Middle-earth is alive, ancient, and deeply dangerous. The roads are less safe than they were a year ago — and they were not safe then.

You have arrived at the Prancing Pony in Bree, the last reliable roof before the wild begins. The Fellowship of the Ring is somewhere out there, carrying its impossible burden — but that is not your story. Your story is here, in the north, where travelers have been vanishing from the East Road without a trace, and something at the ruins of Weathertop is waking from a very long sleep.

Who are you? What brought you to Bree? And what do you do when Barliman Butterbur tells you, very quietly, that three of this month's missing guests all signed the same name in his register — a name that isn't a name at all?