Timeline Event
Fellowship trapped inside Moria
Event Type: Military/Strategic
Age: 3rd Age - Ring War
Date: January 13, 3019
Description:
An event in the Battles of the Fellowship at Moria; see that entry for an overview:
'Into the gateway! Up the stairs! Quick!' shouted Gandalf....
They were just in time. Sam and Frodo were only a few steps up, and Gandalf had just begun to climb, when the groping tentacles writhed across the narrow shore and fingered the cliff-wall and the doors. One came wriggling over the threshold, glistening in the starlight. Gandalf turned and paused. If he was considering what word would close the gate again from within, there was no need. Many coiling arms seized the doors on either side, and with horrible strength, swung them round. With a shattering echo they slammed, and all light was lost. A noise of rending and crashing came dully through the ponderous stone.
Sam, clinging to Frodo's arm, collapsed on a step in the black darkness. 'Poor old Bill!' he said in a choking voice.... 'Wolves and snakes! But the snakes were too much for him. I had to choose, Mr. Frodo. I had to come with you.'
They heard Gandalf go back down the steps and thrust his staff against the doors. There was a quiver in the stone and the stairs trembled, but the doors did not open. 'Well, well!' said the wizard. 'The passage is blocked behind us now and there is only one way out — on the other side of the mountains. I fear from the sounds that boulders have been piled up, and the trees uprooted and thrown across the gate. I am sorry; for the trees were beautiful, and had stood so long.'
'I felt that something horrible was near from the moment that my foot first touched the water,' said Frodo. 'What was the thing, or were there many of them? '
'I do not know,' answered Gandalf, 'but the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' He did not speak aloud his thought that whatever it was that dwelt in the lake, it had seized on Frodo first among all the Company.
The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 2, Ch 4, A Journey in the Dark
'[Our supply of miruvor] will not last much longer, I am afraid,' [Gandalf] said; 'but I think we need it after that horror at the gate.... Go carefully with the water, too!.... We may not have a chance of filling our skins and bottles till we come down into Dimrill Dale.'
'How long is that going to take us?' asked Frodo.
'I cannot say,' answered Gandalf.... 'It cannot be less than forty miles from West-door to East-gate of Moria in a direct line, and the road may wind much.'
The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 2, Ch 4, A Journey in the Dark
Contributors:
Elena Tiriel 9Jan12
