Frostbluff Theatre

The last two Yule festivals brought an array of fun new activities to LOTRO.  A very popular and unique place to visit has been the Frostbluff Theatre.  Nowhere else can LOTRO players have the chance to formally perform (and critique!) for each other in such a manner.  The plays put on by the G.L.O.B.E. (Green Lily Orators, Bards, and Entertainers) company and the chance to act in one or be an audience member are more than enough draw in and of themselves.  But there's much more to this little theatre that we get to visit only once a year.

I have already mentioned how Turbine pays homage to one of their own characters in the Old Bloodtusk post.

The actual play we get to see and participate in, "The Curious Disappearance of Mad Baggins," carries much more subtle lore than might be seen at face value. It harks back to the strange events of several years ago, on the day of Bilbo's Eleventy-first birthday party.  This is of course the day he disappeared, and did so in a very strange and mysterious manner that caused quite a stir in and beyond The Shire for years afterward.

Remember, this play is the interpretation of local Hobbits who have stayed behind in The Shire, with virtually no idea of the events relating to the War of the Ring or the implications for their own world.   So we see the perspectives of the local Hobbits throughout the play.  Party goers expect to receive gold and jewels as party gifts, because naturally Bilbo is swimming in them after his great Adventure.

The antagonists are the Evil Dwarf and Gandalf the Villain.  Knowing all that we know, this is of course absurd.  But the Dwarves who spirited Bilbo away on their "adventure" are viewed by the other Hobbits as suspicious and up to no good.  The villainous Gandalf is their ringleader.  Gandalf is credited with having an "evil plan" up his sleeve.  The Evil Dwarf is described as "sour-looking," and their ultimate plan is to of course steal the great fortune that everyone believes Bilbo possesses.  Frodo is viewed as a bit of a dupe, and Bilbo is quite mental, though still the hero of the story.  Bilbo's disappearance is attributed to the two villains, the Dwarf and Gandalf, "doing away" with Bilbo and making off with his treasure.

The tendency for Hobbits to view outsiders with suspicion, including other Hobbits, and attribute less than noble motives to outsiders is found throughout The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  Gandalf was generally held between distant respect for his skills with "fires, smokes, and lights" and some disdain for how he would lead innocent Hobbit lads and lasses "off into the Blue for mad adventures." 

The books do reflect these growing attitudes toward Gandalf - in the time after Bilbo's disappearance, Gandalf returns to Bag End to speak to Frodo and admits that his reputation is in decline:  "I find that I have become rather unpopular.  They say I am a nuisance and a disturber of the peace.  Some people are actually accusing me of spiriting Bilbo away, or worse.  If you want to know, there is supposed to be a plot between you and me to get hold of his wealth."  Although the local Hobbits believed Bilbo was mad (at the end of The Hobbit we are informed that upon his return to The Shire, he discovers he has lost his reputation) and odd, the blame for his disappearance was "mostly laid on Gandalf."  As for Dwarves, it is stated that companies of Dwarves who passed through The Shire to and from the Blue Mountains were the chief source of outside news for Hobbits, yet as a rule Dwarves would say little to the Hobbits, and the Hobbits would not go out of their way to speak to the Dwarves.  So the seemingly over-the-top play is actually quite representative of the attitudes and beliefs concerning Bilbo's disappearance and particularly Gandalf's role.

Another point of interest in the Frostbluff Theatre actually falls into my Cracked Egg category.  If you sit and watch the play, you may notice in between performances that there are a couple of Hobbit critics up in a balcony overlooking the stage.  These two sharp-witted gentleman are Waldo Tunnley and Statdor Proudfoot, who provide some entertaining commentary in between plays.  Possibly something about their exchanges - the insulting comments, the thorough enjoyment of their own humor - sounds a bit familiar?  Even the names sort of sound like...Waldorf and Statler, maybe?

By the way, if you look at the pictures hanging below Waldo and Statdor, look closely at the middle one.  If you approach it, the image just blurs out, but from a distance it looks kinda familiar now, doesn't it?  Now what would a bunch of Hobbits, who have presumably never traveled outside of The Shire, be doing with a painting of what most certainly looks to be Durin's Door, the western entrance into Moria?!  Mysterious, Turbine, very mysterious.

The painting in Frostbluff Theatre

Look a bit familiar to Turbine fans?

John Howe's conceptualization

Professor Tolkien's own rendering of Durin's Door

Sources:  The Fellowship of the Ring, The Hobbit

Cracked Eggs - Old Bloodtusk

Read more about the Cracked Eggs series here.

At a couple points now Turbine has done a send-up of itself, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

I will admit to being very sad and disappointed to discover that, after the launch of Free to Play and some content updates, Old Bloodtusk was never to be found in his tree trunk again.  Those of you who played before this time know, Bloodtusk was the temperamental boar who lived in a dead tree trunk outside Archet.  Little level 7's would have to take him on, with varying amounts of success.  It was not uncommon to have to stand there waiting in line to get him with other newbies (we were apparently either too ignorant to group up at that point in order to save time for one mob kill, or just stubbornly resistant to doing so). Inevitably some noob rock star would come in from nowhere and immediately tag him ahead of everyone else waiting to do so.  Ahhh, the old days.  I was lucky enough to take several toons through that area, and Bloodtusk was a regular part of it.  But since Free to Play, he's apparently moved on. His trunk is still there, though.

