Prologue: of rings and things
So gather round comfortably, little children, and prepared to have the crap scared out of you by a freaky little story that will make you never want to touch jewellery or go to the movies again.
So there was this hard scary bloke named Sauron, who had a little gold ring with lots of nifty powers, and with it Sauron, being a git, enslaved the free peoples of Middle Earth (read: Birmingham city centre), and the pointy eared guys didn't like it. So they and a bunch of surprisingly normal people set up an army and fought against Sauron. They were getting the shit kicked out of them until the King, Isildur (N.B. all names must be pronounced with a vague and unrecognisable accent) chopped of Sauron's finger, nicked his ring, and buggered off with it.
The elves were understandably unhappy since all this did was prove to them that they'd been right all along and Men were assholes. Men were assholes in fact for some time, until Isildur finally bought it and the ring passed to a weird little creature named Gollum, nee Smeagol, who wanted it for his birthday.
Unfortunately Gollum failed to keep hold of the ring, and it passed to the most unlikely of creatures: a little bloke with furry feet named Bilbo Baggins, whose name would forever be remembered in songs written by himself, the elves, and Leonard Nimoy. Bilbo was a Hobbit, and he took his ring back to the Shire, where we join him many years later as he is about to disappear at his own birthday party, thereby bemusing and annoying a large number of his fellow hobbits, and especially his nephew Frodo, who will become vaguely important later on.
So gather round comfortably, little children, and prepared to have the crap scared out of you by a freaky little story that will make you never want to touch jewellery or go to the movies again.
So there was this hard scary bloke named Sauron, who had a little gold ring with lots of nifty powers, and with it Sauron, being a git, enslaved the free peoples of Middle Earth (read: Birmingham city centre), and the pointy eared guys didn't like it. So they and a bunch of surprisingly normal people set up an army and fought against Sauron. They were getting the shit kicked out of them until the King, Isildur (N.B. all names must be pronounced with a vague and unrecognisable accent) chopped of Sauron's finger, nicked his ring, and buggered off with it.
The elves were understandably unhappy since all this did was prove to them that they'd been right all along and Men were assholes. Men were assholes in fact for some time, until Isildur finally bought it and the ring passed to a weird little creature named Gollum, nee Smeagol, who wanted it for his birthday.
Unfortunately Gollum failed to keep hold of the ring, and it passed to the most unlikely of creatures: a little bloke with furry feet named Bilbo Baggins, whose name would forever be remembered in songs written by himself, the elves, and Leonard Nimoy. Bilbo was a Hobbit, and he took his ring back to the Shire, where we join him many years later as he is about to disappear at his own birthday party, thereby bemusing and annoying a large number of his fellow hobbits, and especially his nephew Frodo, who will become vaguely important later on.