[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lorecast.
[SPEAKER_00]: The show that explores the background of Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first sentence of today's episode is, with such gloomy thoughts followed ever by croaking crows above them, they made their weary way back to the camp.
[SPEAKER_00]: On last week's episode, we discussed a lot of the details of their journey going to the lonely mountain, the way that the landscape and even the weather, the time of year, all of these details compound together to affect the mood, or at least to share in the mood of the party as the closer and closer to the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, we know the reasons, or at least some of the reasons for why the party was in such a bad mood,
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, you have Bilbo, who is concerned about having to confront a dragon and that seems more and more likely as time goes on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it would make sense that they are in a kind of a dark mood.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been on a long journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are exhausted.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know what the future holds.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in some ways, this feels counterintuitive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a few days earlier, they were partying in Lake Town and being treated like celebrities and they were in very good moods.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know that they're getting closer and closer to the point of the story because we've read it before, or we've at least watched the movies where they find the hidden door.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know that they have the hints to help them find the door, the runes on the map.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the runes, let's go back and read those, stand by the gray stone when the thrush knocks and the setting sun with the last day of Durin's Day will shine upon the keyhole.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it seems like they have all of the elements that they need.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are equipped, they are fed, they know what to look for according to the runes on the map, but yet their mood is terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for this week's episode, I've been contemplating why exactly is the mood so bad?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we often read through these stories at least after our first read through with, well, a sense of knowing where things are going and how things will play out.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know the end of the story before it happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that the things that the characters in the story in the events that they're going through are worried about aren't really going to be a problem because they're going to find a way through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're looking at the story backwards, but we have to remember that they aren't.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are living through the story as it happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what that means is that they are interacting the way that they naturally would with the information at hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's where the confusion, at least in my head lies, well, wouldn't that mean that they feel equipped?
[SPEAKER_00]: They know where they're going?
[SPEAKER_00]: They know what they're looking for?
[SPEAKER_00]: They have the hints in the rooms about exactly where to find a keyhole.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the map and the the ruins and the magic all of that is dwarven most of this party is dwarven and the vast majority of them shouldn't they feel familiar with this and feel comforted by the fact that they seem to have everything they need but yet they don't
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't create the map.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Eribor was founded hundreds of years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the runes in the magic were cast by people that they may not even have actually gotten a chance to know in their own lifetimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't really know the details about that, but my point here is
[SPEAKER_00]: that just because it feels like these are dwarven things and dwarven characters can do dwarven things and so therefore they're going to find the keyhole and get into the mountain and looking back on it from knowing the story makes us kind of doubled down on that feeling that's not how they feel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think of it from their perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're looking for a tiny keyhole on a gigantic mountain where one day
[SPEAKER_00]: One day out of the year they will have the opportunity to figure out where that is because simultaneously a thrush will knock on a rock at the same time the last light of the sun will illuminate the keyhole.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they are not at the exact correct location, looking in the right direction at that exact moment, there will not be an opportunity to do this again in a very long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why they're in this mood.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a pressing matter, and if they do not come across the thing that they need in the midst of all of this,
[SPEAKER_00]: Then they're done.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only other option is to go through the front and we were just told that the front doesn't seem like a great option.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like an obvious route directly to the dragon and the place where the dragon would be most aware of anybody who was trying to come in to take his treasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, maybe everything I just explained is completely obvious to all of you, but there's something about the tone of this that felt contradictory in my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe you perceive the way I do as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's keep it in our heads that this is not necessarily going to work out in their minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on top of it, they're looking for a keyhole on a gigantic mountain at exactly the time that a bird knocks on a rock and a sliver of sunlight happens to pass through and point to the right spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is extremely vague.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then this is how it plays out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the narrator here has given us a lot to think about as the party is looking for this hidden door.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're reminded that it was only in June that they were guests with Elron.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, for them, it feels like years have gone by.
[SPEAKER_00]: And remember, they went through Merquad.
