Quicksand Fans

Been playing LOTRO a LOT lately. I started noticing that there was quite a bit of content involving the various marshes and swamps in Middle Earth. I keep running into more and more if it.
Most noticeably, there is a Non-Player Character (NPC) named "Roderick Neeker-Friend." He LOVES the Midgewater Marshes, and comments on how "most folks don't like the smell, or the damp, but I do." He even keeps a pet Neekerbreeker (the supremely annoying and suddenly agressive large insects that live in the marshes.) His pet's name is "Sniken." Rearrange those letters, and what do you get?
Later on, I run into a quest where you have to gather wild mushrooms from a bog along the Brandywine River. This bog is infested with huge slimy slugs. I was fighting one of these, and all of a sudden my character was struggling to move! Turns out it wasn't the bog (uniformly watery so far) but the slug using an attack with sticky slime that reduces your movement speed by 75%. But if you're fighting in a bog, it acts just like your character is getting stuck.
Still later on, I run into a young lady who is having trouble with nightmares. She also likes spending time exploring the bogs in her part of Middle Earth. But one day she met this "lady" (more like an evil spirit, I guess.) Now, the Norbogs (bigger, evil versions of Neekerbreekers) are singing to her- the same song the "lady" sang to her when she was trying to lure the girl into the bogs.
Anyway, sounds like at least one of the game developers for LOTRO is "one of us."

nachtjaeger wrote:His pet's name is "Sniken." Rearrange those letters, and what do you get?

I must be slow because I have no idea.

Sinken.

QuicksandMania wrote:

nachtjaeger wrote:His pet's name is "Sniken." Rearrange those letters, and what do you get?

I must be slow because I have no idea.

nachtjaeger wrote:sounds like at least one of the game developers for LOTRO is "one of us."

I have sometimes wondered whether Tolkien himself might have been. Apart from the Midgewater Marshes and the Dead Marshes, there's a reference to the Vale of Entwash being "flat and fenny and...perilous to those on foot and laden." There is also a reference to potentially fatal bogs in The Hobbit. As far as I know, he never wrote a sinking scene - but perhaps he wanted to.

Lomax wrote: As far as I know, he never wrote a sinking scene - but perhaps he wanted to.

Could be, he just never published such scenes If he had Internet, he could do it for us

Lomax wrote:

nachtjaeger wrote:sounds like at least one of the game developers for LOTRO is "one of us."

I have sometimes wondered whether Tolkien himself might have been (A QS fan).

I doubt it. He had the perfect set-up when Frodo and companions were crossing the marshes on the way to Mordor, yet passed on the opp.