Goblin-town

The warren under the pass

Goblin-town lay inside the mountains directly beneath the High Pass. Its upper entrance was the Front Porch, a dry cave opening onto the road where travellers were tempted to shelter; a crack at its back could open in the night and let the goblins pour out to seize whoever slept there. From it a tunnel ran down into a great cavern lit by red fires, the hall where the Great Goblin sat among his guards, and from there passages branched in every direction through the rock. The goblins had lived in these tunnels for many generations and knew them in the dark, and they had made a back door on the eastern side of the mountains through which their raiding parties came and went.

The goblins of the Misty Mountains were smaller than the Uruks of Mordor but cunning with tools, and they hated everyone who walked above ground, Dwarves most of all. They kept wolves as allies, took prisoners for slaves and food, and had long memories for injuries. In the deepest part of the mountain, below any tunnel the goblins used, lay a cold lake on an island of which Gollum had lived for nearly five hundred years, eating fish and the occasional goblin and hoarding the ring he had brought from the Gladden Fields.

Orcs multiplied in the northern mountains after the fall of Angmar, and Sauron planted holds there in T.A. 2480. Goblin-town's people fought in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs and suffered in it. Their chieftain in 2941 was the Great Goblin, who had Thorin's company brought before him from the Front Porch and recognised Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver, in Thorin's hand. Gandalf put out the fires and killed him with Glamdring, and the Dwarves fled down the tunnels with the goblins after them. Bilbo, knocked senseless and left behind, woke alone, found a ring on the floor, and after the game of riddles with Gollum escaped invisible through the back door.

The goblins never forgave the death of their chief. Under Bolg of Gundabad the orcs of the whole range marched on Erebor that autumn, and most of them died at the Battle of Five Armies. Goblin-town was much reduced afterwards, though orcs still lived in the mountains during the War of the Ring; Glóin reported to the Council of Elrond that the Beornings kept the pass safe only with difficulty. It vanishes from the records after Sauron's fall.

Caves and tunnels inside the northern Misty Mountains beneath the High Pass, with the Front Porch opening on the pass itself and the back door on the eastern slopes above the Anduin vale.