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Eruonen
Half-elven
Dec 5 2014, 9:36pm
Post #1 of 11
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A major problem for Thorin and company
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What would they have had to eat sitting in the mountain?
It was the start of winter, they antagonized both the elves and men who could have traded goods. You can't eat gold and jewels. I doubt any age old stores would have been edible. They held the mountain and would have to have relied upon Dain for supply. If Dain had been cut off...they would have starved.
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Dec 5 2014, 9:40pm
Post #2 of 11
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I think that was exactly the plan
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to starve them out. And I think Bard's messenger said something like, "We'll leave you to your gold. Eat that, if you will." Their only hope was rescue by Dain.
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Eruonen
Half-elven
Dec 5 2014, 9:50pm
Post #3 of 11
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And to be fair to Thorin, if he had not been overcome with
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Dragon Sickness, I think he would have held to his promise in Laketown.
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Elarie
Grey Havens
Dec 6 2014, 2:59am
Post #6 of 11
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They weren't completely without food
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They recaptured several of their ponies after Smaug was killed and transported their food stores that had been left outside the mountain, so they had several weeks worth of 'cram', enough to hold out until Dain arrived:
“As they worked the ravens brought them constant tidings. In this way they learned that the Elvenking had turned aside to the Lake, and they still had a breathing space. Better still, they heard that three of their ponies had escaped and were wandering wild far down the banks of the Running River, not far from where the rest of their stores had been left. So while the others went on with their work, Fili and Kili were sent, guided by a raven, to find the ponies and bring back all they could.”
__________________
Farewell hope,
and with hope
farewell fear.
John Milton
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Eruonen
Half-elven
Dec 6 2014, 3:24am
Post #7 of 11
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True, but a seige of more than a few weeks would have been
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disastrous if Dain was prevented from relieving them. I think it possible that in that situation, there could have been a mutiny led by Balin as Thorin would clearly have not been himself.
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Elarie
Grey Havens
Dec 6 2014, 4:24am
Post #8 of 11
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they certainly would have been in a fairly hopeless bargaining position, but it seems so typical of dwarf nature that Thorin and the other dwarves never seriously considered the possibility that Dain wouldn't reach them. They just take it for granted that a fully equipped dwarf army isn't going to be stopped by anybody and poor sensible Bilbo seems to be the only one worried about other possibilities.
It's interesting to speculate, though, on what might have happened if Dain had been cut off, and if the orcs hadn't attacked, and if there had been a long, winter siege of the mountain. Tolkien's dwarves are so incredibly clannish and loyal that I'm not sure if a human style 'mutiny' would happen in their culture, but eventually hunger would win out and I can imagine a very angry, grumpy Thorin finally agreeing to bargain for food rather than watch his men starve.
__________________
Farewell hope,
and with hope
farewell fear.
John Milton
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Dec 19 2014, 10:54pm
Post #9 of 11
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Some food was being brought to them by the ravens.
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I do doubt that the ravens of Erebor could provide enough food for Thorin's company to sustain them for an extended period of time, but the birds (in the book) were extending the supplies of the Dwarves.
'There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' - Gandalf the Grey, The Fellowship of the Ring
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Beleg Strongbow Cuthalion
Bree
Apr 8 2015, 8:07pm
Post #10 of 11
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Cram? But Bilbo got really tired of that, as Tolkien says in TH.//
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~"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ― Gandalf the Grey~
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