances of that in this situation is small.

No if succusful it will not be but you can lose big in your scenerio. In mine if we win, we win big, if we lose we lose small and can even be considered to have won since our allies know of our existance which is not a bad thing.

Our advantage is not in the knowledge of comming events but of the past, and the motivations of characters. The past will not change and most characters motivations won't change. Or advantage remains whether we act or not.

[Vympel]

Personally, I just don't like this scenario. The 20-year wait till anything happens is quite frankly quite stupid.

[Ren]

You people seem to think that we should go this alone, be stealthy so no one knows we are there, not even those that would be our allies. That you can take Mordor by yourselves without a strach on you. This is probably not the case, without allies we would quickly become lost trying to get anywhere or starve to death trying to farm our own food. Face it we need allies and the way to make allies is to help them out, show them that you are reasonable and on their side, and work with them, not robbing them and then trying to force them to help us later.

Additionaly, Gandalf is in many ways more importantant than the Ring, he can provide us with supplies, guides, and many additional allies. Have a plan that you think will work, but requires the Riders of Rohan, talk to him, if it is a reasonable plan, he can get them for you. So what if he wants to keep the Ring in Rivendell if it turns out we can't destroy it, it's going to be just as safe as in our base, if we want to move it and he refuses he probably has a good reason. Remember Gandalfs mission is to destroy Sauron and the Ring, not screw us, if we can convince him that our intentions are good he can help secure a swift and low causulty victory. If we try to screw him over and he catches wind of it he can make it a long and costly fight. He probably has tons of good advice, this is his world, after all. If you think you have a good plan you can run it by him and he can point out problems that you would never have known about until it was to late, so what if we are not calling all the shots, or mission is not to boost our ego's but to help destroy the ring.

[Enforcer Talen]

after the 111 yr party, there is a three yr gap where gandalf doesnt show up, as mentioned in shadow of the past. given a yr for training, we have two years to do our little raid, fully prepped, on a hobbit's house, who isnt paranoid, and doesnt know anything about the ring beyond it turns you invisible. nor does gandalf, for that matter.

or we could wait for him to show up, which is infrequent over the two yrs past that, and then he stops for 9 yrs straight. I think a meeting unlikely, unless we sit outside is doorstop. and that is rather unusual for the shire, eh?

and what would we say? we know where the one ring is, that holds the essence of evil in it, and we plan to take it to our secret base which cant be sucessfully seiged, to see if it can be destroyed? a base of humans?

well, your right, humans are corrupted. but, we could bring frodo with us! an inexpierenced villagemen to travel across hundreds of leagues, with people he doesnt know, to go to a power that gandalf doesnt know, and which are corrupted easily?

a quick theft saves years of time, and isnt gambling on gandalf's goodwill - an extremely unlikely event in this situation.

[Coaan]

You people seem to think that we should go this alone, be stealthy so no one knows we are there, not even those that would be our allies. That you can take Mordor by yourselves without a strach on you. This is probably not the case, without allies we would quickly become lost trying to get anywhere or starve to death trying to farm our own food. Face it we need allies and the way to make allies is to help them out, show them that you are reasonable and on their side, and work with them, not robbing them and then trying to force them to help us later.

Additionaly, Gandalf is in many ways more importantant than the Ring, he can provide us with supplies, guides, and many additional allies. Have a plan that you think will work, but requires the Riders of Rohan, talk to him, if it is a reasonable plan, he can get them for you. So what if he wants to keep the Ring in Rivendell if it turns out we can't destroy it, it's going to be just as safe as in our base, if we want to move it and he refuses he probably has a good reason. Remember Gandalfs mission is to destroy Sauron and the Ring, not screw us, if we can convince him that our intentions are good he can help secure a swift and low causulty victory. If we try to screw him over and he catches wind of it he can make it a long and costly fight. He probably has tons of good advice, this is his world, after all. If you think you have a good plan you can run it by him and he can point out problems that you would never have known about until it was to late, so what if we are not calling all the shots, or mission is not to boost our ego's but to help destroy the ring.

Three words moron.

Armour piercing rounds.

What types of armour to Mordor use? Heavy plate mail. Oh dear. watch as armies of Mordor are filletted right as they step out the door, where's your large army to threaten the gang then?

Also, if they have the ring then why do they need allies?..automatic weapons fire is pretty damn protective and isn't running in short supply, somehow I doubt the BOP is going to get threatened, much less assaulted due to noone knowing where it is and noone being able tp approach.

You spend what time's left going out and getting pissed while the sci guys dissolve the damn thing.

[Robert Treder]

You people seem to think that we should go this alone, be stealthy so no one knows we are there, not even those that would be our allies. That you can take Mordor by yourselves without a strach on you.

