a single letter difference, and too much free time
I found myself thinking about the last section of The Lord of the Rings (that got cut out of the movies): the “Scouring of the Shire” chapter. And it occurred to me that “scouring” and “scourging” are only one letter apart. And while in common parlance, “scourging” just means whipping, I started thinking about the Scourging of Lordaeron in World of Warcraft, where cultists transform an entire kingdom’s populace into ghouls and zombies, and so, what if Saruman was a necromancer, and he basically turned all the hobbits undead….