Shadow in the West Role-Playing Character Descriptions

As a child, Baingíl lived in the area around Dol Guldur with her parents and one older brother. As the mysterious shadowy evil grew in the forest, her brother (who had a rather wild temper) correctly blamed the Necromancer for their troubles. He tried to drive the Necromancer out with help from other young elves in the area, but Sauron, even at this stage, was quite able to deal with the small band of elves. All died, including Baingíl's brother. After this, the forest held too many bad memories and too much evil for Baingíl's parents, so they took their young daughter and fled the forest. They refused to settle in any one place. They left their family name behind and began to use the name Randír, or Wanderer. When she grew up, Baingíl continued to travel with them. She saw a great deal of Middle Earth during her travels with her parents - everywhere from Lothlorien, to Imladris, to Minas Tirith (from a distance). Baingíl's parents' spirits improved, but never fully recovered. About TA 3014, Baingíl and her parents met a group of elves bound for the Undying Lands. They had a long conversation. The elves said that the time of the elves was over, and dark times were ahead. Baingíl's parents knew that the pain of losing their son - unhealed still, after all the centuries - would be healed in the Undying Lands, and they had no wish to experience dark times. Baingíl, however, hated the thought of leaving Middle Earth to its fate. She had been a very small child at the time of her brother's death, and had borne less pain than her parents; and what pain there was turned into a deep and bitter hatred for the darkness that had killed her brother and darkened her beloved home, which she had heard tales of from her parents. She decided that she would rather remain in Middle Earth and fight the darkness; if she died, she would only join her brother in the Halls of Mandos - nothing worse than that. The family went in opposite directions - the parents to Lindon, and Baingíl to Mirkwood. She promptly offered her services to the Elven-king Thranduil, and was offered a position on his guard. She accepted, hoping this would give her an opportunity to fight the evil things in the forest, and perhaps clear away some of the darkness from her home. She went on to train for the guard, then ended up becoming the Chief Guard of Thranduil.

This piece is even more distinct from the rest of the collection than the previous two. Lorient Avandi was the first member of Forumshire who was not previously a member of the Old Forum or Planet Tolkien, and when he proposed beginning a structured role-playing thread (that is to say, play-by-post role-playing, which usually does not depend on rolls of the dice) he had a different sense of what that meant than most of the forum. Lorient wanted a storyline set in Middle-earth proper, drawing on both book and movie lore but with nothing too flagrantly out of place. As such, most of the participants created new characters not based on their forum personas. The result was not exactly set in Forumshire but it overlaps and creates an interesting contrast to the direction most of the forum’s creative output ultimately went.

Eldy wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-post_role-playing_game

Or to quote myself from the fanfic collection (p. 48; see the link in Petty's sig):

This piece is even more distinct from the rest of the collection than the previous two. Lorient Avandi was the first member of Forumshire who was not previously a member of the Old Forum or Planet Tolkien, and when he proposed beginning a structured role-playing thread (that is to say, play-by-post role-playing, which usually does not depend on rolls of the dice) he had a different sense of what that meant than most of the forum. Lorient wanted a storyline set in Middle-earth proper, drawing on both book and movie lore but with nothing too flagrantly out of place. As such, most of the participants created new characters not based on their forum personas. The result was not exactly set in Forumshire but it overlaps and creates an interesting contrast to the direction most of the forum’s creative output ultimately went.

This style of role-playing is/was common on other Tolkien forums, both those wholly dedicated to the practice as well as some of the larger centers of regular Tolkien discussion (including the LOTR Plaza, Arwen-Undomiel.com, and TORC, to name just a few). Shadows in the West was not as structured or managed as one typically sees, though--it has more in common with free RP threads despite the nominal overarching plot.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Eru alone knows }}