[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lorecast.
[SPEAKER_00]: The show that explores the background of tokens amazing world from the very beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: one of the ways that you can tell that the background of the world is more fleshed out in the fellowship of the ring than it was in the Hobbit is the way the first few chapters go.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a distinct difference between the way that we're introduced to Bilbo in the Hobbit versus Frodo in the fellowship of the ring.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the Hobbit we have a fairy tale and it starts with this cute little guy who lives under a hill and
[SPEAKER_01]: He goes off in an adventure with some dwarves.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's very little conversation about the greater community, about his friends, his family, anything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the fellowship of the ring, it's completely the opposite.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not a brisk little adventure where people show up on Frodo's doorstep, and he is whisked away into the greater world.
[SPEAKER_01]: We spend a lot of time in chapter one, which is a fairly long chapter, and now in chapter two, talking about the place where this character lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we get introductions to other characters that are important to their story.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get to know their friends and their family, and some more than others.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've already met Mary, and now we're about to meet Sam, and yes, Sam has come up in the first chapter, but this is the first time that we really get a long conversation with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, we won't quite get to the conversation part in this section of the story, but it is coming up next, and I just wanted to use that as part of the description of what's going on here, but we'll get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on top of that, Tolkien spends the majority of the beginning of the Hobbit trying to convince us how much Bilbo Baggins does not want to go on a adventure, how he's much more of a Baggins than he is a took.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in this story, we see kind of the opposite.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have mounting evidence for ways that Frodo is similar to Bilbo, the ways that Frodo longs for adventure.
[SPEAKER_01]: and not just Frodo.
[SPEAKER_01]: But his friends, the whole concept is kind of turned on its head when you think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, of course, there's a meta narrative reason for this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're telling a very different story here.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's events and things that are going to happen and the trajectory of the character arcs, all of that, is very different than it is in the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to have kind of a different starting point.
[SPEAKER_01]: You also have very different characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a kind of in-law reason why that might be the case.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bilbo was one of very few Hobbits in Hobbit Society to go off and disappear and then come back from an adventure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now he's not the only Hobbit in the Shire ever to act oddly and do something strange like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The old took, for example, is somebody that has brought up fairly regularly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he is the most famous or at least currently most famous of these eccentric type characters in the Shire.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've been told that he's not only generous and kind, but that he takes special care to treat his nephews and nieces and other young hobbits in a very kind and special sort of way.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not married, hasn't have kids of his own or grandkids, and yet he goes out of his way to build relationships with this younger generation and to tell them his stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you can see in the beginning of this chapter and other places in the story that that has taken root.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some 60 years after his first adventure, the Shire is a different place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And although the vast majority still think Bilbo's kind of a weirdo, there are a number of people out there who think that maybe he's onto something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Adventures might be a good idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the elves like?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is going on in this greater world?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what are these dark stories that we're hearing from the edges of our borders?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's go find out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter 2, the shadow of the past begins right after Chapter 1.
[SPEAKER_01]: It rolls right through this, and Frodo is still dealing with the social fallout of Bilbo's disappearance.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're told the talk did not die down for nine or even ninety-nine days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, that's a reference to something that was mentioned in the previous chapter.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what's even more interesting about this is this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second disappearance of Mr. Bilbo Baggins, which, of course, he disappeared some 60 some years before this, on his first adventure, was discussed in Hobbiton, and indeed all over the Shire for a year and a day, and was remembered much longer than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, why for a year and a day?
[SPEAKER_01]: That seems like a very specific way to phrase this, which means, it's definitely
[SPEAKER_01]: something.
[SPEAKER_01]: It comes from somewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turns out, I did some research.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turns out, the origin of the phrase, a year and a day, comes from English legal terminology.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now some of you from England might be very familiar with this, but as an American, this is another one of those things that it was new to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It turns out, a year and a day was used as a statutory period to ensure a full cycle of the
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this applied to all sorts of things, a homicide law up until 1996, historically, a person could only be indicted for murder if the victim died within a year and a day of the stroke or injury.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they lived 367 days, the law presumed they died of other causes, or the status of serfs in the middle ages, a runaway serf who remained in a free town for a year and a day
[SPEAKER_01]: It was even using contract law for land ownership and that sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this comes from somewhere, but it's not just from legal stuff and I'll get back to the story in a second because this is so interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: The phrase a year and a day became a magical unit of time in British ballads and poetry as well, because it represents this complete cycle, the full finishing of a complete cycle plus a day, and it was even used and sometimes referenced in Celtic folklore.
