Master Lóin, Son of Ladrun, Son of Sórrun, Esteemed among the Dourhands, was a great many years ago employed by his kin in carrying out a daring and mischievous heist within Thorin's Hall. Needing assistance in the completion of his task, he was aided by his son Lonfrik (Son of Lóin, Son of Ladrun, Esteemed among the Dourhands).
The plot was simple, if audacious. One Master Folin (Son of Fríf, Son of Fodi, A Most Respectable Dwarf) was rumoured to be returning from a great journey across Eriador with a caravan laden with gems. Master Folin (Son of Fríf, Son of Fodi, A Most Respectable Dwarf) would then of course wish to sell the gems to other Respectable Buyers. This particular caravan caught the attention of the Dourhands, however, with the whispers of a collection of certain gems being included in the caravan, crafted masterfully in a (formerly) secret Dourhand holding in the Misty Mountains. The gems would certainly fetch a great price from any buyer, but to the Dourhands they were of a value beyond measure.
Lacking funds to spend purchasing what some among the Dourhand leadership considered a "frivolous investment", those most interested in their acquisition instead asked Lóin (Son of Ladrun, Son of Sórrun, Esteemed among the Dourhands), a spy within Thorin's Hall, to obtain them by other means. He would be tasked with stealing the certificate of purchase (used by many dwarven merchants to protect their claim to purchased goods) from the prospective buyer of the gems and copying it with himself as the buyer instead of whoever originally made the deal. Given that Folin (Son of Fríf, Son of… you get the idea) would take a good deal of time to return to the Hall on his journey, he had instead sent associates ahead to work out deals with buyers. Folin would never actually meet his clients until the day of the final exchange. By simply forging the signature of the associate who had worked out the deal on the copied document, Lóin could easily fool Folin into believing that he was a legitimate buyer. He would also use the certificate to claim that the gold which Folin would soon be receiving from his original buyer as payment was actually sent by Lóin himself. With the forged document seeming to be evidence against them, the true buyer, who had actually sent the gold, would seem to be attempting to hijack the transaction, when in fact Lóin was the one doing so.
A day after the caravan’s arrival, the Dourhand gems were confirmed to be among the goods for sale, their buyer was identified (one Master Mudi, whose lineage will be left out for the sake of brevity), and Lóin began his great heist. He himself would cause a confusion over the gold that Mudi would be sending as his payment, hoping to further support his claim to the Dourhand gems once the certificate of purchase arrived. Lonfrik, being stealthier and with good skill in handwriting, would be the one to counterfeit the certificate.
So Lonfrik found himself creeping as a burglar through the halls he had called home since childhood. Beneath Thorin’s great hall twisted dim passageways, connecting homes, workshops, and abandoned chambers far older than the dwarven delvings that snaked past them. Following a crudely drawn map, lit only by a dimly flickering candle, Lonfrik was sent to find his way to the near-forgotten back door of Master Mudi’s mansion, in the deeps beneath the Blue Mountains, where the certificate was supposed to be. Simple enough.
He meandered through the halls, straining his eyes to determine which side of a fork to take, doubling back at dead ends, nearly burning the parchment map as he held the candle closer to it as darkness closed around. He was in one of the lesser-used sections of the complex of passages, mined out for iron and silver and then abandoned, now only used by those who found its passages most convenient to reach their destination. Or by those who valued secrecy. Indeed, he had not passed by a single dwarf since turning into the small side passage that led to this labyrinth. For indeed it was a labyrinth, mined out in all directions, creating narrow loops, tight cracks, and pitch-dark dead ends that would be nonsensical in an ordinary underground thoroughfare. But at least some Dourhand spies had taken the time to map it, and if Lonfrik had read the crude map rightly, he should be arriving at Mudi’s back door within half an hour.
Some two hours later, after much scrambling, backtracking, and head-scratching, Lonfrik stumbled upon a red stone door set into the side of a passage, half blocked by crates covered with dust and cobwebs and lit by a faintly glowing crystal. Upon the lintel, the light reflected off of a tarnished silver plaque, inscribed simply with the name “Mudi”. The right place, indeed. Lonfrik glanced around. Where the passages behind almost gave one a sense of openness in the dim light of a single candle, the small chamber before the door felt decidedly claustrophobic, what with the tightly stacked crates and low ceiling now visible in the light of the crystal. Neither of these bothered Lonfrik especially much, he being an underground-dwelling dwarf, but he glanced about nervously nonetheless as he stood before the door, and not entirely out of fear of discovery.
After glancing around and briefly inspecting the door, Lonfrik slung a leather pack off of his shoulder. An assortment of items clattered around inside of it as he rummaged through, before finally withdrawing a long, bent strip of iron and a narrow knife, hooked below the point. A thief might recognise these as lockpicks for an oversized lock, but there would be no lockpicking today. Mudi’s backdoor was crafted with dwarven expertise, and only those who knew how it was made could say what trick was used to open it. Though not as masterfully made as the famous hidden doors of Erebor and Khazad-Dûm, with the right maintenance given to it this entryway might have been impervious to all attempts at opening it. However, it was clear that this door had not been used since those now-rotting crates were placed in front of it, perhaps a great many years before. Cobwebs adorned the corners of the doorframe, and the door sagged to the extent that, by pressing his eye against the crack, Lonfrik could see its hinges. It was these that Lonfrik had brought the “lockpicks” for.
He began to work at the hinges one by one with his tools, slowly loosening the bolts securing the pins in place so that they might slide out one by one, leaving the joints detached from each other. Hardly a thought of guilt crossed his mind as he worked at breaking into the home of a fellow dwarf. He was still but a beardling, not quite yet come of age, full of dreams of excitement. To him, this seemed to be his first great adventure, almost a rite of passage, liberating artifacts of his kin from grubby Longbeard hands. He softly whistled a childhood tune as each hinge-pin slowly loosened, then clattered to the ground. Five hinges had held the door in place, but a little over a half hour later each had been opened. The most delicate part, however, was still to come. With enough shoving the door would come free of the bolt securing it on the other side, but as a result of doing so it would fall to the ground with a great, unwanted noise. Lóin had determined that Mudi had two servants, and both were expected to be with him, inspecting the goods he hoped would soon be his at Folin’s caravan. But if one had stayed behind, or if Mudi had any guests or kin living with him, they would quite easily hear the door falling from anywhere within the mansion. Lonfrik would have to be careful.
Lonfrik once again rummaged through his pack, pulling out three things: a rolled-up mattress, a handful of pitons, and two lengths of rope. He also took a small hammer from his belt. After laying out the thin mattress before the door, he set about hammering the pitons into the stone, two near the top of the door, two on the bare wall above, and two one the cave wall opposite. Then he attached the ropes, first tying one end to a piton in the door, then threading it through another above, then finally tying the other end to the piton on the opposite wall. With this setup, even after being freed from the bolt the door would still hang from the ropes above, until Lonfrik untied the ends on the back wall and allowed the door to lean outward, slowly allowing more rope and slowly lowering the door until it finally came to rest, softly, on the waiting mattress. The plan worked well. After shifting the door to expose the bolt keeping it in place, then working at it with his tools while continuing to push, the door finally came free. He was a strong dwarf, and the door was lighter than it appeared. The door lowered to the ground, just as planned, with hardly a noise, sending up a small cloud of dust from the mattress, which was clearly less clean than it seemed when Lonfrik had slept on it the night before. Pleased nonetheless, he brushed his hands together, lifted his pack, and stepped through the entry.