Nobody's home.

So imagine my pleasure when the Frostbluff Theatre first advertised its new play, an Ode to Old Bloodtusk, in 2010!  I sat excitedly in the theatre, waiting to see what would happen.  Only to be surprised by a change of plans and a play instead about that Mad Baggins.  I wanted to see Old Bloodtusk!  But I really enjoyed how cleverly they added that tiny nod to a popular part of their own game.  I still have high hopes that some day we really might see a Bloodtusk play.

Naturally I was even more excited when I arrived in Dunland a year later, and just outside Galtrev wandered into an area titled Bloodtusk's Den!  My heart raced as I imagined seeing Old Bloodtusk again after all this time and distance!  I eventually picked up the quest to go back to the Den, only to discover this was actually a descendant of Old Bloodtusk, that "old, grisled boar" who had wandered down from the north.  This youngster was called Big Bloodtusk.  How Big Bloodtusk came about so quickly, and grew so large in such a brief amount of time, I'm not quite sure.  But he certainly is a big boy and Old Bloodtusk must have been very proud.

I like how Turbine nested this little joke within a joke about one of their own characters.  He may have been a relatively small and insignificant mob, but for new baby toons, he was definitely a memorable one.  And it has been nice to cross paths with at least his reputation, and a descendant, on my journey south.  It also gives me hope that the now unemployed rep barter NPC's may have found jobs elsewhere in Middle Earth, and that we'll encounter them somewhere as well.

Dwaling and a Lost Lead Dog

In my prior post on the Bird and Baby Inn, I talked about the group of Hobbits who congregate in the back room, deep in literary discussion.  One very important Hobbit is missing, where in Middle Earth can he be?

If one takes a stable point from Michel Delving, over to Hobbiton, up through Overhill to Brockenborings, and then north to Oatbarton, you'll eventually discover a small village north of Oatbarton that has been overrun by brigands of the worst kind.  Dwaling was once a snug, peaceful little town inhabited by artisan glass blowers.  Recently much of the property in Dwaling was purchased by some mysterious Hobbit from the Westfarthing, who then sold it to some Big Folk, who subsequently turned out to be ruffians working for the equally mysterious "Sharkey" (or Sharku, as the half-orc properly calls him) and quite rude, to boot.  And the Hobbit who sold all the property in Dwaling to this band of no-gooders?  That naughty Lotho Sackville-Baggins.  No surprises there, eh?

The remaining residents of Dwaling have turned to a local Hobbit of respect who apparently has some good writing skills, Mr. Ronald Dwale, to help them draft a letter to the chief ruffian in Dwaling.  Mr. Dwale is none other than LOTRO's doppelganger of Professor Tolkien himself. A number of biographical sources state that his family called him "Ronald."

Your first meeting with Mr. Dwale may actually be to assist him in a quest to find a toy that his young son recently lost (Lost Dog).  Turbine has again wonderfully integrated an event from Professor Tolkien's life into the story line here.  In 1925, the Tolkien family went on a holiday to the Yorkshire coast, where one of his young sons lost a favorite toy lead dog.  Professor Tolkien created a short story about the lost toy dog, which was submitted for publication a decade later after The Hobbit had been accepted, yet was never published until many years later and after his death.  You may read more about Roverandom and the story of the little toy lead dog at Tolkien-Online.  In the world of LOTRO's Middle Earth, however, the destiny of the toy dog is a bit nastier - it appears to have been eaten by one of the Sand Nerbyg from the dunes of the Barandalf!  Washing it off in the Brandywine before returning it to Mr. Dwale might be a considerate thing to do.

Turbine gives us two additional chances to help the good Mr. Dwale.  He seems to have lost a page from his notes that contained the first lines of a story he has been working on.  Possibly one of the most important pieces of Hobbit literature - don't just stand there, go help him!  Although just imagine where we would all be if he hadn't chosen to edit that first line....

After you have assisted him, Mr. Dwale decides he had better take advantage of the flowing creative juices (and I'm sure we would all thank him for that) and skip meeting with his friends - none other than the group at the Bird and Baby Inn in Michel Delving. They are naturally a bit disappointed, and a couple of them had hoped to read from some of their own works.  But they are ultimately understanding friends in the end.

Jack Lewisdown expressing his disappointment.

A wonderful reward for assisting Mr. Dwale is a pipe that matches his own, and which emits a very pretty smoke shape!

Unfortunately you can only smoke his pipe once every hour; probably a good thing, as these Hobbits seem to be cloaked in smoke half the time - can't be healthy at all.
  
You may encounter Mr. Dwale twice more in your journeys through Middle Earth - he shows his linguistic skills during one of the chapters for the In Their Absence quest group.

Those lucky enough to be invited backstage at the G.L.O.B.E. theatre in Frostbluff may also catch a glimpse of him hurriedly finishing a play.

Leeowyn enjoying a smoke with Mr. Dwale.