Middle-earth: the story so far

Gandalf put a mark on Bilbo Baggins's door and thirteen dwarves came through it. Thorin Oakenshield wanted his grandfather's kingdom under the Lonely Mountain back, the dragon Smaug had been sitting on it for generations, and the contract said Bilbo was the burglar.

They were nearly eaten by trolls, sheltered at Rivendell where Elrond read moon-letters off Thror's map, and were taken underground by goblins in the Misty Mountains. Bilbo was knocked out and left behind, found a ring lying in the dark, and won a riddle-game against a creature called Gollum who had lost it. He walked out invisible and never mentioned how.

Eagles carried them clear, Beorn housed them, and Gandalf left them at the edge of Mirkwood. Bilbo cut the dwarves out of the spiders' webs, then smuggled them out of the Wood-elves' dungeons in barrels, and Lake-town welcomed them as a prophecy coming true.

Bilbo went down the secret door alone, stole a cup, talked to Smaug, and noticed a bare patch in the scales over his chest. A thrush carried that to Bard of Lake-town, who put an arrow through it while the dragon burned the town.

Then the treasure did what treasure does. Thorin would pay neither the men who had lost their homes nor the elves who came with them, so Bilbo stole the Arkenstone and handed it to the besiegers as a bargaining chip. Thorin called it betrayal and threw him out. Goblins and wargs arrived and settled the argument, and the Battle of Five Armies was won when the eagles and Beorn came. Thorin died forgiving him.

Bilbo took a small share of the gold, went home, and kept the ring.

Bilbo vanished in front of everyone at his hundred and eleventh birthday party and left the ring to his cousin Frodo. Seventeen years later Gandalf came back and said what it was: the One Ring, made by Sauron to rule all the others, and Sauron wanted it and had learned the name Baggins.

Frodo left with Sam, Merry and Pippin, hunted by Black Riders. Tom Bombadil pulled them out of Old Man Willow and then out of a barrow. At Bree they picked up a Ranger called Strider, and on Weathertop the Riders' chief put a Morgul blade into Frodo's shoulder. Elrond's flood took the Riders at the Ford and Frodo woke in Rivendell.

The Council of Elrond laid it out. Isildur had cut the Ring from Sauron's hand and kept it rather than destroy it. Saruman, chief of the wizards, had gone over to the enemy. The Ring could not be used, hidden or given away, only unmade in the fire that made it. Strider was Aragorn, Isildur's heir. Frodo volunteered to carry it, and eight went with him.

Snow turned them back from Caradhras, so they went under the mountains through Moria and found Balin's colony dead in it. A Balrog came up out of the deep, and Gandalf held the bridge and fell with it into the dark.

Galadriel kept them a while in Lothlorien, refused the Ring when Frodo offered it to her, and sent them down the Anduin with gifts. At Amon Hen, Boromir tried to take the Ring by force and came back to himself the moment Frodo vanished. Frodo decided to go on to Mordor alone, and Sam waded out after the boat and would not be left behind.

Orcs took Merry and Pippin at Amon Hen and killed Boromir defending them. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli ran across Rohan for three days and found the war-band destroyed by the Riders of Rohan and the hobbits gone into Fangorn.

The hobbits had found Treebeard. The three found Gandalf, back from the Balrog as Gandalf the White and holding Saruman's place. At Edoras he pulled King Theoden out from under Grima Wormtongue's whispering, and Rohan rode to Helm's Deep and held it through the night until Gandalf came at dawn with fresh riders and a forest of Huorns that swallowed the fleeing orcs.

The Ents had meanwhile walked on Isengard, torn it open and drowned it. Gandalf broke Saruman's staff at the foot of his own tower. Wormtongue threw a palantir down at them, Pippin looked into it that night, and Sauron looked back and took him for the Ring-bearer. Gandalf rode for Minas Tirith with Pippin in front of him.

East of the river, Frodo and Sam caught Gollum, who had trailed them since Moria, and made him swear to guide them. He took them across the Dead Marshes to a Black Gate they could not pass, then south, where Faramir's rangers took them. Faramir worked out what Frodo was carrying and let him go, which his brother had not managed.

Gollum led them up the stair at Cirith Ungol into Shelob's tunnel, which had been the plan all along. The spider stung Frodo. Sam drove her off with Sting and Galadriel's phial, believed Frodo dead, took the Ring and left him, and then heard orcs say he was alive and only poisoned, and that they were carrying him into the tower.

Gandalf brought Pippin to Minas Tirith, where the Steward Denethor had been looking into a palantir for years and had already decided the war was lost. Rohan rode. The Witch-king broke the city gate.

Aragorn took the Paths of the Dead and held the Oathbreakers to a promise a thousand years old, used them to take the Corsair fleet at Pelargir, and came up the river in black ships with the men of the south aboard. Theoden died on the Pelennor. Eowyn, riding disguised, and Merry with a barrow-blade killed the Witch-king between them, which no man could have done. Denethor burned himself on a pyre, and Pippin and Gandalf got Faramir off it alive.

Aragorn then marched what was left to the Black Gate as a distraction and stood there outnumbered on purpose.

Sam got Frodo out of the tower at Cirith Ungol, and the two of them walked across Mordor. At the Cracks of Doom, Frodo could not do it. He put the Ring on and claimed it, and Gollum bit it off his finger and went into the fire with it, still dancing. Sauron ended in an instant and his armies with him.

Aragorn was crowned and married Arwen. Eomer took Rohan, and Faramir and Eowyn took Ithilien. Then the hobbits came home to find the Shire occupied by ruffians under a man calling himself Sharkey, who was Saruman, and had to take their own country back. Wormtongue cut Saruman's throat at Bag End and was shot for it.

Sam married Rosie and replanted the Shire. Frodo never healed, and sailed from the Grey Havens with Bilbo and Gandalf into the West.