[SPEAKER_00]: It messed with their sense of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, they've been through a lot of stressful situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's something very real about the nature of stressful situations and the way that affects your perception of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were at the end of their journey, but as far as ever it seemed from the end of their quest.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it says immediately after this, none of them had much spirit left.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was wearing on them, the entire journey, but also the uncertainty of being able to find what they're looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And strangely enough, we're told here that Bilbo seemed to actually have more spirit than the others, even though he was the first who's mood fell.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the one that's still kind of holding onto hoop.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends his time looking at the map and gazing over and pondering over the runes trying to piece together this puzzle in order to solve it in order to make sure that they can get in through the side door, which seems contradictory because he knows he will be the one who has to go through that door in confront this dragon or at least.
[SPEAKER_00]: sneak around and hopefully not get noticed by the dragon.
[SPEAKER_00]: They move their camp over to another section, which is a little bit more shadowed and kind of hidden in the arms of the mountain as they kind of reach out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everyone is scouring the mountain side, looking for wherever this hidden door might be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Philly and Killy seemed to find what they were looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to read through this section specific.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in quote a whole big section of this, because the details here are so specific and so well laid out.
[SPEAKER_00]: They scrambled down the valley, and these tumbling rocks to the southern corner where this begins.
[SPEAKER_00]: After midday creeping behind a great stone that stood like a pillar, Bilbo came on what looked like rough steps going upwards.
[SPEAKER_00]: Following these excitedly, he and the dwarves found traces of a narrow track, often lost, often rediscovered.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love the way that Tolkien details this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly as somebody who has followed tracks through the wilderness before and seen where they get overgrown or they kind of disappear and then if you look a little bit further you can see where they would have continued.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this sentence continues that wandered onto the top of the southern ridge and brought them at last to a still narrower ledge which turned north across the face of the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can kind of see how these
[SPEAKER_00]: These like arms of the mountain kind of wind and shape around the lower sections of the actual sides of this gigantic structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking down they saw that they were at the top of a cliff at the valley's head and were gazing down on their own camp below silently.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cleaning to the rocky wall on their right, they went in single file along the ledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the wall opened and they turned into a little steep walled bay, grassy floored still and quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: This gives me so much detail.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're creeping along these ledges that from below, they can't tell our areas that you could even navigate.
[SPEAKER_00]: individually, but yet when they're up there, they can see that there's kind of this pathway, there's this ledge, and they can make it one at a time across this area, which would make a lot of sense as a place that you would want to hide a door, a place where you couldn't march an army to.
[SPEAKER_00]: People would have to go single-file.
[SPEAKER_00]: The actual natural structures of the rock face.
[SPEAKER_00]: Protect this door by both hiding it but also making it very difficult to get to with any significant sized group of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's entrance which they had found could not be seen from below because of the overhang of the cliff, nor from further off because it was so small that it looked like a dark crack and no more.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not a cave and was open to the sky above, but at its inner end a flat wall rose up in the lower part close to the ground was as smooth and upright as Mason's work and without a joint or crevice to be seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: No sign was there of post or lintal or threshold, nor any sign of bar or bolt or keyhole, yet they did not doubt that they had found the door at last.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice all the details here that confirm that they have found what they were looking for even though there are no signs of this being a door.
[SPEAKER_00]: No joint, no frame can be seen, no hinges, no keyhole, obviously no handle to open it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet this is the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hidden away, it's hard to see, it's hard to get to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when they finally get to this one section of the cliff face, it looks flat.
[SPEAKER_00]: as if Mason's had worked on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to the eyes of the dwarves, they know what they're looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't a naturally occurring part of a mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something dwarves would have built and yet to anyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: This would have been almost impossible to have seen or to have discovered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody would have wanted to walk on the threshold of a cliff face where they had to go single file and potentially fall off the side of a mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet here they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can tell that they're excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: They begin beating and pushing on the door over the wall or whatever this section of rock is in order to figure out how it opens and to find a crevice or a crack or a keyhole.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet they can't find anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to go back down.
[SPEAKER_00]: It becomes evening and they have to think about, well, what are they going to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: So they rest for the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: They leave buffer and bomber down at the bottom with the camp and everybody else goes back up in order to see if they can't figure out the puzzle of this hidden door.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're reminded about how hard it is to get to this place.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were no bundles or packs that they could carry because the path up there along the side of the cliff was so narrow and breathless as Tolkien describes it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're told that it's a fall of a hundred and fifty feet beside them down to sharp rocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody would survive that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They bring rope and they wind it around their waist because, again, they're dwarves.
