Nameless Things

Cosmic Horror in Middle-earth

Welcome to Nameless Things, a small, strange crossover between the bucolic countryside of Tolkien’s Middle-earth and the unspeakable eldritch horrors of H. P. Lovecraft. Middle-earth is already ripe with horrors, from the “nameless things” that gnaw the depths of the world, to the undead Barrow-Wights and Nazgul, to primordial spirits such as Ungoliant and her descendants. Likewise, the idealized vision of the English countryside that is the Shire is easy to reimagine as a place of secrets and decay, with insular and suspicious hobbits peering out of noisome holes, corrupt and degenerate families falling from nobility into shocking ignorance and monstrous habits, and seekers after lore and power whose minds are blasted by what they find.

Nameless Things is set in Middle-earth several hundred years after the events of The Lord of the Rings. Great names such as King Elessar are the stuff of legend, the Elves are all vanished and only half-believed in, and the world is a dark and fallen place.

Nameless Things uses the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition rules, with alterations as noted here.

Setting Rules

The following setting rules are in play:

• Abstract Wealth: Characters roll a Wealth die instead of counting coins.
• Civilized Folks: Wearing armor or carrying a large weapon where it’s considered inappropriate imposes a Persuasion penalty (½ armor value, -2 for a weapon).
• Difficult Healing (Horror Companion): Only one healing roll per Wound.
• Dynamic Backlash: A critical failure on an arcane skill roll forces a player to roll on a special table.
• Gritty Damage: When Wild Cards take a wound, they roll on the Injury table and apply the result.
• Hard Choices: The GM’s characters only get bennies when the players spend theirs. Jokers no longer generate bennies.
• More Skill Points: Start with 15 skill points instead of 12.
• Multiple Languages: Characters know half their Smarts die type in different languages at d6.
• No Power Points: Those casting spells don’t track Power Points but instead subtract half the listed Power Point cost (round up) from their skill roll to activate the ability. Powers may be maintained as desired at a −1 penalty to all further arcane skill rolls.
• Skill Specializations: Characters choose a specialization when taking each skill and subtract 2 when using other variations.
• Unarmored Hero: Wild cards without armor add +2 to their Soak rolls.
• Wild Cards (Horror Companion): Most characters and monsters are Wild Cards.

The Investigators

Character people and role player name	Parry	Toughness	Edges	Hindrances	Attributes	Notes
Meinir Thrift human adventuress Elfwine	5	5	Elan	Curious Impulsive Loyal	Agility d6 Sanity d6 Smarts d8 Spirit d8 Strength d6 Vigor d6
Halfast Overhill gentlehobbit of leisure UnknownCorrespondent	3	5	Investigator	Curious Elderly	Agility d6 Sanity d6 Smarts d8 Spirit d8 Strength d6 Vigor d6
Old 'Tatty' Tamsin The Crone in the Corner ferretribution	2	5	Brave Strong Willed	Doubting Thomas Elderly Stubborn	Agility d4 Sanity d6 Smarts d8 Spirit d8 Strength d6 Vigor d6
Name people role Player	5	5	Edge01 Edge02 Edge03 Edge04	Hindrance01 Hindrance02 Hindrance03 Hindrance04	Agility d6 Sanity d6 Smarts d6 Spirit d6 Strength d6 Vigor d6
Name people role Player	5	5	Edge01 Edge02 Edge03 Edge04	Hindrance01 Hindrance02 Hindrance03 Hindrance04	Agility d6 Sanity d6 Smarts d6 Spirit d6 Strength d6 Vigor d6
Name people role Player	5	5	Edge01 Edge02 Edge03 Edge04	Hindrance01 Hindrance02 Hindrance03 Hindrance04	Agility d6 Sanity d6 Smarts d6 Spirit d6 Strength d6 Vigor d6

Tobold's Old Manuscript & Ephemera Society

No one can quite agree whether Tobold Hornblower (known as "Tobold the Younger, a descendant of the famous Old Toby) was born in Bree, Staddle, or somewhere further afield — he claimed all three at different times, depending on who was buying the next round. He was a stocky, affable hobbit with a knack for growing things that ought not grow together, and for finding things other folk had long since lost.

Tobold came back from one of his “little wanderings” — which may have gone no farther than the Old Forest or as far as the southern vales of Anduin, depending on which version you hear — with two things that set the course of his later years:

A battered satchel full of papers and trinkets — maps with no place-names, faded letters in strange hands, seeds no gardener could identify.

A fondness for telling long, winding stories about how he came by them, each more unlikely than the last.

