"Three, three and five of course. And I suppose I might have a picture of an Orc and a Goblin around here somewhere...

Dwarves are generally like Men and Hobbits, Short like a Hobbit but slightly taller. Stockier and hardier with broad shoulders and muscular frames. And never seen one without a beard in my life. They are excellent miners and smiths of metal. They never forget a slight against them but are steadfastly loyal to their friends.

And Elves are like men but taller and thinner. With pointed ears and sharp features and a feeling of...otherworldliness to them. They don't die of old age and seem disconnected from the world a lot of the time. Mind you younger elves can be a lot closer in temperament to a mortal like you and me. You can hear them singing in the woods sometimes and it is the most beautiful thing you have ever heard in your life.

And I suppose Wizards are another kind of thing altogether. Gandalf looks and acts like a man but I have never seen him age a day in his life. And even the Elves listen to his counsel." Bilbo explains what he knows of the other free races of middle earth.

"I know where you keep the illustrations for your book! I can go find the Orc and the Goblin and the one with the three Trolls." Frodo pipes up again.

"Thank you Frodo, you can go get them if you want." Of course Frodo knows the Illustrations for my book better than I do Bilbo thought.

And off Frodo runs. He acts young and eager but he doesn't look less than early 20s going by human ages.

"If it was a different language l would expect different numbers of letters... unless the translation also affects that. Maybe I should create a crossword puzzle instead."

"That's a lot of more variation than I expected for the same world... if you don't mind me asking. Is it possible for these people to have children together? Fertile children? Also, what is Gandalf capable of?"

Frodo remains adorable. He then remembers that Bilbo mentioned a 111th birthday and... "How long hobbits live? How old is Frodo?"

"Oh goodness no! why would that even be a question." Bilbo suddenly looks very flustered at being asked about people having children together. That is not something people usually talked about in polite company.

"As far as legends go Elves and Men were made by the same god. Elves came first to middle earth with fated destiny and Men later with free will. Elves to live until the end of days or to go to the halls of Mandos. And men to fade with time and die of old age. Apparently long ago an elf gave up her immortality to be with a man and bear him sons but there was the blessing of a god involved I think. 

I don't know how much to believe of that but the Elves certainly all believe it. Never heard of a Half-Elf being known to exist today though.

Dwarves apparently were made by a different god than men and elves while they are not immortal they can live a very long time, longer than 250 years if they are of certain lines and do not die of disease or battle. And their king reincarnates? I should probably know more about the legend of Durin but it wasn't a focus of mine when picking up these legends you know. Never heard of a Half-Dwarf even in legends.

Orcs are apparently Elves that some evil god that has long since been defeated, tortured and used magic on and bred together, till he had his own terrible slave race. Goblins I assume are a related sort of thing to orcs. No clue where trolls and ogres and such come from. But I Suppose with magic you could create any sort of creature if you had no shred of goodness in you and thousands of years to do it in.

I have seen Gandalf talk to beasts, command great eagles, make fire with his staff, make light and he knows all manner of ancient lore and is a trusted friend to many of the oldest and wisest elves which would make him very old indeed. Old elves do not trust so easily.

Hobbits usually live to 100 or so, Oldest Hobbit on record made it past 130 years. I feel at least another decade in these old bones of mine myself." He chuckles and pats his knees as if to show off his old bones. He does not look that old maybe in his 70s at the oldest.

"Young Frodo is not so young anymore but Hobbits are seen as adults by 30 and he is 33. He's a Hobbit grown now I suppose...I remember when he was 20 and got caught stealing mushrooms." A very wistful sigh remembering fond memories from Bilbo.

"I found the papers!" Frodo comes in with a bundle of papers. "Here. The goblins of the mountain from your book. The trolls turned to stone. And the Orcs from the battle of five armies."

The Goblins of goblin town

An Orc Soldier

The stone Trolls

Since he just woke up in fantasy land with a gaming interface in his head, he is absolutely going to buy this worldbuilding stuff without question. Sticking around to talk to Gandalf sounds like an increasingly good idea.

He accepts the papers with gentle care. "This is fantastic art. Did you draw that yourself?" He scrutinizes the figures, all humanoids. "Does everything that talks walks upright and has two legs and two arms?"

Bilbo is very proud of the compliments to his art. Puffing out his chest proudly. "Why thank you. It has taken me 50 years to write this book and I wanted to make sure it was perfect, and it Isn't even finished.

Bilbo looks a little pensive. "Well, the Elves speak of Maiar that can take the shape of anything they want...But a lot of their claims about the gods and spirits seem...like you would notice them if they were running around. Oh, and the great eagles are said to understand human speech even if the only one I know who can speak eagle is Gandalf. Dragons I know personally can speak just as well as any hobbit or person and seem fairly intelligent in certain ways. Dragons do sort of have arms and legs of a sort even if they go on all fours... There is talk amongst elves of Spiders Intelligent enough to trick elves and men in the Murkwood but not of them speaking to anyone, but they might only talk amongst themselves being person eating spiders and all."

Frodo is loving all this talk of lore. Usually takes a bottle of farmer Darrows finest vintage to get Bilbo to talk so much about his collected lore.

