Comparative religion: the Daedric Princes and the Chaos gods

Now that I've got a degree in comparative religion, I feel I ought to do some. Let's get the easy ones out of the way first!

Hermaeus Mora = Tzeentch

The Daedra of fate and knowledge, Lord of Secrets, is clearly Tzeentch.

Sanguine = Slaanesh

Similarly obvious is the connection between the Daedric Lord of debauchery and the Prince of Pleasure.

Namira = Nurgle

The Lady of Decay is most definitely Nurgle.

**

The Four Corners of the House of Troubles

It would be extremely pleasing if each of the Four Corners could be matched to a Chaos God. And they can!

Malacath = Khorne

Malacath, who spurns physical weakness and is depicted holding a very large weapon, suggests Khorne to me.

Mehrunes Dagon = Tzeentch

Mehrunes Dagon, like Tzeentch, represents change.

Sheogorath = Slaanesh

I chose to identify Sheogorath with Slaanesh mostly because Dark Seducers serve Sheogorath, and because Slaanesh was the one Chaos god left over after the three easier matches.

Molag Bal = Nurgle

His realm is desecrated and ruined, his enemy is Boethiath.

**

The Anticipations

Azura = Tzeentch

The goddess of the magical realms of dusk and dawn, who interferes subtly in the affairs of mortals: Tzeentch.

Boethiath = Tzeentch

The Daedra of secret plots and conspiracies has a fairly easy match in Tzeentch.

Mephala = Khaine = Khorne

Mephala has aspects that could easily be matched with Slaanesh or Tzeentch, but founding an order of elven assassins to serve her makes her very much Khaine, and therefore Khorne.

**

Clavicus Vile = Tzeentch

Pacts and machinations are hardly alien to any of the Chaos gods, but are most emblematic of Tzeentch.

Hircine = Khorne

Hunting and werecreatures are something I would associate with Khorne, as one of the characteristics of werewolves is their inability to control their rage.

Jyggalag = Nurgle

As Tzeentch is the Lord of Change, so his opposite is the equivalent of the Daedric Prince of Order.

Meridia = Tzeentch

Meridia, Lady of Infinite Energies, has no direct counterpart in the Chaos pantheon, but if I had to associate the undead with a Chaos god, it would be Nurgle. Therefore, the enemy of the undead is Tzeentch.

Nocturnal = Tzeentch

For want of a Chaos god especially dedicated to thieves and the night, Tzeentch's interest in deception is the best match.

Peryite = Nurgle

Peryite's spheres are pestilence and order.

Vaermina = Slaanesh

This one isn't so obvious, as dreams aren't the exclusive sphere of any Chaos God; in the fluff, they all use dreams to communicate with their followers. Based on her relationships to the other Daedra, however, Vaermina can be identified with Slaanesh: her only ally is Sanguine, previously found to be Slaanesh, and her enemies include Ebonarm, Peryite and Hermaeus Mora, i.e. war, pestilence and knowledge.

Let's Read Tolkien 7: Queer Lodgings

The next morning Bilbo woke up with the early sun in his eyes.

We rejoin Thorin and company in the eagles' eyries, from where they're airlifted to a great big rock in the middle of Anduin, the Great River of Wilderland. It's actually a bit odd how little attention flying gets in the story; we're rather matter-of-factly told that an eagle grabbed Bilbo and they flew off, and then later he rode an eagle in another direction. As bourgeois as Bilbo is, I still don't think he can possible ever have flown before, so you'd really think that it would be a bigger deal, but for some reason Tolkien doesn't seem to think so. "What is finer than flying?" asks the eagle, and it's tough to reply, because we have very little idea what flying is like. Hell, we don't even get a landscape description. I'm a bit disappointed.

But land on the Carrock they do. The classic problem of airborne operations is supply, and that's true here as well: the dwarves have no food and no transport. To arrange some, Gandalf proposes to introduce them to one of his colleague Radagast's friends, a crazed hippie berserker. This is all the more necessary because Gandalf is going to be leaving Thorin and company to attend to business elsewhere, which, given their track record so far, honestly seems like a terrible idea. One gets the impression that dwarven expeditions that set off without wizards aren't going to get much farther than the first troll, who will probably see them less as a glorious adventuring party and more like a convenient food delivery.

