Middle-earth Kinship

Speak with the free folk of Middle-earth: trade, change your coin, and hire a blade for the road.

A Fabric mod for the Middle-earth mod

Description

Walk up to a friendly villager, ranger or soldier with an empty hand, right-click, and a quiet dialogue opens off to the side of your view. From there you can barter over their wares, break your heavy coin into smaller pieces, or take a warrior into your service for the road ahead - and then hand them a pack to carry, post them on guard, sit them down by your gate, ask their name, and find that the road you shared has made you closer.

Nothing here is pulled out of thin air. Prices are worked out from Middle-earth's own alloy recipes and the nutrition of its food. A trader's purse follows who their people are by lore, from the gold of Erebor to a snaga's few coppers. A hireling's wage follows the gear on their back, not the title over their head - and when you ask a fighter's name, the answer comes out of the legendarium: a fitting name of their own people.

Tip: talk with an empty main hand. Coins in hand are left free for other mods that trade on them, so the two never fight over the same click.

What you can do

	A small, see-through dialogue sits beside the crosshair, so the world and the person stay in view. Everyone talks to you, wares or no wares: one with an empty stall says so in his own words, and a dwarf is a smith and not a shopkeeper about it while a hobbit has not a spare spoon and the spare spoon is promised. Every people speaks in its own voice too: Erebor is blunt and about the coin, Lórien courteous and distant, the Shire warm and about supper, Rohan plain and about horses. And each person meets you in a temper of their own - most will talk, some are busy, some proud, some have no warmth for strangers - which is a trait they were born with and not a mood of the day.
	Buy a trader's wares, or sell your own. A worn tool fetches less by how battered it is, and a sound item you sell goes back on their shelf, so you can buy it back later. The counter shows five rows at a time and scrolls for the rest, so a rich stall does not push its own bottom line off a small screen.
	Change copper, silver and gold in either direction, by a slider or a typed amount. You can only change as far as the trader's own strongbox reaches, so a wealthy merchant is worth finding.
	Strike your own coin when no trader is near: heat an ingot, lay it on a shaping anvil and hammer it out - nine copper from copper, five silver from silver, one gold from gold. About ten blows and a second heat, and the coin comes off the anvil as plain coin, no different from what a trader hands you.
	Each trader's wealth is rolled from their race and faction by Tolkien's lore, and it rises and falls as you deal with them. Sell a fine blade to a farmer and he may not have the coin for it.
	Wares, prices and the odd rare find are drawn from each NPC, so a shop you walk back to is the same shop, but the one two doors down is not. Every people trades its own: lembas, mallorn and edhel steel at an elven counter, cram and khazad steel at a dwarven one, and a foreign blade among them is the curiosity it should be. Gear sits one to a shelf, a second piece the rare exception. A warrior lays out four blades on average and never fewer than two, with the whole rack turning up now and then; Dale, which lives by resale, keeps a rack as a matter of course, and a blade at a townsman's counter is rare enough to be worth noticing. And every people asks its own price: the merchants of Dale live on reselling and undercut everyone, Erebor is easy on metal, and the elves of Lorien part with their work grudgingly and charge for it. Drink is priced by what it does to you, from fifteen silver to sixty.
	Claim the beast you are riding, and whistle it back to you from wherever you left it - out of a sleeping chunk, across a world if it has to be, and set down on ground that will hold it. Everything you ride answers, from a donkey to a warg. And if it falls, it can be raised with its saddle, its armour and its chest still on it.
	Take a warrior into service for a term you set in game-days, up to sixty of them (shown in real minutes too). They follow you, keep a distance you choose, run to catch up, survive relogs, and can be extended or let go. Up to three at once. Outrun them on a horse, cross a lake, step through a portal - the company catches up and is set down on ground that will hold them, and your own blade cannot cut them down by accident. Not everyone comes: some fighters are sworn to their own and refuse in their own words, while the odd farmhand dreams of the road and volunteers.
	Every hireling carries a pack: storage rows plus a gear row for helm, mail, legs, boots, weapon, bow and shield, each empty slot marked with a ghost icon. Armour lands on their back the moment you set it in, a bow makes an archer of a swordsman, and a wounded fighter, if you allow it, eats from the pack - picking the meal that fits the wound and mending by its nourishment. A fallen fighter drops everything they carried for you.
	Standing orders are spoken in the dialogue: hold this spot, sit down and rest, fall in behind me. A posted fighter waits where told however far you travel and however often you relog, stands up for a fight and settles back after. Light their beacon and they glow through the walls until you come back; /mekinship crew points at the post from anywhere.
	A fighter who has seen fighting is the better for it. Every kill nudges one of four things a little - what they can take, how hard they hit, how true they shoot, what their armour turns - and each is born leaning towards one of them, so two hirelings of the same rank become different men over a season. Ask "show me what you can do" and they tell you: the fallen behind them, and every number that answers for it.
	Your company fights your fight. Whoever raises a hand against you becomes their enemy, and whatever you strike, they strike - a bandit, a cow, another player, no questions asked. They also go for wargs, trolls and the walking dead on sight, without waiting for you to bleed first. What they will never touch is your own: not you, not each other, not what you are riding, not your tamed beasts, not the mount you whistle for. And one word calls them off - type стоп or stop in chat, or /mekinship stop: everyone within thirty-two blocks lowers their weapons, for a minute if it was a person and for two seconds if it was a troll, because a companion standing still in front of a troll is a companion you are about to bury.
	Keep a fighter long enough - five or six weeks of service, and every man has his own day for it - and he will say in chat that the term is running out and he would rather not go. Talk to him and he asks to stay for good. Say yes and there is no term and no wage any more: he hands back what you paid for the days he will not be a hireling for, holds his place until you let him go, and greets you as one of your own from then on. The only other answer is that you should part for now, and it changes nothing today - he serves out what was paid. What it changes is what he remembers: most sign on again as before, about a third want asking more than once and have their own excuses each time, and a very few have quietly found another road by the time you come back and tell you so kindly. None of it costs a copper more, and your own words change too - you do not offer work to a man you once let go, you ask him to come again.
	Ask a fighter's name and you learn it once and for all: a lore name of their own people, borrowed from the legendarium's minor folk, and from then on they are called by it - the name alone, with their rank kept where a rank belongs, at the head of the conversation. Some will not tell a stranger - there are crafts that find you by a name - and you earn the answer by serving side by side long enough. And if you never think to ask, one who has marched with you for a week or two tells you anyway, unprompted, because staying nameless beside somebody that long is not how people are. The days served together quietly soften the wage as well: an old comrade greets you as one, and asks less.

