[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]: In today's episode, we're doing things a little bit differently.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are at the point in Gandalf and Frodo's conversation where Gandalf basically lays out everywhere gallum went.
[SPEAKER_01]: After Bilbo took the ring and left the cave.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you've been keeping up with any news about upcoming movies like The Hunt for Gollum, this is exactly the part of the story where we first get a description about everywhere Gollum went and the events surrounding that, which is basically as far as I can tell the plot of the movie that they are about to start filming next month.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in this introduction section, I'm going to be going over some of the things that we know, everything that I could pull together, that we know about this movie, so that we can have that in mind as we get through this section of the story and try to understand possibly what we're going to see in the movie.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, I'll point out some of the things, some of the foreshadowing, some of the
[SPEAKER_01]: The details, I mean, they bring up Aragorn already in the story, even though we're nowhere near meeting Strider yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, of course, there's some juicy bits, but here, let's get into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do we know about the hunt for Golem?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, as of the middle of April, 2026, when I'm recording this right now, in case you're listening in the future.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now we know that it is set for theatrical release on December 17, 2027, a year and a half from now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the movie is still quite a ways out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's being directed by Andy Circus, who, as most of us would probably recognize, is the guy who brought gallum to life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if I remember correctly from the original filming of the Fellowship of the Ring, when they were in New Zealand back 25, 20, however long that was 27 years ago, or whatever that date was, originally they had cast Andy to do the voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: if I recall correctly, he ended up being in a full motion capture suit because they wanted to have somebody stand into the scenes to add physicality and to include movements which eventually became his face and his facial animations or at least the motions of his face is expressions and things like that became
[SPEAKER_01]: Foundational for the animators who were animating the 3D rendered golem at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the filming of the Hobbit, he was basically motion-captured in, and his face was, as far as we could tell, a one-to-one analog to what we saw on the screen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of the time, there's always a little bit of clean up and movie magic that goes on to, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: brush things up a little bit, but Andy Circus with direction from Peter Jackson has basically defined all of our interpretations of Gallum for the last more than 20 years now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it makes sense that he would be the director in the film not only because of this, but he's also gone on to do many other things in the in the movie industry in those 20 something years.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that doesn't mean that Peter Jackson and crew don't have any involvement in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: and fill up a boyants who have all been key players in bringing these characters to life in the films.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that works out well because the screenplay is written by friendwalsh and fill-up a boy and alongside Phoebe Gitton's and Arty Papa Jorgio.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that correctly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And filming begins in May of this year, a month from now, or maybe even just a few weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the breakdown of the plot, as far as we understand it, and I want you to keep this in mind as we go through the section that we're going to cover today.
[SPEAKER_01]: The story takes place in the shadowed time between Bilbo Baggins departure from the Shire and the formation of the Fellowship, right, between the books basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: Coronerative, Gandalf enlists the Ranger Aragorn, or Strider as he was more well-known at the time, to track Gullum across Middle-Earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: The film is described as a psychological drama told largely from Golem's perspective, exploring his backstory and his time in locations like Mordor, including the interior of Baradur and the minds of Moria.
[SPEAKER_01]: it draws from Tolkien's appendices and mentions in the fellowship of the ring regarding Gandalf's year-long search for the creature.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it absolutely references in the design of this movie, the section that we are about to read along with some extra stuff in the appendices.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I find it interesting that Gaulam is the main character seemingly here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are not, according to what I've seen, going to be following Gandalf and Aragorn telling their story about hunting Gaulam down.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems as if...
[SPEAKER_01]: we might get gollum's perspective as the primary character.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, thinking about the way these films are done, typically you have point-of-view characters changing throughout the films, think about the two towers, for example.
[SPEAKER_01]: jumping between Frodo and Sam and Gullum and the rest of the fellowship even bouncing between Erragorn, Gimli and Legolas and Marion Pippin.