He squirms uncomfortably about the spiders. Yikes. Hopefully, they are not the easiest way to obtain string for a bow. "That is a very large number of... kinds of creatures that might intelligent. Any idea if dragons and great eagles are... I don't have a better word that weird, like, they value things in a way very different from the humanoid species?"

"Also, do you have the printing press?"

"Well since I've only known Gandalf to talk to the eagles I have no idea about them. But they don't do people things like build homes or do art. Dragons at least do appreciate things like craftsmanship and monetary value. They can understand things like politics and politeness even if normally they are solitary creatures. Smaug the dragon seemed like a person to me, even if all he cared about was his horde of gold." Expositions Biilo.

"What's a printing press?" Pipes up Frodo.

"I probably would need more time to think the right questions to ask," he tells Bilbo, to Frodo say he replies. "A printing press is a mechanical device for a faster and more convenient manufacturing of books. The basic principle is having a movable set of stamp letters that you can form the text of a page, then you put ink on them and press the entire thing on paper. And then you can ink it again and press the next page and do it as many times you need. Then you rearrange the thing into the text of the next page. And so on and on."

Frodo is visibly thinking about how you would actually make a printing press. "So you have the letter imprints in backwards...so when they stamp they are the right way around...they would have to be very small and fit in a page-sized frame together...Wouldnt be faster for just a few copies of a book but for a pamphlet or something that you need dozens of, it could be very helpful. Bilbo this would save so much time for writing out the party invites! I already have a sore wrist just thinking about helping write over a hundred invites." Frodo is a very clever hobbit indeed.

So clever. "That's right. You can even have for pretty symbols to decorate your invitations. And the printing press allowed for newspapers which are these... well, multi page pamphlets with recent events and useful information."

"Oh we just have a board in the town centre people pin things on, only have to write it once then. Not sure there would be enough people interested to make it worth setting and printing the news for them." Frodo says.

"What a clever idea. Never heard of anything like that being invented recently and I make the trip to Bree every few years to catch up on news. And if the dwarves invented something like this then I never heard of it. Where did you say you were from again?" Bilbo looks rather impressed with the idea of printing.

"My world is called Earth. I really don't think it's the same as this one." Franklyn tells Bilbo.

To Frodo. "It might be the case that's not worth for your town. Even in my world a place like this rarely gets their own newspaper. But there are ones that cover very wide areas. I suppose one could print them in a central location and then distribute throughout the continent?"

Bilbo puffs on his pipe while mulling over the word for another world. "Earth, the word for dirt. Seems like something a hobbit would name a world, I quite like it as a name. The elves call this world Arda."

"Sending papers across the continent seems impractical. Travel is dangerous these days. Not that it was ever very safe mind you. If a king needed to get some news out he would just send a messenger to tell the town ealdormen and they would tell the people? faster than printing and delivering a news-paper to every person who could read. Plus most folk are unconcerned about anything further away than a few days ride you know, I am an oddity in that I like to travel and learn of the world. Besides young Frodo, of course, he also picked up my spark of curiosity." He chuckles and looks fondly at his ward.

Frodo looks mildly embarrassed to be talked about fondly like that. "I don't think I will ever go on such adventures as you have Bilbo."

"Thank you, Arda is a pretty name."

"Aww." Franklyn says at the display of affection, before he can stop himself. "Sorry. I guess newspapers are long way. But they did catch on in my world when populations centers and literacy were widespread enough. Still, absolutely valid for books. Books are great."

"Books are great, I have quite the collection myself, one of the biggest in Hobbiton and certainly bigger than anything in Bree." Bilbo proudly brags, puffing out his chest.

Frodo just rolls his eyes.

Bilbo is proud as he should. "Awesome."

"If you would like to stay here with us until Gandalf gets here you are welcome to. You could help Frodo bodge together a Print for the birthday invitations that would also be wonderful if you wanted?" Very expecting look from Bilbo. He would have let the man stay here for free but now there is some work he can do that is useful he should help contribute while staying.

Franklyn is obviously happy about the prospect. "I would love to! Any help that I can give, really. It's good to not worry about having a roof while I figured things out."

"Oh, folk are nice around here. Even the meanest folk would let you sleep in the barn if you helped collect the eggs in the morning or somesuch chore."

Franklyn manages not to aww. "That's great. Is there any chore or job that I should be doing now. There are still bits of the thing I haven't poked yet."

"Go ahead and poke at the strange magic, but nothing dangerous inside so if you learn to start fires with a word or call forth the beasts of the forest do it outside thank you very much." Bilbo gathers up the plates and cups they snacked on and brings them to the kitchen.

Frodo is still very curious about this newcomer so he stays at the table and does hope that Franklyn suddenly makes flashy magic appear.

Since he has a helper... he will poke the Party part of the menu and try to figure out if there are ways to add people to his Party.

There is a little + icon in a circle on the party member bar! That seems a likely candidate.

"Ooh, I will try something that won't set anything on fire, but might be visible to you." Poke.

A microphone symbol appears in the middle of the "screen", seems to be asking for a voice input.

Frodo looks hopeful that something interesting will happen.