The smell of pipeweed and the sound of merry laughter drifts from the open door of the Inn of the Prancing Pony. It is a Highday, and like every Highday, Barliman Butterbur has opened his  common room to guests from lands near and far to sample his beer in exchange for coin, conversation, and a promise 'not to go up into thin air, thank you very much!'

This week's (March 21, 2025) hook:

Once again, Nob of the Prancing Pony is in trouble…

‘…deep trouble, you damp-footed trout!’ the bellow of Barliman Butterbur can be heard from behind the counter of the Pony’s common room. ‘There’s a fortnight’s pay you’ve washed away, and make no mistake! Dear, oh dear; fallen in the river, books and all! There’s no hope for you—and even less for those books!’

No hope, indeed! Nob, possessed by a fresh love of letters, went out of Bree west-a-ways to purchase new reading material from a Dwarf caravan along the East Road. Though Mr Butterbur firmly dissuaded Nob from going out of town and doing business with the Dwarves (‘They’ll bleed you, Nob, and the books here are good enough for you!’ ‘But Mr Butterbur, I’ve read them all, and five times over—I’m tired of Mr Prescott’s boring old songs!’ ‘Tired of—! Oh, you are an ungrateful little fellow! You’ve got me redder than Miss Honeymead’s—!’), the Dwarves were fair to Nob and sold him, at a good price, books from far-off lands. However, not all remained well: on Nob’s return home, he was harassed by a mad rider at the Greenway Crossing. Whatever occured there (“He was going like a hummingbird’s wing—so fast you couldn’t see him! Nearly killed me dead!”), Nob and his books ended up in the Greenway River.

Now, on this Highday, Nob has returned to the Pony, sodden and just as poor in reading material as when he left the place. Naturally, the common room is a bustle of laughter and cruel jokes on Nob's behalf. But some kinder souls sit and contemplate just what may have happened to Nob's books, whether they sunk into the river silt or found their way down to Halecatch Lake... or whether they might somehow end up back in the hands of poor old Nob, what ever Mr Barliman Butterbur says. Stranger things have happened in Bree!

Please note that this week's hook responds to Roleplayers of LOTRO's 'Refurbishing the Brandy Hall Archives' special event prompt, which prompts RPers to supply Merry Brandybuck with lore in his quest to restore the ancestral library at Brandy Hall. Once 150 pieces of lore have been collected, a story-based celebration in LOTRO's Buckland will be triggered, as well as the reveal of a brand new project we have been working on for the roleplay community, codenamed Project Kalimac. Reactions to this post on ROL's LFRP Board will count towards the special event's Lore Count.