Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lorecast, the show that explores the end of chapter 7,

Tolkien continues to weave these mysteries for us.

And after a brief reprieve, a brief resting moment for the party to kind of catch their breath and resupply, they are back on their way again.

And in very Tolkien fashion, the stakes are raising.

The tension is rising.

We're moving from a place of relaxation and a little bit of humor kind of sprinkled in to, well, the boundaries of Merckwood.

And not only are we reminded a few times during this section of the story, how dangerous the upcoming journey is, the rest of their journey is. But we're also told that, well,

the dwarves and Bilbo are going to have to go at this next part of the journey alone.

Gandalf is leaving them. And this is something that happens in stories like this, when you have

a character who represents a much more powerful,

capable character who would lower the tension if they were included, a character who makes

things too easy for everybody else there. Things like this happen in Marvel movies all the

time. You have a character like Thor, a literal god of thunder, somebody

who outpaces most of the Avengers when he first shows up in the Avengers movie. I mean,

you've got a guy in a iron suit. You have a super soldier. You have a guy who turns into a Hulk,

but then you have a guy who shoots arrows very, very accurately and a super spy. But Thor is a different kind of thing.

He's an alien who can summon the power of lightning at will.

And so what do you do with that scenario?

Well, you isolate or you remove the most powerful individual from the group

so that the tension can naturally rise for everyone

else. This is a very similar situation you have here. Gandalf, as we have seen, has come to the

aid of the party multiple times. He's gotten them out of these dangerous situations with the trolls,

...