Alan Sisto

Question for you, Matt.

When Tolkien was drafting this, was he thinking, I want to create a backstory for the squint-eyed Southerner, or...

was he writing about Soderman and going, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we already encountered this guy?

I know.

We'll use that squid-eyed southerner.

exactly and i love that i do think i think it's more intentional than a happy accident i would say that's my guess yeah yeah so we see that uh this fellow had been negotiating a big tobacco contract and purchasing other supplies as isengard was preparing for war without ever asking isengard that is should we go to war is this a good decision

He was a dummy woman whose plans failed because they were bad.

Don and I are going to talk more about this with Brett, I am sure.

But he points out it's a pretty big strategic error for Saruman to be going to war with Rohan right now.

Focus on your search for the ring.

I mean, after all, even if you beat Rohan, you're still toast without the ring.

Like one thing at a time.

Let's go fight on 12 fronts.

Makes no sense.

You know?

Anyway, this man, as the text keeps calling him, or I think once they call him this Dunlending, was heading back to the Shire to get the transport details all locked down before the change of weather at the end of fall.

And now I'm picturing like a half-scale truck.

So not only was he heading back that way to work his deals, and I'm having a hard time imagining this awful, terrible, moody, grumpy, ugly half-orc dude is really good at contract negotiations.

Right.

You and I have played enough tabletop role-playing games to know what's the stat they're looking at for things like that.