Ancient Story of Evil, An

General Quest

Naerandir wants your help in bringing peace to the Barrow-downs. If you undertake this task, he will tell you his tale. But first, you'll have to gather pieces of a special key for him.

Special thanks to Durlo, Tachyon and Kwee, who assisted The Brasse staff with part of this quest, and a special extra thanks to Maligant, Risi and Dragonlordx, who helped Brasse and I complete the quest!

STEPS:

1) Find the left half of the key. Find the right half of the key. Step one is to get to the Greater Barrows, and you'll be doing that via the Southern Barrow-downs (note the zone-in to the Great Barrows is on the northwest side of the map). Once inside, you'll encounter a maze of passages. I sure could not find my way around here, so I brought along my dorf, and here is her map.





Inside you will find LOTS of Epic creatures: spiders at first, then wights, with plenty of regular mobs tossed in for good measure. Now then, onto finding the keys! The quest notes give you a slight hint as to where to find them:

"The first key fragment is guarded by two wights in the Great Barrow maze. The second key fragment is held by a Gaunt-lord elsewhere in the Great Barrow."

The left half of the key is indeed guarded by two wights, and once you get to their area in the southwest, you'll know it. One is Gaerthel, a level 21 Elite Master with 8,396 morale and 835 power. The other is Gaerdring, also a level 21 Elite Master, with 8,230 morale and 1,671 power. These two will also call on many regular mobs to help them in the beat-down process, but with tactics, perseverance and a bit of luck, your group should prevail! If you have traps, use them. If you have mez, use it. If you have power and health potions (and you should), you'll be using them.

Our group was: Two Hunters, one level 24 and the other level 26, Guardian level 23, Champion level 22, Minstrel level 22, and Minstrel level 27. This was an extremely tough fight, and at the end, all had died but our level 27 Minstrel, who bravely won the battle for us by whittling down one of the Elites when they had about 400 or so morale left. Whew! For comparison purposes, here is the makeup of the second group I killed these two with: 28 Hunter, 28 Guardian, 25 Minstrel, 25 Lore-Master and 20 Hunter.

After you've slain these bad boys, don't forget to claim your key fragment--you'll find the left bit on the corpse of Gaerdring. Now make your way to the hallway that leads to Thadur the Ravager, for it is on his dead body that you'll find the right half of the key. You should fight Thadur within the room he stands, and not try to pull him out into the hallway, for he will run away and reset his morale if you do. And believe me, that just ain't fun. You should know what you're dealing with, first off. Thadur is an Elite Master with 9,490 morale and 1,816 power. He will back off from the fight several times, the first time when he is at around 80% health.

The next time he'll be around 60%, and then his last hurrah at about 40% health. Each time he does this, many more regular wights (Foul Barrow-Wights) will come out of the walls and you'll be unable to attack Thadur (though he won't attack you either). You'll know when this happens for he'll start to spew things like "Curses! This is a waste of my time!" and "Do you mock me with this refusal to die? Allow me to collect myself while you meet my friends." and also "I do not have time to deal with this. You are making me angry!" As the fight continues, so will Thadur's pearls of anger:

"This is becoming quite frustrating. I must rest, and then I will deal with you once and for all! I presume you have a reason for disturbing me for this long? This must end now!"

Be sure to conserve your mana, and protect your healer when the ADDs come. Good luck!

2) Bring the key fragments to Naerandir.

3) After you speak with them and select "Finish Now", you get your coin reward, XP, either Anorchathol, Naerandir's Gauntlets, or Svalfang's Fall, and you will now be able to take the next quest, Forging Anew.


Special thanks go out to Wren for providing this quest writeup!
Wren has entered 612 LOTRO quests.