It was very late and everyone had left the hall except an old man who sat in the shadows the leaves of the old Mallorn made against the moonlight. The two elves inside the hall knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he usually was quiet and kept to himself they knew that if he became too drunk he would start setting things on fire, so they kept watch on him.
"He's drunk," one elf said.
"What do you care?"
"He's muttering about the secret fire."
"Leave him alone. He used to carry a ring."
"He'll stay all night. He should never have been rebodied."
The old man rapped on the table with his goblet. The younger elf went over to him.
"What do you want?"
The old man looked at him. "Another miruvor."
"You'll be drunk," the elf said. The old man looked at him. The elf went away.
"Look at his bushy eyebrows," he said to his colleague. "There is nothing as nasty as an old Man. He'll stay all night and I'll never get any sleep."
The elf took the bottle of miruvor from the counter inside the hall and marched to the old man's table. He poured the goblet full.
"You should never have been rebodied," he said to the old man.
NOTICE:
Persons attempting to resolve the question of Balrog wings by means of this
narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to define the nature of Tom
Bombadil will be banished; persons attempting to find allegory in it will be
shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.
FOREWORD:
In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Quenya Elvish dialect; the extremest form of the Rhovanion dialect; the ordinary Sindarin dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would
suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not
succeeding.
"Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring!
I am too small to carry this thing!"
"I can not, will not hold the One.
You have a slim chance, but I have none.
I will not take it on a boat,
I will not take it across a moat.
I cannot take it under Moria,
that's one thing I can't do for ya.
I would not bring it into Mordor,
I would not make it to the border."
SCENE. -- Front yard of Bag End in Hobbiton, the Shire. Various hobbits discovered standing and sitting in various attitudes suggested by Rankin-Bass films and trippy illustrations from the 1970s.
CHORUS OF HOBBITS.
If you want to know who we are,
We are gentlemen of the Shire;
In many an inn and bar,
By many an alehouse fire,
We dine on six meals a day;
Our attitude's bright and gay;
But we don't mean it that way, oh!
If you think we are cutesy-poo,
Like an Ewok or Jar-Jar Binks,
You don't know what we do:
When we don't smokes, we drinks!
Our dwelling is Hobbiton;
We only stand three foot one;
We use evil rings for fun, oh, oh!
We use evil rings for fun!
If you want to know who we are,
We are gentlemen of the Shire;
In inn and bar, by alehouse fire;
In many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many a bar, oh, oh, oh, oh!
In inn and bar, by alehouse fire!
Enter Gandalf in great excitement. He carries a pack of fireworks on his back and a staff in his hand.
RECIT. -- GANDALF
Gentlemen, I pray you tell me
Where a gentle hobbit dwelleth, named Frodo,
The ward of Bilbo?
In pity speak, oh speak, I pray you!
TED SANDYMAN. Why, who are you who ask this question?
GANDALF. Come gather round me, and I'll tell you!
SONG and CHORUS -- GANDALF.
A wand'ring wizard I,
A thing of spells and magic,
Of stories dark and tragic,
Of counsel I'll prophesy...
Frodo, the Deliverator, belongs to an elite order, a Fellowship of nine members only. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his only mission that matters. His armor is silver like the light of the full moon, jangling only slightly with its decorative gems. An arrow will bounce off its dwarvenmesh weave like a hammer off an anvil, but excess perspiration wafts through it like the winds over the charred plains of Gorgoroth. All the arrows of all the hunters in the world couldn't cut it against this one.
When they gave him the job, they gave him a sword. The Deliverator never l
ooks for trouble, but some Orc might come after him anyway---might want his
armor, or his cargo. The sword is tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of
sword a Hobbit would carry; it cuts quickly into load-bearing beams without
visible effort, and when you get done using it around evil, you have to
sheathe it, because it glows in the dark.
Of the great War of the Ring, and the tast
Of that Forbidden power, the long and
Arduous trek, thru' fiery, blasted plains
With faithful Hobbits and treacherous beasts
To Chaos' edge, and there to cast the One
To endless fire and eternal death:
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that in Rivendell did'st
First teach of the Rings of Power forgéd,
In the beginning how the Dark Lord Sauron
Brought into the world from fiery depths
Of Doom this ring of gold, pouréd into't
His Malice and his Evil; I now
Invoke thy Aid to my Adventrous song
That struggle as it might to take to th'air
Though will I drag from bottomless perdition
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime
And justifie the ways of men to Elves.
