The Way We War

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I dunno- I think I can imagine Dwarves making and deploying curved plastic housings packed with C-4 and shrapnel, detonatable either by remote command or tripwire.......

Ha! I thought you'd read all of HoM-e. The Dwarves' use of anti-personel mines against Moria Orcs was an idea Tolkien was playing with in a late '60's re-write of LotR. Of course, the 'plastic housings' were to be made of 'imperishable crystal' & the tripwire made from single strands of Elven hair. The idea was that Gimli's request for a single hair from Galadriel's head was to provide said wire, which would have been set in the crystal housing of the mine & hopefully would have been strong enough to be retrieved & reused. An alternate idea involved his shaving Legolas' head one night to obtain a large stock of said tripwire material. Obtaining the explosive would have been more difficult - Gandalf would have been a possible source of gunpowder (Gimli would have offered him a contract to supply 'fireworks' for the Lonely Mountain's Durin's Day Hop in the hope that Gandalf wouldn't realise their true intention - in this version G. would have had serious debt problems after a late night gambling session with some drunken Elves & been left with a price on his head & Glorfindel on his tail for the cash).

The whole idea, sadly, fell by the wayside....