Bilbo Baggins meets Gollum beneath the Misty Mountains in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
Bilbo becomes separated from the Dwarves after entering the Goblin tunnels. In the darkness, he finds a mysterious ring and then encounters Gollum, a solitary creature living beside an underground lake. Gollum challenges Bilbo to a riddle contest, with Bilbo’s life at stake if he loses. Their exchange is one of the best-known episodes in the novel.
The ring allows Bilbo to become invisible, helping him escape from Gollum’s island and the tunnels. Tolkien later revised parts of The Hobbit so that Bilbo’s account of finding the ring fitted the darker history developed in The Lord of the Rings. Gollum’s original name was Sméagol, and the ring’s long influence transformed him over centuries. He is therefore not a Goblin, dragon, or spider, although he lives near Goblins and later becomes central to the Ring’s story.