But Gandalf is still with Bilbo and the dwarves, and he concocts a plot to get around the werebear Beorn's irascibility: he'll go up to Beorn's place with Bilbo, start telling him the story of how they got there, and sort of gradually work up to revealing that they have a bunch of dwarves with them as well. This is done, with Gandalf making the occasional off-hand reference to his traveling companions, at which point a couple more dwarves show up, until Gandalf has effectively tricked Beorn into letting the whole bunch of them into his hall. It's a particularly well-written scene, and Beorn enjoys the story and maybe even the subterfuge enough to make the travelers his guests for the night.

Memorable dialogue from Beorn: "Troop of ponies? What were you - a traveling circus?" Honestly? Pretty much.

This chapter is our first glimpse of Tolkien the environmentalist: Beorn lives with a bunch of animals he talks with, keeps bee-pastures and apparently doesn't take at all kindly to people who kill animals. The food at his table is vegetarian. It's an unexpected combination with the fact that the one thing that made Beorn well-disposed to the dwarves more than anything else was that they'd murdered orcs. But like I said, hippie berserker. Bechdel test update: I don't even think any of Beorn's animals were female.

The traveling circus hangs out at Beorn's for another day, and having ascertained that they really did murder hella orcs Beorn gives them vegetarian provisions and lends them ponies to ride to Mirkwood. He strongly entreats them to both send the ponies back when they reach the woods, and under no conditions whatsoever leave the path once they get there. They ride up to the edge of the forest, send the ponies back and say goodbye to Gandalf, who tells them several times that they have to remember that once they get into the forest, they must on no account leave the path ever.

Next time: you had one job.

RIP Jim Thompson (1964-2014)

So yesterday evening Helsingin Sanomat told me that Jim Thompson passed away. Me, my significant other and Jim were first-years together at the University of Helsinki English department back when such a thing still existed. Unlike me, he graduated and went on to be a succesful author. We didn't really keep in touch; we exchanged some tweets a couple of times but that was it, and now I'm beating myself up a bit that I didn't get back in contact with him properly when I got over the worst of my problems.

My enduring memory of Jim is a Contemporary American Short Story class we took together. The course material was a short story anthology I've still got somewhere, and we would all read a story at home and show up in class to discuss it. The teacher would sort of shepherd the class toward the canonically accepted interpretation of the novel, which I totally understand, but it started getting a bit exasperating for me and Jim, and at some point we had kind of both decided to put up a fight. The occasion - if I recall correctly - was a story by Amy Tan, where the canonical interpretation was that the protagonist was struggling with their Chinese-American identity and needed to embrace her roots. We both felt that it was equally possible to read the story in the opposite way, that the obsession with "roots" was in fact what was causing the protagonist's problems. Purely on the principle that literature can and must be interpreted in different ways, and there isn't one "correct" interpretation of any damn text, we got into a debate with the entire rest of the class and the teacher. Next week, we did the same with a Paul Bowles story, and actually had fellow students complaining to us after class about why we were being so difficult and couldn't we just accept what the teacher said. I recall answering no, we couldn't. The teacher obviously understood what we were doing, and overall I thought we had some good debates.

That's one of my best memories of my short time majoring in English, and a dear memory of Jim. Rest in peace, friend. We'll miss you.

Let's Read Tolkien 6: Out of the Frying-Pan Into the Fire

Bilbo had escaped the goblins, but he did not know where he was.

We find Bilbo alone in the wilderness, having escaped the goblin dungeons but lost his fellow travelers. Like the previous one, this is a considerably longer chapter than usual so far, and quite a bit happens in it. As the sun sets, Bilbo realizes it's setting behind the mountains, meaning he's accidentally made it across the whole of the Misty Mountains. Soon he finds the dwarves, and still having his invisibility ring on, decides to sneak up on them. They're currently in a debate with Gandalf over whether or not to go back and look for Bilbo, who they assume is still lost in the goblin caves. Some of the dwarves are questioning why they brought Bilbo along in the first place, as he seems to them to be a completely useless burglar. Bilbo startles them by removing his ring and stepping into their midst quite literally out of nowhere, and the dwarves' opinion of his burglarizing abilities is considerably improved.

