Sting (Middle-earth)
Sting has the magical ability to detect orcs or goblins nearby, glowing blue in their presence, as it did when the Fellowship encountered orcs in the mines of Moria. Tolkien establishes this as a common property of First Age Elf blades, particularly those forged in Gondolin. Sting is also exceptionally sharp. Bilbo manages to thrust it without effort deep into a wooden beam at Rivendell. Frodo also wounds a troll in Moria, after Boromir notches his own sword with his attempt. Sam uses Sting to cut through the giant spider Shelob's strong webs with ease, and also wound the spider, driving it away from the paralyzed Frodo.
Christopher Tolkien
Tolkien had long been part of the critical audience for his father's fiction, first as a child listening to tales of Bilbo Baggins (which were published as "The Hobbit"), and then as a teenager and young adult offering much feedback on "The Lord of the Rings" during its 15-year gestation. He had the task of interpreting his father's sometimes self-contradictory maps of Middle-earth in order to produce the versions used in the books, and he re-drew the main map in the late 1970s to clarify the lettering and correct some errors and omissions. J. R. R. Tolkien invited Christopher to join the Inklings when he was twenty-one years old, making him the youngest member of the informal literary discussion society that included C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Warren Lewis, Lord David Cecil, and Nevill Coghill.