Mirkwood Soldier - The One Ring Theoretical - Company of the Marsh Bell

More Pathfinder art.

For the sixth member of the Company of the Marsh Bell I have decided to use an Elf of Mirkwood. This is going to be a warrior and contrary to the movies, that means a spear. Especially in Lord of the Rings, the elves much more known for the quality of their spearmen than anything else. Of course, the Mirkwood Elves stand out from their kin for their fame as bowmen, but even with them, their warriors primarily use spears.

The initial benefits of being a Silvan Elf includes the Cultural Blessing of Folk of the Dusk which means that while the elf is in the forest, underground, or it is night, then when they spend Hope to give an Attribute Bonus it uses their favored score for all Common Skills. That's actually quite nice. As to Skills, Lore and Athletics are both good but neither is favored. Awe, Stealth, Song, Battle, and Awareness are all decent with Awareness being Favored. They have basic skills in Hunting and Healing. The Woodland Realm is a Martial Culture.

This comes to the weapon skills. The first of the two lines we have a choice between is skill with all Spears as well as skill with the Sword and the Dagger. The second is favored skill with the Bow, skill with the Sword and Dagger. As I said earlier, we're going for the spears here.


Next it's time to pick the specialties for this character. The choices we have are: Boating, Elven-Lore, Fire-Making, Mirkwood-Lore, Swimming, and Woodwright. I am going to go with Elven-Lore here, making this an unusual Silvan Elf in that she speaks Quenya, the language of the High Elves. For my second, I am going to take Woodwright so that I have another crafting skill in the Company besides Stone-Work.

For background, I am going with Noble Blood as it is one of the only backgrounds for Silvan Elves that gives Heart of 4. The other two Attributes are Body 4 and Wits 6. It also explains why she might speak Quenya, she has some heritage from the Sindar Elves in her bloodline. I considered Memories of Suffering for the higher Body, but decided that it would be better for this character to have higher Heart. This also gives Inspire as a favored skill and a choice of two from the following list of traits: Fair, Honorable, Lordly, Proud, Quick of Hearing, Suspicious, Swift, and Wilful. Out of these, I am going to hit Fair to play up her descent from the Sindar and Suspicious to lean into the Calling I plan to give her.

For Calling I am making her a Slayer. Despite being a youthful elf of less than three centuries, in that time she has seen how much her homeland has been pressed by the onslaught of many enemies. Chief among these from her perspective are the terrible spiders. As such, I am going to give her Spider-Lore in addition to the Shadow Weakness of Curse of Vengeance. She also gets a choice of two more favored skills from Movement and Personality. Those two will be Awe and Stealth.

With the choice between Valor and Wisdom I am going to go with Valor and I again have a very good idea of what exactly I want out of the Rewards. The Cultural Rewards for Mirkwood Elves include the Bitter Spears, which give increased Injury ratings when the Feat die hits the Gandalf rune; Spearman's Shield, which is a buckler that can be used with two-handed weapons; and Woodland Bow, which allows an archer to get two opening volleys at oncoming foes instead of one. I am going to take the Bitter Spear. It will be a basic spear rather than a great spear.

For the Favored Attributes, I am going to go ahead and put +3 in Body. This helps with Awe and Awareness right now but I don't have any Favored Weapon skills yet, but I'm planning for that to happen eventually. I will then put +2 into Heart and +1 into Wits. This brings her Favored Attributes to Body 7, Heart 6, Wits 7.

Now we come to spending our starting 10 experience. I am going to increase Inspire to 2 for 3 points and Awe to 3 for 3 points. I am also going to increase Travel to 2 and Courtesy to 1. I considered improving the Spear skill out of the cultural (spears) skill, but I only found mention of doing that in the improvement section rather than character creation, so I'm going to assume that will have to happen further down the line. As a note it costs just as much to increase (spears) as Spear so it might seem to be a loss of points since I go from increasing two weapon skills to increasing one. The thing is that you can't make cultural weapon groups Favored, so I have to improve a single weapon out of the group to eventually make that a Favored weapon skill.

Starting Endurance for Mirkwood Elves is 22 + Heart which gives her 26 Endurance. This is the highest a Silvan Elf can get on Endurance without using a Virtue to increase Endurance. Starting Hope is 8 + Heart, which is 12. We have no Virtues or Blessings which affect anything, so we'll move on to gear.

For gear we're going to have a Bitter Spear, a Short Sword, and a Dagger. That gives her the option of throwing her spear if she need to and still have a weapon to fight with. That's 3 Encumbrance so far. I will then take leather corslet and a shield. That's Encumbrance 14 so far. I am considering whether or not to take a helm. A soldier would have one in time of war, but when traveling about I'm not sure. I think with the existing Encumbrance we'll stay away from a helm or head cap. That leaves the total Encumbrance at 14.

Angwiel of the Woodland Realm

Culture: Elf of Mirkwood

Cultural Blessing: Folk of the Dusk

Calling: Slayer

Shadow Weakness: Wandering Madness
Standard of Living: Martial
Age: 238

Endurance: 26

Hope: 12

Shadow: 0

Valor: 2

Wisdom: 1
Standing: 0

Encumbrance: 14

Fatigue: 14

Parry: 6+2

Specialties: Elven Lore, Woodwright, Spider-Lore

Distinctive Features: Fair, Woodwright

Body: 4 (7)

Heart: 4 (6)
Wits: 6 (7)

Personality: Awe 2, Inspire 0, Persuade 0

Movement: Athletics 3, Travel 0, Stealth 2

Perception: Awareness 2, Insight 0, Search 0

Survival: Explore 0, Healing 1, Hunting 1

Custom: Song 2, Courtesy 0, Riddle 0

Vocation: Craft 0, Battle 2, Lore 3

(spears) 2, Sword 1, Dagger 1

Rewards: Bitter Spear

Virtues: None yet

War Gear

• Weapons
• Bitter Spear - 5 Damage, 9 Edge, 14 Injury, Encumbrance 2, On a G result +4 Injury
• Short Sword - 5 Damage, 10 Edge, 14 Injury, Encumbrance 1
• Dagger - 3 Damage, G Edge, 12 Injury
• Armor 
• Leather Corslet - Protection 2d, Encumbrance 8
• Shield - Parry +2, Encumbrance 3