Ring of great evil
Small one casts it into flame
Bringing rise of Men
At the end of the Council of Elrond, everyone concluded that 'Shards of
Narsil' would be a great name for a band
"The Halflings, cap'n, they will na take the strain"
"Strider, we've got to get out of this snow. Legolas, did you get a reading on that creature?"
"Fascinating, Captain. It appears to be an unknown creature that lurks in the pool waiting for passing strangers. Ecologically implausible, captain."
"Do you know what it is?"
"I believe I said it was unknown, Dr Gimli. Logically, if I knew what it was, then it wouldn't be unknown."
"Cap'n, we're in some sort of temporal warp, stretching and deforming the plot. The snow should take place a day before our encounter with this beastie."
"Captain, what are we going to do?"
"Boromir, put on that red armour."
"Cap'n, she can't hold much longer...."
Legolas allowed himself the luxury of allowing himself the luxury of a stray thought. What new treachery is this? he mused at the form coming slowly toward them through the world-haze. He reached out with senses sharpened by years of Elvish training. It looks like ... no! That cannot be! It must be a vision. Nazgul spies must have poisoned my lembas.
But the self within himself knew that his lembas was uncorrupted, that the vision that he saw now was not merely of a possible future but of an inevitable future. Yet still it strode closer, and closer, its pointed white hat contrasting sharply with the dull oceans of unbroken forestland and mountainrock behind it.
Galdalf lives!
"I am no longer Gandalf the Grey," the wizard intoned, his white stillrobes
glistening in the day's heat. "Through the Trial of the Balrog I came close
to death, but now the sleeper has awakened! I shall now be called ...
Gandalf-Muad'Dib, the Mithrandir, the Lisan Al'Maia!"
The trouble with writing an epic, I find, is knowing just where to begin. So here I am, quill and parchment at the ready, a full bowl of pipeweed and, dash it, have great difficulty in beginning! That's the trouble with epics, as I suspect old Treebeard himself would say, and wasn't he a one for insisting that every story begin at the very beginning - of time, that is, and it takes all one's memories of school training to be polite to the old boy when you're rushing to catch an Eagle.
I brought this up with Gandalf when he dropped by yesterday. "Gandalf", I said, "Do you remember that old ROP we dropped into the crack of Mount Doom?" He did, of course. It was one of those rectangular - no, I mean rhetorical - questions. How could one forget? It was a tale to freeze thy blood, to make one's hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine - though I've never understood why one says porpentine when you mean porcupine. Something to do with elves, no doubt. I had been thinking of making a start by putting one of the elven marching songs on the title page, but all I can remember os 'Ding, dong, ding, dong, ding, dong, I hurry along', which would never do. Elrond would never approve.
So Gandalf applied himself to the task at hand - and that's a sight to see that makes strong men gasp and the ladies swoon. You could see the blood whizzing through that magnificent brain of his, chock full of all that health food he grazes on with Tom Bombadil. When there's a problem to be solved, just slip a few nuts and berries to old Gandalf and stand back, I say. Frightening, really.
So after a good think, Gandalf suggested Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday, and
I knew right away I held the winning ticket, cash for life with no taxation.
"Perfect" I told him. "That's just precisely where I'll set the starting
post. You have hit the n. right on the h."
On this particular evening, something changed hands quietly in the back of a hobbit-hole in the Shire many miles from the dark realm of Mordor. A small, metallic something. Something which could be accurately described as a circular loop of shining metal.
The land of Middle Earth was almost oblivious to the change of ownership,
which was wonderful for the two parties concerned. The trade went unnoticed
among the citizens of Rivendell, it escaped the Nazgul completely, and even
the dark lord himself continued straight on with his day without noticing.
This was a pity for him, because it was exactly the thing he had been
searching for all these years.
