Editing The Lord of the Rings (section)

=The Books=
Because of its original publication scheme (the whole thing was too big for '50s era bookbinding techniques), LOTR is commonly, though erroneously, called a trilogy - it's technically ''six'' books, just bundled into three. Tolkien had wanted the whole thing to be one single, giant doorstopper, but he was talked out of that. Thus, we got three books:

*The Fellowship of the Ring
*The Two Towers
*The Return of the King

You have, of course, read them. If you haven't, gtfo and read them. And don't you even dare ''just'' watch the movies. Although amazing films, they aren't the same experience.

==The Story==
[[Image:LotR 1e.png|right|300px|thumb|The original [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|First Edition]] nerd book]]
If you're a filthy normie or you've been living on a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, here's a brief refresher:

Check [[The Silmarillion]] and [[The Hobbit]] to go in chronological order.

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', decides upon his 111th birthday to leave home and entrusts his magic ring to his nephew Frodo. Problem is, Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo's wizard friend, has figured out that something's off about the magic ring once he sees how Bilbo can barely bring himself to give it up; it is in fact the One Ring, an artifact created by Sauron, Lord of [[Mordor]] (and also Of The Rings), and contains a vast amount of his power. Its continued existence is a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth and Gandalf exhorts Frodo to come to a meeting in Rivendell, house of the great elven lord Elrond, where a council of all the finest minds that can be brought together will determine what to do with it. Joined by his gardener Samwise and two fellow hobbits, Merry and Pippin, Frodo makes his way to Rivendell but not before running afoul of barrow-wights and Sauron's chief minions, the Nazgul, leading to him getting stabbed with a cursed sword by the lead Nazgul that would make him their wraith minion.  Fortunately Elrond is also skilled in healing arts and magic and saves Frodo from the fate worse than death.

At the meeting, it is revealed that no mortal artifice can destroy the One Ring (demonstrated in the movie when Gimli shatters a weapon on the unassuming golden band). The only way to unmake it is to return it to the fires of Mount Doom where Sauron originally forged it. Unfortunately, Mount Doom is smack dab in the middle of Mordor and Gandalf can't ask his great eagle buddies to risk death by arrows, Fellbeasts (seriously, why does everyone forget that the bad guys could fly too?) or deadly volcanic gases to fly the ring to Mount Doom for him. Really though, stealth was the only realistic option, even if that meant hoofing it for months on end. And to make things more complicated, the ring itself is actively trying to get back into Sauron's hands, whether by alerting Sauron to its presence every time someone puts it on, outright manipulating people with promises of power, or just trying to GTFO the Bearer's person at every vaguely-plausible opportunity. Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring on its journey and a group is formed to escort him there. The party for this quest is called the Fellowship of the Ring and consists of:

*Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer, hobbit;
*Samwise Gamgee, Paladin/gardener/Frodo's [[Gay|"best friend"]], hobbit;
*Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, rogue, hobbit;
*Peregrin "Pippin" Took, bard, hobbit;
*Gandalf the Grey, wizard (one of the Istari, essentially an Angel in human guise, and on the same tier as Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrog);
*Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ranger, human of Númenorean descent and heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor;
*Boromir, son of Denethor, fighter, human;
*Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil, archer, elf;
*Gimli, son of Glóin, fighter, dwarf;
[[file:Legolas.jpg|right|400px]]
So, off they go. After a few detours and sidetracks, the Fellowship is split into three (even though you should never split the party): Frodo and Sam go off directly to Mordor, as Frodo's the only one who really needs to go and Sam is too much of a bro to abandon him; Gandalf duels a primordial demon to the death (both their deaths, really) since he's the only one there powerful enough to stop it, but since he's a demigod on a divine mission [[skub|he gets to come back]]; Pippin and Merry are kidnapped by orcs but escape and wind up in Gondor, a formerly prosperous kingdom, and Rohan, a nation of Anglo-Saxons on horseback, respectively, after having adventures with Ents; Boromir dies in an ambush but has a pile of corpses to show for his troubles and gets a river funeral; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli form a Human-Elf-Dwarf triple threat team, ostensibly to find and rescue Merry and Pippin, but end up travelling across two different kingdoms and fucking evil's shit up for the rest of the story, with Gimli as Dennis Rodman.

Despite having their own problems to contend with, somehow the members of the divided Fellowship seem to get involved with everyone else's mess and need to sort shit out. Their list of game achievements include, but are not limited to: surviving a ruined [[Dwarf Fortress|dwarf city]] filled with an insane number of goblins and a big motherfucking demon lord with weapons made of fire (the backstory behind this inspired the aforementioned game); foiling the plans of Gandalf's wicked wizard counterpart and his orc army; saving not one but two human nations (and the entire world for that matter); winning a whole campaign's worth of scenarios and battles; and defeating the big bad evil guy of the setting (that is currently not imprisoned off the edge of the world, his old boss had a bigger resume) with enough time to go home for tea and crumpets.

Finally, after going around the most fuck-me way possible to get into Mordor (partially due to bad directions from Gollum, who was conflicted with his addictive desire for the Ring, and an encounter with the [[Arachnarok Spiders|giant spider]]/spider-demon hybrid Shelob), Frodo reaches Mount Doom and is about to drop the ring into the lava when he can no longer resist the ring's allure. <s>Just as it had done at the end of the Second Age when it stopped Isildur from destroying it,</s>(That was an invention of the films. In the Book Isildur never even went to Mount Doom with the Ring) the ring saved its existence from certain doom. But in an ironic twist, the ring's former owner Gollum attacks Frodo for it and bites it off of his finger, dances about happily, and falls into the lava, just as both Frodo and the ring itself had warned what would happen if Gollum betrayed him and tried to take the ring. With the ring destroyed, Sauron's power is all but gone forevermore and his armies scatter. The eagles can swoop in for MEDEVAC, getting Frodo and Sam back to civilization to rest and recover before the hobbits return to the Shire.

