Ranatuor's Lore - “The Grasp of the Gnome”

He's wandered all over Middle-earth...

“The Grasp of the Gnome”^[1]



Easter Egg #2 The Garden-Dwarf (Spring Festival housing decoration)

A funny thing happened whilst sorting out my housing decorations across a few new homes. I happened to glance at the item note for one of the Spring festival furniture pieces and I realised there must be an Easter Egg involved!

The item was the Garden-Dwarf.

Like any good mystery, team work solved the day! I posted on the LOTRO official forums, asking about the Garden-Dwarf. Bit by bit, we moved closer to the origin of its creation.

As I said, it all started with the item note.

“A lawn-dwarf signed by its creator: J. Carlo.”

Who was J. Carlo? At first I believed it may be linked with JRR Tolkien’s friends, the members of the in-game Writer’s Club at the Bird and Baby Inn (Michel Delving, the Shire) - Carlo Williams, Jack Lewisdown and Owen Farfield - who represent the real-life "Inklings".  Could the note possibly be an amalgamation of Jack and Carlo?

Then I looked at cartoonist and sculptor called J. Carlos. Carlos had met Walt Disney.

Fellow forum poster Herwegur believed it could be linked with Pinocchio. There was some great deductive working going on in his post. He also noted how close the Garden-dwarf’s costume was to in-game armour.

At this point SSG team member and First age lore-master MadeOfLions stepped up to the mark to provide some wonderful insight in the following post

"I don't remember the specifics, but I was able to poke around the file history and learned that the garden dwarf was based on a player. More than that has been lost to time, I think, which strikes me as being particularly Middle-earthy. :) 

MoL"

This seemed a perfect little conclusion to the Gnome-mystery.

…and then something wonderful happened. More people posted about J Carlo and we found the player behind the Garden-Dwarf!

Palenen led the way with a partial remembering of someone dressed up like a gnome (they thought the player was a Hobbit, not dwarf, but that's by-the-by!).

Nosdracir then went above and beyond by finding a screengrab of the player on Pinterest, now revealed to be JeanCarlo!

JeanCarlo on Pinterest: "Explore Garden Gnomes and more!" 

From there it took a little more searching to find JeanCarlo on the LOTRO forums and their original post where they proudly showed off their Garden Gnome costume to the LOTRO community! Sadly, it does appear JeanCarlo has moved on from LOTRO, they last logged onto the LOTRO forums back in 2012.

But what a great story - from a player with some fancy duds to a Spring Festival housing decoration, the tale of the Garden-Dwarf has been now been rediscovered – a lovely little Easter Egg and a wonderful gesture by Turbine (now SSG) towards a long-standing member of the player community.

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Footnotes
^[1] “The Grasp of the Gnome” is an episode from the “Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated” TV series (Season 1, episode 8, 2010)