I'm reading The Hobbit again, as I live-action roleplay as a Tolkien scholar in an attempt to understand Middle Earth, its lore, and its effect on modern gaming. I'm reviewing each chapter of the book as I read, and this is my review of Chapter 12: Inside Information.
This review contains spoilers.
Bilbo ventures to enter Smaug's lair, the former dwarven halls of Erebor. He is so stealthy that he manages to steal a cup from the dragon's hoard, and brings it back to the dwarves without awakening Smaug. However, by the evening Smaug senses part of his treasure missing, and flies out of the mountain in search of the thief. The dwarves and Bilbo are in hiding, but Smaug manages to eat 6 of their ponies.
Bilbo dares a second descent into Smaug's lair later, only to find Smaug awake and awaiting company. Bilbo, being invisible thanks to his magic ring, manages to hold a civil conversation with Smaug. He sensibly declines to provide his real name or origin, but being a lover of riddles he drops several hints about his adventure. Combined with that, and the aftertaste of dwarven riders on the ponies he ate, Smaug decides that the thief must be from Dale. That night, he leaves the mountain to seal the back entrance to his lair and then to attack Laketown.
Like Riddles in the Dark, this is a tense chapter for its intrigue. I've always taken it for granted that Bilbo and Smaug, obviously, never fought. We all know it's Bard that slays the dragon. But after my latest reading of this chapter, I realise I've been wrong my entire life. Bilbo and Smaug do very much duel, and in every sense Bilbo is the victor. Granted, Bilbo didn't know what his deception was going to bring about, and he even regrets his riddles almost immediately after speaking them. Regardlessly, Bilbo's successful deception tricks Smaug into revealing a weakness in his armour, lures Smaug from his lair, and inspires him to go to Laketown and to his defeat. I don't think you'd mark a hero poorly for a failed parry as long as the hero wins in the end, so I don't think we can fault Bilbo for not exactly having a fully-formed plan. The important thing is that he did what came naturally to him, and whether by his Tookish nature or by the conditioning of the adventure, it seems that naturally he's a real rogue.
As a Tales of the Valiant and Pathfinder player, I can't help but notice the hints of charisma and deception mechanics in this chapter. I didn't play D&D back in the 1970s and 1980s, so I don't know how players then dealt with player characters attempting social engineering, but this chapter absolutely is a tutorial for creating tension through spoken interaction. Whether it's a model for a conversation, or a model for the relationship between Dungeon Master and player, this chapter is almost a transcription of a tabletop RPG. One side provides clues and riddles, the other side tries to divine the meaning. The question is: Is Bilbo the DM or the PC?
Here's the thing about Tolkien's world. He doesn't have its entire history figured out just because he was an obsessive geek like many of us nerds. The history of his Middle Earth is Middle Earth. The real-ness of the history makes it meaningful that Bilbo walks through a corridor that, unlike a crude goblin tunnel, was precisely constructed by dwarves. The history comes alive when you learn that much of Smaug's hoard consists of a large order for an army that never got paid for or collected. There's so much technically-mundane detail to everything in the book, and it's why the novels feel almost like non-fiction. It's history with history.
We already know the door to the back entrance is enchanted, but it's mentioned again in this chapter when the dwarves and Bilbo decide to seek shelter in the corridor. They're concerned, Tolkien says, that they won't be able to get the door open again from the inside. I love that Tolkien didn't forget about this detail, and I love that the dwarves don't know how the magic works.
As a games master, I'm guilty of revealing a lot to my players about magical items. I do it because life's too short to not know about the cool stuff you're encountering in a dungeon, but I freely admit that knowing that you don't know is definitely satisfying, too.
There's also the suggestion that Smaug may have some magic about him. He's a mythical creature, of course, so there's the obvious argument that he is literally magical (as are dwarves, hobbits, and wizards). But on top of the baseline fantasy setting, there's a hint that Smaug's mesmerising conversation isn't just due to his personality. Some of the phrasing Tolkien uses seems significant.
...a nasty suspicion began to grow in his mind—had the dwarves forgotten this important point too, or were they laughing in their sleeves at him all the time? That is the effect that dragon-talk has on the inexperienced. Bilbo of course ought to have been on his guard; but Smaug had rather an overwhelming personality.
It could be that Smaug's personality and "dragon-talk" are one and the same. But the way I read it, Tolkien names "dragon-talk" to suggest that it's a thing, like a magical force, fully separate from Smaug's personality. Smaug's personality is what is keeping Bilbo off-guard, making Bilbo more susceptible to enchanting dragon-talk. It's a theory, but I wouldn't imagine I'm alone in getting this sense. Even the dismal Peter Jackson versions (yes yes, I worked on them, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about them) had Thorin succumb to the dragon's latent influence of greed.
There's a definite suggestion that there's a sort of shift in the environment, both physical and magical, within a certain proximity of a dragon. This chapter even says that the plantlife around the mountain has been cleared, although I'm not sure that's a physical corruption or just because Smaug breathed fire on it one night). There are probably lots of examples in pop culture of the idea of corruption spreading from the lair of an evil entity. I know that the Monster Manual for D&D 5th edition features environmental corruptions near the lairs of dragons and other monsters, for example.
I'm tracking Bilbo's reputation with the dwarves, and the dwarves' reputation with Bilbo, as the book progresses. In this chapter, Bilbo brings back a trophy from Smaug's lair and the dwarves explicitly promise their (and their families') service to him. Unsurprisingly, they quickly turn on him once Smaug awakens, complaining that Bilbo shouldn't have stolen from a live dragon, until Bilbo reminds them that he wasn't hired to dispose of Smaug but only to steal from him.
I'll count Bilbo's many contributions as 1 Victory Point. The dwarves aren't of much use in this chapter. Balin accompanies Bilbo down the passage toward Smaug, but only part of the way. To be very charitable, I'll award the dwarves a Victory Point for Balin's help when Smaug breathes fire in Bilbo's general direction (and actually does singe some of his hair).
A great chapter, easily one of the most intriguing after Riddles in the dark. Interestingly, I think this demonstrates that Tolkien does have a knack for dialogue, even though he barely exercises it. There's a part in this chapter when Thorin is giving a speech about Bilbo, and Tolkien writes something like "You are familiar with Thorin's style on important occasions" and my immediate reaction was that no, I am not familiar with Thorin. And yet, I guess we do know Thorin by now. Through the scant dialogue and descriptions of mannerisms, we do get the archetypes of all the characters in this book. There's a lot we have to fill in, and maybe that's a form of invitational absence. We end up knowing the characters because we imagine we know the characters, based on just the snippets of actual dialogue we get throughout the book. I can envision the book being different, but then again the book's pretty good and pretty successful, so maybe that's the point. We can envision things being different, and in so doing we make the book our own mythology.