Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, the show that explores the background of

Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning. That was one of his most miserable moments.

Now this is the very first line of the section that we're discussing today.

And there's a reason for this.

Now, it doesn't say that was his most miserable moment, but it was one of them.

And we've seen that these continue to pile up situations with the trolls, with the goblins in the

cave, and now he's alone. As a reminder, he's been following, well, along with the party, in some ways leading the party,

towards, well, what appears to be a bunch of elves in a forest with a feast, and they're

starving.

And three times now, they've been left in the dark.

And this final time, Bilbo is alone in complete silence and darkness, and neither he nor

the dwarves can find each other.

Now this is one of his most miserable moments, and that's important because this is part

of the hero's journey.

And we're going to take a deeper look at that in the bonus episode today.

But for right now, the details that you need to know about are things like you begin in the

ordinary world, or at least the hero does.

That's step number one of 12.

Then the call to adventure, you move.

And think of this as like a clock.

You're starting at noon and moving around the clock. And of course, you go through these

different steps. Eventually, you meet a mentor and eventually you cross the threshold into the

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