We don't need to assault Mordor at all if we can destroy the Ring by ourselves. This is why we must take it, and we can't bullshit around with asking them, because they won't give it to us.

This is probably not the case, without allies we would quickly become lost trying to get anywhere or starve to death trying to farm our own food.

Oh come on, farming won't be that difficult. The locals do it, and we have among us several who are knowledgeable of farming techniques which are much more advanced than those of the locals.

Face it we need allies and the way to make allies is to help them out, show them that you are reasonable and on their side, and work with them, not robbing them and then trying to force them to help us later.

Of course allies would be nice, and we're not going about this with the intention of alienating ourselves on purpose. But the fact remains that securing the Ring is more important than the political consequences of securing the Ring. It's called compromise.

Additionaly, Gandalf is in many ways more importantant than the Ring, he can provide us with supplies, guides, and many additional allies. Have a plan that you think will work, but requires the Riders of Rohan, talk to him, if it is a reasonable plan, he can get them for you.

We won't be devoid of diplomatic skills without him.

So what if he wants to keep the Ring in Rivendell if it turns out we can't destroy it, it's going to be just as safe as in our base, if we want to move it and he refuses he probably has a good reason.

First of all, no, Rivendell is not as safe as our base (unless Rivendell has machine gun turrets that I'm unaware of). Second of all, why should we take Gandalf's word that his reasons are good?

Remember Gandalfs mission is to destroy Sauron and the Ring, not screw us, if we can convince him that our intentions are good he can help secure a swift and low causulty victory.

How is the solution we're presenting not swift and low casualty? And how could Gandalf provide that one? The swiftest and lowest casualty victory lies through taking the Ring from Bag End, transporting it to our base, and destroying it or protecting it there. I remind you that the game is over once we destroy the Ring, and there aren't any good reasons why thermite won't work.

If we try to screw him over and he catches wind of it he can make it a long and costly fight. He probably has tons of good advice, this is his world, after all. If you think you have a good plan you can run it by him and he can point out problems that you would never have known about until it was to late, so what if we are not calling all the shots, or mission is not to boost our ego's but to help destroy the ring.

Nobody is saying that Gandalf wouldn't be a valuable ally. But if he's going to stand in the way of us taking the Ring and destroying it, then so be it.
Also, remember that among our number are quite a few Tolkienphiles, so we're not devoid of knowledge of Middle Earth.

[Keevan_Colton]

Right then....

First off, the Rangers :-
The Rangers of the North are Striders Kinsmen, they are generally excellent trackers, very good swordsman and skilled in the use of bows. I think it is quite likely going by the descriptions of thier skills that they could track us...unfortunately thier numbers are not great and they generally travel in very small groups or individually. This would mean even in the event of things fucking up and them tracking us we have the advantage of a good 3x or more range....if they try to follow us, we do have the firepower to easily encourage them to stop. Either by shooting to wound (the rangers do seem as though they would care for a wounded comrade unlike the orcs) or if needs be, to kill.

Gandalf :-
I'm not sure approaching Gandalf at first would be the best course. With the likes of Durandals plan we hold all the cards...we are an unkown element with unknown capabilities. As has been mentioned Gandalf is not stupid...he is likely to respect firepower when its arrayed against him....so he is unlikely to come charging after us. We could most certainly explain why we took any course of action we did....though I think Rob Wilsons suggestion for having Elrond as our primary contact in middle earth might be best...

Elrond :-
The elves are somewhat insular in the time of the novels, they are not overly happy with the idea of getting dragged into wars. Elrond has memory of the first war of the ring, and is likely to want to do all he can to avoid a second one. We could pose as lost descendants of Neumenor (sp?) from a land far away, while he was not overly fond of the race of man he himself was once of Neumenor (he is actually on half elven) and so might be open to talking with us about how we can save Middle Earth from the Dark Lord....and then through his influence the other elves could be swayed to our cause.

Gondor :-
The impression of Gondor was always of one of a nation pressed hard against the wall by thier enemy and willing to jump into bed with damn near anyone if it can help them defeat the Orcs that plauge them. If we need to we can offer them strength enough to hold thier own against thier enemies which should be all we need to gain thier support.

Gollum :-
No one really seems to have remembered Gollum....we know he will get captured by the Dark Lord...but this IIRC doesnt happen till after the time when we arrive...its his torture by the Dark Lord that lets him know the ring has been found and that its "Baggins" and "Shire" that he should be looking for. If we were to neutralize him early we could have a huge advantage.

Rohan :-
Neutralize wormtounges influence and Theoden would likely be more open to talk of protection his land from the Dark Lord. IIRC the orcs make raids on thier horse heards at times...the Rohirim would be intrested in any way to protect thier horses from this....


Just a few little points for thought for the plans being thrown around.

[Robert Treder]

Haha, your use of the colon followed by a hyphen looks like...aw, nevermind.