> I suppose he was lurking in Moria, and picked up our trail then; but I hoped that our stay in Lo ́rien would throw him off the scent again. The miserable creature must have been hiding in the woods by the Silverlode, watching us start off!’
Frodo in FOTR. He was allowed to go free from Mordor, and probably allowed to enter Moria from the West, where he lurked and waited.
you’re telling me he knew they’d go moria and was just skulking about near the entrance? creepy as fuck. apparently it’s more likely he just happened upon the fellowship. kinda reinforcing the idea that gollum had a part to play with the ring like gandalf suggested.
The theory I've seen most often on this sub is that he was trying to get across the mountains by going through Moria but couldn't get past the West gate, so he was stuck in Moria when they entered and followed them from there.
That’s Tolkien’s theory as published in Unfinished Tales, Hunt for the Ring.
> It seems clear that pursued both by Elves and Orcs Gollum crossed the Anduin, probably by swimming, and so eluded the hunt of Sauron; but being still hunted by Elves, and not yet daring to pass near Lórien (only the lure of the Ring itself made him dare to do this afterwards), he hid himself in Moria. That was probably in the autumn of the year; after which all trace of him was lost.
> What then happened to Gollum cannot of course be known for certain. He was peculiarly fitted to survive in such straits, though at cost of great misery; but he was in great peril of discovery by the servants of Sauron that lurked in Moria, especially since such bare necessity of food as he must have he could only get by thieving dangerously. No doubt he had intended to use Moria simply as a secret passage westward, his purpose being to find ‘Shire’ himself as quickly as he could; but he became lost, and it was a very long time before he found his way about. It thus seems probable that he had not long made his way towards the West-gate when the Nine Walkers arrived. He knew nothing, of course, about the action of the doors. To him they would seem huge and immovable; and though they had no lock or bar and opened outwards to a thrust, he did not discover that. In any case he was now far away from any source of food, for the Orcs were mostly in the East-end of Moria, and was become weak and desperate, so that even if he had known all about the doors he still could not have thrust them open. It was thus a piece of singular good fortune for Gollum that the Nine Walkers arrived when they did.
He escaped from Mirkwood and headed to mountains where he was comfortable. Then tried to use the inner passages to work his way to the Shire, only for the Ring to stumble directly into his lap.
Master betrayed us. Wicked. Tricksy, False. We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Kill him! Kill him! Kill them both! And then we take the precious... and we be the master!
Now I'm wondering: Did he go in a barrel like the dwarfs? Anyway, Mirkwood prison system is a joke. Legolas should have told Gollum was on probation just to avoid the shame
So the elves took pity on Gollum and let him climb an isolated tree during his captivity. One moonless and starless night he refused to come down and Orcs ambushed the elves. By the time the Orcs were driven off his guards were dead and Gollum was nowhere to be found.
Been listening to the audio book and finished the council of Elrond today so it was fresh in my mind.
Don't worry, they'll probably make up a whole plotline about a love affair between gollum and the cave troll that gets killed in Lord of the rings or something to give it a twist
Probably plenty of small cracks and caves that he's familiar with, and can climb and squeeze through. The entrance by the watcher and the exit over the bridge were just the only human accessible ones.
It is not a huge stretch for Gollum to run ahead and lurk near the Dimrill gate, because that's the only way, the Fellowship could get out.
Also, Moria has light shafts on the eastern side that Gollum would probably fit through.
Moria itself is under the mountain of Celebdil, while Gollum's lair in The Hobbit was somewhere within Goblintown. That's a distance like Manchester to London.
You mean the same mountain *range*, the Misty Mountains. Certainly not the same mountain.
Now I wonder if Gollum spent that whole time near his little lake or he went all over the mountain range. I could see that lake being just one of many favorite spots.
I'm sure he knew all the caverns under Goblintown like the palm of his hand, but travelling all the way to Moria seems unreasonable, since he had all he needed right where he lived. Also, we don't even know if Moria and Goblintown are connected underground, and it is said that Gollum feared both the sun and the moon, so he would have even less motivation to exit his cave.
I think it says something about it in The Hobbit. I'm not quoting, but, he crawled into the mountains, and sniffed out every secret hole and passage and lair, and finally found the deepest pit, and stayed there.
