The Failure of Mordor

She was just a normal girl, living normal life. Now she is something else. A spectre, a ghost that cannot die. The Shadow of Mordor. Except she is really damn bad at it.

Anna Fletcher was nobody special, just another twenty-one coasting through life on charm and weekend plans. A typical party girl who lived by the philosophy that hangovers were temporary but stories lasted forever. Her biggest concern was usually which club to hit on Saturday night.

That all changed when she woke up not hungover in her bed, but in some bizarre place, with even more bizarre leather armor on her and a sword in her hand. But the most disturbing discovery was a wraith of ghost talking to her, apparently fused to her very being.

Her reaction was entirely reasonable: she screamed. This immediately attracted a nearby orc garrison, who swiftly and brutally killed her. Except death didn't stick. Whatever dark magic now sustained her, Anna had been "banished from death" itself. Moments later, she reformed some distance away, completely intact and very, very confused.

She then tried to get some information from the ghost connected to her, but the spectral elf attached to her proved less helpful than one might hope. Suffering from convenient amnesia, he knew virtually nothing useful and insisted on calling her a "Gondorian Ranger", a title that meant absolutely nothing to her.

Having no other option really, she started to scout around. It didn't end well, because sneaking around as a half-wraith was never part of her skill set. Stabbed by orc, shot by arrows, mauled by wild beasts, set on fire, dying from falling off the cliff after trying to "parkour", she died, again and again.

Then as she continued to die, by chance she met Gollum, and everything clicked then. She recognized the scrawny bastard immediately from memes, and knew now that she was stuck in Middle-Earth, in some nerd wet dream that for her was a nightmare.

Gollum, surprisingly, could see the elf ghost. Even more surprisingly, he claimed knowledge of how to restore its memories and potentially make her stronger, giving her an actual fighting chance in this hellscape. Despite trusting him about as much as a gas station sushi, Anna had