OOC - Author's Note:
The following will collect a number of reflections or 'journal' (diary)-type entries by Lonoric, Archivist Third-Class, as he ventures eastward from the Shire out into the big world beyond. So far it has 4 entries, but will be updated periodically. Where other characters are mentioned, they are done so with their author's permission.
Entries so far:
- "Discoveries in Dust"
- "A Matter of Letters and Leaving"
- "Eastward Bound"
- "Big Town, Big Folk, Big Trouble" (new addition)
- TBD
Additionally: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written, and gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own (as adapted from live-play with others naturally), but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI support in producing it ultimately.
Image Credit: StockCake.com
“Discoveries in Dust”
It began, as many things do in the Shire, with a cup of freshly brewed tea.
It was an afternoon too wet for gardening. The rain had settled in above Michel Delving like an old woollen blanket; grey, damp, and familiar. It drummed its steady fingers across the round windows of the Mathom House, where Lonoric sat hunched amid a forest of scroll-tubes and ledgers, his teacup cooling beside him.
Most folk thought of the Mathom House as a quaint museum, a curiosity, a folly. They might wander in on holidays to gawk at battered helmets and cracked old pots said to have belonged to Bandobras or Bilbo or some other long-dead Took. But for Lonoric, Archivist Third-Class and unofficial caretaker of "things nobody asked about", the Mathom House was a living thing. A murmuring, paper-breathing beast, content so long as you listened close.
It was by chance, or perhaps by that quiet nudge that memory gives to its stewards, that his hand fell upon a slim, leather-bound folio misfiled behind a treatise on cheese-tax shire-law. Its cover bore no title, just a weathered mark shaped like a road-branching rune.
The heading inside read simply: 'Company of the East Road - Operations & Provisioning'.
Lonoric furrowed his brow. The name stirred something, faint and recent. A face, too: an Elf-woman, tall and quiet-voiced, who had passed through the Shire in late winter, seeking records of Second Age trade routes and asking curious questions about Bree. ‘Naridalis’, she had called herself. A rare sort of visitor, not just polite, but genuinely interested in things the rest of the world seemed keen to forget.
She had mentioned the Company in passing. A guard force, she’d said, or perhaps a kinship of old road-wardens.
But the ledgers were not what he expected. Yes, there were the usual rosters of rations, contracts for cart-repair, signed statements of payment rendered to trappers and farriers. Yet scattered through the pages, like nettles in wool, were entries in another hand. Short bursts of ink in a stilted, angular script. Redacted names. Abbreviated places. Cryptic phrases like “Crowlight fulfilled”, or “One lantern unlit at Stillwater.”
It reminded him of a children’s book of puzzles he once had… little messages in code….
Intrigued, Lonoric pulled from the shelf a long-ignored box of linguistic fragments recovered from the Southfarthing after the War, believed at the time to be scraps of Black Speech. He had catalogued them once under protest, disliking their sound and the way the pages always seemed too cold.
It was sheer luck, or some deeper grace, that one torn scroll bore the same glyphs now staring back at him from the Company ledger. So it was a cipher afterall. Patiently, tea forgotten, he began to match patterns. Sound for shape. Phrase for code.
It took him three days.
What emerged chilled him. Behind the polite records of tolls and patrols lay a second story… one unspoken and deeply troubling. Missions marked as recoveries were, in plainer tongue, kidnappings. Contracts for goods in shadow transit were smuggling orders… some clearly involving arms, others more... ambiguous. And worst of all were the red marks beside the names of certain routes: “Resolved. Firehand present.” Another: “Three knives sent, one returned. Stormrider unburdened.”
Assassinations. Within the Company. Sanctioned by someone. Signed off with symbols.
One such symbol… scrawled always in black ink, shaped like a bird in flight…. appeared more than any other.
Lonoric stared at the page long into the night.
He thought of Naridalis. Of the way she had spoken, not just with knowledge but reverence for the past. He could not imagine her part in such deeds. He would not.
Still, he did not sleep.
Instead, he fetched fresh parchment and a wax-sealed envelope. His handwriting was careful but vague, mentioning only that he had found records concerning the Company and that some of them... troubled him. He wrote nothing specific. Who knew who might read a letter before it reached its mark?
He addressed it to Naridalis, via The Prancing Pony, Bree-town.
And as he carried it to the post on the edge of town, umbrella overhead and boots in the mud, Lonoric could not help but mutter, half to himself:
“All roads lead to the Pony, they say. I just hope she gets there before the crows do.”
Image Credit: StockCake.com
“A Matter of Letters and Leaving”
A page from the journals of Lonoric, Archivist Third-Class
A few days had passed when the raven came.