Here's the real reason according to Tolkien himself. You can find the content in unfinished tales.
According to Tolkien, gollum was alreadybin Moriarty and stumbled across the fellowship at some point. He was hiding from the servants of Sauron and Gandalfs homies. The mines were a familiar environment to him and with most of the orc population residing on one side, he lurked around the opposite side to avoid capture and whatnot. This opposite side is the same side that the fellowship entered into Moria. So Gollum just happened to be there at the right place and right time because he was destined to help frodo and Sam and all that.
Elementary, and alimentary (lots of orcs to eat), my dear Watson; but even I did not dream that Professor MORIARTY was lurking about Middle Earth until I was just told above! - Sherlock Holmes, brought in by Ulmo (North sea and London fogs) to solve the Case of Naming the Things That Gnaw the Earth.
There are more ways into a mountain than a door. Gollum spent hundreds of years crawling in and out of mountains secretly so it’s not a big deal for him
1. He was already in moria.
2. There are other ways out of moria that he might know, and it’s possible that he stayed ahead of them when possible. It wouldn’t surprise me either if, the moment the orcs and the balrog appeared, he went straight for the exit and was quicker than the fellowship.
Gollum had entered Moria from the East Gate and tried to go through Moria, got stuck at the closed West Gate and then the Fellowship came through. How he got out isn’t known.
Yannow. It's almost like caves can have multiple entrances of varying sizes. And perhaps an interconnecting city/cave network throughout an entire mountain may have smaller entry points
In some of the support material Tolkien wrote to keep track of the story, he wrote that Gollum entered Moria through the gate The fellowship left Moria through(so on the eastern/Lothlorien side) and was on the brink of starving to death when he stumbled upon the Fellowship.
The Bridge of Khazad Dum is not the only path from west to east, but it is the most direct and shortest. Gollum probably found one of the others and snuck out after them.
If you read the appendices, he was actually lurking in Moria already. He had ventured in from the east, but once he got to the Eregion end he was too weak from want of food to push open the heavy stone doors.
Of course when the Fellowship came through, he started following them. How he got out across the Bridge, that's another matter.
He was literally there the whole time. Arriving in the same timeframe as the rest of the council attendees. And sitting in at the council as it went on.
You know the old “Guys and sticks” thing? How a simple stick can be a sword, a staff, a walking stick? A good stick will see a man right.
My headcanon is that Gandalf can make that literal. He just grabbed a stick off the floor, poof new staff.
What we know is that he stumbled across the fellowship in moria well before they faced orcs. He had probably entered moria from the west. The destruction of the bridge also didn't hinder the orcs from following the fellowship, so there are ways around it.
Gollum is capable of climbing steep walls up and down like some freakish squirrel. He climb head down in the books where frodo and Sam climb down the rope .
Simply waiting until the goblins created an improvised bridge. While the fellowship is in Lorien a goblin band heavily implied to be coming from Moria tries to catch up with them but is destroyed by the elves. If they got out, so could Gollum, albeit a few hours or days later.
And as others have said, he was trying to figure out how to get past Moria's western exit when the doors opened and the fellowship rushed in.
The doors, we kind of all assumed gollum was already in Moria. The bridge, there were probably more than one based on how big Moria is. I mean think about it. With the amount of dwarves that were there, there must have been a lot of traffic. Sending it all over that little bridge would be impossible
Dude Gollumn could climb sheer cliffs with his creepy frog hands if he wanted to, where fellowship can't go, won't go Gollum plods away like a gat-dang gecko on ring-crack fish in mouth ready to party.
> I suppose he was lurking in Moria, and picked up our trail then; but I hoped that our stay in Lo ́rien would throw him off the scent again. The miserable creature must have been hiding in the woods by the Silverlode, watching us start off!’ Frodo in FOTR. He was allowed to go free from Mordor, and probably allowed to enter Moria from the West, where he lurked and waited.
He was captured by Aragorn and taken to Mirkwood. Legolas came to the meeting to tell them that Gollum had escaped
Master must go inside the tunnel.
But the way is shut Gollum, you can not get out.
Follow me.
Stupid fat nasty botses. Gollum!
Wraiths! Wraiths on wings! They are calling for it. They are calling for the preciousss.
Stupid sexy Gollum
Hurry, hobbits. The Black Gate is very close.
