The Fellowship Walk for Child's Play

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Once again we are starting a very special Fellowship that will undertake one of the most epic journeys of virtual Middle-Earth.

We were able to reach our $5,000 goal last year and are hoping to meet the same goal for 2011.

The Fellowship Walk is an online fundraising event for Child’s Play Charity, an organization providing toys and games to sick kids in hospitals.

On the traces of Frodo and his friends, our team of writers will walk from Bag End up to Rivendell, and maybe beyon. For every donation made to Child’s Play, our Fellowship will take one step further towards the healing house of Elrond.

Join us in our journey, donate now and help us make it to Rivendell!

Find out more or donate at our site: http://cstm.us/fellowshipwalk

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Donate and Win!

We are very excited to announce some amazing gaming gear generously donated to the Fellowship Walk by Mad Catz to giveaway to some of our lucky donators!

The Fellowship Walk is a fundraising event CSTM is organizing to raise money for Child’s Play Charities. You can find out more information about this event on our blog.

All that is required to enter to win is to donate $20 (or more) using our Chip-In Widget on the CSTM blog!

For more details or to donate please visit our site.

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Tonight the Fellowship Walk traveled from Bag End to Crickhollow. And at $963 in donations, it will not be too long until we continue on to Tom Bombadil's house!

Thank you to everyone who participated!

More pictures from this evening can be found in our LOTRO Flickr Group.

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Tonight (9/24) The Fellowship Walk will be meeting at Crickhollow on Landroval after the CSTM live show on Middle-earth Network (approximately 10:30pm Eastern).

Listen into the show (starting at 9:30pm Eastern) and then join us as we walk to Tom Bombadil’s House for Child’s Play Charity!

The Fellowship Walk has currently earned $1,260 for Child's Play!

We are just $240 shy of making it into the Barrow Downs as well tonight!

Thank you all for your donations! We're making great progress!

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We've reached the $1,500 mark! That means tonight's (9/24) walk will go from Crickhollow in Buckland to Tom Bombadil's house in the Old Forest AND to the Great Spire in the Barrow Downs!

Way to go everyone!

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The Fellowship Walk safely made it to the Great Spire and reached the checkpoint for $1,500 for Child's Play! Here is our Fellowship at the spire shouting about the reason for this fundraising event!



Our next checkpoint is at $2,000 and will get us to the Prancing Pony in Bree!

See more photos from this event at http://flic.kr/s/aHsjwk41aN or share your photos in the CSTM Flickr Group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/lotro_screenshots/

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We have reached the $2,000 (40%) mark in donations so it is time for another walk in Middle-earth!

Join us on Landroval TONIGHT (9/28) at 9:30pm Eastern as we walk from the Dead Spire in the Barrow Downs to the Prancing Pony.

All levels and visitors from other servers are welcome to join us! Give a shout and we can see if a captain is available to help get you there safely.

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The Fellowship Walk has made it to the Prancing Pony! Thank you all for your support!

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I woke up this morning and saw that thanks to generous donators we are not over the $2,500 mark (over half way to our goal!). That means it's time to stage our next in-game walk!

Join us tonight (9/30) at 9:30pm Eastern on the Landroval server as we walk from the Prancing Pony to the Forsaken Inn!



Now I know that the Forsaken Inn is NOT on Frodo's famous lists of stops. However, it is much safer for our line to follow the road (plus we aren't being chased by Nazgul... I think) and a good marker to make it into the start of the Lone-lands.

All levels are welcome to join us as we walk for Child's Play! If you are not on the Landroval server, you are welcome to create a character and join us after you get out of the intro instance. There will be a live video feed of the walk should you like to participate that way. Merric will be posting a link to our twitter and facebook when it is active.

For more information on this event or to donate please visit http://cstm.us/fellowshipwalk

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We've made it to the Forsaken Inn!


Next stop: Weathertop! We will head out when we receive $3,000 in donations!

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I’m super pleased to announce that last night we reached the $3,000 mark which means it’s time for another in-game walk!

Join us on Landroval TONIGHT (10/5) at 9:30pm Eastern as we walk from the Forsaken Inn to Weathertop.

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I’m super pleased to announce that today we reached the $3,500 mark which means it’s time for another in-game walk!

Join us on Landroval TONIGHT (10/8) after the live show of CSTM approximately 10:30pm Eastern as we walk from Weathertop to the Last Bridge!

All players are welcome to join us. We have some very wonderful helpful folks on Landroval that will help get your toon to Weathertop to join in the walk and protect you on the journey.

For more information on this fundraiser and how you can donate please visit http://cstm.us/fellowshipwalk

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We have arrived at (and then promptly jumped off) the Last Bridge last night, our $3,500 goal.


Walks will be on hold next week as we ramp up for a special party happening next weekend. Details on this are soon to follow!

Remember to enter our "The Hobbit" Themed Glassware Giveaway with many ways to enter to win. Only open until October 13th!

Also remember for a donation of $20 or more, you are automatically entered in our Mad Catz giveaway!

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Fellowship Walk Update

Since last update, the Fellowship Walk has taken several trips forward all thanks to your donations! I’m very pleased to announce that the Fellowship has safely made it to Bilbo’s Trolls in the Trollshaws! This is our $4,000 goal! Rivendell is not much farther!

This is the FINAL WEEK for donations!

The event closes down next Monday, October 24th! We are at the home stretch at this point so if you haven’t considered donating, please do so. Anything you are able to afford is welcome and appreciated! Tell your friends and family who may be interested! The end is in sight and we’d love to make our goal of $5,000 for Child’s Play!