Having found each other again, Thorin and company exchange stories and move on; their baggage and ponies were lost to the goblins, so they have no supplies, and they anticipate that the goblins will send someone after them for having killed the Great Goblin and generally made an impact on the local goblin community, so to speak. So down they go into the foothills of the mountains, until sudenly they hear wolves. This prompts the company to quickly climb some trees for safety, and they find themselves surrounded by a pack of Wargs: evil, talking wolves that hang out with the goblins. It's mentioned that occasionally goblins will even ride wolves, which is probably the genesis of the finest light cavalry in 4th-to-6th-edition Warhammer Fantasy, the Goblin Wolf Riders. Remember, the short bows do nothing.

With the wolves intending to besiege the dwarves in their trees until the goblins turn up, Gandalf tries a bit of fire magic and sets a whole bunch of them on fire. Unfortunately, the goblins arrive and turn the fire against Thorin & co., threatening to burn them alive with the trees. At the last moment before Gandalf launches a suicidal attack on the goblins, the eagles arrive and whisk everyone off to safety, where Bilbo is momentarily worried they'll be eaten, but everything turns out all right, they have dinner and hitch a lift from the eagles to their next destination.

**

It took me ages to get this written up, partly because of annoyances such as starting a Rogue Trader role-playing campaign, moving and finally graduating college, but more because I just wasn't that thrilled with this chapter. It's all a bit meh for me; yay across the mountains! Oh no, wolves! Yay fire! Oh no, goblins! Yay eagles! Oh no, eating! Yay eating! Thus conclude the adventures of the Misty Mountains. I already pointed out before that the deus ex machina is the weakest point of fairytales for the adult reader, and the eagles play that role here. Beyond that, I thought the chapter wasn't particularly well paced, and the episode with the eagles somehow comes off as a bit awkward.

To stick with some of our themes, the eagles also buck the supposedly straightforward division of Tolkien's world into good and evil. They become involved in the story because they consider the goblins their enemies and because Gandalf had at one time helped their leader, but they won't give Thorin & Co. a lift all the way to where the woodmen live, as they would - at other times quite rightly - think that the eagles were there to prey on their livestock; the same thing that the wolves did. So from the woodmen's perspective, I'm not at all sure that the eagles and wolves appear as particularly different in terms of ethics. The Lord of the Eagles, by the way, is also known as the Great Eagle, who I'm sure must be a colleague of the Head Beagle.

The conversation the dwarves have with Gandalf over Bilbo is interesting because as near as the reader can tell, the dwarves are right: Bilbo really has been pretty much completely useless, and it isn't at all clear why Gandalf recruited him for the job at all. It just seems strange that Gandalf is so insistent on him coming along. I don't know if we're intended to think that Bilbo is really a Proper British Gentleman®, who might not get off to the best start but can be trusted to Muddle Through™ and keep his Chin Up, Old Boy™ because he's a Dashed Good Egg Really™ or something, or if it's just that he's the protagonist and that's it. Certainly the profession of burglar doesn't sit very well at all with the solidly civilized, middle-class Mr. Baggins, whose class credentials are enhanced in this chapter when we learn that he isn't even of any use in preparing food since he's used to having his meat delivered to him by a butcher, not having to butcher the animals he eats himself.

But the story moves on: the nickel-and-dime dragon-hunting operation stumbles from one random encounter to another. Next time, a rural interlude.

Let's Read Tolkien 5: Riddles in the Dark

When Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark with them shut.

We left Bilbo lying out cold on the floor of one of the goblins' tunnels. It has to be said that one possible reason for the complete lack of female characters in the story is that in traditional patriarchal and heterosexist terms, Bilbo has been playing the female lead: so far, his accomplishments are pretty much limited to screaming, fainting and being carried around. When he wakes up alone in a dark underground tunnel, however, Tolkien reminds us that this isn't quite as terrifying a situation for Bilbo as it might be for us. After all, hobbits live in tunnels, and eventually, cheered up a bit by the thought of having a blade from fabled Gondolin with him, Bilbo gathers his wits and gets moving. Oh, and incidentally, happens to accidentally come across the One Ring to Rule Them All. You know, ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul and so on.