[SPEAKER_01]: The films do this a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: They jump between character perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wouldn't doubt that we're going to get some specific end-off in Erragorn perspective parts.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're going to stitch that together.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the fact that Gullum is now going to be a point of view character as he kind of becomes more throughout the the two towers and the return of the king in the original films is interesting because we're going to get some flashbacks.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to get some details and I'm excited to see the details of the inside of Mordor, including Barra Dur.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is going on inside of there?
[SPEAKER_01]: How does Sauron actually manage these works?
[SPEAKER_01]: We get glimpses in the original films of Gullham being tortured in order to find out the name Baggins and the Shire.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what else was going on in there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now.
[SPEAKER_01]: There aren't details in this section of the story or in most of Tolkien's writings that really bring that to light in any specific detail, because as you'll find out in today's reading, Gollum doesn't like to reveal information, and it's very difficult for Gandalf to get anything out of his mouth that actually makes any sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: But eventually he does.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you might be curious before we jump into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we going to get the main actors back for all the different roles?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it looks like we get in Mackellen.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's coming back as Gandalf.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get Elijah Wood coming back as Frodo.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get maybe Orlando Bloom as Legolas because it seems like parts of this journey go up through Merquwood and involve that specific kingdom of elves.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're more likely to get Legolas's father, Thrandewill, and I'm sure a lot of fans would love to see actor Lee Pace come back and revise his role.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that makes more sense for the plot, as we'll get into, but, you know, star power and a reason to bring everybody back together, makes sense that we'll get in Orlando Bloom.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Vigo Mortensen has decided that he is not returning, he's declining, and there are some rumors about who will be cast as him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's fair, you know, as actors get older, or as they move on to other things, it makes sense to replace them with other actors.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been tradition in the movies for a century, so why change that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's fine too.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so I thought it would be fun to cover this stuff and know this isn't like a sponsored section or something that I wish it was a sponsored section.
[SPEAKER_01]: That would be great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, movie people send me a note.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love to work together.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here, let's get into it because we get Gandalf's perspective and explanation to Frodo about everything that was going on with gallum.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this section starts with Frodo asking what happened after Bilba escaped from Golem and he raises the question, do you know that?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a good question, but I can imagine the way that this is phrased, it comes from a, well, it seems like this would be difficult information, but maybe you know what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I'll for response that he doesn't know so clearly.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, what I have told you is what Golem was willing to tell, though not, of course, in the way I have reported it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is very important here.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says specifically, Golem is a liar, and you have to sift his words.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, like so many things that Tolkien writes, this is set up for everything else we're about to discover.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it lends itself to a certain amount of, maybe the best phrase here would be unreliable narrator, but not really narrator, more of unreliable source.
[SPEAKER_01]: that makes sense, because Gola is a liar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gandalf is right.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has to sift his words and sift his words is a wonderful way of saying, try to find the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know, pieces of gold among a bunch of rocks in a river.
[SPEAKER_01]: because those pieces are there and even a liar will sometimes betray the truth because deep down they know what actually happened and not because they feel guilt or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that Golem would feel guilt about lying to somebody like Gandalf.
[SPEAKER_01]: but more that the truth has its its way of seeping in in between the lies and that's what he's setting up here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now his first example of this is the fact that he was referring going to the ring as his birthday present and Gandalf says he's stuck to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said that it came from his grandmother, and he explains that she had lots of beautiful things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the story was ridiculous, even if she was a very wealthy matriarch of a large family in this early kind of proto-hobbit village.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean that it's likely that she would have possessed many elven rings.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says that this is absurd, an absolutely a lie.
[SPEAKER_01]: But inside here is a grain of truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's interesting the way this is phrased.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gandalf says, the murder of Degal haunted Golem, and he had made up a defense repeating it to his precious, over and over again, as he nod bones in the dark until he almost believed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that phrase of almost believed it, because isn't that the way liars work?
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that why liars are effective?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that they come to a point where they start to believe their own lies and it makes it feel more authentic?
[SPEAKER_01]: And off goes on and says, it was his birthday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Diego ought to have given him the ring.
