How did the "Greatest of the dwellings of the Dwarves"

The balrog drove them out to the Lonely Mountain and the Iron Hills, and then the orcs infested Moria. A bunch of dwarves fought a battle with the orcs there later, when thorin got the nickname Oakenshield.

>>8746710
If that happened so long ago, why is everyone in the Fellowship surprised to see it overrun?

>>8746719

dwarves are isolationists but yeah the fact that Gimli didn't know this is stupid

>>8746735
You'd think the "Greatest of the dwellings of the Dwarves" would do some trading with the local areas. Word that it had been completely taken over would spread. Especially if it had been years since it happened.

Everyone knew it had been taken over centuries ago. Dwalin had been sent to resettle it like a couple decades before and hadn't been heard from. Only Gimli really thought they would have succeeded, which is why Gandalf and Aragorn were against going through

>>8746774
Okay. This makes more sense.

>>8746719
They knew it was fucked, but remember that Balin lead an expedition to resettle Moria. What they're surprised about is finding no sign that that party was successful.

>>8746774
>>8746787
So why did they risk going through if they knew it might be overrun? Why didn't Gandalf just make an executive decision and lead them through Rohan?

>>8746799
To clarify, the whole "too close to Isengard" argument doesn't matter because they still end up getting attacked by Saruman's orcs/urak-hia.

File: tmp_6248-1479100503657-563570127.gif (1MB, 600x329px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 600x329px

Am I the only one who noticed how hard the elder scrolls games made after the first LOTR trilogy rip off the dwarves cities? Right down to the the way the arch ways look. Then they just had the Falmer replace the orcs, right down to how their armor is similar. And with the dwarves having disappeared in the ES, they gave the orcs the attributes of the dwarves

>>8746719
Because the movies are shitty

>>8747683

>wildly successful fantasy movie trilogy influences aesthetic of fantasy video games

yeah you're the only one who noticed pal you must be super smart

>>8746682
The great Dwarf-Queen Merkelkûn allowed in all the goblins fleeing from the conflict between the Haradrim and the trolls. Eventually there were many more goblins than dwarves, with the remaining dwarves being relatively older than the youthful goblins because of cultural differences in family and reproduction. Most of the dwarves didn't object because of a combination of public decency laws and promises that goblin labor would enable the mining of more gold and gems.

In reality, the goblins simply lived off of "temporary" royal allowances intended to allow them time to integrate into Moria until their numbers grew to the point that they could compel the Dwarvish state to make such allowances permanent. Eventually all Dwarvish assets were confiscated and redistributed to needy goblins as recompense for historical Dwarvish aggression against goblins and alleged mistreatment of early goblin settlers.

At this point most of the remaining dwarves fled to the Lonely Mountain, where they pretended the whole thing had been some hard-fought battle in order to salve their consciences.