At first, Tobold invited a few friends to meet in a side-room at The Prancing Pony to help identify the seeds, swap cuttings of rare plants, and argue over whether certain herbs were better dried or fresh. Soon, papers and artifacts from his satchel became part of the gatherings, and the talk wandered from gardening to genealogy, from old songs to curious stones dug up in gardens.

Somewhere along the way, the Old Manuscript & Ephemera Society was born — though none of its members remember deciding on a name. Tobold simply began calling it “the Society” and insisted on keeping a “register of proceedings” in a heavy, leather-bound ledger.

When Tobold passed on — some say in his bed, some say on the Greenway, still chasing a rumor of a giant’s footprint — the Society carried on. Its members still meet in quiet corners, still bring in the oddest things they find, and still tell long, improbable tales in his memory.

Some Bree-folk say the Society’s nothing more than a bunch of harmless old gardeners and gossipers. But there are others — a very few — who know the ledger Tobold kept hides stranger accounts, and that some of the “antiquities” in the Society’s keeping are better left undisturbed.

Important NPCs

Character	Appearance	Personality	Notes
Name people and role	description	personality	notes
Name people and role	description	personality	notes
Name people and role	description	personality	notes
Name people and role	description	personality	notes
Name people and role	description	personality	notes

More Rules

The Peoples

Men (Big Folk)

Some Men dwell in the Bree-land, though many more hail from the lands beyond. Men stand between five and six feet tall with a variety of hair and skin tones. Some claim descent from the Dunedain, the Rangers of the North.

• Adaptable: Men start with a free bonus edge, which may be any edge they qualify for.

Hobbits (Little Folk)

The inhabitants of the Shire, though many Hobbits live in Bree-land as well.

Most Hobbits stand a little over three feet tall, with curly brown hair on their heads and feet. They favor green and yellow clothing, and six meals a day when they can get them.

• Plucky: Hobbits start with a d6 in Spirit instead of a d4. This increases maximum Spirit to d12+1.
• Quick and Quiet: Hobbits excel at moving quietly, and start with a d6 in Stealth instead of d4.
• Small: Hobbits average three feet in height and weigh 40 to 50 pounds. Their Size is -1.

Dwarves (Bearded Folk)

Dwarves may hail from the Blue Mountains, Khazad-dûm, or even far distant Erebor or the Iron Hills. Though few make their homes near Bree, they are often seen on the road passing through on business of their own. Dwarf merchants are popular and respected, and their wares are of the highest quality.

Dwarves average four feet tall and are very broad. Their long beards (sometimes forked) are often brown or black, and sometimes yellow, red or even blue. They favor hooded cloaks.

• Make Light of Burdens: Dwarves start with a d6 in Strength instead of a d4. This increases maximum Strength to d12+1.
• Born Crafter: Dwarves start with a d4 in Repair.
• Outsider: Dwarves are reclusive and insular, and both Men and Hobbits are never quite comfortable around them. Dwarves subtract 2 from Persuasion rolls except with other Dwarves.

Notes on Wealth and Gear

• The Wealth Die is being used. Characters have a starting Wealth of d6 unless they take the Poverty hindrance (d4), or the Rich edge (d8) or Filthy Rich (d10)
• Standard medieval gear is available for purchase, although armor and large weapons are rare and may not be readily available.
• Bronze and plate armor does not exist.
• Chain armor is uncommon and generally possessed by professional soldiers or Dwarves.
• Black powder weapons are uncommon but they do exist; a recent innovation of the Dwarves. The cost is doubled for non-Dwarf characters.

Skill and Languages

Most skills now have Specializations, each of which represents a specific usage of that skill. A character picks one specialization when they gain their first rank in the skill; additional specializations can be acquired by spending skill points or Advances. Gaining a new specialization counts as raising a Skill below its linked Attribute, and so costs 1 skill point or half an Advance.

When you use a skill in a manner you lack Specialization in, subtract 2 from your roll.

The following skills do not have specializations: Battle, Common Knowledge, Gambling, Language, Research, Stealth, Taunt.

The following skill specializations are available. This list is not exhaustive.

• Academics: History, Law, Culture (specific), Elf-Magic, Dark Sorcery
• Athletics: Climbing, Wrestling, Swimming, Throwing
• Boating: Small Craft, Ships, Navigation
• Fighting: Blunt/Axes, Knives, Swords, Poles, Unarmed
• Healing: Diagnose, First Aid, Disease, Anatomy, Veterinarian
• Intimidation: Overawe, Brag, Threaten
• Notice: Scrutiny, Insight, Vigilance
• Performance: Sing, Dance, Instrument, Storytelling
• Persuasion: Charm, Fast-Talk, Orate
• Repair: Carpenter, Mason, Smith, Jeweler, Engineer
• Riding: Horse, Pony, Teamster
• Science: Geology, Biology, Botany, Chemistry
• Shooting: Bow, Crossbow, Rifle
• Survival: Herblore, Hunting, Tracking
• Thievery: Sleight of Hand, Pick Pockets, Lockpicking.

