A/N Well, here we are, this is my translation of the story of the Lord of the rings into a modern setting, as told through the journals of a few of the main characters. Constructive criticism is appreciated. All flames will be used to burn the pretty long hair off the heads of Mary-Sues.
Disclaimer: Ha! Me own LoTR? I'm flattered, really, I am.
I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.
-J.R.R. Tolkien
PrologueJ.R.R Tolkien was a genius. There was never any doubt of that. He was a genius, and a good man. It's really too bad that it all went so wrong. You see, the work of a genius, though it might entertain most, inspire greatness in some, and provoke the insight of others, it can also be very, very dangerous in the hands of a madman.
The boy's name was Malachi Sarn, and he had grown up rich, privileged, and intelligent. Malachi had always seemed destined for greatness, with his brains, talent, and love for order. His only weakness, in the opinion of some, was his love of fantasy. It was against his character, his obsession with stories of magic and other worlds, but nonetheless part of him, and despite it, he climbed up the many ladders of life, excelling in school, in social circles, and, after founding Sarn inc. at the mere age of twenty one, in business too.
He never forgot fantasy though. It was his solace, those worlds where power was held in wands, crystals, crowns, and rings. It was the Power of these things that ensnared him. He had worked so hard to obtain his domination, but it was never enough, never omnipotent, and here, in these black and white pages, there were objects that kept power, magnified it, created it even. The idea filled him, and inebriated with a lust for control, he set out to create his own objects to hold his rule, and his genius, his twisted brilliance.
Sarn had always loved the thought of a ring that held power, so small, so elegant, and yet perfect. He settled on this idea, and constructed his own set of rings, each of which held what he needed to, as clichéd as it sounded, even to his own mind, rule the world. He had spent years writing a code, a program which, when he gave the word, would give him complete control over any computer it might happen to have access to. All he needed was to have small chip, which he could access remotely come within three meters of a computer, and he would be in charge. There were nineteen such chips which he constructed, and planted one each in nineteen finely crafted rings. These rings, he then, with great care and subtlety, and over many years, managed to give as gifts to those he esteemed as the most powerful in the world, the leaders of what he deemed to be the nineteen country's with the most control of events on earth.
He then formed a twentieth ring, gold, and unadorned, save the finely engraved markings, both inside and out which read: one ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and the darkness bind them.
Sarn had nearly completed his objective. He had been about to initiate the command sequence, the code to which was concealed inside the ring, when he fell. Intelligence agencies around the world had been keeping watch on him, as they did anyone with the kind of money or influence that Sarn did, and two had discovered the plot. Both the CIA and MI6 had found him out at the last moment. They sent in a team, two men, one from each agency, to infiltrate the Sarn Tower in Hong Kong. They made it, almost to late, but they made it notwithstanding. Isul Durgon, the MI6 operative tore the ring from the massive computer at Sarn Tower moments before Sarn could press the small, red Y key that would have sent the entire planet into the hands of a madman.
Isul Durgon could have ended things there. But he did not, the promise of the ring's power was too great, and, against the pleas of Ron Del, the CIA's agent, he kept the ring, and disappeared from all the files.
But the ring would not stay with one master. The heavy, smog filled blanket of night smothered the city where Isul Durgon was hiding as, on a midnight in November, a recently released convict crept his way along the dirty sidewalks, past overturned bins, and mumbling drunks who were no longer coherent after the evening's indulgences. He was looking for one who might still have some money on him, a bit of cash that hadn't been squandered on cheap alcohol- not yet anyway. But his luck was poor, and he was about to make his way back to his apartment, he could not call it his home, when he saw a dark figure striding past the opening to the alley, and caught a glint of gold on the man's finger, the metal catching the light of a flickering streetlamp.
The man with the gold ring died quickly. A simple knife piercing the lungs, the blade tilted sideways to slip more easily between the ribs, timed so the man had just exhaled, creating a vacuum in his chest as he sucked in his final gasp.
The convict took the ring, and wallet he found in the man's coat pocket. It was that quick, that clean, that simple, the passage of the Ring of Power from Isul Durgon to that convict named Smeal.
Smeal kept the Ring for many years, never knowing of its true nature. He might have kept it to the end of his days. It might have disappeared with his death, had it not been for a foolish bet he made against a young American soldier. He lost the bet, and with it the ring, which for a while at least, would belong to one William Baggs, known to his friends, as Billy.