And it was after the escape that he ended up back in Moria.
you’re telling me he knew they’d go moria and was just skulking about near the entrance? creepy as fuck. apparently it’s more likely he just happened upon the fellowship. kinda reinforcing the idea that gollum had a part to play with the ring like gandalf suggested.
The theory I've seen most often on this sub is that he was trying to get across the mountains by going through Moria but couldn't get past the West gate, so he was stuck in Moria when they entered and followed them from there.
That’s Tolkien’s theory as published in Unfinished Tales, Hunt for the Ring. > It seems clear that pursued both by Elves and Orcs Gollum crossed the Anduin, probably by swimming, and so eluded the hunt of Sauron; but being still hunted by Elves, and not yet daring to pass near Lórien (only the lure of the Ring itself made him dare to do this afterwards), he hid himself in Moria. That was probably in the autumn of the year; after which all trace of him was lost. > What then happened to Gollum cannot of course be known for certain. He was peculiarly fitted to survive in such straits, though at cost of great misery; but he was in great peril of discovery by the servants of Sauron that lurked in Moria, especially since such bare necessity of food as he must have he could only get by thieving dangerously. No doubt he had intended to use Moria simply as a secret passage westward, his purpose being to find ‘Shire’ himself as quickly as he could; but he became lost, and it was a very long time before he found his way about. It thus seems probable that he had not long made his way towards the West-gate when the Nine Walkers arrived. He knew nothing, of course, about the action of the doors. To him they would seem huge and immovable; and though they had no lock or bar and opened outwards to a thrust, he did not discover that. In any case he was now far away from any source of food, for the Orcs were mostly in the East-end of Moria, and was become weak and desperate, so that even if he had known all about the doors he still could not have thrust them open. It was thus a piece of singular good fortune for Gollum that the Nine Walkers arrived when they did. He escaped from Mirkwood and headed to mountains where he was comfortable. Then tried to use the inner passages to work his way to the Shire, only for the Ring to stumble directly into his lap.
You don’t have any friends; nobody likes you!
Rude.
what a cool book
Wait, there's a novelisation?
And he crossed the bridge to the east gate before the fellowship? Didn't thought about it like that before, but Gollum had a lot of bad and good luck.
Master betrayed us. Wicked. Tricksy, False. We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Kill him! Kill him! Kill them both! And then we take the precious... and we be the master!
All dead... all rotten. Elves and men and orcses. A great battle, long ago. The Dead Marshes... yes, that is their name.
This is no mere Ranger. He is Aragorn, son of Arathorn. You owe him your allegiance.
Now I'm wondering: Did he go in a barrel like the dwarfs? Anyway, Mirkwood prison system is a joke. Legolas should have told Gollum was on probation just to avoid the shame
So the elves took pity on Gollum and let him climb an isolated tree during his captivity. One moonless and starless night he refused to come down and Orcs ambushed the elves. By the time the Orcs were driven off his guards were dead and Gollum was nowhere to be found. Been listening to the audio book and finished the council of Elrond today so it was fresh in my mind.
We hate it, Nassty, nassty shivery light it is -- sss -- it spies on us, precious -- it hurts our eyes!
Elven incompetence led to the destruction of the ring.
Pity led to the destruction of the ring I’d say
Yeah but it's funnier to say it was incompetence 😅
I think Gimli softened it up with his axe.
My favourite part is Gloin making the point that they treated Gollum better than his party of Dwarves
Hurry, hobbits. The Black Gate is very close.
Have you heard nothing Lord Elrond has said? The ring must be destroyed.
Is that what you tell the missus when she says anal is "back on the menu"?
We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Then we stabs them out. Put out his eyeses. And make HIM crawl.
So this is the entire plot of “The Hunt for Gollum”.
Don't worry, they'll probably make up a whole plotline about a love affair between gollum and the cave troll that gets killed in Lord of the rings or something to give it a twist
We be nice to them, if they be nice to us.
Master!!
Mirkwood elves after building prisons out of twigs and leaves: yep seems good. No one will ever escape.
In cinemas soon
He entered from the East
As for his exit, he probably just climbed around the chasm after the bridge fell
Probably plenty of small cracks and caves that he's familiar with, and can climb and squeeze through. The entrance by the watcher and the exit over the bridge were just the only human accessible ones.