But wait! The Shire's under new management, Chief Sharkey. Frodo and company help the hobbits rise up against Sharkey, who turns out to be Saruman, who has committed his greatest evil yet by trying to industrialize The Shire out of spiteful revenge.  Frodo allows Saruman to leave the Shire, but his put-upon minion Gríma Wormtongue slits his throat (and is then riddled with arrows, nicely tying up that loose end).  After compiling his memoirs and still feeling pain from the Nazgul attack all the way at the beginning of his journey, Frodo travels to the Grey Havens and is allowed to sail into the West, where he may find relief from his pain. The story ends on a bittersweet note as Sam (arguably the story's true protagonist and MVP of the closing chapters) finally settles back home with his family, writing the final pages to the Baggins' family saga.

Final apocrypha detail the fates of the characters, notably Sam goes west following his wife's death as he was a brief ringbearer (leaving the Red Book to his daughter and son-in-law), Merry and Pippin retire after lengthy political careers and witnessing Eomer's death before dying in Gondor, Aragorn cleans up the remaining orcs and makes peace with human servants of Sauron, has a son and some daughters with Arwen and dies of old age, followed by Arwen a year later. Gimli and Legolas go west after Aragorn's death, presumably along with the final few Elves who were getting their affairs in order before leaving Middle Earth, leaving humans as the dominant power of the Fourth Age and the Dwarves apparently peacefully dying out after reclaiming lost homes.

==The Expanded Canon==

Besides the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit, there are a few other books about Middle Earth. Many of them were published after Tolkien's death, but were personally edited by his son to make them available to the public. While none of these books are strictly need-to-know material, they can be thought of as great fluff books full of additional stories that flesh out the setting.

*[[The Silmarillion]] - This was an abridged history of Middle Earth, from its creation to the War of the Ring. Here you'll find more information about Sauron and the creation of the One Ring, as well as epic tales of both elvish and human heroes from the First Age, the sociopathic Elf King Fëanor who played right into Melkor's (Middle-Earth's Satan and Sauron's boss) schemes, the rise and fall of <s>Atlantis</s> Numenor, the War of the Last Alliance, and other things. Many people complain about the Silmarillion being too dry and reading like a history book (which is what it is, to be fair); if you’re looking for a ''novel'' - read on.
* Children of Hurin - published after Tolkein’s death, it is also the only complete novel covering one of the First Age stories in the Silmarillion. This covers the tragic story of Turin Tarambar, Tolkein’s version of Kullervo, and how Morgoth cursed him and his family to a fate worse than death. Still an epic adventure that fits well into the Legendarium.
*Unfinished Tales - As the name implies, these are narrative scraps which Tolkien hadn't completed before his death. Christopher Tolkien published this mess of notes on his way to completing two of the Tales (which he hadn't dared, himself, at the time). This book includes longer versions of lore mentioned in the trilogy, such as Isildur's death, the origin of the Wizards, and the founding of Rohan. And draughts of those ''Hurin'' and ''Gondolin'' stories which Chris would fill in, and publish, (much) later. But not ''Beren''.
*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - Poetry centered around Tom Bombadil, who is best described as Middle Earth's equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. He's actually in the first LOTR book but is so carefree and oblivious to the War of the Ring that he's not terribly important despite being implied to be powerful enough to kick Sauron in the balls an walk away without a scratch.
*The History of Middle Earth - A 13 volume series detailing the creation of Tolkien's mythology, includes early drafts and unused stories. Here's where ''Beren'' is first floated, as a poem; and the first (maybe best) ''Fall of Gondolin''. While the early material here isn't considered canon, some very interesting revelations appear here:
:*Originally, Tolkien wanted to claim that he only "discovered" the stories about Middle Earth from a book he translated.
:*Which book, you may ask? Why, just a copy of the [[wikipedia:Red Book of Westmarch|Red Book of Westmarch]]. Also known as that book Frodo and Bilbo were writing as the story progresses. This is because...
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lost_Road Middle Earth is actually our Earth.] [[wat|From before the Ice Age]] (hey, if Robert Howard could do the "lost era of history" story for [[Kull]] and [[Conan the Barbarian]], then so can Tolkien).
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Athrabeth_Finrod_ah_Andreth And that First Age humans predicted the birth of Jesus Christ] (though not in explicit terms). Did we mention Tolkien was Catholic?

==The Cancelled Sequel==
Yes, you're reading that right. After the Lord of the Rings was all wrapped up, Tolkien did at one point feel the "sequel itch" and considered doing a follow-up set in the Fourth Age that would have included the son of Faramir, and with the villains being a cult of Sauron fanboys. But, recognizing that following up the epicness of Lord of the Rings with a much more minor threat was almost certainly not going to work, his heart just wasn't in it and he quickly gave up on the idea. Tellingly, despite how much subsequent creators have wanted to tell their own stories in Middle-Earth, none have yet to try and take Tolkien's discarded 4th Age story ideas and run with them (probably because they've come to the same conclusions about it that he did).