Then the ring was found by Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit from the Shire, on his journeys. It passed centuries with no one finding it, until a strange creature, Gollum, encountered it, and it turned him into a semi-immortal, possessed soul. In ancient history, Middle Earth nearly fell to the power of the great ring and Sauron who wielded it, but his finger was cut off in battle, and the great ring was eventually lost. That single ring was forged to one day rule them all, and bring darkness over Middle Earth. Behind these rings of power, however, was another, great ring designed to be wielded by Sauron, the dark lord. There were 3 rings for elven kings, 9 for mortal men, and 7 for the realm of dwarves. Legend has it that millennia ago a number of rings of power were forged from Mount Doom in the heart of Mordor. On the evil side is Mordor, run by the dark lord Sauron. Also on this half of the equation is The Shire, the land of the Hobbits, though the Hobbits do not have any formal alliances with the other kingdoms, since they simply keep to themselves and aren’t well equipped for the drawn out fights for power that take place in the other realms. On the good team are the humans, dwarves, and elves, who have a long standing alliance among them, clearly defined borders, and a healthy respect for each other’s kingdoms and ways of life. The trilogy takes place in a fantastical world called Middle Earth, which has a mix of races, many of them good, but some evil. In the first novel of Tolkien’s epic trilogy, The Felloship of the Ring, the Lord of the Rings series starts out by giving an introduction to some of the main concepts behind the story.

Lord of the rings audio