It arrived not with the gentle knock of a post-hobbit or the jingle of a pony’s harness, but with a tap of beak on glass, insistent, sharp, and altogether out of place. Lonoric had been reordering a box of Oldbuck fishing records when the bird landed on the windowsill of the Mathom House, black eyes gleaming with uncanny intent.
Tied to its leg was a letter, sealed not in wax, but in thread spun through with silver. Elvish work, without question.
He opened it with careful hands.
Naridalis’ script flowed across the page like songlines on parchment. She had received his letter, though not in Bree. She was away with the Company in the North Downs, "tending to matters,” the letter read, but his words had troubled her greatly. She thanked him with sincerity, though he could feel the tension behind her ink. She urged him to search further, specifically into any mention of one ‘Deorla’, a once-trusted ally turned rumoured traitor, now spoken of in whispers by Rangers as a shadow reborn. What had she done, and how deep did the truth run?
Lonoric read the letter three times before setting it gently beside his cup.
He glanced at the raven, which now sat calmly on the sill, cleaning its feathers with a deliberate air, as though it meant to wait.
“Well,” Lonoric murmured aloud, “that’s not something you get from Overhill every day.”
He stared across the archives. For all the dusty glory of the Mathom House, it was still only a small island of knowledge in a much wider sea. The deeper truths, if they existed at all, would not be found among the receipts of barrel shipments or the rosters of Tookland volunteers. No, the rest of the story would surely lay in Bree, where the bigfolk where, where the Company of the East Road kept their records, and where folk still remembered more than they were willing to speak aloud.
And if Naridalis needed him to search… then search he would.
He didn’t know her well, not truly. A handful of conversations, a shared fondness for histories, a moment or two spent poring over Second Age routes and Sindarin crosswords. He was quite learned, for a hobbit, but still… there was something in her presence that made the world seem... less hollow. As if his thoughts were no longer strange when spoken aloud. As if someone, finally, understood what it meant to love knowledge not as a tool, but as a comfort. It wasn’t love, not quite… but it was near enough to matter.
So he packed.
He dusted off his great-uncle’s travelling case, stowed three notebooks, a copy of ‘Rambleberry’s Guide to Bree-Land’, two sandwiches, and his best inkstone. He left a note with the curator…. “Off on field research. Maybe gone a while; Bree-way. Feed my plants will you.”
He donned his coat, polished his brass buttons, and stood one last time before the doors of the Mathom House.
“I suppose,” he said quietly to the raven (which had, of course, followed him to the gate), “if Bilbo could make it out his front door, so can I.”
Then he turned his face to the westward road, heart beating quicker than he’d ever admit to anyone.
He was going to Bree.
Not just to visit. Not just to sightsee. But to investigate.
Because something in those Company records had rung false. Because Deorla’s name echoed in too many shadowed margins. Because Naridalis had asked him to. Because he was a curious hobbit…
And if he was to learn the truth, about her, about the Company, and about the dark mystery that lingered beneath their banners, then parchment alone would not suffice.
This was going to take footsteps.
And Lonoric took his first step.
Image Credit: StockCake.com
“Eastward Bound”
As written in the travel notes of Lonoric, Archivist Third-Class (on leave)
If I’d known how many hills there were between Michel Delving and Stock, I might’ve thought twice about the pace I set leaving the Mathom House.
The road out of the Westfarthing was fair enough at first, smooth stone and spring birdsong through Waymeet, where the baker still remembered my name (and my unfortunate spill into the jam stand during Lithe two summers past). I stayed the night in Tuckborough, more from sentiment than necessity, and paid my respects at the family smial. Mother was out, thank the stars; I left her a note and a bundle of dried apples. If she sees me on the road later, I’ll never hear the end of it, “Lonoric, dear, if you wanted to chase mystery and scandal you might’ve joined the Bounders instead of the Archivists...”
The East Road unwound gently from there, golden-green and peaceful. I passed fields and byways I knew from old maps but had never stood upon. Odd, how something you’ve read about all your life still manages to surprise you. The light falls differently out here... and the wind carries a different sort of memory.
Stock sits like a sleepy watcher on the edge of the Brandywine, half-turned to the past, half-listening to the river. I made for The Golden Perch, of course; known from Michel Delving to Bree for its ale, its warm hearth, and the crispness of its mushroom pies. I settled into a seat near the fire, unfurling my notes and muttering ferry times to myself when the voices rose behind me.