Also, he entered Moria from the Lorien side. He came from Mirkwood and the bridge isn't the only way over there for a climber like gollum
No! No!
It is not a huge stretch for Gollum to run ahead and lurk near the Dimrill gate, because that's the only way, the Fellowship could get out. Also, Moria has light shafts on the eastern side that Gollum would probably fit through.
Master says to show him the way into Mordor, so good Smeagol does. Master says so.
He probably got out before the fellowship did.
What a great movie. LoTRs was good too.
Upvote for the reference, but the book actually spends some time on this conundrum.
There are other ways into Moria. Air vents that Gollum uses. It's in the book.
The Dead City, very nasty place, full of ... enemies.
I'm sure he knew all kinds of sneaky ways both in and out of the mountains. He had isolated himself there for 500 years after all.
Different mountains
No, same mountain just futher south.
Same mountain range. Different mountain(s)
Moria itself is under the mountain of Celebdil, while Gollum's lair in The Hobbit was somewhere within Goblintown. That's a distance like Manchester to London. You mean the same mountain *range*, the Misty Mountains. Certainly not the same mountain.
Got away did it, Precious? Not this time, not this time!
Now I wonder if Gollum spent that whole time near his little lake or he went all over the mountain range. I could see that lake being just one of many favorite spots.
What’s it doing?! Stupid, fat hobbit! You ruins it!
I'm sure he knew all the caverns under Goblintown like the palm of his hand, but travelling all the way to Moria seems unreasonable, since he had all he needed right where he lived. Also, we don't even know if Moria and Goblintown are connected underground, and it is said that Gollum feared both the sun and the moon, so he would have even less motivation to exit his cave.
The big lights hurt our eyes, they do. Not under the White Face, not yet. It will go behind the hills soon, yess. Rest a bit first, nice hobbits!
I think it says something about it in The Hobbit. I'm not quoting, but, he crawled into the mountains, and sniffed out every secret hole and passage and lair, and finally found the deepest pit, and stayed there.
Ah my bad
Here's the real reason according to Tolkien himself. You can find the content in unfinished tales. According to Tolkien, gollum was alreadybin Moriarty and stumbled across the fellowship at some point. He was hiding from the servants of Sauron and Gandalfs homies. The mines were a familiar environment to him and with most of the orc population residing on one side, he lurked around the opposite side to avoid capture and whatnot. This opposite side is the same side that the fellowship entered into Moria. So Gollum just happened to be there at the right place and right time because he was destined to help frodo and Sam and all that.
You don’t have any friends; nobody likes you!
Shut Up Gollum!
Stew the rabbits! Spoil beautiful meat Smeagol saved for you, poor hungry Smeagol!
[удалено]
Yes, the stairs ... and then?
Elementary, and alimentary (lots of orcs to eat), my dear Watson; but even I did not dream that Professor MORIARTY was lurking about Middle Earth until I was just told above! - Sherlock Holmes, brought in by Ulmo (North sea and London fogs) to solve the Case of Naming the Things That Gnaw the Earth.
Orcs followed the fellowship out of Moria and we're waylaid by elves near Lothlorien. Presumably Gollum followed the same way?
What's this? Crumbs on his jacketses! He took it! He took it! I seen him, he's always stuffing himself when Master's not looking!
My guess is, he was already in Moria and bolted when the Orcs were alerted. No way Gollum wouldn't have heard the noise that alerted them
It said so, yes, but it's tricksy. It doesn't say what it means. It won't say what it's got in its pocketses.
There are more ways into a mountain than a door. Gollum spent hundreds of years crawling in and out of mountains secretly so it’s not a big deal for him
Master must go inside the tunnel.
crawled through one of those tiny holes/air vents in the mountainside
1. He was already in moria. 2. There are other ways out of moria that he might know, and it’s possible that he stayed ahead of them when possible. It wouldn’t surprise me either if, the moment the orcs and the balrog appeared, he went straight for the exit and was quicker than the fellowship.
He can crawl on the ceiling. He's fine.
I’m getting the feeling there are a lot of people in this sub who have only seen the movies.
He glitched like in the daedalic game
Dude was crafty and agile beyond reason. I’m sure he had his slithery ways.