[SPEAKER_01]: the idea of a trial marriage and you would basically get married to somebody and if it lasted a year and a day and you decided to stay married then you could stay married but after that period if you decided to unroll the marriage it was like well we gave it a shot it didn't work out we're done and time to move on so why is it used here in this passage?
[SPEAKER_01]: Indeed, all over the Shire for a year and a day, it was remembered much longer than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this might be implying that it became such a feature of Hobbit Society like laws or traditions that use a year and a day that it became a substantive part of just Hobbit Society.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was something that people still discussed and were not going to stop discussing, because it survived for that trial period of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the book tells us that this even became a fire side story for young hobbits about mad baggins who would disappear and with a flash and a bang and then you'd reappear with gold and jewelry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, the little hobbits thought that this character was great.
[SPEAKER_01]: It became a famous character.
[SPEAKER_01]: And isn't that so accurate?
[SPEAKER_01]: The way that stories start out as real things, but then eventually turn into legends and myths that are more about the telling of the story and the enjoyment than about the facts that created the stories are begin with.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as the Shire tends to do, the hobbits all started to explain that he had gone mad and he probably was dead and they were
[SPEAKER_01]: blaming Gand off because he's a bad influence because he's this wizard who comes into town every so many years and then disappears again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the general consensus was that he was dead.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then we're told that Frodo kept up the custom of giving Bilbo's birthday party year after year until they got used to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every year he would celebrate Bilbo's birthday party as if he was still alive because Frodo believed he was still alive.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew he just left on an
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this not only sets up that difference between Frodo and the rest of the Hobbits, the same way that we have that difference between Bilbo and all of them, but it's still foreshadowing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's telling us that a character that we like, a character that we know is going to be the main character of the story holds a very specific belief, and that belief will be confirmed or
[SPEAKER_01]: broken at some point in the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it also does this other thing where we kind of identify with certain characters when we read stories or watch movies, and we want to believe that we're going to see Bilbo again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we hold on to this hope for a part of the story in the future where that will actually be true.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we're finally told more about Frodo.
[SPEAKER_01]: He lived alone as Bilbo had done, but he had a good many friends, especially among the younger Hobbits, like I talked about
[SPEAKER_01]: which makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're the people who are a little bit more okay with the weird things and going on adventures and things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who had, as children, been fond of Bilbo, and often in and out of back end, Folko Buffin and Fredgar Bulger were two of these, but his closest friends were Paragrin took.
[SPEAKER_01]: usually called Pippin and Mary Brandybuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: His real name was Maryoduck, but that was seldom remembered.
[SPEAKER_01]: Frodo went trampling over the Shire with them, but more often he wondered by himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: See how this is setting up the future story.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are already companions.
[SPEAKER_01]: They go on adventures across the Shire.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, Frodo is a loner.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's happy to be with his friends, but he's just as happy to be off on his own, doing his own thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to see reflections of this when Frodo decides to leave the fellowship at the end of this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're even told that he would go out at night into the woods and hills and Marion Pippin thought he was out there, maybe visiting the elves.
[SPEAKER_01]: then they were probably right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now not only did Frodo have a similar personality to Bilbo, but he also was showing signs of good preservation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we know why that is, it's the ring.