Two Men; one broad of shoulder, the other with the lean twitchiness of a fox, spoke in low tones at a nearby table. I wouldn’t have paid them any heed if the name hadn’t come up.
“Company of the East Road,” said the broad one, flicking crumbs from his cloak. “They’ve got folk in every town between Bree and Dale, so I ‘ere. Keep your head down if you cross ‘em.”
His companion gave a sharp little laugh. “They’re road-wardens, aren’t they? Mercs with pretty cloaks. Nothing more.”
“Not anymore,” the first muttered. “Used to be. But there's another side to them or so I ‘ere. Folk talk… smugglers, even killers they say, if it suits the contract. Quiet work. You understand me.”
They drained their mugs and rose, but the oddity of their words clung to me like pipeweed smoke. I looked down at my parchment, my notes on ferry times now ringed with nervous doodles and a small inkblot that might have been my own heartbeat. It gave me pause. I’d believed Naridalis when she spoke of the Company as noble. But stories had teeth. Perhaps so did the truth…. Perhaps it was just bar talk…
I wondered what Naridalis might think of all this. Probably find it quaint. Or perhaps not. She had that look of someone who remembers things. Real things, heavy with meaning. I wonder if she ever sat in this very inn, tracing her finger along a map and debating ferry schedules with a puzzled innkeeper.
---
Next morning, under a grey and whispering sky, I crossed the Brandywine by ferry.
The ferry crossing is something I’ve dreamed of since I was a lad reading There and Back Again under the eaves of the Mathom-house. The Brandywine shimmered with that sleepy sort of light only found near dusk, and I swear the ferry planks creaked with the weight of old stories. I sat quite still in the middle of it, breathing deep as if the scent of the water might lodge itself in memory.
The water lapped like old stories, soft and slow and deep. The river was high and the ferry hobbits seemed to take things slow. There’s something rather thrilling about the crossing. Like the road knows you're about to step out of one world and into another. Beyond the Brandywine, things change… or so folks say in whispers and chuckles, but they say it all the same.
Buckland met me with spring in its breath and briskness in its pace. At Brandy Hall, I heard tell of Master Meriadoc himself working on some grand effort to preserve the old records of the Hall and the Bounders. I made a firm note to return that way on my journey home…. might even see what sort of indexing system he’s favouring. I’ve long held that a well-kept ledger can be as comforting as a cup of tea.
In Newbury, I paid for passage on a modest caravan bound for Bree; boxes of pipeweed, casks of cider, and a few quiet travellers like myself. I was the only hobbit. No surprise. Most of my kin wouldn’t venture beyond the Bounds, unless they had pressing business with the Big Folk further east, and even then… reluctantly.
But I’ve never been quite like most hobbits. It’s the Mathom-house, I suppose, and Master Baggins…. Oh they say he had a hand in my studies, though I’ve never dared ask outright. But the Sindarin primers and the Black Speech scrolls didn’t arrive in Delving by accident, and someone paid for the ink I used learning to copy them. I reckon I owe most of my knowledge to his patronage of the Mathom House in fact!
The coachman was a chatty sort, boasting he could make the trip in two nights flat so long as the roads were clear. I nodded along and kept my folio close, tied with string and sealed with wax, the mark of the Company plain on its spine. Still, as the wheels turned and the East Road opened before us, I couldn’t shake a certain feeling. Not dread. But something... uneasy. I don’t think I’ve the constitution for such long journeys…
---
We passed the edge of the Old Forest under a velvet dusk, the trees rising like watchers, restless even without wind. I’d read about that place, and I clutched my folio tighter, comforted by the rough leather and the symbol of the Company stamped upon it. It was then they came…. silent at first, but fast, and many.
Brigands, masked and armed, stepping from the shadowed underbrush as if summoned by some dark whistle. Rough cloaks, eyes like flint, blades notched and ready. Five… no, six of them. One leapt straight onto the lead wagon, another grabbed the reins of the pack mule behind. Shouting broke out. A scream. A whip cracked, and someone fell hard from their seat. I slid down between the barrels, my heart hammering.
One of them came near, too near. He smashed open crates, dragging a poor man out of the wagon by the collar. Then he saw me… and reached.
“What's this then?” he snarled, fingers stained with old blood and bark. He yanked the folio free, holding it to the dying light.
His eyes widened.
“The Company,” he gasped.
Another came running. “What’s the hold up?”
“He’s carrying that,” he said to the others, voice suddenly hollow.
“…Aye,” the second one said, backing away now, like the first had touched fire. “It’s the East Road lot alright. This must be their caravan. Not worth it. Let ’em go.”
And then, as fast as they’d come, they were gone. The trees seemed to swallow them.