[SPEAKER_00]: They know how to navigate a mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: They create like a rope system in order to haul things up to them so they don't have to carry them up the mountain because they can't really carry them up the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, a genius strategy to keep any potentially dangerous force from being able to bring things through that passageway.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so hard to get things up and down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we get this joke about Bomber who still wouldn't come up with the rope.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says here, I'm too fat for such flywalks.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said flywalks, the combination of flying and walking through the air.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should turn dizzy and tread on my beard, and then you would be thirteen again, and the nodded ropes are too slender for my weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Luckily for him, that was not true as you will see.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's concerned about going up in the ropes, and it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows he's a big guy, and it would be very difficult for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's also a note here, and this is a tiny little thing, that he notes that if he were to die, then it would be thirteen of them again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know other than saying, well, this would make a dent in the party, the number thirteen specifically feels intentionally unlucky.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he wouldn't want to leave them with an unlucky number.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the very next paragraph kind of turns this around a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're told that some of them explore beyond the ledge and they look a little bit further, but they really don't want to go that much higher on the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're still being very, very careful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we're given kind of like this tone check.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tolkien chimes in and explains to us, at least the narrator does, that things feel different up here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Silence, rain, broken by no bird or sound except that of the wind and the crannies of stone.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels quiet and still up here.
[SPEAKER_00]: The entire mood of this section of the
[SPEAKER_00]: Outdoors area of a gigantic mountain somehow feels different from the rest of it, or did it feel like them holding their breath because they were on edge.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're reminded here that danger brooded in every rock.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have this kind of combination of silence, which I think is also noted so that we can tell that characters would notice when, say, a thrush knocks on a rock.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the sound of that would be obvious.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't be drowned out by other sounds around them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it also gives us this feeling of them kind of being excited and yet holding their breath, wanting not to interact too much, to draw attention, to not go too far, to not make too much sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yet, we're reminded here that they were so excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were too eager to trouble about the runes or the moonletters.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd let that idea slip.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd found what they were looking for, at least they believed they found what they were looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so figured that maybe they could just make this work somehow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the runes weren't necessary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they could just open the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: They bring picks and tools.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only to discover that that doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they splinter and break.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which seems very odd.
[SPEAKER_00]: These tools would be designed for exactly this kind of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how does that make sense?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it makes sense because it's a magical door.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has a protection spell on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like we've discussed before, magic doesn't look like a video game in Tolkien's mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like there's a force field they can see around this section of the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, the force of the will of the individual who planted that spell willed the things that they would use against this door to break when they were used.
[SPEAKER_00]: and so therefore that's what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magic is way less about force fields and fireballs and way more about the ability to will things into existence or to change the nature of a thing simply because you will it to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: to somehow reach down to the foundations of existence and change the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this becomes obvious to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can't use their mining tools in order to break through a magical door, but it confirms to them that they're in the right place.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then they're also scared of the echoing noises they don't want to alert the dragon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although slumps down on the little grassy space between the wall and the opening, and this is what they're calling the doorstep here, and he decides that he's just going to sit and think until he can come up with something, but in all of this,
[SPEAKER_00]: He's longing for home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's spirits sink because they can't seem to figure out how to open this door.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the line here is wonderful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sank into their boots.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something very Tolkien about your emotions traveling physically down into your boots, something about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hobbit was no longer much brighter than the dwarves.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would do nothing but sit with his back to the rock face and stare away west.
[SPEAKER_00]: through the opening over the cliff over the widelands to the black wall of Merkwood into the distances beyond in which he sometimes thought he could catch glimpses of the Misty Mountains, small and fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about religion before in Tolkien's work and the nature of the way that God-like powers play out in this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, that was the very beginning of this entire podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've also talked about, and I'm pretty sure this is on a bonus episode, the nature of religion being fairly absent from the world by the third age.
[SPEAKER_00]: Men don't seem to pray or go to a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hobbits don't seem to either.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this feels like the closest thing to a prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice he stares west.
