The Lord of the Rings Nazgûl, to seize it. The story begins in the Shire, where the hobbit Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring from Bilbo Baggins, his cousin and guardian. Neither hobbit is aware of the Ring's nature, but Gandalf the Grey, a wizard and an old friend of Bilbo, suspects it to be Sauron's Ring. Seventeen years later, after Gandalf confirms his guess, he tells Frodo the history of the Ring and counsels him to take it away from the Shire. Frodo sets out, accompanied by his gardener, servant and friend, Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, and two cousins, Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck and Peregrin "Pippin" Took.
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