[SPEAKER_01]: But being a relative of Bilbo and somebody with the baggin's name, then maybe people would say, well, this is just,
[SPEAKER_01]: genetics or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't say that here in the text, but you can see how people would assume that it was just something with this group of hobbits that was common and maybe Bilbo was the first one they noticed in because he lived so long or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people would say things like, some folk have all the luck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just kind of dismissing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, time goes on and Frodo eventually hits 50 years old, just kind of dismissing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, time goes on and Frodo eventually hits 50 years old, or in the text he's about to, and we learn a little bit more about him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's taken naturally to becoming the Mr. Baggins of Bagend, and that's good enough, but he starts regretting not having left with Bilbo, wondering more about what else is out in the greater world.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would find himself wandering at times, especially in the autumn about the wild lands and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, at first when I saw the especially an autumn part, I thought, wait, did the Hobbit, the journey from the Hobbit leave an autumn, but no, that was spring, that was April.
[SPEAKER_01]: So especially in the autumn, make sense in our own society as a time when the days get darker and colder, a time where we spend more time in the outside spaces where the sky is dark, where our imaginations can drift, where we can see the stars, the stars being something
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you add on top of this strange visions of mountains that came into his mind in dreams.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that seems to confirm that there's more going on here, either his subconscious is longing and imagining these things, which might be the case, or those dreams are being implanted by a power that Frodo doesn't know about yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: This could be another one of those hints at the hand of Louvatar kind of gently guiding the story, not really reaching in and making a big change, but just kind of gently guiding the story, or it could be the Valar, there's something that is priming him for a role, a very critical role in the story that's about to unfold.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would say to himself, perhaps I shall cross the river myself one day, to which the other half of his mind always replied, not yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now notice this is very different from Bilbo.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Bilbo would have any of these thoughts, they would get shut down immediately.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, but no, why would I do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm comfortable here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have my food and my comforts and no.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually a little bit different with Bilbo.
[SPEAKER_01]: The, the will and the want to go out of the shire to find adventure to travel is stronger.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the response by his other half isn't no that will never happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't think about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as instead,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just not time yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I think you can chalk this up to Bilbo's influence on Frodo.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this is actually something that a lot of us as parents may see in our children.
[SPEAKER_01]: The things that we struggled with when we were children or teenagers or young adults or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have parents who struggled with similar things and can provide guidance and support to your children, then they are not as
[SPEAKER_01]: ill-equipped or as afraid to take on some of the things that we took on at those times in our lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we've already shown them the path forward and we showed them what is possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: We weren't the ones like Bilbo who were treging through that path on their own because no hobbits had ever done that before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, Frodo and his friends know that it's possible to go out on a journey to meet with the elves, to have some sort of big adventure and to come home and survive it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Frodo here realizes that 50 was the age that Bilbo went off on his journey, and so that might be playing into this as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he looked at maps and wondered what lay beyond their edges.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maps made in the Shire showed mostly white spaces beyond its borders, and Frodo started venturing off even further.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would even go have conversations with strange wayfares that began at this time to appear in the Shire.
[SPEAKER_01]: The world beyond the Shire.
[SPEAKER_01]: was changing, and we already knew some of that from the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_01]: The world used to be more civilized, more settled.
[SPEAKER_01]: The kingdom of Arnor in the North managed the boundaries and the borders of this part of the world, but was no longer there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other kingdoms we will come to find out are not as powerful as they once were, but there's more going on than just that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The rumors increased and Gandalf has not shown back up for quite some time, so he hasn't been around for them to ask what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Frodo begins to gather as much news as he can, whether it's from these wayfares or traveling dwarves, or the elves that he runs into maybe in the woods, but there's something going on with the elves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ells, it says here, who seldom walked in the shire, could now be seen passing westward through the woods in the evenings, passing and not returning.
[SPEAKER_01]: They notice this is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know that the dwarves often take the east road, and they go through the middle of the shire, and they travel through, and they might stop at an inn or whatever, and they might have some conversations, or be hired by the hobbits to do something.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had kind of a relationship going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the elves maintain a certain level of mystery they travel in the woods, as if they're seeking not to impose themselves on the lives of the people in this part of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And once we realize that they are leaving Middle Earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: This starts to make sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you have a background in the lore, we know why they're leaving middle-earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: The time of the elves is coming to an end.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their influence over the world is in decline.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their power is reducing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is about time for them to migrate over the sea.
