Okay, I wasn’t actually dead, but I wasn’t doing very well.  Being in Isengard, you might as well be dead because… and this is the truth about most evil places… it is so dull and tedious.  I mean, seriously, being dropped into Isengard leads you to a series of the most annoyingly repetitive quests I’ve ever been faced with.  The devs wanted you to experience peon life.

But I didn’t know that when I arrived.  All I knew then was that I wanted to be in Rohan and not Isengard… also, I wondered if I might have avoided this by just leaving the quest and the instance that contained it behind.

In fact, a lot of things went through my head when the game suddenly yoinked me to Isengard, both wondering how I even got there… just more cut scene magic… and how I could get out.  As a hunter I supposed I could just use one of my many travel skills and time skip or dimension shift or whatever it is that lets me travel between places instantaneously.  But I also figured I was there, I ought to go see what is up.

In Isengard, as in every place in Middle-earth when a well armed drifter with a history of violence shows up, their first inclination was to put me to work.  They didn’t even disarm me or put me in an orange prison jump suit.  There were several times when I just up and killed a White Hand orc that turned out to be aggro because I went down the wrong path.  All they did was assigned me a case officer to track my progress and then sent me off to work.

What makes Isengard so tedious is simply the amount of running around you have to do to accomplish some of your tasks.  You start up in the ring, then get down to the depths, where end up running between the forges, the kitchens, the dungeons, the barracks, and occasionally back to the surface, to the ring.

The Isengard Depths

There are no short cuts and, while they’ve left you with all your gear, you cannot ride a mount in there.  So it is running all the way… though I did figure out part way through that when you off some random orc who is attackable… most are not… you get a speed buff.  Talk about your perverse incentive structures.

So you spend time in the forges lifting and carrying barrels of weapons and armor and collecting stuff of the floor.

The weapons and armor won’t put themselves in the barrels

Then it is over to the kitchens to clean slop up off the floor.

After five years of service they give me a brush

Don’t worry, the slop all goes into the slop bucket, which is used to feed the prisoners… and the orcs again.

Then you end up taking some of the slop down to the dungeons to feed the prisoners, which you do by tossing a bucket full of slop in their general direction.  Then it is back up to the forges.

Heading back from the dungeons

The whole place has a bit of a Blackrock Depths air to it… except you’re on staff and keeping the locals supplied.

Then it is back up to the surface for another delivery.  At one point my name was called to go have an audience with Saruman. He knows my name… I don’t think he recognized me from the auction, so someone likely prompted him…and starts off trying to neg me so I’ll be eager to please him or something.

The battle but not the war old man!

Then he tried to use the voice on me, trying to get me to join his team.  Again, when a well armed drifter with a history of violence shows up, everybody seems to have a positions available for applicants with those qualifications.

However, I typed in /resist, which is apparently all you need to defeat his voice.  Actually, the quest tracker has a button that will do it for you.  It is just that easy.

So I keep resisting his questions, like where the ring is, what Gandalf knows, who played The Cisco Kid, and how to throw a knuckle ball.  Frustrated by my lack of response and my ability to press a button, he went down another path.  He brought in a woman keen to kill me, and not even one of my ex-girlfriends.

Kill Tistann? Dare I live the NPC dream?

Apparently she had been following Lothrandir and I, she being the mob we faced during the whole mustering of the Grey Company series of quests, whom I had failed to even acknowledge during my summary of the events.  All I put down in my post was:

Then there was a run through Forochel that was mercifully quick and Lothrandir was soon on his way to Rivendell.

This was Gun Ain, which means “without name” or “white wood” or something like that (and is just one typo away from being “Gun Aim”), whom we faced after walking through a short ice maze, and who seemed kind of whiny at the time.  Otherwise she didn’t really register with me.  I took more screen shots of Calenglad girlfriend than I did on the ice caves tour with Lothrandir.

Basically all I have from the ice cave trip with Captain Obvious

I even took a screen shot of Lothrandir’s quest comments and he didn’t bother to mention her.  I can just see in the text scroll back in that screen shot that he left her some food, so you think she might be a little more on our side.  But no.