New Skill: Morgal

Morgal replaces the Occult skill. Unlike most skills, Morgal has no governing Attribute. Also unlike most skills, Morgal cannot be bought normally; the Morgal skill can only be increased by reading certain ancient tomes, or through direct interactions with certain creatures.

Morgal reflects knowledge and experience with the paranormal and unnatural, and an awareness of a side of reality most people could not fathom. It can be used to decipher strange pictograms, recall information about unnatural creatures, understand strange and alien spells, or perform dark rituals.

A character can gain their first rank in Morgal in one of two ways: either by reading from certain blasphemous, forbidden tomes, or by encountering a strange and alien creature whose very presence fractures their sanity. The first time a character critically fails a Sanity roll, they gain one free rank in the Morgal skill. Subsequent increases require research into dark and sinister lore.

Increased knowledge of Morgal comes at a cost: for every rank a character has in Morgal, their maximum Sanity is reduced by 1 rank. Upon gaining their first rank in Morgal (d4), the character’s maximum Sanity is reduced to d10, and so on. If the character’s current Sanity is above their new limit, their Sanity is immediately reduced.

Idea Rolls

Veteran Call of Cthulhu players may be familiar with the Idea roll. An Idea roll may be requested by the player or called for by the GM, and represents the character piecing together known information, noticing something the player may have overlooked, or otherwise being made aware of information the character has but the player may not. Idea rolls are useful when an investigator feels stuck or a GM feels the players are overlooking something significant.

An Idea roll is a Smarts roll. Idea rolls can be rerolled with a benny, but cannot otherwise be tried multiple times.

Languages

Languages are very important, both to the world of Arda and to delvers after ancient lore. What languages you can read or speak, and how well you understand it, can mean the difference between a vital clue and a meaningless mess of gibberish.

All characters start with d8 fluency in the Westron (common) tongue. Dwarves have d8 in Khuzdûl and d6 in Westron. In addition, characters have d6 fluency in a number of languages equal to ½ their Smarts die.

The following languages exist in Middle-earth:

• Adûnaic: Language of the Edain and downfallen Numenor. A dialect is known to have been used by Black Numenoreans.
• Black Speech: The language of old Mordor.
• Drûadan: The guttural, throaty language of the Wild Men, the Drûedain. It is rarely written down and even more rarely taught to others, and shares almost nothing with other Mannish tongues.
• Old Entish: A long, slow, rumbling language attributed to the legendary tree-herders.
• Haradric: The people of Harad and the East have many languages, the majority of which are unknown in Western lands. Haradric is the one most used by those who trade with Gondor.
• Khuzdûl: The secret tongue of the Dwarves, which they do not teach to outsiders.
• Orcish: A debased form of the Black Speech mixed with Westron words. There are many Orcish dialects, some of which function as separate languages.
• Quenya: Tongue of the Noldor, the High Elves of the West.
• Rohirric: Language of the Horse-Lords of Rohan. The Men of the northern land of Dale speak a variant of this tongue.
• Silvan Elvish: Language of the Wood-elves, derived from the Teleri tongue.
• Sindarin: Tongue of the Sindar elves.
• Valarin: Language of legendary Valinor; very obscure
• Westron: The “common tongue” of the Western lands, with many dialects

Sanity and Madness

New Attribute: Sanity

Example Incident	Sanity Roll
You see a particularly gruesome corpse	Sanity (Rattled)
You experience a strong unnatural sensation such as deja vu, “missing time” or hallucinations	Sanity (Rattled)
You witness an act of torture	Sanity (Rattled)
You see an unnatural entity from a distance	Sanity (Rattled)
You see dozens of mangled corpses	Sanity
You are tortured	Sanity
You see an unnatural entity up close	Sanity
You witness a clearly supernatural or impossible killing	Sanity
You speak with someone you know or later discover to be dead	Sanity -1
You kill someone innocent	Sanity -1
You see a friend, loved one, or ally killed	Sanity -1
You discover you have committed cannibalism	Sanity -1
You are possessed by some outside force but remain aware while it operates your body	Sanity -2
You witness a friend, loved one or ally killed in a particularly gruesome or unnatural way	Sanity -2
You are attacked by a single gigantic unnatural entity or a horde of smaller entities	Sanity -4
You kill a friend, loved one, or ally	Sanity -4
You witness a true cosmic horror, such as a Nameless Thing	Sanity -4

Sanity is an additional Attribute. All characters have a starting Sanity of d4, like all other Attributes. Since there are six Attributes rather than five, all characters have six points to distribute among them. Sanity can be raised normally.

