Hello and welcome to the Natacast podcast, the podcast that usually goes through a Song of Ice and Fire

one chapter a week, but not here. I'm one of your hosts Emmett, also known as Poor Quentin. My co-host

Jeff, also known as Brendan Beefish, is taking a couple of months off the podcast for work.

Soon as he's back, we'll jump right back into the Song of Ice and Fire weekly podcast with Sansa's third chapter in a Storm of Swords. In the meantime, I'm picking up where I left

off last time with J.R.R. Tolkien's, the Lord of the Rings. Last week, I covered book four

chapter seven and most of chapter eight in the Lord of the Rings, and this week we're going to wrap up book four chapter 8 of the Lord of the Rings, The Stairs of Kirith Ungol.

I left off last time with Sauron's army emerging from Minas Morgul, a host of dead silence

set on conquering Gondor and beyond.

And leading them on, of course, is the witch king, chief of the Nazgul.

Now, Sauron himself isn't really a physical entity at this

point. He's more like a voice in your head. So the Witch King is the most potent embodiment of

evil we see in the series, even more than the Ballrog. And we've seen him before, as Frodo reminds us.

He's the one who stabbed Frodo at Weathertop, an act of cruelty and defilement so powerful that it

basically prevents Frodo from being happy on Middle Earth after the war is done, along with other

literal and metaphorical wounds he takes along the way. But now the Witch King is back from his fall

at Rivendale, and he has changed to match the changing scope of the story. Remember when the story

was just like a handful of hobbits

on a hill being pursued by one rider in black? Now we've seen it turn into a cross-continental

struggle for survival. And so the witch king is reborn as a general, like he was back in the day

when he destroyed the northern kingdom of Arnor, Erdogan's home turf. He's even got his own crown.

In his mind, this is his return of the king,

an image of man given over wholly to power. That crown flickers with a perilous light, Tolkien

...