Of course, at this point we have no idea that that's what Bilbo just found lying around on the floor of the tunnel. As far as I know, neither did Tolkien. Later, in the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien develops a sort of theology of the finding of the Ring, which I'll go into when I get to it. it involves questions of what, exactly, luck and things that happen "by accident" are. But it's interesting to consider whether any notion of these things can be found in the Hobbit, especially in this chapter. I do use the word "theology" quite deliberately, as it bears reminding that Tolkien was a devout Catholic and expressed his faith in his writing. Ultimately the questions of luck and accident that Tolkien comes to deal with in this context later are so fundamental to faith that I don't think it's unreasonable to look for some unformed notions of his later ideas, as it were, here.

So Bilbo decides, quite reasonably, that the only way out is forward and sets off. And onward and downward along the tunnel he goes, past a plethora of side passages until he walks right into an underground lake. I love the way Tolkien sets the scene here as Bilbo makes his way further down, into the mountain. All the stuff about the "original owners" of the caves the goblins inhabit and the things "that have sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark" is as good as anything by Lovecraft. Especially when one of those things comes paddling across the underground lake, its eyes glowing like witchfires in the dark: Gollum.

In terms of the larger story, especially the Lord of the Rings, this is a pretty heavy chapter: Bilbo gets his hands on the One Ring and meets Gollum. This basically sets the scene for everything that happens in the Lord of the Rings, so much so that in the context of the later work, everything else up to and including Smaug himself is a footnote. The Hobbit really suffers from this kind of hindsight, and for that reason I'll leave any discussion of Gollum or the Ring beyond what happens in this chapter for later, barring a few notes.

For now, here's who we meet:

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum - as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. He had a little boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold. He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side, but never a ripple did he make. Not he. He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking. He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind, if they ever came down alone anywhere near the edge of the water, while he was prowling about. They very seldom did, for they had a feeling that something unpleasant was lurking down there, down at the very roots of the mountain. They had come on the lake, when they were tunneling down long ago, and they found they could go no further; so there their road ended in that direction, and there was no reason to go that way - unless the Great Goblin sent them. Sometimes he took a fancy for fish from the lake, and sometimes neither goblin nor fish came back.

If I said in the previous chapter that the goblins are hardly introduced to us as pure videogame villains, here that notion is completely subverted: how can you not feel a little bad for the goblin sent to fish in Gollum's cold lake at his master's whim? Here's something the previous chapter's villains are scared of.

The description of Gollum is just excellent. Really, there's almost a horror aspect to this, especially as Gollum spots Bilbo and glides out from his island on a little boat, in complete silence, curious as to who Bilbo is and anticipating that he'll make a very tasty meal. Having said this, though, when Bilbo finally spots Gollum, what breaks out is a conversation. It's interesting that as dangerous as we've seen the world Bilbo travels through is, it's remarkably civilized in that so far, everyone but the storm giants has at least had the courtesy of talking to people they meet, no matter what their ultimate intentions may have been. The giants, we can imagine, just didn't notice the poor shivering dwarves. So it isn't really surprising at all that Gollum and Bilbo should have a reasonably civil conversation; unless, that is, one has subscribed to the vulgar interpretation of Tolkien's stories as morally unambiguous orc-murdering epics. I realize I keep going on about that, but frankly, it's always annoyed me.

A startled Bilbo quite politely introduces himself to Gollum, blade prudently in hand, and a combination of curiosity and unease with the elven dagger makes Gollum positively convivial. He suggests a game of riddles:

Riddles were all he could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before he lost all his friends and was driven away, alone, and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountains.

There's characterization in a sentence for you.

The two of them riddle away, with high stakes: if Bilbo wins, Gollum will show him the way out, but if Bilbo loses, Gollum eats him. They both exchange fairly similar riddles, with Gollum's usually having rather darker themes than Bilbo's. A few times Bilbo is saved by what seems to be pure luck: when he can't guess that the answer is fish, one jumps out of the lake at him, and when he tries to beg for more time he inadvertently gives the correct answer. Lastly Bilbo wins the entire contest by muttering "What have I got in my pockets" out loud, which Gollum can't guess. Defeated, he agrees to show Bilbo the way out, only he just has to pop back to his little island for a bit.

