Art Gallery

Although role playing is first and foremost a matter of words written and spoken, no one would deny that artwork can enhance and enrich the visualization of an imaginary world. When our resident artist Quentin Westcott took on the job of magazine layout and design, we had not long to wait before full-page cover art became a standard feature of Other Hands. A few issues later our Mithril feature spawned the advent of centerfold illustrations, bringing our imaginations of Middle-earth to life as never before. The MERP series and its MECCG step-child have left us a powerful visual legacy to live up to. Here we celebrate that legacy with a gallery of the cover and centerfold art that has appeared in the magazine to date.

COVER ART

The Knight-wives
(Issue 18, July 1997)
by Quentin Westcott

The Knight-wives had their origin in one of Gondor's most terrible tragedies—the Kin-Strife. In 1437 Osgiliath fell to the Usurper, and with it fell the flower of Gondorian nobility. Among the casualties was Hendiril, a nobleman and famous companion to Ornendil. His wife, Finlaurë, was imprisoned in Osgiliath along with the rest of Castamir's political enemies.

Over the next few years, Finlaurë became the center of a resistance movement comprised of the widows and daughters of Dúnedain slain by the Usurper. This group, which came to be called the "Knight-wives" by their supporters within the prison city, organized rebellion within the old ward of Wilwarin, which was occupied predominantly by displaced refugees from Calenardhon. When Eldacar's army returned with a chance for liberation, the population of Osgiliath rose up against the garrison forces; the Knight-wives orchestrated and led the assault on the Eastern Fort. Finlaurë slew the lieutenant of that garrison, Aldacar, in personal combat.

Although Osgiliath was liberated, Eldacar still had much to do, and so did the Knight-wives. Leaving their birthplace behind, the small band of women wore arms and armor in Eldacar's army of re-conquest, eventually coming to the King's attention. He briefly attached them to his personal guard after a foiled assassination attempt, where they made a profound impression on Eldacar's Northman allies. In the final battle with Castamir, the Knight-wives fought in the front ranks of Eldacar's center.

Click here to read more about the Knight-wives.

"Thus befell the contest of Sauron and Felagund which is renowned. For Felagund strove with Sauron in songs of power..."

—The Silmarillion, pp. 170-171

"He chanted a song of wizardry..."
(Issue 19, October 1997)
by Quentin Westcott

From England unto Eglamar
(Issue 20, January 1998)
by Quentin Westcott

Thus said Ælfwine the far-travelled:
There is many a thing in the West-regions unknown to men
marvels and strange beings, a land fair and lovely,
the homeland of the Elves, and the bliss of the Gods.
Little doth any man know what longing is his
whom old age cutteth off from return.

—"The Lost Road" (HoMe V.44)

'It was six hundred years after the departure of the survivors of the Atani over the sea to Númenor that a ship first came again out of the West to Middle-earth and passed up the Gulf of Lhûn. Its captain and mariners were welcomes by Gil-galad....The news spread swiftly and Men in Eriador were filled with wonder. Although in the First Age they had dwelt in the East, rumours of the terrible war "beyond the Western Mountains" had reached them; but their traditions preserved no clear account of it, and they believed that all the Men who dwelt in the lands beyond had been destroyed or drowned in great tumults of fire and inrushing seas. But since it was still said among them that those Men had in years beyond memory been kinsmen of their own, they sent messages to Gil-galad asking leave to meet the shipmen "who had returned from death in the deeps of the Sea". Thus it came about that there was a meeting between them on the Tower Hills; and to that meeting with the Númenóreans came twelve Men only out of Eriador, Men of high heart and courage, for most of their people feared the newcomers were perilous spirits of the Dead. But when they looked on the shipmen fear left them, though for a while they stood silent in awe; for mighty as they were themselves accounted among their kin, the shipmen resembled rather Elvish lords than mortal Men in bearing and apparel. Nonetheless they felt no doubt in their ancient kinship; and likewise the shipmen looked with glad surprise upon the Men of Middle-earth, for it had been believed in Númenor that the Men lefgt behind were descended from the evil Men who in the last days of the war against Morgoth had been summoned by him out of the East. But now they looked upon faces free from the Shadow and Men who could have walked in Númenor and not been thought aliens save in their clothes and in their arms.'

—Unfinished Tales, pp. 213-214

Kindreds Long Sundered
(Issue 21, April 1998)
by Quentin Westcott

Flame of Udûn
(Issue 22, July 1998)
by Quentin Westcott

Something was coming up behind them. What it was could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe, yet greater; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and to go before it....Its streaming mane kindled, and blazed behind it. In its right hand was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left it held a whip of many thongs.