The caravan guards blinked in stunned confusion; the coachman fell to his knees with a loud prayer of thanks. The caravan was quiet a long while after. We got moving again, but no one said much. Folk stared at me, just a little, and then looked away, like I was carrying something they couldn’t see.
And truth told, I felt the same.
I’d meant only to find the truth of Naridalis’ kin leader, this…. Deorla… and now I wondered what sort of truth I’d wandered into. I knew the Company of the East Road was an established group; respected… but I didn’t know they were feared also, at least by some…. And fear can be a strange kind of currency. Why had that symbol inspired such fear? What had they heard, what had they seen, that made them flee from parchment and wax alone?
It saved my life, perhaps. But something inside me turned cold.
The Company was feared. But by whom, and for what?
Tomorrow I reach Bree, and the Company's kin house thereafter. Their archives will likely be found there. And if I want to help Naridalis, that’s where I must go. I may be in over my head… but I’ve never been one for shallow waters.
But I’ll step carefully.
Some truths are heavier than they look.
Image Credit: StockCake.com
“Big Town, Big Folk, Big Trouble”
Archivist-at-Large (Unofficial), Currently in Bree
I reached Bree by second breakfast, which I missed entirely due to the shock of the brigand business, and arrived with my cloak smelling of sweat and nerves. I made straight for the Prancing Pony, figuring that if I were to delve into the business of the Company of the East Road, I might as well begin in comfort, and perhaps with a bowl of something hot and a bit of seed cake if the Big Folk haven’t scoffed it all by this hour.
Barliman Butterbur, proprietor of the Prancing Pony, bless him, was precisely the sort of flustered hospitality one hopes for after such a journey. Clearly having received my advance letter, he bustled out to meet the caravan and greet me before I even crossed the threshold. He’d barely let me get a word in before shouting for Nob, who came skidding round the corner with a jug of cider in one hand and a tray of meat pies balanced, barely, in the other.
“Ah! Master Lonoro, is it? We’ve got just the room for gentlehobbits what’ve been nearly robbed in the wilds, right this way! … Nob, fetch the extra blanket; hobbits feel the cold, y’know!”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was quite capable of warming my own feet. He meant well, and the room was snug, with low beams and a window just the right height for staring wistfully at the stars. I spent the evening with a steaming dish of something called “Farmer Maggot’s Surprise” (which surprised me chiefly by not containing any of his well-known mushrooms) and listened to a tale about a chicken that once escaped from the kitchens and laid an egg square in the middle of the taproom during a Dwarvish drinking contest.
The next morning, I asked after the Company of the East Road.
“Oh, them?” Barliman said, pausing in his wiping of the bar. “Fine folk, mostly. Bit odd. Always coming and going, involved in matters along the road, or something or other. But they don’t lodge here, no, no. Got their own place, out in the Bree Homesteads.”
So off I went, after breakfast, armed with my folio, a few biscuits for elevenses and directions that included the phrase, “just past the market, and beyond you’ll find transport to the homesteads; you’ll know you’re at the right stable-master by the smell of cabbages.”
So off I wandered.
Bree was a place quite unlike any I had known; bustling and broad, with cobbled streets that seemed made for stomping boots rather than bare hobbit feet. The buildings towered above me, leaning in at strange angles, their upper floors jutting out like overgrown toadstools. Folk of all kinds passed by, Men, mostly, tall and weathered and sharp-eyed, but I also glimpsed the odd Dwarf with jingling packs, and even a wandering Elf with a distant gaze. There was noise everywhere: the clatter of hooves on stone, the shout of a trader hawking apples from a barrow, the jingle of coin, and the ever-present low hum of gossip and song that seeped from the open windows of inns and taverns.
The smell, too, was something else entirely… sweet pipe-smoke mingled with horse-sweat and the aroma of spiced stew wafting from the kitchens of the Pony. And yet, despite the strangeness, Bree was not unkind. It had the feel of a crossroads, a meeting place of fates and stories. It set my heart beating a little faster. Here, perhaps, a halfling with more questions than most could find some answers... if I could manage not to be trampled or swindled in the process.
Still, I pressed on, clutching my satchel tight, the one with the folio tucked safely beneath my arm. I'd just passed a stall selling roasted chestnuts when a great commotion burst forth ahead, a clatter of crates, a shout, a squawk (definitely a chicken), and the unmistakable scrape of a wheelbarrow gone awry.
That was when I saw him.
