A Weekend Trip to Rivendell. Non-LOTR geeks beware...
It never fails, really; each time I wander onto a new map in Lord of the Rings Online, I wind up getting the Tookish bug. I forget whatever else I was going to do (in this case, killing monsters to get some more cash, since I bankrupted myself crafting) and go exploring. Often this leads to disaster, since I start getting too curious for my own good and roaming out into areas where the monsters are WAY too tough for me. (Maybe that's what happened to a lot of those Tooks of years past that Bilbo mentioned in The Hobbit, who went exploring and never returned...)
However, this little jaunt into parts unknown went spectacularly well. Intending to go monster-hunting in the Lonelands near the Forgotten Inn, I set out from Bree, then ended up crossing the entire width of the Lonelands. I ducked the bears and other weird-looking things in the Trollshaws, crossed the Ford of Bruinen, and finally started up the slopes toward Rivendell itself.
EVERYTHING from the mid-Lonelands on out was red or purple to me (for those not initiated in the mysteries of massively multiplayer online RPGs, monster names in red or purple almost always mean "RUN AWAY!!!") But I managed to dodge and circle around and just plain run the heck away from everything that decided I looked tasty...and at last, I reached the top of the hill and passed the Gates of Rivendell (no real gates, just a rather narrow pass only about the width of a really really big doorway) and came down into the valley.
From then on out, the pictures will tell you how I spent my "overnight" in Rivendell. (A journey that took Aragorn and the hobbits a good three weeks in the book took my speedy little hobbit less than a day. Good old distance-condensing MMORPGs!)
The only members of the Company of the Ring that I didn't manage to track down in Rivendell were Gimli the dwarf and the younger hobbits, Pippin and Merry. I searched the house from top to bottom (at least I think I did) but no goofy little tweens-age hobbits could I find. I thought that if Gimli would be anywhere, he'd be at the forge, but he wasn't.
Once I'd found all the Company members I thought I was going to be able to find, I just wandered around and basically played. Explored some more, did a little cooking in the Hall of Fire, swam in the pools and did some waterfall-surfing--my favorite MMORPG extreme sport, aside from high-diving. No, you can't *really* dive; you do a feet-first drop into the water, which *can* kill you if you fall far enough.
By the time I assured myself that I really could *not* get to the top of the Imladris Falls and swim over them, it was nearing game-time dawn. I ran around a while longer, reluctant to leave (just like Frodo) and highly tempted to use the milestone and put Rivendell as my "home" location, but I have so much left to do back West that I knew it would be a mistake. So, sadly, I took a last few pretty pictures, then used my Map Home to take me back to Hobbiton-Bywater.
Maybe it was the drizzly weather in Hobbiton when I got back, or maybe I'd done something odd to the color or gamma settings while fiddling around to get better pictures in Rivendell, but even the cozy, homey Shire seemed a bit drab after the Last Homely House west of the Mountains.