Gryfflet has been awaiting his rendezvous with Aragorn and Bregdal but he is willing to wait while we recap where we got to and how the game handled it. On our arrival at the farm of Pel Dúven, which is not looking anything like when we were here last, Aragorn and Halbarad immediately put us to work checking Orc corpses: some of them are not as dead as they pretend. We check in with Bregdal, the errand-rider, then set out to investigate. We find some genuine corpses and some fakers, and deal with each appropriately. We end up with our old friend Radanir, who has himself had to deal with a faker, but we are distracted by a commotion caused by another Ranger: Corunir is shouting at a nearby Gondorian and Halbarad needs our help. It turns out that the gossip about Golodir that was spread by the brothers Duilin and Derufin has taken root and the Gondorian soldiers somehow believe that Golodir is a friend of Gothmog, the enemy leader. Corunir is staggered to find out that Gothmog and Mordirith are one and the same, and invites us to track down Golodir to make sure he is OK. Sadly we are just in time to witness Golodir's defeat of the troll Thrúgrath, killer of Elfmar, albeit at the cost of his own life. There is little time to mourn his loss as the battle rages on but Gryfflet is able to console Corunir somewhat. We acompany him onto the field where we encounter Halros and Horn. The latter is having a crisis which is not alleviated when Halros defends him, again at the expenses of his own life. We are however able to defeat Crúmgam whom we have been seeking since our encounter in Rohan, and then we join Aragorn and Halbarad in confronting Gothmog. He is not happy to hear of Golodir's death and strikes at Aragorn: Halbarad follows the developing pattern and takes the blow on himself, leading to his death as mentioned in the book. Aragorn confronts Gothmog and defeats him by force of personality which signals the end of the battle for us. We make our final check-in with Bregdal and meet up with Aragorn to consider our next steps. Horn is distraught at the death of Halros, and Gléowine is upset to see his student brought so low. Gimli is just glad to be off the ships, Aragorn is already making plans, but Imrahil would like our help restoring Minas Tirith. We also find the Riders Three who are ready for a rest. Gryfflet collects his tasks from Imrahil and Húrin, Warden of the Keys, and sets off to fulfil them. Freeing trapped civilians, collecting supplies, extinguishing fires, and dismantling obsolete barricades are all grist to Gryfflet's mill, and allow us some long-delayed Lore Discussion. Even collecting the heads lobbed into the city during the battle, and tracking down lurking spies, is a blessed relief after the stress of recent sessions. This takes just enough time to complete the session at which point we are ready to proceed to the Houses of Healing to talk to Pippin.
"OK, find the fakers and kill them!"
"Nothing to do but go through his pockets and look for loose change!"
"We did it, finished the Battle of the Pelennor Fields! OK!"
"On the one hand, that's really tedious! On the other hand totally worth it!"
"What disturbs me is the size of the barrel they want me to pick up!"
"I remember the cisterns!"
While the battle is still active we concentrated on that, although we have time to ponder the vagaries of Orc education, but once it was done we were able to consider a question about Gandalf's knowledge of Bilbo's Ring.