[SPEAKER_01]: to Valenor, whether for the first time or back there again, like somebody like Galadriel, and leave Middle-Earth to the people who live there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So at this point in the story, that's left basically a mystery, although it becomes a major part of the story when it comes to, for example, Arwyn and Aragorn.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's not from the elves that we learn about the dark things going on in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the dwarves passing through who tell us more about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now, Frodo often met strange dwarves of far countries seeking refuge in the West.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were troubled, and some spoken whispers of the enemy, and of the land of Mordor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this is the first time the land of mortar shows up in the fellowship of the ring, and I don't believe it's mentioned at all in the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I might be misremembering this, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't even come up.
[SPEAKER_01]: The closest we get to a dark lord and the land of the dark lord is the necromancer in southern Merkwood, because that's what was going on at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And remember, Gandalf leaves the journey with the dwarves in Bilbo in order to go investigate this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here we get an entire paragraph that fills us in with so much detail about what's going on in the greater world, at least what Frodo is able to learn about it at this point, and us through Frodo's eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go through it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says that name the Hobbit's only new in Dark Legends of the Dark Past, and talking about the land of Mordor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a shadow in the background of their memories, what an apt analogy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sauron himself was described to have been reduced to a shadow when he lost the ring and then had to rebuild his power in order to come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: the idea of the land of Mordor itself, and knowledge of those past evil things, is like a shadow in the background of people's minds, even in the Shire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stories have been told about these terrible, terrible things that this dark lord did in the past, and it doesn't speak of it here, but you have to wonder, that
[SPEAKER_01]: does knowledge of the last alliance survive in some way, among Hobbit, folklore, and fairy tales.
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably, probably in some form, they may not know the names of all the players, the existence of the ring, even.
[SPEAKER_01]: or what was going on geopolitically between the elves and the kingdom of Gondor and any of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they might know the story about how the good peoples of Middle-Earth stood up against the Dark Lord and threw him down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that Dark Lord was from a place called Mordor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't do the R-Rolling thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mordor, I guess I could a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love how in any of the movies or TV shows, they say more door and they've rolled out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I should do that more often.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I can't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, well there you go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Discoveries.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here, let's keep going.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a shadow in the background of their memories.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was ominous and disquieting, something that they didn't want to think about very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems that the evil power in Merquid had been driven out by the White Council only to reappear in greater strength in the old strongholds of Mordor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, when we read that sentence, it makes a lot of sense to us, because we've spent a lot of time thinking about these things and studying them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But imagine you are somebody who just picked this book up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're somebody who didn't read the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know anything about this world, and let me read the sentence again, put yourself in the mindset of somebody who has no idea what any of this is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seemed that the evil power in Merkwood had been driven out by the white council
[SPEAKER_01]: So, some evil power, in a place called Merkwood, it has wood in the name, so I guess you can imagine it's a forest of some sort, but if you don't know the story of the Hobbit, you don't even know what Merkwood was, and why there was an evil power there, was driven out by the White Council.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the White Council?
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you read the Hobbit, you may not have a strong enough memory of some of the things Gandalf talked about to understand what a white council might possibly be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what does it mean to drive out this evil and now it's in the land of Mordor in the
[SPEAKER_01]: old stronghold holds.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much about this sentence that if you were probably in like a literature class or something like that and you were teaching the class, you would probably say things like, this is an example of a sentence that you do not put in your story because it's confusing to the readers and will alienate them because you haven't explained anything of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't you don't have a character there who can talk about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like Gandalf isn't giving this information and explaining what the White Council is and why that's important or the history of these places.
[SPEAKER_01]: you would probably avoid a sentence like this in this moment and hold off until there was a better time to drop it into the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Tolkien doesn't do that, and I think that is to his credit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are somebody who's reading this for the first time, even if you're somebody who's read the Hobbit,
[SPEAKER_01]: Sentences like this, add mystery and depth and breadth to the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I just say breadth correctly?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, but these are important because when you read these sentences, it only gives you this vague concept and there's enough there for us to gleam some understanding and some meaning of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me go back through and again and perceive it this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seemed that the evil power in Merkwood.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, there was an evil power in a place called Merkwood.
