Post Office of the Four Farthings

[Farewell]

“By no means all Hobbits were lettered, but those who were wrote constantly to all their friends (and a selection of their relations) who lived further than an afternoon’s walk.”
~ Tolkien, Prologue, The Fellowship of the Ring

As you walk along the main street of Hobbiton, you come across a small building nestled between a sweet-smelling candy store and a busy tailor shop. The walls of the edifice are made of fine oak, glazed, and made strong. Positioned above its wide-swinging doors, hangs a lengthy sign with neatly engraved letters spaced evenly: ‘Post Office of the Four Farthings’.

Upon various pedestal writing desks, bottles of dark ink can be found attached with fine chains to light-colored quills. Parchment scrolls of varying lengths have been stacked atop their pine surfaces as well. Milo Poppy and his mail carriers dash to and fro as they prepare to load their ponies with numerous satchels. He raises his eyes at you as you enter and approach his half-round reception station.

“G’day,” his voice rings out in greeting, “How can I assist you?”

Welcome to the Post Office of the Four Farthings!

You can send bills, postcards, holiday and birthday greetings, well wishes, circulars, gifts, and letters to your Halfling family and friends here.

Please keep in mind, this postal thread is for composing messages and sending packages only.

You may also wish to tag the roleplayer of the character you are writing to.

~ * ~

Eriador Mail Service RP - viewtopic.php?f=10&t=515

The Dwarven Express (Post Office) - viewtopic.php?f=15&t=622

The Old Mailing Tree - viewtopic.php?f=16&t=202

Riddermark Ærendgewrit—Rohirric Mail - viewtopic.php?f=12&t=299

Minas Tirith's Mail ~ The Roquen Express Revived - viewtopic.php?f=11&t=474

The Mordor Post Office - viewtopic.php?f=14&t=503

[Dwim]

Dear @Annúnfalas,

I am hoping this letter reaches you in time before you leave the Shire, as I'm afraid I do not know which foreign Elven land you have come from. Your efforts in coordinating the reshaping of the Shire's postal service are profoundly appreciated. I cannot thank you enough.

Our once great service had become a shambles. Letters were taking months to arrive, or were delivered to the wrong homes, or were simply not arriving at all. My neighbours knew more about my life than I did, as they were always receiving my mail, reading my letters with pleasure as if they were weekly gossip articles.

I feel you have empowered Milo Poppy with both the confidence and the organisational skills necessary to lead his team of carriers towards a newfound reputation of reliability, promptness and success. It is with the greatest pleasure that I stamp this letter, the first ever letter processed by the new postal service (I must confess, I pushed in line to make this happen), with full confidence that it will reach its intended target within an impressive timeframe.

With sincerest gratitude,

Dwim Took

[Silky Gooseness]

@Lailyn

Dearest Rilla,

Thank you so much for the delightful mug! I am so sorry for the lateness of your response. My mother found it and alas, she has the most terrible habit of opening my Mail for me. Out of concern, no doubt; yours truly is a scatterbrained hobbit and she assures me that if she didn’t do these things for me I should never do them myself. A lad cannot contradict his Mother so I shall say no more.

As it happens, your mug found a second life as a Planter; we popped some tulip bulbs in them and we were just getting the most delightful little Sprout when that scamp Pinkletoes knocked it off the kitchen window!! So it has been chipped once again, but rescued; and now it lives in my bedroom.

At present I shall decline to send an invoice to @Menolly re the mug; please don’t mention it again around Mother as I am slightly worried she may March up to Menolly and begin shaking her down which would do nothing for our friendship.

I do hope to see you again soon; perhaps we might have tea some time?

AAffectionately yours,

Silas Hardwick

[Lail]

Dear Silas,

Not to worry. I understand how meddlesome parents can be! Wait a minute, scratch that... no I don't.

Mine let me run around and do whatever I wanted to from Buckland to Frogmorton and back! Hm. One time I even wandered off for three whole days and nearly got lost in Woody End but a nice old fellow came along helped me find my way home. When I got back no one knew I'd been gone - not even one of my eight siblings! I'm not sure how anyone could not miss me, do you? I will never forgive them for it!

I am pleased the mug was useful but do you think Pinkletoes was jealous of my fine artistry and knocked it over on purpose?! I would be heartbroken if she did not like me!

Yes! Tea sounds scrumptious especially if there are crumpets, biscuits, eggs and a nice sausage roll! We could invite all our friends from the Walking Club and have a jolly good time.

Your mother isn't cross with me is she? Did the mug smooth things over? Should I keep a wary eye out? I won't mention the you-know-what again...but I appreciate a warning if so. Sometimes I can't tell if people are giving me the stink-eye or if they just smoked a particularly bad batch of Old Toby... those bad leaves will stick with you for a while. Trust me, I know.

Your friend,
Rilla B.

@Sil

[Istya Alassea]

Dear Doctor Longbottom (NPC),

I have a couple of somewhat urgent - and perhaps one not so urgent - questions for you. My urgent one has to do with my infant daughter. I find her coughing every now and then, and shortly after I come to hold her and pat her back, she starts laughing and giggling. I suspect she is coughing just to try and get my attention. How would I know this for certain? Are there any symptoms I should look out for to make sure she just wants her mother's attention or to see if the coughing is something a little more serious?