The coin

Middle-earth mints three coins, and this mod ties them together:

A long game leaves you carrying stacks of copper worth a few gold. Any trader with a deep enough strongbox will change it, up or down.

And if no trader is near, you can strike your own. Heat an ingot in a forge, lay it on a shaping anvil and take a hammer to it:

Gold is soft and grudging under the hammer, which is why one ingot makes one coin. Bronze is not minted at all - no coin was ever struck from it. Minting is deliberately worth less than selling the metal, so it is a way to make change on the road rather than a way to make money.

How to use

Playing well with others

Two neighbours are handled without either mod knowing about it. Both are optional: nothing is required, and nothing breaks if you do not have them.

Requirements

Built in for English and Русский.

More for your Middle-earth run

	Middle-earth Satchels My other mod for the same world: eight tiers of backpack, each forged from its culture's own metal, from a humble leather satchel up to mithril. Carry more, and dye the wrap to your own colours.
	Middle-earth Spawn Balance Lore-true spawning for the same world: the orc lands crawl, the elven woods stay quiet, torchlight keeps your home clear and the uruk-hai march at noon. It ends the mob flood and hands you a settings screen with presets to tune it yourself.

Support the mods

I make these in my spare time and give them away free. If you would like to help them keep growing, a tip is always warmly welcomed.

Your coin helps me fix things faster, add what is planned next, and keep the mods up to date. Thank you for playing! 🌿

License

All Rights Reserved. Please don't reupload or redistribute the mod elsewhere. For modpacks, follow the project's distribution setting on CurseForge.