Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, the show that explores the background of Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning. They go by many names,

Goblins, orcs, Uruks,

the things that go bump in the night,

the scary monsters of Tolkien's world, or the corrupted individuals

who prefer violence and meanness and darkness and destruction.

This is the first time in the Hobbit that we encounter goblins.

And in the Hobbit, they're called goblins.

They're not called orcs oroks.

They go by an older, more common name for the kinds of monsters that go bump in the night.

And that's exactly what they do here, when the party encounters them.

They go bump in the night and clap, snap, grip, grab, pinch, nab.

And for as dark and vile and as plain as it may seem,

these seem like the black against the white,

that this is the darkness compared to the light,

that these creatures are wholly irredeemable.

But as we've discussed before, in Tolkien's works,

nothing is ever quite as black and white as we seem to try to remember it to be.

There's something more here.

And yes, goblins are terrible.

They're mean and violent.

And they will do terrible things to whoever they want.

They are not the good guys.

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