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Good/Evil Faction — Choosing Your Side

The module's in-game faction system is entirely separate from your character's D&D alignment.

Two player-facing factions govern which NPCs are hostile to you as you travel Middle-earth: Good (Gondor, Rivendell, Lothlórien, Helm's Deep, Edoras, …) and Evil (Mordor, Isengard, Cirith Ungol, Carn Dûm, …). See the Factions page for the full list and reputation matrix.

Alignment ≠ Faction. Your character's D&D alignment (Good / Neutral / Evil on the character sheet) has no effect on NPC hostility. It is cosmetic. All characters — regardless of alignment — choose a side via the orbs. A Neutral-aligned character picks Good or Evil the same as anyone else.

To change your character-sheet alignment, visit the Alignment Adjustment NPC in Bree at any time.

Choosing Your Side in the Well of Eru

Each time you are about to leave the Well of Eru through one of the teleporters, click one of the two orbs to set your faction for the session:

Orb	Effect
Shaft of Light (blue/white)	Declares you Good. Good-faction NPCs treat you as an ally; Evil-faction NPCs become hostile.
Shaft of Light — Red	Declares you Evil. Evil-faction NPCs treat you as an ally; Good-faction NPCs become hostile.

After clicking the orb, use the Guardian of Light (Good) or Guardian of Darkness (Evil) to teleport to your destination. The teleporters each offer a list of faction-appropriate locations.

Your side is remembered — it is stored per character and re-applied automatically every time you log in. You only need to touch an orb again when you want to change sides.

Your Side Changes Which Encounters Spawn

Roaming encounters (the ambushes that appear as you travel, as opposed to NPCs standing where they are placed) are tied to a faction, and an encounter only fires for travellers that faction treats as an enemy. Most of the module's encounters — around 700 of them — belong to the generic Hostile faction and ambush everybody. But 77 encounters belong to the Good or Evil faction instead, and those stop spawning for players who have taken that side.

Encounter faction	Spawns for	Where
Good (29 encounters)	Everyone except Good-allegiance players	Great North Road and Gap of Rohan (the Rohirrim), Mering Stream, The Pelennor Fields, Lothlórien (the wardens), Mirkwood: Forest of Greenleaves, The Valley of Rivendell
Evil (48 encounters)	Everyone except Evil-allegiance players	Northern Forests of Ithilien, Ettenmoors, The Angmar Mountain Range, Great East Road (Carn Dûm), The Cirith Ungol Pass, Ered Duath Road, Dol Guldur, Isengard (Outerrim)

So declaring for the Free Peoples buys you a quiet road through Rohan, Gondor, Lothlórien and Mirkwood — and declaring for the Enemy buys you the same quiet through Ithilien, Angmar, Cirith Ungol and Dol Guldur. Take neither side and both sets ambush you.

Hunting a specific spawn? If a creature you are looking for never appears no matter how long you patrol, check your side first: 15 creature types — including the Rohirrim reinforcements, the Black Númenóreans and Khamûl the Ringwraith — only ever appear in faction-tagged encounters, so one allegiance never meets them at all. Every area page lists its encounters with a Triggers for column showing exactly who each one spawns for — see Great North Road for a worked example.

Nothing here is dynamic: an encounter's audience is fixed in the module, not chosen at spawn time. It just looks dynamic from the road, because your allegiance decides which half of the world is willing to ambush you.