The Great Goblin

Lord under the High Pass

The Great Goblin ruled Goblin-town, the warren of tunnels and caverns that the goblins of the Misty Mountains had dug beneath the High Pass, the main road between Rivendell and the vale of Anduin. His name is never given; the goblins called him simply their chief and the greatest of them, and he was enormous even by the standards of the larger Orcs, with a huge head and a bellowing voice. He sat in a great cavern lit by red fires, surrounded by armed goblins, and passed judgement on whatever the patrols brought in from the pass. Travellers had learned to be wary of that road: the goblins had lately opened a new way from the pass into their tunnels, and had begun to take anyone who camped near it.

The capture of Thorin's company

In the summer of T.A. 2941 Thorin Oakenshield and his thirteen companions took shelter from a storm in a dry cave high on the pass. It was one of the goblins' front doors. In the night a crack opened in the back wall, the ponies were driven through it, and the whole company was seized and hurried down through the mountain by whips and torchlight to the Great Goblin's hall. Gandalf, who had been awake, escaped the goblins' grasp in the dark and was not among the prisoners.

The Great Goblin questioned Thorin. Thorin said they were travelling to visit relatives east of the mountains, which was true, and that the cave had seemed empty, which was also true, but the goblins had already found the sword he carried. It was Orcrist, the blade from the troll-hoard that had come out of Gondolin, and the goblins of the mountains knew it as Biter, a weapon that had killed hundreds of their kind in the Elder Days. The Great Goblin screamed with rage, sprang from his seat and rushed at Thorin with his jaws open.

Death

He never reached him. The fires in the hall went out at once in a column of smoke, sparks burned the goblin guards, and out of the dark a sword flashed and went through the Great Goblin where he stood. It was Glamdring, the mate of Orcrist, in Gandalf's hand. The chief of the goblins fell dead in the middle of his own hall, and in the panic that followed the wizard led the Dwarves and Bilbo out through the tunnels toward the back door of the mountain, cutting down the pursuers who came too close. The goblins recovered enough to give chase, and in the confusion Bilbo was lost and found the Ring.

Legacy

The goblins did not forget. The death of their chief, together with the burning of the Wargs and their goblin allies by Gandalf a few nights later, gave the mountain tribes a grievance that spread from hold to hold, and when word came that the dragon was dead and the treasure of Erebor open, the goblins already had their war. Bolg of Gundabad took command of the muster, and the host that fought the Battle of Five Armies was, in part, the Great Goblin's revenge.

Run through by Gandalf with the sword Glamdring in the great cavern of Goblin-town, T.A. 2941.