While spend­ing time in Mid­dle Earth, you may notice that there are a lot of libraries.

From the small, cozy library in Bree, to the large, well-stocked cache of tomes in Riven­dell, you are never want­ing for read­ing mate­r­ial for what­ever down time you may have. How­ever, there is a prob­lem once you start ven­tur­ing out from the friendly con­fines of the keeps and towns.

It seems that a large num­ber of these libraries are aban­doned and have become home to foul crea­tures such as orcs, rats and fire grims. Not to men­tion cranky dwarves.

One day while try­ing des­per­ately to find a book, a spe­cial glow­ing shelf or mag­i­cal list of items, it occurred to me, why didn’t Elrond or Gan­dalf just cre­ate a coun­cil of Librar­i­ans? I mean, we all get the title of “Librar­ian” after defeat­ing mobs in Tham Mir­dain, so if we can run off and save these places, why can’t oth­ers pro­tect them from the start?

If the Elves or Men had just installed some stern, purse-lipped, shush­ing librar­i­ans, I would dare say things would have turned out a bit differently.

Just imagine…an orc, wield­ing what­ever piece of metal he found on the side of the road, comes lop­ing in, would be stopped by the Head Librar­ian and asked “Do you have your library card?”

The Orc, taken aback by some­one address­ing him with­out the use of a staff, sword, musi­cal instru­ment or shiny rock, would be at a loss. He would have no choice but to leave the library or stand there and fill out the card with his absurdly long name (assum­ing he can write), bring a util­ity bill prov­ing he resides in that county and then wait 14 busi­ness days before he attempts his pil­lag­ing again.

Prob­lem solved.