[Morthoron]

Amarthanuin drained his ale down to the bitter dregs, and wallowed in extravagant melancholia like a kraken lurking in a dark pool. He grimly gazed about in vain for a busty barmaid to fill his empty tankard (a little know fact about Hobbit maids was they not only had big feet, but they were also well-endowed elsewhere), and with his hyperacuity he immediately noticed something odd: in every corner of the inn lurked darkly hooded figures like him. Wherever there was darkness, wherever the light of hearth or candle did not touch, there were cowled characters cowering in conspicuous but incondign inconspicuousity, the chiaroscuro of light and shadow playing in parallel to the bright bustle and clammer in the center of the inn as opposed to the inordinate coolness and covert counterpoints, pregnant with portent, around its dim edges. Stranger still, the dark hooded figures all had savage glints, gleaming glances peering perilously from the unfathomable unlight of their covered miens.

Amarth chuckled knowingly to himself. It always amused him to think in ridiculously ornate verbosity, a garrulous internal monlogue that never impeded his everyday conversations. After all, these folks were all simple; he needn't flaunt his superiority among the guttural farmers and stuttering ploughboys dripping rank ale down their filthy jerkins. They wouldn't understand him anyway. He moved from thinking about his thoughts back to the mysterious figures ensconced in the gloomy recesses of the Prancing Pony. He wondered if the other inn patrons thought it odd that so many sinister shadowmen (there were at least twenty of them) in clandestine camoflage (all wearing some variation of a weatherbeaten hood or cowl in somber tones of scarlet, black, gray or dark green) were surreptitiously quaffing their stouts or ales as if they were stealing sips. Then Amarth noticed they were all glaring at him, as if he were casting unwanted attention on their furtive subterfuges. Catching the scent of unease in the air, he nervously fidgeted with his mug and cast down his eyes in embarrasment. He had got caught spying on spies!

Shifting uneasily in his chair, he sunk deeper into the darkness of his corner, and looked elsewhere in the inn, hoping that the other hooded figures would forget about him and allow him to once again eavesdrop and reconnoiter unhindered. It was then he notice a passel of hammered hobbits failing miserably at their half-hearted attempt at remaining incognito. He gave a sideways glance around the inn at the shadowmen. They had indeed forgotten about him and were all eyeing the hobbits intently. Amarth shrugged and decided the hobbits might prove entertaining to watch for a while, or perhaps he would shift his attention to and fro between hobbits and shadowmen as a means of passing time, for he was now dreadfully bored.