Of course, Gollum's plan is to fetch his magical invisibility ring, murder Bilbo and eat him. He doesn't find "his precious", though, and has a bit of a fit over it. Bilbo hears Gollum screaming about what it has in its pocketses and decides to slip the ring onto his finger. He's rather surprised when Gollum charges right past him, and realizes the ring he picked up earlier is indeed Gollum's magical ring of invisibility. He then follows the enraged Gollum to the exit of the cave, and after a tight squeeze makes it out into the sunlight. So in the end, Gollum did do what he promised!

**

Let's sum up. First Bilbo falls down and knocks his head, both basically by chance; they were being pursued but no-one was making an effort to knock him out. He's then left behind in the fighting and missed by the goblins, purely by luck as he's unconscious at the time. As he's recovering his wits, he tries to light his pipe, which the narrator points out really doesn't seem like a good idea, but luckily he's lost his matches. He then sets off further into the caves, and luckily doesn't get eaten by anything until he runs into Gollum. He gets lucky three times with the riddles, and the ring he lucked into finding saves him from Gollum and eventually gets him out of the caves altogether.

In the context of the story, this string of lucky coincidences is believable and makes an amount of sense, even. Tolkien will return to this theme of luck in the Lord of the Rings, so I'm leaving this summary here for later reference. But to answer my question: is there some notion present here that maybe this sequence of events is more than a fairy-story telling of a hero's customary luck? I have to say no. I didn't really see any signs of Tolkien's later "theology of luck" here.

In more general terms this underground escapade is the first time we see Bilbo venturing out on his own for a longer stint as something other than baggage for the dwarves, and through luck he in fact does quite well. I'm sure psychoanalytical types would make much of this journey deep underground and all it signifies, but I'd really rather not. Certainly it marks an important step in Bilbo's personal story. And at this point that's really all it is. On re-reading this chapter, there's very little to hint at any of this being any more than an interlude in Bilbo's story: he's met adversity, prevailed and been rewarded with a magic item; an item whose origins are a mystery, and the history of its previous owner even more so. Said previous owner is also left screaming Bilbo's last name in a vengeful rage, so there's something there to hang a sequel on. Having said that, though, this is definitely a part of the Hobbit that's very much worth reading on its own merits, not just as a "prequel" to later events.

XCOM: Hidden Potential and Not Created Equally

We got ourselves XCOM: Enemy Within, and we've been enjoying it. I really like the new options for "modifying" your soldiers, and the Exalt missions are an interesting change of pace; what I'm disappointed in is that the main story still centers on the hugely boring alien base and the frankly appallingly tedious final mission. Would it really have been too much to ask for those to be improved? Preferably improved a lot?

I do also have to mention one particular gripe: the random soldier specializations. I'm currently playing a game where I have two heavies, one support and ten snipers. Ten. It's fucking ridiculous, and makes the game much more difficult than it should be. XCOM snipers are exactly like wizards in most tabletop RPGs: they're useless and vulnerable at low levels, but once you get them going they're incredibly powerful. Only how do you fight with a squad that consists entirely of low-level snipers and rookies? It's not impossible, but it is frustrating, especially when the rookies level up...into snipers. Which, by the way, makes it really hard to get your hands on enough Meld to turn them into mechs, too.

Surely it wouldn't be impossible to weigh the odds of a given class being rolled up based on your existing roster. It would stop complete stupidity like my current lineup from happening.

**

One of the things we really liked in the new Enemy Unknown were the Second Wave options. I never got around to really giving Not Created Equally and Hidden Potential a proper shot, but now that I'm playing Enemy Within, I was considering whether they're worth it or not. I have to admit that Not Created Equally scared me, because the average XCOM rookie is so completely useless as it is, and I had visions of getting soldiers with even worse stats. So I did a little math, and because I couldn't find these numbers with a quick Google search, I thought I'd share.

