Session 5-04: The Season 5 Frame

[Haakon]

O

I’d say yes, that the Black Numenoreans have declared for Sauron and are behind the movements of whoever we put as the Heavy*. If Sauron is not directly involved with the Black Numenoreans, the entity manipulating things could be a Nazgul; if we so chose this could be the Witch-King of Angmar. If the Mouth of Sauron is the Heavy in this season, he could be sent by the Black Numenoreans to bring the Haradrim over to Sauron's side.

*TV Tropes term for the active, plot-driving villain, ie Darth Vader.

Ok my suggestion was that one or more of the lesser Nazgûl are movers behind the curtain, and the future Mouth guy is an up-and-coming guy/Nazgul puppet/guy who strikes a deal with the Nazgûl. So, ‘the Heavy’ will never be found, as it really is Sauron himself, and Gandalf doesn’t find out about the Nazgûl except through hints which aren’t very clear to him (Gandalf).

 

[Ange1e4e5]

O

Ok my suggestion was that one or more of the lesser Nazgûl are movers behind the curtain, and the future Mouth guy is an up-and-coming guy/Nazgul puppet/guy who strikes a deal with the Nazgûl. So, ‘the Heavy’ will never be found, as it really is Sauron himself, and Gandalf doesn’t find out about the Nazgûl except through hints which aren’t very clear to him (Gandalf).

So do we want one of the Nazgul (probably one of the three of Numenorean descent) be a mover behind the curtain or Sauron?

 

[Haerangil]

Dezerted doesn't necessarily mean completely uninhabited... dezerted means left to waste, treacherously abandoned, left from arms, left to appear empty...

I just guess the traditional settled places would have been either the coasts or the harad road and river crossings... and plundering corsairs and a collapsed economy wouldn't leave anybody much options to retain such places the old way... but that would not be necessarily true for smaller rural communities, wild tribes in the generally unsettled wilds or nomads in general... Harondor is a pretty big region... we often tend to forget how large many lands in middle-earth actually are...

 

[MithLuin]

Question: where did the Harad idea come from? Because I have a relatively long memory for what’s discussed in threads and Harad never came up until last session.

Naturally, the Harad idea arose during the session, not prior to the session on the messageboards.

However, it is fair to say that a lot of what we discussed leaned in that direction.

Trish was enthusiastic about having a frame that somehow focused on the return of Sauron. That was discussed here on the boards, naturally, because it is one of the only official events in the time frame we're focused on! Here are some snippets of messageboard discussion focused around the villains in the Frame:

• Rhiannon: Maybe we could parallel the Dagor Bragollach by showing Barad Dur rebuilt at the end of the frame.
• Haakon: I like the suggestion about the rebuilding of Barad Dur. By showing that, we could perhaps reduce the amount of time we spend on Angband, and make the viewers guess that something is going on.
• Amysrevenge: Would it be out of line to have the S5 Frame be entirely bad guys within Mordor, culminating with the re-opening of (the) Barad Dur? It would definitely be a left turn.
• Haakon: I think it’s a fun idea but it would probably not be as fun in reality. Plus, we’ve said that the less we focus on the bad guys, the better. They tend to become less awesome the more time we give them.

The overall upshot of that conversation is...don't forget about Barad-dur! But at least one person wasn't interested in having the Frame actually set in Mordor. The frame we ultimately chose does build on this conversation, don't you think?

Another suggestion that was made in multiple places was to have a Frame focused on travelling - Bilbo's travels as he returned to the Shire from Erebor, or Arwen's travels as she left Lothlorien to return to Rivendell. It's true that we didn't suggest here having Gandalf be the one whose travels we focused on, but Gandalf did appear in the Bilbo's travels suggestions that Rhiannon listed out. So, again, it's not like we didn't suggest Gandalf travelling around, it's simply that we didn't suggest Harad as one of the places he would visit!


I think it's important to remember that while the messageboard discussions do have input into the podcast sessions, the content of the sessions is not pre-determined. There are contributions from listeners who do not post here, and the podcasts often cover tangents that we did not explore in advance. The goal, of course, is to find the best idea to fit our story. I do think that the 'Incanus in Harad' frame was a complete surprise, but I am excited about the chance to explore this little-known side of Middle-earth. I think it was a very neat solution to our impulse to focus on Sauron...without actually focusing on Sauron.