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There is quiet, for a time, when Gimli is away at Mount Etna studying smithcraft with Hephaestos.

This is not one of those times. Right now there is quite a lot of loose stone flying about, although this is all outside the bar and quite a ways off from the immediate area of the lake. Which is good, really.

Still, that's hungry work, so Gimli is putting in an appearance at the Bar proper to get some real breakfast before he does any further quarrywork.

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Nonsense. This mun just thinks that the joys of howstuffworks.com should be used for much, much more than merely explaining solar cells and electronic calculators. *nods sagely*

"Ah," says Gimli. "I see."

"Fertile sort of place, I should imagine."

~~Does howstuffworks.com have a Discworld section?~~

Angua considers this. She considers all possible meanings of the word 'fertile' and manages apply most of them to boththe river Ankh and the twin city.

"Yes, it is," she agrees.

~~Possibly. It's got lightsabers. Although maybe The Science of Discworld is a better source.~~

"I don't believe there's any place in Middle-earth with so many people in one place as that," Gimli says. "Once, perhaps, in the land of Numenor- or so I'm told; it was the sort of country where the folk lived long and died seldom by accident. Though even then I doubt they ever gathered all into one city, even at great need."

"No big cities at all?" Angua asks. "What about trade?"

"Oh, there are cities," Gimli assures her. "Merely none that big. Minas Tirith, I think, was the largest city in the west of the world; they'd perhaps half the population that could have lived there comfortably, when last I saw them. The King Elessar established himself again at Annuminas, but a city restored from the ground up takes some time to grow aright. And the great dwarf-cities were yet recovering from our wars of recent centuries; we're a slow folk when it comes to breeding." He shrugs. "Still, where the kingdoms of Men abut the territories of the Dwarves there's trade enough between our folk- we've no great skill for the raising of animals, and only small patches for the growing of grain and other food, so even such Men as have a good hand at the forge will often trade with us rather than make their own metal."

"But where there's trade, not settlements build up?" Angua asks. "People from both communities staying where the trade is rich between the two?"

"Small ones at best, on one side or the other," Gimli says. "More like... colonies, really, or embassies, I suppose one might put it. Some handful of Men dwelling close to the dwarven settlements, or a few dozen dwarves in a town of Men- it seems to shake out so."

Mun is going on Tolkien's statement that the 'excellent arrangement' whereby Bree was an almost fully integrated biracial town was found nowhere else in all the world. Granted, that was hobbits, not dwarves, but hobbits were more like Men and bred faster than dwarves anyway.

"That sounds unusual," Angua replies. "I would have thought those areas of trade would encourage population growth in an area."

Mun has opinions about Tolkien and Pratchett's relative realism

Mun is quite sure Pratchett is significantly more realistic. Aside from, you know, the bit with the giant turtle and all.

"For the men, maybe," Gimli says with a shrug. "My folk aren't fond of uprooting themselves if it can be avoided."

"No," Angua allows. "but there's still advantages in going where there's work, and sending money home."

Gimli smiles just a touch. "True enough. My kinsman Thorin was a traveling smith for long years, before he and my father and the rest of their companions moved to reclaim Erebor from the dragon. And I've traveled a fair amount myself in the interests of getting things done."

"But you always went home?"

Gimli thinks for a bit. "Long enough to gather a goodly number of my folk and strike out for new lands in mountains where no dwarf had walked in Ages," he says at last. "Erebor had its charms, aye, but it wasn't the same in the end."

"Oh well, that's different," Angua says. "You founded an entirely new settlement?"

"That I did," says Gimli with a smile. "Held it as long as I lived in Middle-earth, too. I gave the axe my father'd given me to my kinsman's son, in the end, and sailed West over the Sea with the first Elf any dwarf'd called 'friend' in thousands of years- but that was my realm, until the time came to go."

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