"Kill Ten Rats" Adjusted for Inflation

"Melko marking his hardy frame believed him, and was willing to accept him as thrall of his kitchens. [...] therefore now he gave orders for Beren to be made a thrall of Tevildo Prince of Cats.

[...]

he set Beren to a test, and he bade him go catch three mice [...] a very wild, evil and magic kind that dared to dwell there in dark holes, but they were larger than rats and very fierce"

J.R.R. Tolkien / Christopher Tolkien - The History of Middle-Earth

Oh... no. Nononono, please say it ain't so!

Dire mice in Middle-Earth? As targets for a "kill ten rats" newbie quest?

*sniff* I can't... I can't even...

Et tu, Tolkien?!?

So yeah, I've been screwing things up in real life so I've retreated to the safety of hobbit holes and last homely houses. Instead of re-re-re-reading the main books I've started slowly working my way through The History of Middle-Earth, the compendium of early versions of what eventually became The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. As a collection of rough drafts, narrative dead ends and overanalysis of minutiae, it's a bit of a slog... and also kinda trippy. I mean "Teh Devil-o, Prince of Cats"* and Beren and Lúthien scrubbing Melkor's dishes and pages of wonder-dousing descriptions of the trim and rigging of the vessel of the sun or moon? Can this be the glorious intersection of folklore with modernity which launched a thousand fantasy settings?

Well... sort of. While it can be jarring and entertaining to view such fumbling as a primitive version of Fantasy Fiction's crown jewel, try thinking of it from the other direction. See the layout of Mordor inherent in Melko(r)'s kitchen. Much like the fantasy game writers of today, Tolkien started with "kill ten rats" - but unlike them he advanced beyond such tripe. We remember the re-written, more ambitious versions, not those rough drafts which still treated escapist fiction dismissively as children's stories.

"Kill ten rats" was insufficient in 1920 and by no means should be considered sufficient in 2020. This might explain, to those of you who wonder at our outrage, why so many nerds fume at "kill three dire mice" scenarios. We see hints of how the narrative might mature yet feel, every time, as though trapped in a primitive, antiquated rough draft to a better world held out of our reach.

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*Possibly the freakiest aspect is that Tevildo never entirely disappeared as Tolkien refined his storytelling. He remained Melkor's lieutenant and gradually metamorphosed into... Sauron. Yes, Sauron, The Enemy, The Necromancer, The Deceiver, The Lord of the Ring, Lugbúrz, Gorthaur, The Dark Lord, the lidless eye wreathed in flame, the far-seeing, unseen, unspeakable, looming menace clad in a tower of "wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement"... started out as a talking cat with a golden collar (!) who liked to chase magic mice.

How does one even process such information?

P.S.

Also, I cannot escape the vision of a sleepy-eyed Morgoth shuffling around in bunny slippers at 3 a.m., bumping into kitchen cabinets trying to make himself a sandwich.

Wait, can Morgoth even make a sandwich or can he only pervert pre-existing sandwiches? Does he have to steal Iluvatar's BLT and dip it in licorice sauce?

Mayhap the rest of the Lost Tales hold the answer.