[SPEAKER_01]: Merk sounds like murky, like a dark and ominous kind of place.
[SPEAKER_01]: That makes sense for an evil power to be in a place that's dark and murky.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it had been driven out by the White Council.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we may not know what the White Council is, but in contrast to evil in murky darkness, we are given a White Council.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, those must be good guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, now we know there's a White Council out there of powerful good guys who are fighting against this evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is going to become an important part of the story moving forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: only to reappear in greater strength than the old strongholds of Mordor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, now we know that this evil power in this spooky forest has gone back to its original old strongholds and is the same power.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is the same threat that those old stories about the land of Mordor were echoing the shadows of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is that same power.
[SPEAKER_01]: And from that perspective,
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope that makes sense to all of you when I put it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that we get all the details, it's that the details and the names that are given to us here give us enough to go on so that we can project out in our imaginations, the expanse of the world, the history of this world, and the greater things that are going on beyond the shire, in kind of this shadowy vague sense which will eventually get filled
[SPEAKER_01]: But we do get some more of those details here at the end of this paragraph.
[SPEAKER_01]: The dark tower had been rebuilt.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was said, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now we know there's a dark tower, capital D, capital T that was rebuilt.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people are talking about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: From there, the power was spreading far and wide.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a way, far east and south, there were wars and growing fear.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, very vague, but this helps us to understand the full extent of what we're talking about here.
[SPEAKER_01]: This dark power is corrupting or dominating it's doing something bad in parts that were far away in the Far East and South.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, we know the far east and south are places beyond the map of Middle Earth, the places where the peoples of those areas have already been dominated and are working for Sauron.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, of course, we learn about that much later in the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it also implies places in the south, there are wars and growing fear.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that include...
[SPEAKER_01]: Places that we've been to in the Hobbit know because we traveled east, not south, and this is talking about far east and south.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this section, this paragraph, is prepping us to go to places beyond where we've experienced before in the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's continue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Works were multiplying again in the mountains.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so if you knew about the Hobbit, if you read the Hobbit, you would know about the orcs in the mountains.
[SPEAKER_01]: Orcs are they the same as Goblins?
[SPEAKER_01]: They start asking questions, well, functionally they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those words are inter transposable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that a word?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can use Orcs or goblins.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the movie sense, the goblins are the little guys and the Orcs are the bigger guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: But really, Tolkien didn't draw a discrepancy between those.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, he uses goblins in a fairy tale story because that's a word that that audience would have been familiar with.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then he uses Orcs in this story because it's a much more grown-up term for the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now we know the Orcs seem connected to this evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: Either directly or indirectly, they're multiplying in the mountains.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trolls were abroad.
[SPEAKER_01]: No longer dull-witted, but cunning and armed with dreadful weapons.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you haven't read the Hobbit, both of these things are scary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, these monsters called Oerks and Trolls are out there in the world, but they're...
[SPEAKER_01]: They're becoming more common and they're arming themselves, but if we have read the Hobbit, trolls being abroad that are no longer dull-witted think about the trolls from the Hobbit, the reason they were able to beat them is because Gandalf knew that they were idiots and got them to argue with each other until the sun came up.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this time, it won't be so easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're cunning and armed with dreadful weapons.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we get the final sentence here that tells us that this story is going to go places that we haven't been before.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we know from the Hobbit that there are other things going on, we've seen trolls and goblins and giants and dragons and evil spiders.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are terrible things in this world, and yet there are things even worse than those.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is both scary, but it also compels us with questions
[SPEAKER_01]: and the want to find out what is worse than trolls and orcs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there were murmured hints of creatures more terrible than all these, but they had no name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for tuning in again in the bonus episode this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: We will be going into even more of the locations in the Shire.
[SPEAKER_01]: So get ready for that and come join us if you're a part of the patreon.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're not patreon.com slash L-O-T-R-Lorecasting come sign up and join and get like 200 bonus episodes and a bunch of other stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also thank you to our newest members.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Greg C.
