Availability of Horses & Ponies

[Glorelendil]

Words of wisdom, Falenthal. As usual.

That sounds more fun, as well as more Tolkienesque, than finding a pony merchant in every village.

[Glorelendil]

The evidence...from the Bree incident...suggests that availability is not ubiquitous (I hope the comment about Bree being more remote that Wilderland was tongue-in-cheek). But beyond that it's whatever the LM believes will make for a good story.

In a way, Bree is. It's the only sizable settlement of Men on the western side of the Misty Mountains since Tharbad was abandoned. What traffic goes through Bree is Dwarves travelling to and from the Blue Mountains, mostly. The Wilderland has post-Smaug two new kingdoms going on for it, Beorn becoming a chief, the Woodland Realm opening up a bit and the trade with Dorwinion going on. A far more developed trade network means in this case more horses around.

Wow. We have totally different impressions of the geography (political and physical) it seems.

I see Bree as the easternmost settlement in a chain of peaceful, well-traveled, and settled regions that stretch all the way to the Gray Havens. With a safe, easy road connecting everything, used by Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits. Yes, Bree is bordering on wild areas, but it's part of a large settled region.

The Anduin Vales, on the other hand, consists of a few fortified settlements with no roads between them. Sure, post Battle of Five Armies the population is increasing and some new villages have sprung up next to the river, but it's still sparsely populated compared to the Grey Havens to Bree corridor, and vastly more dangerous. Things are improving, but Gandalf's description to Bilbo as they cross the edge of the wild still mostly holds true.

[Jussi Marttila]

I see Bree as the easternmost settlement in a chain of peaceful, well-traveled, and settled regions that stretch all the way to the Gray Havens. With a safe, easy road connecting everything, used by Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits. Yes, Bree is bordering on wild areas, but it's part of a large settled region.

The problem is that while Western Eriador is safe, it's also isolated from pretty much everywhere else, along with having underdeveloped trade networks inside the region. There's not much indication that the Elves and the Grey Havens have much to do with the rest of the region (considering Gildor's company travels in the woods on their way through the Shire and so on and so on), and neither do the Hobbits, who occasionally travel to Bree but that's pretty much it. And it doesn't look like the Men of Bree have much to do with the Shire either.

Most of the traffic along the roads of Eriador seem to come from the Dwarves, who have a reason to go back and forth. The rest of the population mostly don't.