A Dwarf, or rather, a hurricane masquerading as one. He stood in the centre of the chaos, arms spread wide, a great big bushy beard in wild disarray, a wide-brimmed hat flopping about his head like a ship’s sail in a gale. Trinkets dangled from every visible pocket; buttons, brooches, spoons, marbles, and more than one suspiciously glittery thing. Around him, a trail of dropped goods and disgruntled vendors marked his recent passage like breadcrumbs in a forest.
“I told ye, that barrel weren’t mine, and the goat followed me of its own will!” he bellowed, wagging a stubby finger at a red-faced baker.
I should’ve turned around then. Truly, I should’ve. But something in the Dwarf’s eyes caught me, a kind of fire, or mischief, or both.
And then he saw me.
“You there! Halfling!” he called out, striding forward with all the subtlety of a cart crash. “You’ve got the look of a fellow with excellent judgement. Tell this man I didn’t take his tart.”
I blinked. “Tart?”
Too late. The baker was already calling for the Watch, and before I knew what was happening, a burly constable had taken one look at me, the Dwarf, and the half-eaten jam tart in the Dwarf’s beard, and decided we both looked suspect enough to spend an hour in Bree’s gaol cooling our heels.
It was not, in fairness, how I had expected my first proper day in Bree to end… but that, is how I met Vratni Copperhand…. merchant, mischief-maker, and, as I would later learn, a Dwarf with a most peculiar set of skills.
The gaol was surprisingly clean, though the bench was built for Big Folk and left my legs dangling like a child’s. I sat with arms folded, fuming quietly, while Vratni, wholly unbothered, examined the bars of the cell as if they were a curious display in a shop window.
“I told them I’d done nothing wrong,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
“Aye,” Vratni said brightly, tapping one bar with a knuckle, “and I told them the jam in me beard was from breakfast three days ago. Trouble is, folk don’t believe the innocent face. But…" he turned and grinned, “…. an accusation shared is a penance halved!”
I shot him a look. “That makes no sense.”
“Neither does sharing a cell with a goat once in Tharbad, but that’s a tale for another time.”
I groaned and leaned back. “This is a disaster…”
But then, the Dwarf tilted his head. “You hear that?”
I paused. “Hear what?”
“That,” he said, pointing towards the corridor. “Boots. Soft ones. That’s no constable’s pace. Someone’s sneaking about. Could be good... or could be very bad.”
Before I could ask how he could tell, Vratni was at the cell door, crouching low. He produced, from somewhere within his endless waistcoat, a long, thin piece of metal, a hook of sorts, too small to be useful... unless you were planning something decidedly devious.
“Hold this,” he said, passing me his hat, which smelled faintly of pipe-ash, pickles, and varnish. Then, with a few expert flicks and a muttered string of words that might’ve been Khuzdul or a bad cough, the lock clicked.
“You’re picking it?” I hissed.
“I’m examining it,” he whispered with a wink. “Not opening. Just seeing how it works in case we get forgotten in here.”
A moment later, there was a sudden rattle of keys from the far end and I leapt nearly out of my skin, fumbling Vratni’s hat. The Dwarf had already sat back down, arms folded innocently, tool vanished.
To my great relief, and not a little confusion, it was Barliman Butterbur who appeared round the corner, red-faced and puffing. “oh bless you, there you are, Master Lonorol! I’ve had Nob running all round town trying to find you!”
“I’ve been in here all day!” I said, throwing my arms out.
“Well yes, I see that now,” Butterbur said sheepishly, turning to the guard. “I’ll vouch for this one, he’s only here on study, you know. Harmless. Bit of a nose for books, that sort.”
Behind him, a tall, stern-looking Man in a wine-coloured coat and silver clasp appeared, squinting into the gloom.
“And you,” he said to Vratni, “are expected at the Guild Hall, Copperhand. You’ve a hearing about that petition, remember? For the peddler badge nonsense?”
“Trusted Seller Scheme, Constable” Vratni beamed. “Honest work deserves honest emblems!”
The Constable rolled his eyes. “Come along before I change my mind.”
As we were led out, Vratni leaned down and nudged me gently with an elbow.
“See?” he whispered. “One slice of trouble, split neatly down the middle. But”, he straightened, dusted off his sleeves, “you ever need something, you call for me. One favour. Any favour. Within reason, and within Bree-law… if it matters to ye”, before chuckling.
I blinked. “You’re serious?”
He tapped his chest where a small brass pin shaped like a bent hammer sat crookedly. “Vratni Copperhand never forgets a shared cell. That’s were friends are made.”
And with that, he was gone into the dimming evening light, still arguing about jam and goats.
I shook my head. Bree, I thought, was going to be far more complicated than I’d planned.