[SPEAKER_01]: It had obviously turned up just so as to be a present.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was his birthday present and so on and on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this also hints to something else about Gollum.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gollum, as an individual before he was, well, when he was smiggle before he was corrupted, was still a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he may have been kind of a kind of a conniving, had a tendency towards being sneaky and some evil inclinations, but like all of us,
[SPEAKER_01]: Killing his friend was a step too far, and notice the ring already gave him the will to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it might have brought it out more, maybe this was an idea that flashed through his mind, but originally, Smiggle wouldn't have just killed his friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: That would have seemed too far.
[SPEAKER_01]: If somebody had whispered in his ear, hey, maybe you should kill your friend and take the ring.
[SPEAKER_01]: He probably would have been like, no, that's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: but the ring had already gained control or at least some control over him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he had to mentally, and emotionally justify this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this was his justification.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now there's some dark stuff here that Candle has to do in order to get the information.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, I endured him as long as I could, but the truth was desperately important.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the end, I had to be harsh.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, like many of you, I don't really like most justifications of the ends just to find the means.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't know exactly what that means, it means basically there's an end goal that is so important that it justifies doing terrible things usually in order to reach that goal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if I can get to that goal, then everything's going to be so much better and the cost will be worth it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a method that goes back to the beginning of human civilization.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something that leaders and powerful people have used for years to justify wars, but it's also something that most of us do in some way, every so often, in order to try to get the thing that we think is more important.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's some problems with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gandalf is making this justification.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess if we flip to the other side in his defense,
[SPEAKER_01]: The ends would have been stopping the dark lord from gaining the power to subdue and subjugate and then enslaved the entire population of Middle-Earth, so he had to, let's just say it, torture gallum a bit in order to get the information he needed.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see why this is problematic.
[SPEAKER_01]: From a very strong moral perspective, you could argue that torture is never something that you should do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet Gandalf found it necessary in this moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, do with that as you wish?
[SPEAKER_01]: Try to, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me know if you want to comment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel like this was justified?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, how did he do it?
[SPEAKER_01]: He says he put the fire to him and run the true story out of him bit by bit through the sniveling and snarling all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it makes sense he would have eventually revealed something, but the problem with torture, aside from the fact that you are torturing somebody, is oftentimes the information that they then reveal is just as ambiguous and difficult to determine the truth about as anything else they've already said.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because let's face it, when you're being tortured, you're going to say anything you can in order to stop the torture for happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: So oftentimes people will tell the torture or the thing
[SPEAKER_01]: But in this case, Gandalf feels like he got some truth out of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gandalf says that some other fear was on him greater than mine, which is interesting because he was already being tortured by Gandalf, and yet he was still worried about something even worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: which makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he knows that Gandalf would only go so far, but a dark lord is much more willing to do anything necessary.
[SPEAKER_01]: He muttered that he was going to get his own back.
[SPEAKER_01]: People would see if he would stand being kicked and driven into a hole and then robbed.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see from his perspective the justification here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you could argue that Golem agreed to the terms of the game, the riddle game, with Bilbo.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you could also argue the fact that that last riddle about what's in my pocket wasn't actually a riddle, therefore Bilbo should have failed the game and Golem would have won.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gandalf says that he hated Bilbo and cursed his name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, cursing his name is an interesting thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a very old timey thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This idea that you can curse a person, not just by saying, you know, gd them or whatever, but the actual idea of cursing someone's name would be to cast a curse on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not just to wish them will, but to wish that the universe itself, or God himself, would curse the individual.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's actually the origin of using the Lord's name in vain.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just saying a word like damn.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not using the Lord's name in vain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you say, you know, bump your toe and just say, ah, damn it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not saying who should damn what, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you're saying that God should specifically curse someone or damn them to hell, now you are using the Lord's name in vain because you are trying to manipulate God into doing something that God would not choose to do himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thus it's in vain.