Still, I have to give credit for an epic quest line call back.  It wasn’t at the Sara Oakheart level of returns, but it was something.

Anyway, Saruman decided to give me some time to think about his offer before letting her slay me, so it was back out into the ring for another full day of toting and carrying.

Saruman negging me one last time

Along the way the two prisoners I was hurling slop at during my trip to the dungeons, Baldcar and Acca, suggested to me a cunning plan.  On my next visit to the forges, in addition to picking up weapons and armor, they wanted me to pick up some of this mysterious black powder and pocket it.

Once I did that and checked back in with them, they sent me off to the ring to plant the black powder around one of the huge siege engines.  Then when I got back it was time to find the guard with the key and get that so I could let everybody out for the great big jail break.  Also, I poisoned some orcs and bribed somebody with some decent food along the way.

So I break everybody out and there is a rousing “let’s do this!” speech and then we start moving into the ring in groups of two or three as Acca suggested and I am now keen to see how this escape plan is going to work.

I mean, seriously, this had better be freaking good.  All we’ve done is steal some black powder, sprinkle it around a siege engine, and then… get ready?  So, in my head I am imagining all sorts of wild scenarios of escape, from simple diversion to maybe using a catapult to fling us over the walls and into some trees where maybe we meet ents or something.

Baldcar, Acca, and I walk casually through the whole place… again… and then get to a spot a ways from the siege engine, where Acca tells us to wait

While we’re waiting, Baldcar mentions that his first task on escaping will be to report in to Theodred, after which he says we’ll get back to the Falcon Clan and that city of traitors. (“City of Traitors” is one of the quest names when we get to that, though it is barely a settlement or encampment of miscreants when you get down to measures.)

Via a Ouija board?

In my head I respond, “Theodred? Theodan’s dead son?  What are you, a clairvoyant?” then realize again that I am effectively a time traveler in this world.  I’ve seen all this play out before.  It is a good thing the NPCs can’t hear me.

Baldcar rambles on a bit, then decides Acca is taking too long.  So we run off to find Acca dead at the feet of one of the overseers who suspects something is going on.  Baldcar offers to carry a message, then indicates to me with obvious phrasing, several over eye winks, a waggling of eyebrows, all while using both hands to make giant air quotes before him, that the plan is going forward and that he will start the distraction and that I need to keep our friend busy.

Busy means fighting him and, for some bizarre reason, I think I need to draw the fight out to give Baldcar time, while in hindsight I am sure all I had to do was hit a damage threshold on the big orc to trigger the next phase.

Then, after dancing around trying to draw the fight out, I just unload so we can get to the big escape event.

And then there is a loading screen, after which, you’re just out in the woods in Dunland again.  This was an epic hand wave on the level of the Monty Python episode The Cycling Tour where Pither is facing certain death in the face of the Russian firing squad and then a card is displayed that says something like “Scene Missing” and Gulliver and Pither are back on a road in Cornwall.

Color me disappointed… as well as being completely unable to tell you HOW we escaped in anything by the most vague terms.

Also, when we land in Dunland, in the woods, once more, Baldcar is badly wounded and apparently I have carried his ass all this way as part of the miraculous escape, then promptly dies on me, negating whatever effort I put in.  But his last words were to not seek the treasure… no… to seek Theodred and, resisting the temptation to suggest he might be seeing Theodred soon enough, I swear to honor his wishes.  After all, the quest indicates I get to wrap this up by turning in the quest to Theodred, so I am going there anyways.

Sure enough, Theodred is there, as foretold by prophecy and the quest text, alive and ready for action.

Theodred in Dunland

I was now ready to head towards Rohan!  Then Theodred reminded me that the rest of the Grey Company, from Halbarad on down, were still locked up by the Falcon Clan.  He said we should go rescue them, and I agreed, if only to close out this book in the epic quest line.  But that is for another post.

Overall, Isengard was a strange and often tedious interlude.  It got in some exposition and we got to meet Saruman up close and personal and I got a nice little Isengard Prisoner cosmetic outfit that is suitable for Halloween.

Me playing prisoner

I can’t say it was worth the effort, but it was a thing.