Hello to you all! My name is Gigglewump, and I am your average Hobbit. Handsome, dashing, and with just enough belly to be appealing to the ladyfolk, I'm a real man's man. I like using weapons, my shield is great, and I have a nose for adventure! Let's do this!
I decided it would be a good night to go for a little stroll through the Shire. It's a nice, peaceful place, but I decided to bring my shield and mace, mostly because it makes me look really cool. Wait, what's this? A suspicious fellow loitering around up the road?
Turns out the strange person is not so strange. He's Bounder Boffin, charged with patrolling the roads in this part of the Shire. He was a pretty nice fellow, and extremely generous. I got a new weapon, a hatchet, and a new shield from him. For free! If I wasn't such a trusting fellow, I might think there was something fishy about that little transaction...
Anyways, midway through our chat he started getting weird, complaining about how the night suddenly felt sinister and the air got all heavy. Voices could be heard coming down the road! It was kind of anti-climactic, though – it was just three Hobbits. They wouldn't say what was up, but one of them was a Baggins, and that whole family is trouble. The other two, Samwise Gamgee and Peregrine Took, I'd not heard of.
Well, that Baggins fellow started yelling about getting off the road. He and his posse ran off the road, jumped a fence, and hid on the other side of a hill. Boffin and I were thoroughly confused. Our confusion didn't last long. Remember that strange feeling that Boffin was talking about before? Well, it came back, and with a vengeance. In the form of a Black Rider.
He kept going on, something about trying to find Baggins. Me, I was too scared to say a word. Bounder Boffin, however, was quick on his toes and was able to make up a lie about there being no Baggins family around here. Good for him!Well, we hightailed it out of there, cutting through Old Odo's farm. Old Odo is, as his name would lead you to believe, very old. His farm has fallen into disrepair of late – that much was clear by the giant spiders outside the front gate.
I was excited to test out the new hatchet. Much to my pleasure, I was very good at it. No surprises there. What was surprising was what was on the other side of the gate. The whole farm had been overrun by those eight legged freaks! And worse yet – the way through to the main road was blocked by disgustingly thick webs! Bounder Boffin went ahead and hacked away at the webbing while I impaled, beheaded, mauled, and mangled any spiders that came to pay us a visit.
No sooner had we broken through and gotten to the main road than came a pair of frightened Hobbits. Celandine Brandybuck and Mundo Sackville-Baggins, a cousin of Frodo, were yelling about brigands. In the Shire. What a joke, right? Why would brigands come to the Shire? Well, it wasn't a joke.
Four brigands came and accosted our small group. Despite putting up a good fight (and not cowering in fear, despite what Boffin might say!), we were subdued, knocked unconscious, and taken to a prison. When I came to, I was all alone. Evidently, a gang of brigands calling themselves Blackwolds, sponsored by or somehow working with the Black Riders, had taken us into custody. It looked like a makeshift prison in what could only be described as a compound.
Luck should have it, though, that a pair of Dunedain, rangers from the North, raided the prison that night. Strider, the leader of the two, broke me out.
While fleeing, we stumbled the other Hobbits, who had been rescued by Amdir, the other ranger. Perhaps out of sheer bad luck, Amdir was cornered by a Ring Wraith, one we had managed to avoid by standing on the other side of a locked gate and fence. Strider was quick to leap into action, but it was too late – Amdir was gravely wounded from a stab wound, undoubtedly inflicted by the Morgul blade wielded by the wretched rider.
Strider carried Amdir, and we followed (halfway in shock) to the nearest village, Archet. The brigands had taken us quite some ways – we were no longer in the Shire (Archet is a small Human village north of Bree). After helping Strider get Amdir situated in the shade, where he could rest while being attended to, I climbed to the top of the nearest stairway to get a look at the village.
I think I'm in over my head.