In summer, the scorching sun above Middle-earth sears the land. Perched high on the dome of the sky, it bakes everything down, forcing the Hobbits, the Elves and the men to do their work quickly and retreat to their homes, staying in the cool shade while the orb of light attacks them from overhead. During the winter, on the other hand, the sun only climbs above the horizon for a few hours each day, and then dips back and plunges the world into darkness. The snow drives downward, the winds howl, and everyone, men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Orcs, can feel the chill penetrating to their bones.
Frodo had set out from his home in the Shire, hoping for a chance to see the real Middle-earth. While his official purpose for the journey was to destroy a magic ring in the fires of Mount Doom, he had really accepted the invitation to join the quest because he viewed it as an opportunity to experience the genuine outside world. He had heard stories, of course, about how Hobbits who left the Shire, although naïve and ambitious at first, would eventually turn against the other cultures with scorn, and would long for their cozy hobbit-holes, their elaborate tea parties, their pipes of tobacco before second breakfreast. "Is it true what they say about hobbits who journey eastward, that we all eventually lose the spirit of adventure and just want to return to our cozy homes after a few months," he asked Gandalf once as they sat around the campfire, but the wizard declined to provide a direct answer.
Regardless, he had remained inquisitive during the flight from the Nazgul and
the stay at Rivendell. But as each day passed and the winter grew colder and
more ominous, the dark bulks of the Misty Mountains loomed on the horizon up
ahead. Their peaks seeming to be lost in the cloud cover, the mountains
dwarfed everything, blotted out everything. Their massive bulks weighed on
the members of the Fellowship, and the swirling snow seemed to wrap around
them, cutting off and suffocating them. There, on the slopes of the
Caradhras, Frodo suddenly felt small and insignificant, as if nothing that a
little Hobbit could achieve would ever amount to anything more than that,
snowflakes whirling in a storm.
Old man willow, whistling like a tea pot, shining like a star, oh so
brilliant in the dreaming and smoke and by the river, Goldberry's river,
dancing like a vision, Bombadil, Bombadil, Bombadillo. Rock of ages, young
and ageless, naked before my eyes like Rivendell Rock, sweet and hard and
trusting....
"A balrog!" Gandalf rasped. "I might have known!"
Pippin hauled out his well-worn copy of the Monstrous Manual, while Merry peeked over his shoulder. "I don't see 'Balrog' listed in the index anywhere."
"Of course not, foolish Took," the high-level mage chided him. "The copyright to the 'Balrog' name is owned by the Tolkien estate. Gygax had to call it 'Balor' or a 'Type VI demon' when he put the MM together."
Merry quickly thumbed to the Demon section, only to recall that in 2nd Edition, "Demons" and "Devils" had been renamed Baatezu and Tanar'ri, although he never could remember which was which. He cursed the Fundamentalist Christian parents' groups who had threatened to boycott TSR for creating a "demonic" game, and which had forced that particularly stupid name-change upon them. Finally, though, he located "Balor" in the Tanar'ri section, grateful that they weren't among the discontinued demon listings like Orcus and Demogorgon.
"They're only 13 hit dice," Merry dutifully reported, "But they can cast dispel magic every round at 20th level, so watch yourself, Gandalf!"
"That also do 4d8 damage if they make a to-hit roll with their whip and drag you close to their bodies," Gimli noted. "I'm outta here!" He turned and ran at his full movement rate of 9 (12 if he wasn't wearing armor).
"Leave him to me," the mage intoned. "They're worth 46,000 experience points
apiece, and if I kill him by myself, I get all of those points!" He strode
toward the Balr-- er, Balor, and blocked the 10-foot-wide corridor leading
out of the room. "You shall not pass!!"
The Lake Isle of The Grey Havens
I will arise and sail now, and sail to the Grey Havens,
And a small tower build there, of mithril and magic made:
Nine ent friends will I have there, a hole for the hobbit free,
And live alone in the pipe weed glade.
I sing of Rings, and the halfling who,
Forced by fate and eveil Sauron's unrelenting stare,
First left the Shires for the mountains for Mordor.
Long labors, both by water and land he bore,
Until the doubtful war was won, the destined tower razed,
The evil gods banished by rites arcane,
And settled sure succession in Aragorn's line,
Whence comes the race of human kings,
And the long glories of majestic Gondor.