The House of the Wolfings

I might be one of the last people in the gaming blogosphere to learn about this book, but The House of the Wolfings is apparently one of the books that probably inspired J.R.R. Tolkien. You can download the book for free here at the awesome Project Gutenberg site. You can also get a print copy here.

So, has anyone heard of this book? Has anyone read it? I'd love to get some impressions of its merits/flaws.

Did you know about The One Ring?

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days, I've been tied up with work. My usual Wednesday night game didn't happen tonight, so I'm at home and tooling around the Internet, thinking about what to post since it's been too long since I last wrote something here. And as I was wandering around, I chanced upon The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild!

Did anyone out there know about this upcoming RPG?! Of course, I am intrigued to no end! One of my fantasies has been to run a campaign in Middle Earth, and apparently I'm not the only one with that hankering! I assumed I would use one of the various incarnations of D&D as the rules behind a Lord of the Rings game, and get some setting help from the MERP books I own and other resources. But this discovery of mine tonight seems to have changed the game, no pun intended!

Anyone have any intel on this? Is anyone as excited as I am? I need a prescription medication for Gamer ADD!

*UPDATE: Go here for more details!

The Many Deaths of Fingolfin

I'm sure many of you have read The Silmarillion (if you haven't and want to avoid spoilers, you might not want to read any further). One of my favorite parts of that book was when the elf king Fingolfin challenged the evil Morgoth, most powerful of the Valar, to single combat. It always struck me as such a powerful part of The Silmarillion, where a lone elf king dared to challenge a god. Fingolfin knew he was doomed, but he went ahead with the battle anyway. Morgoth of course slays Fingolfin, but not before the elf holds his own in the fight, and gives the god a wound that never heals. Awesome stuff.

Apparently, judging by how many times the scene has been the subject of artistic depictions, it's also high on the list of many other readers as well.

The following is the battle as depicted by long-time Middle Earth artist Ted Nasmith:

The next image, probably my favorite depiction, is the work of John Howe, another artist that has done a lot of work focused on Middle Earth:

There's many many other depictions to be found on the Web, located here (this link seems a bit buggy, try hitting refresh if this page comes up with an error), here, here, here, here, here (Morgoth seems a bit too gigantic in this one), here, here, here...and these are just a few of the many that I found through a Google search for "Fingolfin"! Try it out and see what I mean.