From: <<>> (David Sulger) Subject: E-text Prologue Part 3 Date: 20 Aug 2000 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <5025-399F72AD-73@storefull-254.iap.bryant.webtv.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Organization: WebTV Subscriber Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=US-ASCII Mime-Version: 1.0 (WebTV) X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAuAhUAja7Ba8VipjnBIoNsZC11ejfBq8wCFQCHpYeyo6Lyrt1YZLtXyhlslgUQPw== Content-Disposition: Inline Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien,alt.fan.tolkien Ok, it's been a while since anyone worked on the Prologue, so I decided to give Part 3 a shot. Enjoy. Of the Ordering of the Shire The Shire was divided into four Farthings, North, South, East and West. However, just to make things more confusing, and to boost their own self-importance, the great Hobbit families named parts of the Shire after themselves. Due to their political ambitions though, members of nearly all Hobbit families except for the haughty Tooks could be found all over the Shire in later times. There were two other divisions later annexed to the Shire. First was Bucklebeltland, founded by the notorious drunk Gorhendad "Brandybuck" Oldbuck during the Shire's ill-fated Prohibition. The other was Wetmarsh, added after the time of this story. Wetmarsh was seemingly granted as a generosity by King Elessar I(tm), but it was actually a shady real-estate scam run by him and his wife, Lady Arwen(tm). The Mayor at the time, Samwise Gamgee, suffered all sorts of political embarrasments due to this deal. The Shire had almost no government at the time, as the Hobbits were more concerned with growing weed and smoking it. There was an ancient tradition concerning the king at Fornost(tm). Although the last king had been deposed about a thousand years ago by the Nazdaq, and Fornost(tm) itself became a haven of sweatshops, they kept his old laws becuase they were too lazy to change them. They were also too lazy to enforce them, and thus money greased the wheels that ran the Shire. The Tooks' haughtiness came from the fact that they had possessed the Thainship for a long number of years. The Thain was originally the representative of the king, but later evolved into the Commander-in-Chief of the Hobbit armies. However, since the Hobbits were most unwarlike, this gave the Thain little to do. So the Thains took it upon themselves to gain more political power. Eventually, they became the kings of the Shire in all but name only. The Tooks were infamous for their disregard for or ignorance of the plight of the common hobbit. The worst case was the notorious Cassiopeia Took, whose statement of "Let them eat mushrooms," led to the horrible fate she met during the Shire Revolution. There was also the Mayor of Michel Delving, who was elected every seven years. Although he was considered the leader of the Shire, he was mostly under the thumb of the Thain or the Godfather of Bucklebeltland. Most of his duties were presiding over parties and banquets, although he ran the Shirrifs and Messenger Service. The Messenger Service was by far the most numerous of the two, as Hobbits tend to be busy-mouthed gossips. Not all Hobbits were lettered, in fact many of them were illiterate peasants, but those who could put a pen to paper did so to spread all sorts of vicious rumors and hearsay about their political rivals. The Shirrifs were the Shire's police, and they wore no uniform, save for a feather stuck in their hats. However, they never bothered enforcing the laws, being mostly on the payroll of the Godfather. There were also the Bounders who were employed as the custom agents of the Shire. However, at the time this story opens, the custom service had grown lax, as the great families had been so embroiled in their political feuds that they scarcely noticed anything else, and of course, the Godfather managed to get a cut in the customs, as well as practically everything else in the Shire. In these days, strangers began to hover around the border more and more. Little did the Hobbits know of the weed-smuggling operations that were being set up by Aruman the Trader, or of Sauron the Dork Lord's attempts to get back the Ring which he had lost, due to his great stupidity. --Dave