It is the morning of Midsummer’s Eve and you awake in your room at the Prancing Pony, the inn that stands in the centre of the village of Bree. Early morning sunlight reaches around the edge of the curtains, brightening your room and you can smell cooking bacon and other delicious smells as the proprietor Barnabas Butterbur and his staff prepare breakfast for you and the other guests that stayed the night. The Pony is busy at this time of year and you were fortunate enough to get rooms, with the village of Bree filled with visitors from the other Bree-land villages and little folk from the Shire too. The Midsummer’s Eve celebrations are known through the lands as a festival to rival that of any other and so travellers come from miles around to take part in the ale drinking, singing of songs, dancing and of course the Summer Smoke Ring Festival too.
Out in the middle of the village, the Green has been filled with temporary stalls, wagons and booths covered in colourful canvas awnings and bunting hangs from every available post and tree. Yesterday more hobbits came from the Shire and other folk arrived from the other villages of Archet, Staddle and Combe, much to the chagrin of the rarely busy Bree-Wardens, the peacekeepers and guardians of the usually quiet village of Bree. Among the visitors is none other than Bilbo Baggins himself, a hobbit of some repute since his adventures around the time of the Battle of the Five Armies and his involvement in the death of the great dragon Smaug! Several Big-Folk (humans) were sat in a darkened corner of the taproom, hoods covering their faces in shadow and heads close together. A woman was among their number, her bearing regal but subdued.
Now the morning has come, some have very sore heads and the sounds of the inn staff moving tables and chairs cause many to groan as they gingerly break their fast. Among those waking up this Midsummer’s morning are a party of dwarves, a hobbit and a number of men of Middle-Earth. They have all gathered at The Pony, among the festival-goes, for their own reasons but soon their journeys may be more entwined than they imagined.