Not Created Equally

The basic rookie has an Aim of 65 and a Will of 40. With Not Created Equally, these values are rolled randomly, with Aim being somewhere between 50 and 80, in five-point increments, and Will between 25 and 59. So basically your average Not Created Equally rookie will have an Aim of 65 and a Will of 42, meaning they're ever so slightly better than the cookie cutter guys. There's also a 1/3 chance they'll have slightly lower movement, and a 1/6 chance it'll be one point higher and another 1/6 for two more points, so that also averages out better than normal.

So based on that, Not Created Equally is theoretically worth taking, if only for the slightly higher Will and Movement. The real benefit, obviously, is the chance of getting rookies with a significantly higher Aim than normal, which is really the only way you're ever going to get a heavy who can hit anything smaller than a building. So I guess I'll have to start picking this option.

Hidden Potential

This one I'm a lot less sold on, to be honest. Hidden Potential replaces the normal stat progression with a random increase per level, so I calculated the average increases for Aim and Health per class and level in the defsult system and Hidden Potential. Will increases are unaffected.

For the assault class, their average Aim and Health increase per level are normally 3.4 and 0.6 points, respectively. With Hidden Potential these change to +3 and +0.5, so the assault class guys get screwed.

Heavies have a dismal average Aim increase of +1.4 per level, which drops to an average of +1 with Hidden Potential, while health progression is unchanged. So heavies get screwed too.

Snipers benefit slightly, replacing an average Aim increase of +5.7 with +6 and bringing their health progression in line with the non-heavy classes at +0.5 rather than the default +0.4.

Support soldiers get better Aim (+4 vs +3.6) at the expense of lower health (+0.5 vs +0.6). MEC troopers clearly benefit, getting +3 Aim per level rather than the old +1.4, but their health progression has dropped as well.

What makes this slightly more complicated is that Hidden Potential also gives each soldier a 20% chance of increasing their Movement stat by 1 per level (10% for heavies). So the average soldier will have gotten an additional point of movement by the time they make Captain. Without Hidden Potential, movement never increases.

So to sum up, Hidden Potential gives you faster troops and better snipers, at the expense of your heavies and assault guys. In my opinion, this comes down to playing style and the vagaries of class generation. Personally, I don't like it. Although my current game would be better off for it!

**

One area where I think XCOM could do with some more depth is injuries. Right now, being wounded just takes your soldiers off missions for a while, unless it's a critical wound, in which case they lose Will permanently. I'd prefer a more nuanced injury system, where badly hurt or critically wounded soldiers would get a randomly assigned injury rather than the automatic Will penalty. Arm injuries could affect Aim, leg injuries Movement, head injuries Will and torso injuries Health, for instance. This would tie in excellently with MEC troopers, as augmenting a soldier would obviously remove any limb injuries, and in my opinion could remove most other injuries as well. The idea of MEC suits as a badly injured veteran's way of getting back into combat would make them much more interesting.

**

As I was writing this, I kept on at my campaign, and now have two heavies and a support soldier, and will get a cybernetics lab next month, so maybe some MEC troopers are on the cards. When trying to play with a lopsided roster like mine, two particular problems stand out. First of all, recovering any Meld at all starts to get unreasonably tricky as the game goes on. One is simply not inclined to dash off into the scenery to find the Meld containers, what with Mutons and Cyberdiscs lurking around.

Also, some of the maps are still just inhuman, especially when trying to get your rookies some experience. I took three of them along to raid a landed small scout, and we ended up on the river valley map, smack in the middle of a river with no high cover anywhere. As we were deploying on the first turn, we spot a Mechtoid. Thanks to a timely Disabling shot, we didn't lose anyone there, but we were barely done with the Mechtoid when along come three Mutons and a Cyberdisc. With all three rookies dead and my best sniper badly injured, we had to get the fuck out of there. Maybe if everyone had dashed into the trees on the left on the very first turn, we could have dealt with the situation. Or maybe we would have run smack into the Cyberdisc. Note that the reason I had three rookies was that I desperately needed other classes than snipers. No way am I assaulting the alien base without a medic. But with only low cover available, we just got slaughtered.

In the situation I find myself in, with the RNG constantly sticking me with snipers (I lost a bunch, only to get new ones instead of classes I'd actually need) and little or no Meld to go around, even without excessive gene modding, it's incredibly difficult to level up rookies. Thank Yog-Sothoth for EXALT. I'm in no hurry to raid their base.