[SPEAKER_01]: That makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, so that was a fun little aside, but then Gandalf says, what is more, he knew where he came from and Frodo asks, well, how did he find that out?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gandalf explains it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, well, for as the name, Bilbo foolishly told Gollum himself, and after that, it would not be difficult to discover his country once Gollum came out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that makes a lot of sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, think about all the names across Middle-Earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many of them are traditionally tied to specific cultures.
[SPEAKER_01]: And think about all the episodes we've done talking about, or at least in the bonus episodes, we've went over all the different Hobbit names that showed up at one point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they all sound a certain way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the people from Rohan all sound a certain way, elves sound a certain way.
[SPEAKER_01]: The people from Gondor, another way, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The language that they speak in their culture betrays the names and where they came from.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's still fairly true today, think about people you know who come from different places.
[SPEAKER_01]: Typically, you can kind of tell by the names that they have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Gandalf confirms that he absolutely does come out of the cave.
[SPEAKER_01]: His longing for the ring proved stronger than his fear of the orcs, or even the light.
[SPEAKER_01]: And notice that the light is more scary than the orcs are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting point.
[SPEAKER_01]: After a year or two, he left the mountains.
[SPEAKER_01]: Took him a year or two to get out, but eventually he did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gandalf explains how this works.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, You see, though still bound by desire of it, the ring was no longer devouring him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He began to revive a little.
[SPEAKER_01]: He explains that he felt old, terribly old, but he was less timid and mortally hungry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, let's zoom in here on Hungry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure if it means that he had a actual physical hunger, like the fish in the pond were no longer enough sustenance to him, because his body began to regain its strength and needed better sustenance.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's what that means.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it could also imply that he was hungry for something he lacked, that the ring itself was fulfilling something in him, and he needed it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the first case is more likely than the second case, but
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are two interpretations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you might be wondering, what about fear of light?
[SPEAKER_01]: That was even more powerful than the fear of the Orcs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gandalf says that the light of the Sun and the Moon, notice he also mentions Moon here, because both of those are connected to the Valar.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's still feared and hated.
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, he was cunning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And...
[SPEAKER_01]: Gandalf uses the word cunning.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a cunning character that is core to golem's personality, and he finds a way to travel in the dead of night.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the nights where the moon was not up or was not shining as brightly, and he grew stronger and bolder with new food and new air.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where we start to get an explanation about where he goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: He found his way into Merquwood
[SPEAKER_01]: Gandalf basically says, well, where would he go when he comes down from the mountains?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, into Merkwood, well, why would that be the case?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because he was tracking Bilbo.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bilbo went into Merkwood.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Frodo asks, is this where you found him?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gandalf answers, I saw him there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But before that, he had wandered far, following Bilbo's trail.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was difficult to learn anything from him for certain.
[SPEAKER_01]: For his talk was constantly interrupted by curses and threats.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, he's recapping the things that he knew from torturing him and trying to get this information out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the curses that Golem says are all about Bilbo cheating, taking his precious all of that, how he should have squeezed his eyes out, thinking, you know, things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then Gandalf goes on and says, basically that he had days of this, but was able to gather some information from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine having to deal with Golem for days?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he finds out that one of the hints that was dropped among the snarles was that, quote, his padded feet had taken him at last to Escaroth and even to the streets of Dale, listening secretly and peering.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now imagine this, Escaroth and Dale places that Bilbo went, places that were being rebuilt a few years after the events that happened with the dragon,
[SPEAKER_01]: And here you are living in this community that feels much safer because there's no longer a dragon in the mountain that's been revitalized.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet this sneaky creature gallum is creeping around peering into windows in the darkness.
[SPEAKER_01]: This must have been terrifying for anyone who noticed him, and then Gandalf explains how he finds out more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the news of the great events went far and wide in Wilderland, and many had heard Bilbo's name and knew where he was from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, Bilbo was a hero at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: People would have been talking about him and telling his story.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had made a new secret of our return journey to his home in the West, which is absolutely true.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just read through the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody knew what was going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: They knew what was going on with the dwarves.
[SPEAKER_01]: They knew who this Hobbit was.
