Originally published at: This sweet new webcomic tells the story of Merry's horse Stybba from Lord of the Rings | Boing Boing
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No spoilers if the comic addresses this but I always thought it was a little suspect that Gandalf was able to put some kind of protection spell on Bill the pony to ensure he could make it back to Bree safe and sound after the Fellowship turned him loose at the entrance to the Mines of Moria.
If I’d been one of the Fellowship I’d have been like “Wait a minute, you had some magic enchantments up your sleeve that can keep even an unsupervised pony safe from all the dangers of Middle Earth? Any reason you couldn’t have shared that shit with the guys who have been busting their asses trying to fight off monsters for the last five months, you stingy old bastard?”
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That was totally Gandalf’s version of a brush off about sending Bill “to a nice farm upstate where he can play with the other ponies.” I bet Gandalf was as surprised as anyone to find out the pony actually made it!
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it really would have made more sense to choose a ring bearer who didn’t have any fingers in the first place
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But the way the ring resized to fit the finger of the bearer, I bet it would totally fit a hoof. And thus is born the dark pony of the apocalypse.
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Riiight… a hoof…
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Bill didn’t go back to Bree directly, and i think Gandalf was less putting a protection spell on him than he was telling him to head for Bombadil’s lands, which is what he did first. Bombadil would get him to Bree safely after that.
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Exactly. Gandalf had a high propensity for bullshitting when helpful. I have a feeling he really didn’t make an enchantment to make the beer at the Prancing Pony even better as he claimed either but was only humoring the barkeep.
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The way magic works in Tolkien is powers bend their will to things and it happens. Gandalf pretty clearly was doing that to protect the Fellowship the whole time. There were a lot more monsters because Sauron was doing the opposite…but, you know, most of them made it.
Besides, is this really what you want instead?
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I’m pretty sure magic in Tolkien is just like how technology works in Star Trek. It provides the protagonists with no more or less capabilities than they need to accomplish the task at hand, even if that means regularly creating huge plot holes.
Well, yeah, that’s inherently how will-based things work in story. It looks like the hero is down…except…this is really important to him, and so he somehow gets up again! It doesn’t mean that’s not the premise behind it though. It’s not supposed to be fixed powers like D&D.
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Yeah, Gygax & co were insistent that their magic wasn’t Tolkienesque but more inspired by the works of Jack Vance – the idea that magic spells must be memorized, that they take a certain amount of effort to cast, etc. Of course they also wanted to distance themselves from anything LOTR-related after the Tolkien estate sued them for using “hobbits” and “ents” (which were eventually changed to halflings and treants).
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Maybe he got carried there by a giant eagle.
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I know an equine who wants that ring:
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No.
A pony is only a foal until it is a yearling, and nobody rides either. They have to be at least four years old before you can ride them.
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