Editing The Hobbit (section)

=The Plot=
For purposes of timeline, read the [[Silmarillion]] article first.

The story follows the tale of Bilbo Baggins (the [[hobbit]] of the title) as wizard Gandalf tosses him into a band of dwarves in their quest to find a legendary treasure in their ancient lost city. The dorfs tell that their forefathers were driven out of by Smaug, a great and terrible [[dragon]] who is the terror of the northeastern lands, beyond the Misty Mountains. The [[dorf]]s need a burglar and hobbits are even smaller and slighter than they are, if you can keep the hobbit from stuffing his face (not like Bombur can talk). Off they all go, then!

On the long way to the Lonely Mountain, Bilbo and the dwarves encounter trolls, visit Rivendell, hide from stone giants, flee a tribe of goblins below the mountains, quiz with Gollum, meet the [[druid|shapechanging]] Beorn, survive a spider-infested forest, flee the wood elves' underground keep, sail many miles within barrels, visit Laketown and finally arrive at the Mountain itself. Bilbo shoots the shit with Smaug, but it catches wind that Laketown helped the dwarves and goes to kill them off. This triggers an exodus of humans, as well as wood elves, who hear that Smaug is dead and that his treasures lay untouched. A great battle takes place for the Lonely Mountain between dwarves from a nearby hold, the wood elves, humans, and the goblins and bat swarms of Gundabad. Some of the dwarves die, but the mountain is secure, and Bilbo goes home, wistfully reminding himself of this larger-than-life journey he didn't even want to embark on in the first place.

This journey sets off a train of events which would eventually lead to Tolkien's most famous work, the [[Lord of the Rings]] trilogy, with Bilbo finding the One Ring and returning with it to the Shire, [[Sauron]] in his guise of the Necromancer being driven out of the Mirkwood and left for his true lair in Mordor, and many of the characters in the Hobbit that would go on to be in LotR undergoing significant personal growth and changes.

We're not here to tell you that ''The Hobbit'' was a perfect epic fantasy. The dwarves are bumbling fools, the eponymous hobbit is a trickster, and Gandalf jumps in and out at arbitrary points in the narrative such as to be a plot-device more than character. But... ''childrens' story''. We judge this by Grimm, not by Aristotle.

Anyway, after the Battle of the Five Armies in which Fili, Kili and Bolg die and Thorin is fatally injured, the Northern Orc armies are severely broken and were left unable to provide much direct help to Mordor, only regaining strategically valid strength when allied with the Men of Rhun. Sauron, in his guise as the Necromancer is banished by the White Council back to Mordor.

[[The Lord of the Rings|At this point, Saruman starts to think about how he could make all of this better and Gandalf starts to think that maybe that curious invisibility ring Bilbo picked up might not be as minor an artifact as it appears to be.]]