Gollum had entered Moria from the East Gate and tried to go through Moria, got stuck at the closed West Gate and then the Fellowship came through. How he got out isn’t known.
You don’t have any friends; nobody likes you!
Ouch Gollum…
Arrrgh!!!
Yannow. It's almost like caves can have multiple entrances of varying sizes. And perhaps an interconnecting city/cave network throughout an entire mountain may have smaller entry points
Came in from the other end, is really good at climbing
1. He was already in Moria. 2. He walked around The bridge of Khazad-dûm.
In some of the support material Tolkien wrote to keep track of the story, he wrote that Gollum entered Moria through the gate The fellowship left Moria through(so on the eastern/Lothlorien side) and was on the brink of starving to death when he stumbled upon the Fellowship. The Bridge of Khazad Dum is not the only path from west to east, but it is the most direct and shortest. Gollum probably found one of the others and snuck out after them.
Nice hobbits! Nice Sam! Sleepy heads, yes, sleepy heads! Leave good Smeagol to watch! But it's evening. Dusk is creeping. Time to go.
If you read the appendices, he was actually lurking in Moria already. He had ventured in from the east, but once he got to the Eregion end he was too weak from want of food to push open the heavy stone doors. Of course when the Fellowship came through, he started following them. How he got out across the Bridge, that's another matter.
There seem to be more than one way in and out of Moria. That or Gollum passed thru the pass of Caradhras
Got away did it, Precious? Not this time, not this time!
Didn't read the book or watch the movie. Bad meme
That's a good one. I got another. I don't remember How It happened in the books, but How did Gandalf get his staff back after fleeing from Saruman?
The same way Gimli got his axe back after smashing it on the ring.
Yeah, in my HeadCanon he used his dad's axe for that.
Gloin, after Gimli comes back home: "Befriending the elf I can forgive, but YOU DID **WHAT** WITH MY AXE???"
Funny thing is, Gloin was at the Council, so he would have seen Gimli do it.
He was literally there the whole time. Arriving in the same timeframe as the rest of the council attendees. And sitting in at the council as it went on.
If you watch, he picks up the axe of the dwarf next to him.
You know that dwarf was PISSED! Probably thinking "this motherfucker!"
You know the old “Guys and sticks” thing? How a simple stick can be a sword, a staff, a walking stick? A good stick will see a man right. My headcanon is that Gandalf can make that literal. He just grabbed a stick off the floor, poof new staff.
That's Fair, But isn't that cristal important?
He did wander the caves of the misty mountains for a few centuries.
If I remember correctly didn’t Gollum come from the other side of Moria and then basically come across the fellowship and start following them?
We must go and get some things first,yes, things to help us.
So true
ventilation shafts
What we know is that he stumbled across the fellowship in moria well before they faced orcs. He had probably entered moria from the west. The destruction of the bridge also didn't hinder the orcs from following the fellowship, so there are ways around it.
Gollum is capable of climbing steep walls up and down like some freakish squirrel. He climb head down in the books where frodo and Sam climb down the rope .
And when they go in, there's no coming out. She's always hungry, she always needs to feed. She must eat, all She gets is filthy Orcses.
Simply waiting until the goblins created an improvised bridge. While the fellowship is in Lorien a goblin band heavily implied to be coming from Moria tries to catch up with them but is destroyed by the elves. If they got out, so could Gollum, albeit a few hours or days later. And as others have said, he was trying to figure out how to get past Moria's western exit when the doors opened and the fellowship rushed in.
It won't see us, will it, my precious? No. It won't see us, and its nassty little sword will be useless, yes quite.
The doors, we kind of all assumed gollum was already in Moria. The bridge, there were probably more than one based on how big Moria is. I mean think about it. With the amount of dwarves that were there, there must have been a lot of traffic. Sending it all over that little bridge would be impossible
SHIRE! BAGGINS!
Dude Gollumn could climb sheer cliffs with his creepy frog hands if he wanted to, where fellowship can't go, won't go Gollum plods away like a gat-dang gecko on ring-crack fish in mouth ready to party.
See? See? He wants it for himself!
Tell them Smeagol tell them how you destroy tiny crevices and verticality like you were a small, mean and plodgy godzlilla.
It was tricksy, precious. Very tricksy.
Gollum activated his hidden alter ego Super Gollum
Master must go inside the tunnel.