[SPEAKER_01]: They knew that he had to return to his home in the West.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was all public knowledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: But from this point, Golem doesn't track Bilbo further to the West.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Fred asked why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why didn't he come to the Shire?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gandalf says that he thinks that Golem tried to
[SPEAKER_01]: He tried to head back westward and he went as far as the great river, but at that point he turned aside.
[SPEAKER_01]: So so far, Golem leaves the mountain, he heads down the mountain through Merquwood, makes his way all the way to Dale, learns that Bilbo then traveled back to the west.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he would have had to travel back through that passage and he made it safely through Merquwood.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know exactly how, we don't know what paths he took,
[SPEAKER_01]: He may have gone over the northern part of the forest, but chances are he was avoiding the light anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the fact that he didn't get caught by the elves means that he must have taken a slightly different path than the party did, but he makes his way back to the great river between Merquid and the mountains.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where he turns aside.
[SPEAKER_01]: And off says that he wasn't dented by the distance, that wasn't the problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was something else that drew him, and this is where Gandalf drops the first mention of Erragorn.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, so my friends think those that hunted him for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's talking about the Rangers, and Erragorn was the chief among the Rangers.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Gandalf's friends also refers to the
[SPEAKER_01]: an easy task for them for his trail was still fresh then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now notice they didn't capture him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he must have gone far enough and wide enough around the territory that the wood elves typically inhabited and kept watch over so that he wasn't captured initially.
[SPEAKER_01]: But once they knew they needed to start tracking him because Gandalf had talked to them, they started to follow him.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were able to track him.
[SPEAKER_01]: But somehow they couldn't keep up and they never caught him.
[SPEAKER_01]: The wood was full of rumor of him, dreadful tales, even amongst birds and beasts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this makes me think of ratagast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that among and off's friends who were helping at the time?
[SPEAKER_01]: Possibly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, there were the Woodman.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Woodman said that there was new terror abroad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now remember, I mentioned the part about him sneaking around Dale.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he would have been sneaking around any group of individuals that he came across looking for
[SPEAKER_01]: sustenance.
[SPEAKER_01]: A new terror was a broad, a ghost that drank blood.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the wooden thought he was.
[SPEAKER_01]: It climbed trees to find nests, it crept into holes to find the young.
[SPEAKER_01]: It slipped through windows to find cradles.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: This section of the story already is so much darker than anything we get in the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yes, the Hobbit gets darker as it goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've talked about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this section, the things that are connected to Gallum, his torture by Gandalf, the drinking of blood of babies, is what this is,
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically saying, he's like a vampire, a ghost in the night to these people, and this is where the trail gets really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It turns away on the eastern edge of Merkwood and goes south, and then they lose it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't know where it goes, and Gandalf says, and then I made a great mistake.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gandalf admits to his mistakes, which is another feature that makes him so wonderful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, Frodo, and not the first, though I fear it may prove the worst.
[SPEAKER_01]: I let the matter be.
[SPEAKER_01]: I let him go, for I had much else to think of at the time, and I still trusted the lore of Saruman.
[SPEAKER_01]: Saruman was influencing Gandalf and making other priorities seem greater than hunting down Golem.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we know how dangerous this is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Golem was dead set on finding the ring.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also know that in Tolkien's world, certain things happen for a reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't help but to continue to quote Gandalf here because it's so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that was years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have paid for it since with many dark and dangerous days.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it makes me wonder how many other terrible things that Gandalf have to survive through due to this bad choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he says, the trail was long-cold when I took it up again after Bilbo left here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now we have a timeline, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: He tracked Gollum a little bit, then he gives up on it for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bilbo leaves the trail is very cold.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the search could have been in vain, he says.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for the help that I had from a friend,
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the other friend among that group of friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the elves and it's not the woodman.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here he specifically says, Erragorn, the greatest traveler and huntsman of this age of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Period, just specifically, Erragorn is the greatest traveler and huntsman of this age of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is already putting Erragorn on the level of the greatest of any age.
