Thorin nodded in answer to Bilbo's question, listening with interest as Beorn began to explain.
"My people were the first to live in the mountains, before the Orcs came down from the North. The Defiler killed most of my family; but some he enslaved," there was anger and almost a snarl in the skinchanger's voice as he recounted the tale, "not for work you understand, but for sport. Caging skinchangers and torturing them seemed to...amuse him."