It was at the end of the Second Age. I think. I'm not sure. Anyway, whenever it was, there was a Dark... Er..
No one was sure if it was male or female. And ya know what? I don't really care. I'll just say it was male.
The Dark Lord...ah, Someone had decided to take over the lands of Middle Earth, either for a new era of disease, oppression, and black magic, or to start up a chain of McDonald's all the way from Mordor to the Grey Mountains. It's sorta hard to say which plot was more abominable.
Anyway.
The Lord Someone decided that if it was go to rule the world and cash in on beefy profits, it was going to need tacky accessories. So, it got either Elven, Dwarven, or those Gith things from Dungeons and Dragons or whatever to form a bunch of things. Someone made a bunch of 'em, and then there was a war over 'em, and the good guys won, hypothetically, but they lost the One Thing, and blah blah blah blah blah. What was the One Thing? Well, there is a rhyme about it, becaue people in Middle Earth had WAY too much spare time:
Three whatchamawhoos for Elven dudes beneath the sky
Seven doohikies for Dwarf-Lords, in their halls of stone,
Nine objectabobs for mortal Men, doomed to die,
One thing for the Dark Lord and/or Lady, on his/her dark throne.
One thing the rule them all,
One thing to find them,
One thing to bring them all,
And in the darkness--
BONK!!
...give them flashlights...
The Lord and/or Lady of the Things
Book One: The Fellowship of the Thing