Lord of the Rings (musical) the region of Middle-earth known as the Shire, Bilbo Baggins, an eccentric and wealthy Hobbit, celebrates his eleventyhundredth birthday by vanishing from his birthday party, leaving his greatest treasure, a mysterious magic Ring, to his young relative Frodo Baggins ("Springle Ring"). The Ring is greatly desired by the Dark Lord Sauron, who could use it to conquer the world, and must be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom in Sauron's country of Mordor. Frodo and his friends Samwise Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took set out along the road that leads out of the Shire ("The Road Goes On").
Meriadoc Brandybuck Black Gate, while in the book he remained in Minas Tirith to heal from the wound he received when assisting in the killing of the Witch-king of Angmar and was instrumental in the romance between Faramir and Éowyn. In the prefaces and appendices to "The Lord of the Rings", Tolkien employed the conceit that he was the modern translator of a unique manuscript, the "Red Book of Westmarch", and that his stories of Middle-earth derived from that. In this guise of translator, he maintained that the character's real name was not "Meriadoc Brandybuck" but rather "Kalimac Brandagamba". This was said