—The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 344

What song can contain the grief of that day? What words can picture the dread of his approach - Skell, Besieger of Thakalgund, Slayer of Dáin, mightiest among the dragons of the North? The earth groaned beneath his wingless bulk, trembling at the passage of his massive, clawed feet. His serpentine tail whipped this way and that with murderous wrath. He had tarried in the abandoned halls of his prey long enough; for though his wound had begun to heal, his malice for the Dwarves now grew apace. Dáin had seen to it that the greater part of Thakalgund's treasures were evacuated from his doomed capital long before the dragon's arrival. And cold-drake though he was, his fire having died in ages long past, Skell burned with rage at his hollow conquest, a victory robbed of its sweetness. His single consuming desire now was to hunt down the surviving Dwarves, one by one, until the ground drank of their blood and their dishonored bones lay unburied for carion to devour.

Such were the images that impelled the great worm to Nuril-lagil. The Dwarves beheld him now at a distance, his crimson scales flashing like the flames of hell that had spawned him in the Deeps of Time. The Orc-host drew back, opening an avenue between the dragon and the pass. But Skell heeded them not; his desired prey in sight, all else receeded from his terrible onslaught. He paused then, and opening his iron jaws, let out a monstrous roar. Like black thunder that rends the high air and ravishes the shuddering earth, the dragon's ire smote all things living in that place: Orcs flung their faces upon the ground and, wailing, blocked their wounded ears; Dwarves struggled to hold their footing on the trembling stone; even the snow-clad mountain sides resounded at that bellowing and shook with fear.

The Dwarves met Skell's baleful gaze, and each read death and unabating hatred in the eyes of the other. All knew that the hour of doom had come. But Róri mocked the dragon: "I have paid in silver for those things dear to me. To you, worm, I will give only blood, for I have not silver to spare. But for blood I will demand blood. The heir of Azaghâl is with me!" At these words the dragon stayed his advance. Azaghâl, Lord of the Firebeards of old, had dealt a grievous wound to Skell's sire, Glaurung the Golden, in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

The memory and shame of that wound drove Skell mad, banishing his wits. Full on the Dwarves he came, hurling his mass towards them like a wave against ramparts of sand. But Róri, goading the beast onward with his taunts, ran now to the mountain wall of the pass, drawing his foe away from the main body of his comrades. The Dwarf climbed to higher ground, just out of reach of the dragon's snapping jaws, and continued to assail him with words. Then Skell, blind with rage and utterly oblivious to his own peril, unleashed a mighty roar that neither steel nor stone could endure.

Róri's body was flung against the cliffside by the force of it, his shield split in twain from the reverberation - the Dwarven hero lay dead. But the Nuril-lagil gave back this grim reply: rocks were dislodged, trees uprooted, snow-drifts loosened their moorings, as the whole mountain-side plunged down in avalanche upon dragon, Dwarf and Orc alike. From afar Thrór and the fugitives heard it, like the rumor of distant thunder in the mountains, followed by a dead silence; but they dared not linger, lest the sacrifice of their kin be proven vain. Yet all knew that doom had fallen at Nuril-lagil.

—exerpted from "The Battle of Nuril-lagil"
©1998 by Jason O. Hawkins and Chris Seeman

When Doom Fell at Nuril-lagil
(Issue 23, October 1998)
by Quentin Westcott

King of the Mountains
(Issue 24, January 1999)
by Bridget Buxton

'For at Erech there stands yet a black stone that was brought, it was said, from Númenor by Isildur...and upon it the King of the Mountains swore allegiance to him in the beginning of the realm of Gondor. But when Sauron returned and grew in might again, Isildur summoned the Men of the Mountains to fulfill their oath, and they would not: for they had worshipped Sauron in the Dark Years. Then Isildur said to their king: "Thou shalt be the last king. And if the West prove mightier than thy Black Master, this curse I lay upon thee and thy folk: to rest never until your oath is fulfilled. For this war will last through years uncounted, and you shall be summoned once again ere the end."'

—The Return of the King, p. 55

The dwarf-house of Tharbad was the greatest meeting-place of Dwarves in Eriador above the ground, where boats from the Mannish settlements about the dwarf-mansion and caravans from the Blue Mountain tribes on the North Road met. Here, unmolested by Mannish greed, the Dwarves could take their ease. But of course there were complex reasons for this locus; and amongst them indeed the Sea-kings hoped to keep the Dwarves apart, under their own law, where they could be watched, if their famed mercenariness extended to the enemies of Andor.