**

Anyway, there's a bunch of random XCOM thoughts for you. Remember: pick Not Created Equally but give Hidden Potential a miss, and give your covert operative Mimetic Skin. If not for how incredibly boring both the alien base and especially the final mission are, this would be an incredibly good game. At least they've got things to fix for the sequel.

Let's Read Tolkien 4: Over Hill and Under Hill

There were many paths that led up into those mountains, and many passes over them.

The Last Homely House is well behind Thorin & Company; Bilbo muses on what's going on in the Shire as they wind their way through the foothills of the Misty Mountains, and everyone is cold and properly miserable.

One thing I haven't really talked about that deserves more attention is the way Tolkien writes about geography. He simply does a wonderful job of conveying a feel of the land, of terrain, space and history, so that the reader feels they're traveling through a rich and living landscape. Tolkien excels at creating a world the reader can really feel immersed in. One particularly striking way this comes up is the way he describes the Company's ascent into the Misty Mountains. Having given us a pretty good notion of the mountains, he gives the most wonderful description of a ferocious thunderstorm raging in the mountains. The detail I remembered best from my previous readings was the stone-giants throwing boulders at each other for fun in the storm, but what I didn't remember was how vividly he describes the storm and the company's utter misery in trying to weather it. You really feel like you're there with Bilbo and the dwarves, trying to snuggle under a rock overhang amidst an awesome display of nature's power.

It's this misery that drives the story forward, as young Fili and Kili are sent to look for a better shelter. They soon return, having found a cave big enough for the party to take cover in. They do their best to take care, exploring the cave thoroughly and refraining from lighting a fire so as not to draw attention to themselves. Finally satisfied that the cave is safe, they settle down for a smoke and go to sleep.

Of course, it isn't safe. After the party falls asleep, goblins emerge from deep inside the cave and surprise the sleeping dwarves. The only bit of luck is that Bilbo was having trouble falling asleep, and his scream of terror wakes Gandalf, just in time for the goblins trying to grab him to get a nasty surprise. The dwarves, hobbit and ponies, however, are captured by the goblins and driven into their deep tunnels, the goblins singing a song that creates a wonderful onomatopoetic effect with the swish and smack of the whip cracks driving them round and round underground.

Things don't look too good for the dwarves as they're hauled into Goblin-Town's great hall and paraded before the Great Goblin himself. Thorin puts on his best pompous manner to talk to him, and they learn that the safe cave they took shelter in was, in fact, the goblins' Front Porch. They're quite understandably suspicious of a party of dwarves at their front door, and the elven sword found on Thorin clinches the case. Just as the goblins are about to put Thorin and Company to death, Gandalf makes his expected reappearance, dousing the lights, creating general chaos and introducing the Great Goblin to the sword Glamdring of Gondolin - a fatal encounter.

Quickly, the company make their getaway, the dwarves taking turns carrying poor terrified Bilbo, stopping once so that Gandalf and Thorin can ambush the pursuing goblins. This buys them some time, but stealthy goblin runners set off in pursuit instead, and as they fall on the dwarves Bilbo is knocked off Dori's back, hits his head and loses consciousness.

**

After the previous chapter's pit stop, this one has plenty of action and leaves us very much in the thick of things. I'd be remiss, however, if I didn't take a moment to document our first meeting with the goblins, later known as orcs. Here's the description Tolkien gives us:

Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light.

There's really no two ways about it: that's a pretty miserable account to give of an entire people, let alone a whole race. But even here, the story we're told is actually quite a bit more complicated than the Always Chaotic Evil trope: the goblins actually have no particular malice against dwarves as such, and Tolkien mentions that "wicked dwarves" have even made alliances with them. Thorin and Company are brought before the Great Goblin who interrogates them, and Thorin has a civilized, if brief, dialogue with him, quite clearly proving that they're intelligent creatures one can have a conversation with. So even these goblins aren't latter-day video game villains who can't be interacted with in any way except through violence.

Obviously this is a major question that I'll be returning to as this project gets further along, but for now, I just want to note that in our first encounter with what will pretty much become the stock Always Chaotic Evil villain of fantasy, the picture is already more complicated than it will later be seen to be.