I also want to say that your idea to re-open the Shire Medical Clinic here has been a little bit of a bust. No one is getting sick! I know we are in strange times and that hobbits don't normally leave their homes anyway - whether or not strange times are upon us. But what do you think I should do in order to bring in the crowds? Be grateful that we are all okay? I don't want to go around dismantling hobbit hole doors or carving out random holes in the ground in certain places around Hobbiton, so I would like your suggestions as to what I should do in order to gain more interest in the establishment.

Thank you for your time!

Istya Alassea

[Chrysophylax Dives]

OOC: While fixing my forgotten plaza password my auto password app. reverted to my older name. When I noticed, next time I logged in, I felt obliged to accept the inadvertent return of my dragon identity. But this does leave some loose ends in the origin story of our Undertowers in the plaza. Also, the current plaza situation seems a tad weird (but maybe it always is).

Dear @Saranna,

Some while ago, having delivered (yes - delivered; me, a male dragon!) my very own dragon egg, I flew into the West and instructed two old friends to transport the egg to Elostirion, where I indeed picked it up before hatching and final delivery (here). Possibly I was a tad paranoid, but I feared an admin posse would attempt to steal the egg before it left the plaza, and so looked to two of my more seasoned, not to say hardened, friends - Tree and Hill. Tree was one of my best friends, steady as an oak; only not too much up top, if you get my meaning. Hill was an architectural genius, but embittered, for his designs were never received well. His towers have garnered a dubious reputation, and his huorn farm in the Westmarch breaks at least seven nuplaza DEI regulations. The trouble with Hill is that he is half Barrow. He never worked out which side of the Hill he was - until now.

Saranna, I don't know how to tell you this, but, well... - no point beating around the bush. Well, the thing is, I am very sorry to say, but Hill has eloped with the Wāt-fairy.

Yes. Hill has abandoned all of his parental responsibilities to pursue an empty fantasy. What really did for him, I am convinced, was reading all those posts by @Ephtariat about fairy-mistresses. The idea was quite novel to Hill, but once he had it clear in his head, and also worked out that the spirit of the ruins was not a wight but a wāt, and so a fairy, he was off west with flowers and poetry and what have you every night after Fairbairn's open-house closed. Personally, I thought the Wāt-fairy had more sense than to fall for Hill's insane babble, but you never can tell with fairies.

So Hill and the fairy are somewhere far away - honeymoon in Fornost was the last I heard, but they could be anywhere in Middle-earth or out of it by now. And that leaves all these little Hills.

I don't suppose you would be a dear and adopt them all as Library minions? It would be a great kindness, and allow me to tick another thing off my list as I try to clear up the mess that Hill has made.

<Melkor edit: moved this to the mail thread>

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Rivvy Elf, I'm happy you moved the letter to @Saranna to a post office but technically I am not sure it was the correct move. This thread is a post office for the four farthings. While I am not denying that the Westmarch is part of the Shire (if we are in the 4th Age), it is not in any age of the world within the Four Farthings. Presumably, the Westmarch had its own postal service - either that or they changed the name of the postal service in the 4th Age.

What do you suggest?

[Rivvy Elf]

@Chrysophylax Dives As the thread-runner is no longer on the plaza, I shall assume the role of threadrunner and declare that the Westmarch is included in this thread's postal service.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Chrysophylax Dives As the thread-runner is no longer on the plaza, I shall assume the role of threadrunner and declare that the Westmarch is included in this thread's postal service.

Dear Rivvy Elf,
Thank you very much! I don't know how far your threadrunning powers go, but is it legal/permissible to tinker with the OP and restore the (or any) image at the top?
Your gratefully,
Chrys. Dives

[Rivvy Elf]

@Chrysophylax Dives It's a dead link so I just eliminated the image.

[Ephtariat]

@Chrysophylax Dives what's a Wāt-fairy?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Dear @Ephtariat,

Nice to read you here again! I am writing to you from Undertowers via the Shire postal service. This thread is the Shire post office, and so posts should - in theory - be letters, as this one.

To learn about the Wāt-Fairy, see Undertowers - the ruins of Cerin Amroth.

Your sincerely,

C. Dives

[Ephtariat]

Dear @Chrysophylax Dives,

Thanks! That was fun.

Sincerelly,
Ephtariat

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Dear @Ephtariat,

I owe you an apology. And sincerely, I am very sorry for my unconscionable posts in conversation with you on the biopic thread. The fact is that I got annoyed by your not waiting for a reply on your Hello again! thread, and that annoyance coloured the tone of all my posts until, in the end, I exploded with irritation contained for six months. None of it was warranted - the Hello again! thread was for others to engage with, not me, and the plaza is not the place to address the issues that I raised and certainly is not the place for personal attacks, which I ended up levelling at you. Once again - apologies!

If I may attempt to resume communication in a constructive way, I do think that we need a sort of meta conversation. Partly about method, but basically recognizing the fact that we disagree about a lot of things concerning Tolkien, and at the core this disagreement seems to preclude conversation. What I mean is that you deem Elves sacred, and so are profoundly offended by my interest in Elves as monsters and ideas of human unions with monsters; but my interest is at the heart of my own research. So we appear unable to converse. I do not frame this as criticism, and would like to move beyond it. I would genuinely like to read your thoughts on how this might be achieved.

Your sincerely,
Chrys Dives

[Aikári Salmarinian]

@ Chrys.