When you encounter something that challenges your understanding of how the world works, you must make a Sanity roll. On a success, you manage to rationalize what you have experienced and suffer no Sanity loss. On a failure, your mind fractures and you must roll on the Insanity table, gaining the indicated hindrance until you have a chance to rest and recuperate (at least a week or two of calm and low activity, or longer for Major hindrances).

If the result of the Sanity die is a natural 1, regardless of the result of the wild die, your Sanity also drops by one rank. If the result is a critical failure (snake eyes), the hindrance gained as a result is permanent.

Sanity lost in this manner may be recovered: for every week of rest and convalescence, you may roll Sanity, regaining one rank of lost Sanity on a success and two on a raise. In addition, notable successes in the face of cosmic horrors (saving innocent lives, destroying or banishing baneful entities) may allow a Sanity roll to recover.

Should your Sanity ever drop below d4, you become indefinitely insane. Indefinitely insane characters are no longer viable as PCs, and often spend their last days as raving lunatics or demented cultists.

Spells and Tomes

Spells and Spellcasting

No Wizards

Middle-earth is a world of magic, but magic was not meant for mortals. Gone are the Wizards, the legendary Istari, with their lore and knowledge. Gone also are the Elves, to whom the Art was a natural part of their lives and their society.

No specific edges are required for spellcasting, nor are there any spellcasting-exclusive skills. Anyone with sufficient willpower, intelligence, and access to certain information may learn some spellcasting. True power, however, is reserved for the determined and the mad.

Spells

Spells are strange and singular. Although they use the standard rules for powers, each spell is unique; there is no general fireball or magic missile. Many spells have unusual trappings, require strange components, or come with weird drawbacks.

Learning Spells

In Nameless Things, learning a spell is simply a matter of finding and studying it. Spells can be found in ancient grimoires, or carved on stone tablets, or etched into plates of metal buried in forgotten vaults. Analyzing and understanding a written spell requires a Morgal roll and, if successful, a Sanity roll as well; both rolls take a penalty equal to the spell’s rank. It takes time to comprehend and memorize the unhuman words, intricate gestures, and delicate manipulations of energies associated with spellcasting, typically a number of days equal to 1d6+1 per rank of the spell (2d6+2 for a Seasoned, spell, etc). If either roll is failed the potential spellcaster can try again, but must re-study the spell for the full duration. Only one person at a time can study a spell from a single source.

Casting Spells

Spellcasting follows the usual SWADE rules, using the Dynamic Backlash and No Power Points options. Morgal is the arcane skill.

Tomes of Dark Lore

There exist certain tomes - they may be books or scrolls, clay tablets or thin metal plates - filled with dark lore and terrible truths about the world. These tomes can impart terrible knowledge and unnatural power to mortals who read them, but there is always a cost.

A tome may be used in two ways: by skimming it, or by studying it. Both require the reader to be conversant with the language used.

Skimming a tome involves looking through it for relevant information and reading occasional passages. This process takes approximately four hours and requires a roll of either Research or the Language the tome is written in, whichever is lower. By default, a success provides a general overview of the tome’s topic; a raise also suggests what sort of spells it contains.

Alternatively, a tome may be skimmed for specific information. In this case, the reader must specify what information they are seeking, and they glean one useful fact about that topic per success and raise. On a failure they learn nothing. This presumes the information they seek is in the tome; if it is not this roll automatically fails. Rerolls are allowed, with additional time spent and more information gained only if it exists in the tome.

Studying a tome requires a number of weeks, the exact duration listed with each tome. This assumes the reader can devote several hours each day to reading, taking notes, and otherwise analyzing the information in the tome. Studying a tome requires no rolls, but the reader must be fluent in the language used (d8 or higher in the relevant Language skill). If the reader’s Language is d6, the time required is doubled; it is tripled if the Language is only d4.

At the end of this period of studying, the reader has absorbed and understood the information contained in the tome. Their Morgal skill increases by one rank (with a corresponding reduction of their maximum Sanity), and they are aware of any spells contained in the tome, although spells must be learned separately. Depending on the precise nature of the tome other information may be gained as well, such as a bonus or a reroll on certain Academics specializations.