[SPEAKER_00]: West is both home to the shire and beyond that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Valinore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the doors would ask him what he's doing and he responded this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You said sitting on the doorstep and thinking would be my job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to mention getting inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I am sitting and thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, the thing he was thinking about was going back to his hobbit hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very Bilbo bagan-zish kind of thing to think about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at this point, some time passes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The very beginning of the next paragraph says tomorrow begins the last week of autumn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thoran said one day, implying that many days had passed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And winter comes after autumn, said Biffer, and next year after that, said Dwellin, and our Beards, and this is a very dworthy thing to say, Dworthy, Dworthy, Dworthy is fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll grow till they hang down the cliff to the valleys before anything happens here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this idea of these Beards being so long, they go down to the valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they start coming up with other ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, well, if we can't get through this door, you've got a magic ring, maybe you could just go through the front gate.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, that didn't sound great to Bilbo.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then some other amount of time goes by and the dwarves all go out to do their dwarven things, they're all searching the mountain side or exercising the ponies or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Bilbo climbs up to this little spot again, sits down on his little doorstep.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're told here he had a queer feeling that he was waiting for something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps the wizard will suddenly come back today, he thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: This sense, the subconscious sense that something was about to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And right before that line, we're told all day Bilbo sat gloomily in the grassy bay gazing at the stone or out west through the narrow opening.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see the puzzle pieces coming together here, a stone, a narrow opening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as he's sitting here thinking, he's watching the sun descend.
[SPEAKER_00]: It lights up the top of Merquid Forest.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he watches as the orange ball of the sun sinks down to the horizon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And remember how silent it is up here, silent enough that he would notice any other sounds that would stand out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he hears a crack.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a bird, a thrush, hitting a snail against a rock in order to try to eat the snail.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we get this, suddenly Bilbo understood.
[SPEAKER_00]: He recognized all of the signs because he was the one that was looking at the map, reading the rooms over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew all of these elements and all of a sudden all of these elements showed up at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he's so sure of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He calls all the, all the dwarves and they come up except for bomber who were told is sleeping, which I think is another little jab at humor amidst the situation where everyone's feeling so down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we get this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The little moon was dipping to the horizon, evening was coming on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then suddenly when their hope was lowest, a red ray of the sun escaped like a finger through a rent in the cloud.
[SPEAKER_00]: A gleam of light came straight through the opening into the bay and fell on the smooth rock face.
[SPEAKER_00]: The old thrush, who had been watching from a high perch with beady eyes and head cocked on one side gave a sudden trill.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a loud crack.
[SPEAKER_00]: A flake of rocks split from the wall and fell, a hole appeared suddenly about three feet from the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't help but notice that the ray of sun is designed like a finger or it's described like a finger, almost like a finger of a levitar himself, pointing at exactly where to look.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another detailed to notice here is that the rock face actually splits open.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like that is somehow not the expected result.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's as if
[SPEAKER_00]: The keyhole would have always been visible, except for now there's a beam of light that points directly to it and helps draw your eyes so that you can find exactly where to look.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or at least that seems to be what they might have expected in the way that they had searched the area.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rocket self actually splits and creates an opening for the key.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had been closed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was covered.
[SPEAKER_00]: and now it was open, which means that had they come sooner, they wouldn't have been able to get in at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was only after this exact moment that that key opening would have existed at all, and had they come appear later, they may not have noticed it, or it would have been harder to find without a finger of the sun pointing directly at where to look.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they get excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bilbo calls out, the key, the key, where is Thorin?
[SPEAKER_00]: The key shouted Bilbo, the key that went with the map, try it now while there is still time.
[SPEAKER_00]: implying that maybe that keyhole will actually close back up somehow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Thorn stepped up and drew the key on its chain from round his neck.
[SPEAKER_00]: He put it to the hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: It fitted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it turned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Snap.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gleam went out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sun sank.
[SPEAKER_00]: The moon was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And evening spring to the sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they all pushed together, and slowly a part of the Rockwell gave away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Long, straight, crack-sepured and widened.