[SPEAKER_01]: Usal, daughter of the twilight garden and Joan A, thanks for signing up and being here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you were enjoying your bonus episodes and your ad free episodes and all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also have to shout out all of our VIP patrons, but before I get to that, we got what I think is one of the most creative reviews on Apple Podcasts that I've seen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty much ever, and I've been doing this for a while in this show, the Fallout Lorcaz, the Elder Scrolls Lorcaz.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of these shows have been going for almost over six years now.
[SPEAKER_01]: This show is about, I don't know, four years in.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember the exact date that I started it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, this has all been going a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: This review is super fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little long, but, but...
[SPEAKER_01]: you're going to enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, if you'd like to help out leave a five-star review on Apple podcast, I'll read it out on a few trips.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is from CoolCat of Gondor, who says straight myth rule, baby.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish I had a voice to do this in.
[SPEAKER_01]: It probably needs to be like a gruffy like blues guy, you know, like Nadig this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You far out fellowship of CoolCats.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: L-O-T-R-L-R-K-S is the heaviest juiciest most out-of-sight-toking rap this side of the undying lands, you dig?
[SPEAKER_01]: This one-man lore machine steps to the mic like BAM, straight silk no filler, no janky ork nonsense.
[SPEAKER_01]: This cat ain't talking to him, he's livin' it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Man sounds like he was born in the second age raised by elves and paid rent in Mithral.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's expensive rent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every episode he lays that Lordown thick baby, slabs of ancient knowledge, prehistoric deep cuts, scrolls on scrolls on scrolls.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking lore so deep.
[SPEAKER_01]: It got a pressure warning.
[SPEAKER_01]: This ain't surface level, hobbit hopscotch.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is valenor after hours jack, the flow, smoother than buttered lembas, on a velvet pillow.
[SPEAKER_01]: The vibe cooler than an elf's heartbeat.
[SPEAKER_01]: The knowledge so heavy, it got its own gravitational pull.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hit play and suddenly I'm threatened through Numenor, like I own the joint, not in a long, like, mmm, speak on it, wise one, this host don't miss.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not once.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every sentence lands cleaner than Gandalf's beard after a spa day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you so much, but I totally do miss sometimes.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you love Lord of the Rings, and I mean love it, then you best park yourself right here and soak it up because L.O.T.R.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lorcass is straight mythic, baby.
[SPEAKER_01]: This ain't a podcast, this is a cosmic lore transmission.
[SPEAKER_01]: This show is so precious, it whispering to itself in the corner.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for taking the time to put that together and to leave the review.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure people will enjoy reading that and maybe it'll convince more people to check out the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we got to wrap this up with a list of all of our VIP patrons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your continued support and to all 200 and two of our current paid supporters and to all of our free.
[SPEAKER_01]: friends on discord and on the patreon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get through the list.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fulcrum, David S. Daniel Knightweaver, Capena, Richard J. TJT, aka music lover, Barney D. Azale Razzle, Laurie B. Norwegian, Myr.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mason Weathertop, Jezor, Gimliabrake, Divine Madman, Rosie Rose, A. Morgoth for President Ginger, Fury.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who on is my hero?
[SPEAKER_01]: Aldarian was
[SPEAKER_01]: Bruce, W, Artemis, Kira-C, DOSS, Robot Moth, Silverstar, and Claude Strafe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for your support.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, I hope you enjoyed that episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was hoping to get all the way to the conversation that Sam has that's coming up next.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it turns out that there was just more to talk about than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to get to that on the next episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you have a wonderful week.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you get niche to go exploring, then hey, maybe maybe the Valar trying to tell you something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you next time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening to the Lord of the Rings lorecast.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd like to learn more about other fantasy worlds, check out my other podcasts.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Elder Scrolls lorecast, the Witcher lorecast, and more at robotsradio.net.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd like to reach out, I'd love to hear from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Send me a note on Twitter at robots underscore radio, or join our amazing community on the robots radio discord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their links, in the show notes, or just search robotsradio discord, or find the link on robotsradio.net.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you next time.