Firebeard and Broadbeam
(Issue 25, April 1999)
by Quentin Westcott

Irusan
(Issue 26, July 1999)
by Quentin Westcott

Irusan is the leader of the southern Larach (the ruling clan of the Oathbreakers), whose clan-hold is Galibur. When Sauron's minions came to Irusan's cousin, Morthec, King of the Mountains, to ask for his help in the campaign against the Dúnedain, Irusan declared his loyalty to Sauron's cause and, spitting in the face of his cousin's indecisiveness, took a small contingent of Larach to fight in the Last Alliance on the Dark Lord's behalf. After the defeat of Sauron's forces, Irusan managed to escape capture and came back to Larach lands just as Isildur's Curse came into effect. However, because of his service to Sauron, Irusan was subject to the necromatic servitude of Sauron's own devising — not to Isildur's curse — and so, although he too became undead, Irusan and his followers were not bound to the will of Morthec, as are all other Oathbreakers. For the next 1500 years, Irusan led the southern Larach in rebellion against Morthec, seeking always some means of thwarting him so that Irusan might himself claim the title "King of the Dead." Should he ever succeed, Irusan would prevent the Oathbreakers from heeding Aragorn's summons and thus bring ruin to the cause of the Free Peoples.

—exerpted from "The Oathbreakers"
©1997 by John Feil and Chris Seeman

She lifted up her white arms, and spread out her hands towards the East in a gesture of rejection and denial. Eärendil, the Evening Star, most beloved of the Elves, shone clear above. So bright was it that the figure of the Elven-lady cast a dim shadow on the ground. Its rays glanced upon a ring about her finger; it glittered like polished gold overlaid with silver light, and a white stone in it twinkled as if the Even-star had come down to rest upon her hand.

—The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 380

The Mirror of Galadriel
(Issue 27, October 1999)
by Quentin Westcott

Elves of Mirkwood (Issue 28, January 2000) by Quentin Westcott

...just as Mablung stepped towards the fallen body, there was a new noise. Great crying and shouting. Amidst it Sam heard a shrill bellowing or trumpeting. And then a great thudding and bumping, like huge rams dinning on the ground.

'Ware! Ware!' cried Damrod to his companion. 'May the Valar turn him aside! Mûmak! Mûmak!'

To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight, Sam saw a vast shape crash out of the trees and come careering down the slope. Big as a house, much bigger than a house, it looked to him, a grey-clad moving hill. Fear and wonder, maybe, enlarged him in the hobbit's eyes, but the Mûmak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk, and the like of him does not now walk in Middle-earth; his kin that live still in latter days are but memories of his girth and majesty. On he came, straight towards the watchers, and then swerved aside in the nick of time, passing only a few yards away, rocking the ground beneath their feet: his great legs like trees, enormous sail-like ears spread out, long snout upraised like a huge serpent about to strike, his small red eyes raging. His upturned hornlike tusks were bound with bands of gold and dripped with blood. His trappings of scarlet and gold flapped about him in wild tatters. The ruins of what seemed a very war-tower lay upon his heaving back, smashed in his furious passage through the woods; and high upon his neck still desperately clung a tiny figure—the body of a mighty warrior, a giant among the Swertings.

—The Two Towers, pp. 269-270

"Ware the Mûmak!"
(Issue 29/30, July 2000)
by Quentin Westcott

Orkish Steel (Issue 31/32, January 2001) by Quentin Westcott

CENTERFOLDS

The Infantry of Angmar (Issue 24, January 1999) by Quentin Westcott	Featured Mithril Figures M42 - Mannish captain on horseback M43 - Mannish warrior w/scimitar M44 - Mannish warrior w/spear

Featured Mithril Figures M269 - Gil-galad, High-king in exile M270 - Elrond, Herald of Gil-galad M273 - Círdan at Gorgoroth	Elf-lords of Lindon (Issue 25, April 1999) by Quentin Westcott

Denizens of the Dead Marshes (Issue 26, July 1999) by Quentin Westcott	Featured Mithril Figures M168 - Ghoul M250 - Corpse Candle M253 - Swamp Star

Featured Mithril Figures M105 - Huinen M106 - Arien M107 - Lachglin M108 - The Silent Shadow	Enchanters of Mirkwood (Issue 27, October 1999) by Quentin Westcott

Halls of the Elven-king (Issue 28, January 2000) by Quentin Westcott	Featured Mithril Figures M63 - King Thranduil (enthroned) M64 - Queen Arhendhiril & 2 maids M69 - Silvan Seer

Featured Mithril Figures M78 - The Razarac M80 - Lesinavi M82 - Master of the Tama	The Mirror of Fire (Issue 29/30, July 2000) by Quentin Westcott

Mayhem under the Mountain (Issue 31/32, January 2001) by Quentin Westcott	Featured Mithril Figures M93 - Zalg, the Goblin-king M95 - Saviga, the King's Consort M96 - Akargûn the Warlock M99 - Karagat the High Priest