[SPEAKER_00]: A door five feet high and three-feet broad was outlined, and slowly without a sound swung inwards.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed as if darkness flowed out like a vapor from the hole in the mountainside and deep darkness in which nothing could be seen lay before their eyes, a yawning mouth leading in and down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And normally I'll just read the last little section and kind of leave you there with it as we transition into the other part of the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: But do take notes that the door that they had opened that they were so excited to find is described in sinister ways here at the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas actual vapors and smoke were coming out of the front door, instead when we look through this hole, darkness flows out like a vapor.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is way more sinister.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's as if the darkness is something physical itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was so deep that nothing could be seen beyond it, like a yawning mouth, almost like a dragon, ready to devour them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because for all of the excitement, for all of the pride of Bilbo probably felt about being able to help these dwarves again in order to open this door,
[SPEAKER_00]: The very thing that he's probably thinking as this door swings open is, I know it comes next, and it's the most terrifying thing I will ever have to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: don't you just love hidden doors and rooms and magical treasure hidden buried places and things that are hard to find and it's such a mythology kind of fairy tale sort of kind of thing and I figured it would be a good time to delve into at least in the bonus episode this week which if you are a patron come back and join us for that the bonus episode this week will be diving into
[SPEAKER_00]: Magical Doors, another stuff that you can find in the inspirations that may have inspired this kind of exact scenario in the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what we're doing on the bonus episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: This week for patrons who sign up at the tiers where you get that, patreon.com slash LOTR.
[SPEAKER_00]: The place to go if you'd like to join us along with our other new members, Thor L. B. H. Nicholas, Brett P. and Jackson Q. Welcome to the, to the Patreon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for your support.
[SPEAKER_00]: for just being here and being a part of the community.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I always have to shout out everybody who signs up as VIP patrons.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's see if I can get through the list as fast as possible without any errors.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably not going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It came music lover.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eldarian was right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apollo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Asle Razzle, Barney D. Boe, Brandy D, Captain Legolas Turner, Cutter Metalworks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Danil Knight, Weaver, David S. David M, Folkram, Jail C. F.C.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gimlia Break, Ginger Fury.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who on is my hero, Jezard Katie S. Capena, Lori Mason Weathertop, Matt, Party Snacks, Philip M.
[SPEAKER_00]: Richard J. Rosie Rosé, single-end looking for antwives, the best display in TJT.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, I apologize for missing last week's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had some hopes that I would be able to secure some interviews with some people at GCX, and that would be the episode that came out last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it turns out that the interviews that I was able to secure were all about Fallout and Elder Scrolls and some other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't able to get any Lord of the Rings stuff that I was hoping to get done and people interviewed in that space.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean that I don't have some cool stuff coming out in the future that I can't really say yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But cool stuff coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I apologize for missing a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you all understand that sometimes things just don't go to plan and I didn't have a backup episode recorded previously in the week because the rest of the week had been kind of a crazy mess with other things going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I won't go into all those details.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I appreciate your patience and being here to support the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, another way to help out, of course, is leaving a five star review on whatever platform you listen to this on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you do so on Apple in the US and leave some words, I'll read that out on a few trips.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, kind of like this one from Sarutone, who writes exceptional podcast, Robots Radio clearly articulates tokens, LOTR creation mythology.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's reignited the magic I felt hearing the stories for the first time by giving me a new perspective from which to view Tolkien's work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for putting in so much work into this project.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for taking the time to leave that review.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really do appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go talk about magic doors and hidden treasure in that kind of thing on the bonus episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you'd like to come join me for that, that would be wonderful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't wait to talk about Dragon stuff next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're actually going into the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is super exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: The story is heating up.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was sort of a fun dragon fire breath, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, stay safe out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't go down the mouth of a dragon if you can help it and I'll see you next time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to the Lord of the Rings lorecast.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to learn more about other fantasy worlds, check out my other podcasts.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Elder Scrolls lorecast, The Witcher lorecast, and more at robotsradio.net.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to reach out, I'd love to hear from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Send me a note on Twitter at robots underscore radio, or join our amazing community on the robots radio discord.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are links in the show notes, or just search robotsradio discord, or find the link on robotsradio.net.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you next time.