I am Bree.
A place for weary travelers of all shapes and sizes to rest and hear tales of old and new.
Most just think of me as a 'stop-over', not a 'destination' by any stretch of the imagination.
Yet here occurred one of the most crucial meetings in the history of Middle Earth.
On a rainy night a wanderer, born to become King crossed paths, albeit preconceived, with a halfling bearing the greatest and most terrible weapon the world had ever known.
Almost immediately a trust that endured both grief and temptation was born and a journey began that none could foresee.
BUT, this is not the meeting of which I speak.
Many years before, there was another meeting here. This time, completely by chance.
Two travelers known to each other only by reputation yet bearing the same problem met in the Prancing Pony. Together they hatched a plan that would ultimately change the fate of Middle Earth.
The two travelers?
A wizard called Gandalf and a Dwarf by the name of Thorin Oakenshield, if I remember rightly.
And the Problem?
A Dragon.
For here in Bree was born the plan to diminish the terror of Smaug the Dragon who lay far away, deep inside Erebor, the Lonely Mountain.
A terror that would have spread tenfold, had the great Drake joined his will with that of Sauron, who grew ever stronger in the quiet of Mordor.
With such an alliance, all of Mirkwood, Lorien and even Rivendell would have lay within the Dragons' grasp.
But, thanks to this chance meeting, such events never came to be, and in the most important of sidenotes also brought about the finding of the One Ring, which curiously, also passed between my gates on more than one occasion.
Oh, I know I'm not as beautiful as Rivendell or as grand as Minas Tirith, but without me, the world would be a VERY different place.
Stop-over indeed.