Read more about the Fellowship Walk's Progress

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Belarieth is at it Again!

Belarieth has generously offered to ONCE AGAIN match any donations up to $100 for this week! Every dollar donated she will turn into $2 for Child's Play up to $100!

Go! Cost this crazy girl money! Read more about Belarieth's Offer

Donate to the Fellowship Walk!

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I’m super pleased to announce that today, thanks to Belarieth and the wonderful LOTRO Community, we reached the $4,500 mark which means it’s time for another in-game walk!

Join us on Landroval TONIGHT (10/18) at 9:30pm Eastern as we walk from Bilbo's Trolls to the Ford of Bruinen!

We realize this is a less than friendly meeting location so do not be afraid to send Goldenstar a holler for help getting there. We will be doing our best to make sure everyone who wants to walk with us is there and stays safe regardless of level!

For more information on this fundraiser and how you can donate please visit http://cstm.us/fellowshipwalk

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Spend Prighild's Money!

It only took us a few hours to meet Belarieth's $100 match and here we have another shining example of the amazing LOTRO Community stepping up to do his part for sick children in need of some fun!

Prighild Tussletoe of Firefoot will be matching donations dollar for dollar up to $100 out of his own funds. Every dollar you donate will be doubled by Prighild’s generosity!

I have to say I'm completely amazed by today's showing of support. We had been at about the same amount since the walk last Saturday and I was beginning to fear we wouldn't make our $5000 goal for Child's Play! The Fellowship Walk ends Monday, October 24th!

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The Fellowship Walk has made it to their $4,500 goal of The Ford of Bruinen!


Our final stop is Rivendell at $5,000 in donations. To help us reach that goal, the amazing Moryel of Silverload has contacted us with not one but TWO Turbine Points codes to give away to people who support the Fellowship Walk from now until Friday.

We are coming down to the wire for donations. Monday is the final day of the Fellowship Walk!

We really want to be able to raise $5,000 for Child’s Play to help bring sick kids toys, games, movies and other forms of entertainment!

We have 2 codes for 2,500 Turbine Points each to giveaway!

Entering is super simple. Just donate to the Fellowship Walk between now and Friday. Previous donations are not eligible to win. We’re really hoping to push towards that final $5,000 goal and walk to Rivendell!

Use the Chip-in Widget in the upper right corner of the blog to donate. Chip-in allows me to see the donations so I will have record of your contribution and enter you into the contest!

Any amount is acceptable to win these codes! If all can donate is $1 we will happily give your $1 to Child’s Play!

Remember donations of $20 or more are also entered in our Mad Catz gamer gear giveaway!

This contest is open until October 21st, 2011 11:59pm Eastern.

See our blog post for full details!

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GOAL of $5000 ACHIEVED!!

...and we've gone a bit over too!

The contest for the Turbine Points is not to end until Friday and I will leave that up for anyone still wishing to donate a little in order to win Moryel's codes! Same with the MadCatz giveaway which is not to end until Monday. We will run the full contest period before selecting winners.

I cannot thank the LOTRO Community enough for what they have done to help us reach our goal. So many have appeared out of no where and helped in ways I was not even expecting. Thank you all so very very much! I cannot wait to tell Child's Play the good news! And I cannot help but smile when I think of how many children will benefit from your generosity and have brighter days full of fun and playtime because you care.

Thank you.

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Reaching Rivendell

Since walking to Rivendell is such a significant marker for this event, we are going to schedule the walk for this weekend in the hopes we can get as many players to join us as possible!

Join us Saturday, October 22nd at 2:00pm Eastern (-4 GMT) on Landroval as we walk from the Ford of Bruinen to Rivendell!

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR LANDROVAL VISITORS:
Last walk we learned you must be at least level 15 to be able to be summoned to the Trollshaws. If you would like to participate in the walk please plan to either:

• prepare by reaching at least level 15 so you can be summoned or
• login early and walk to the edge of the Trollshaws where we can hopefully get you and escort you to the Ford of Bruinen

I know that it is possible to walk to the Trollshaws at a low level (we had a brave hobbit that made it all the way to Bilbo’s Trolls alone on his level 6!). We want everyone to attend and will try to get everyone there! I’m sorry for the homework to attend but we have to work within the limits of the game!

Above and Beyond

As I’ve already said, we’ve have surpassed our $5,000 goal for Child’s Play, in fact we've even surpassed $5,500 which is amazing but it seems a shame that the walk has to end at Rivendell when the funds to move on are still coming in! So I’m adding a new goal to the list!

We will NOT stop at Rivendell but will continue on to Echad Dunann (the little camp outside of the Walls of Moria Instance).

Volume 2 is required to unlock heading inside to the actual walls of Moria and I don’t want to leave our low level friends out of the adventure. This could be a very interesting (and dangerous) walk! I do not guarantee we will all make it alive but it certainly will be an adventure!!

The Fellowship Walk ends on October 24th so lets keep going and give those sick Baby Hobbits of Child’s Play more opportunities to have fun! Donations will be available until the last day!

Our site is currently down as our host is moving us to a new virus free server. I have placed the donation widget on our temporary blog here: http://casualstrolltomordor.blogspot.com/

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The Fellowship’s Walk has finally come to an end, raising a total of $6,223.14 for Child’s Play, well exceeding our goal of $5,000! Thank you everyone who has helped make this possible!