[SPEAKER_01]: Up there with characters like Turin,
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, Aragorn is not a tragic figure of like Turin.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's somebody who avoids all of that and gets to live to the fullness of his purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it makes him such a cool character.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, we the readers don't really know much about Aragorn yet, especially if this is your first time reading through.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the time we meet Strider, this mention is long gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's really cool that we get this little nugget of information before we find out who Aragorn actually is and actually get to meet him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He traveled down the whole length of Wilderland, so he went south, followed the river south.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, Gandalf says, but at last, when I had given up the chase and turned into other paths, Gallum was found.
[SPEAKER_01]: My friend returned out of great perils, bringing the miserable creature with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to recap, Gaulim comes out of the mountains, the Misty Mountains, heads across the river, heads through Merquid, over to Wilderland, visits places like Azgaroth and Dale as they're rebuilding the years after the events with the dragon, makes his way back through the forest, back through Merquid, gets to the river and then heads south.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then for all they know he disappears, the trail goes cold.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, a number of years later, Aragorn takes up the search, heads, south, and eventually captures him in the dead marshes just northwest of Mordor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that seems to imply that we know now where volume was, the very next paragraph confirms it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So keep all of this in mind when you hear more information about the movie, because this is roughly the path that the movie will take most likely for its plot.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's the last paragraph.
[SPEAKER_01]: What he had been doing, he would not say.
[SPEAKER_01]: He only wept and called us cruel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now notice Gandalf uses us there, as if Gandalf has now joined Erragorn as they've captured Gullum.
[SPEAKER_01]: With many a Gullum in his throat, and when we pressed him, he lined and cringed and rubbed his long hands, licking his fingers as if they peened him, as if he remembered some old torture.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm afraid there is no possible doubt.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had made his slow, sneaking way, step by step, mile by mile, south, down at last, to the land of more door.
[SPEAKER_01]: So first of all, thank you for your patience.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't able to get an episode out last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got very close to actually doing the recording, but then a convergence of other life things kind of happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: And kept me from finishing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I appreciate your patience in waiting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes that happens, but hey, I'm back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm excited to have covered this and I'm so excited about some other things because for the patron bonus episode this week, there is a conversation I've been following on Reddit about the meaning of the word hue when referencing
[SPEAKER_01]: The hewing of Morgoth's leg and if it was hewn clean off like his leg was cut off, or if it was just hewn into like had been cut or chopped or slashed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the members of the subreddit has really broken down all the different places you can find the word hewn.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this feels totally up my alley and hopefully up yours, not up that sounds rude.
[SPEAKER_01]: up your alley as well so come join me for that on the patreon patreon.com slash lotr lorecast and you can be like all of our new patrons who get shoutouts when they sign up we don't have any new ones this week but thank you all for your support and I have to read out all of our VIP patrons before I do that if you'd like to help out in other ways.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Also, you can comment on Spotify or on our Discord.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's links to the Discord in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here we'll wrap this up with our VIP patrons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for your continued support.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to all of you, this is, I can't do this without you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to all 186 of our current paying patrons and all of our free patrons,
[SPEAKER_01]: and just our listeners in general.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for being here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see if I can get through this without messing it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you to Folk Room, David S, Daniel Knightweaver, Capena, Richard J, TJT, aka music lover, Barney D, Asyl Rezzel, Blade of Anderell, Laurie B, Norwegian Myr, Mason Weathertop, Jezor, Gimlia Break, Divine Madman, Rosie Rose, the bestist boy, Ginger Fury, who on is my hero, Al Daryne was right, Evariel,
[SPEAKER_01]: Party snacks, single-ent looking for antlives, where we genius, Bruce W. Chris, oh, I almost did it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably not your real name if it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Silverstar and my name is August West.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, all of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys are great.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're the best.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, we're going to go talk about hewing a gigantic evil Lord's leg.
[SPEAKER_01]: So come join me over on the patron episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have a wonderful week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stay safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: 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.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you next time.