#First Age (Arda)

[vinyatar]

fëanorian oc, based off a post crop of "head of a lady in medieval costume" by de Scévola (1900)

[saintstars]

An old tapestry in Númenor

[virgil-upinthestars]

i should be elected to the senate so that when the next bullshit bill is introduced i can stand up, tap the microphone, crack open my copy of the silmarillion, and turn the united states congress into a tolkien conference

[ardashitposting]

[wheel-of-fandoms]

You know, there are probably unplumbed depths of bad ideas to be explored if you combined Wheel of Time with Arda, specifically First Age Noldor and other Elves of Beleriand.

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

THE WHITE MOUNTAIN -- THE HOLIEST MOUNTAIN IN ALL OF ARDA.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on Taniquetil, the highest of the mountains of the Pelori and the highest mountain of Arda -- Manwë and Varda’s mountain. Artwork by Ted Nasmith.

MINI-OVERVIEW: "Taniquetil -- "High White Peak," highest of the mountains of the Pelori and the highest mountain of Arda, upon whose summit are Ilmarin, the mansions of Manwë and Varda; also called "the White Mountain," "the Holy Mountain," and "the Mountain of Manwë.""

-- "THE SILMARILLION," from the "Index of Names," written by J.R.R. Tolkien (edited by Christopher Tolkien)

Source: https://wraithland.substack.com/p/the-valar-gods-of-wisdom-and-wonder.

[edennill-archived]

Actually no I think Númenóreans go through puberty later than normal humans but like, it overlaps. Barely.

So (assuming Númenórean women get periods? they might not get periods because elves don't? if not the timing is still similar but we don't get a neat marker) the girls might start menstruating at about sixteen or seventeen — technically very late, but by far not outside the realm of human experience, with everything else spaced out accordingly.

[vinyatar]

curufin's mad dog

[elronds-library]

Red

by Dalliansss (@dalliansss)

Part 2 of A Fistfight with Fire

When Arda is Remade, Melkor fulfills his Great Task and resumes his place as one of the Valar. Manwe tries to give his brother solace by re-embodying one particular elf that Melkor crossed paths with before, and in doing so, sends Melkor into a path of recollection and contemplation about this one relationship that he had entered into.

Mature, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con

Words: 87,687

[leo-regulus]

*me not walking into a trap* Tell me about Hyacinthe and Iris! :) (genuinely though!)

So the actual chance tumblr would literally murder the quality of this is 50/50, but you should be able to view it in a new tab at proper resolution?? If that's not the case I'll rebagel with them broken-up so tumblr doesn't resize it.

Left to right we've got Iris, Hyacinthe, Katsuhito, and Yumiko! Iris obviously not an OC, the other three are. All of them are shown at roughly nine or ten years of age, although not at once: Iris is about twelve years older than Katsu, and about fourteen-fifteen older than Yumiko.

Under the cut, so I may ramble a bit!

Iris is Klint's daughter, born June 17, 1889. Hyacinthe is Barok's daughter, born February 6 1890. They're not twins, but they'll let you believe they are, because they act like it. They're sisters in every way that matters, and they refer to each other as such, and referring to them as anything else gets you shot.

They didn't meet until Iris was seven and Hyacinthe was six. Iris was living with Fionn, aware that he wasn't her father but not of anything about her blood family. Until one day, she went to look in her bedroom mirror, only to see a girl that wasn't her staring back at her, trees on the other side, as though the girl was looking through a pool of water to Iris.

Hyacinthe van Zieks died July 15 1891, a year and a few months' after her birth. She suffered from Magical Energy Waning Syndrome, the same condition that would have killed her Uncle Moriarty if the van Zieks forest hadn't killed him first. She died in her sleep, peacefully, resting against Barok's chest. Klint took her spirit away, and raised her in his brother's place, refusing to change into human form but doing what he could to be there for her anyway.

Two years and one day after Hyacinthe's death, Barok's life would be shattered again by the death of the woman who he called sister himself: Angharad Gingerson, Beatrice's eldest daughter. But theirs is another story. For now, Iris is seven years old, and the girl who is her dead sister is looking back at her through her mirror.

Hyacinthe knows how to talk: she learned from Beatrice and Osian and Ariadne, the latter of which who will tolerate her but makes no effort to conceal the fact she hates Hyacinthe's guts. She can talk well enough that the two can introduce themselves, and Hyacinthe can explain that they're sisters without disclosing who their family actually is.

The truth is, Hyacinthe doesn't know who her other parent is: she is the daughter of Barok van Zieks the Chainbreaker, for all they call him now the Reaper of the Bailey. She has been raised by a great white wolf of a ghost, who swears to her that she is family, that she will not be alone. She is the sister of Iris Wilson, and she wants to be friends.

They have tea together every day that they can. They talk about their days and brush their hair, they puzzle through inventions and magical theory together. Iris is not the resurrectionist her uncle is, not yet. She can't call the animals of the forest back to life by singing to them. She can't step through the mirror and hold her sister tight.

But she's an inventor, and she'll find a way. Hyacinthe likes reading theory, likes studying, wants to be a part of the hot, fast world her sister lives in. There's no mirrors in the van Zieks estate to watch Barok from, she doesn't know how he's coping with her death. She wants to take her sister's hand and meet him, hold onto the man who must be parent to them both.

They are determined, and they know better than to tell any adult of their relationship to each other, they know better than to admit what sort of magics they're willing to study if it means neither of them ever has to be lonely ever again.

By the time Barok is accused of murdering Inspector Gregson, they've managed it. Iris can pass through the mirror, sit in the ghostly forest of the twilight with her sister and have a tea party. It takes much more work, and much more power, to bring Hyacinthe into the daylight. They manage it anyway, just in time for Barok to be arrested, just in time for a homecoming a decade in the making to be sidelined by tragedy.

Hyacinthe runs in the daylight in the form of a wolf puppy, ribbons tied to the fur by her ears, Iris running beside her. They do not want to split up, but someone needs to tell the Queen, and someone needs to stay by Barok's side.

Iris goes. Hyacinthe stays. Barok recognizes his daughter, as he would in any form she took, and does not let go of her even as he watches the two men he loves more than he knows how to deal with argue over whether or not he will join his daughter in death. At this point, he might have said he no longer cared. At this point, he can see Klint's eyes in his daughter and in Iris and in the great white, ghostly wolf that flanks Kazuma even as Barok watches him fall apart. At this point, he is no longer thinking of what mercy the world could even still grant him, but what he can save before he goes.

After the trial, Susato and Gina are held up at the Old Bailey, being interrogated for their roles in the aftermath. The boys are holding fast to each other, Ryunosuke suggesting a nice pub to get blackout drunk at so that maybe come morning they'll remember how to hold to each other. Yuujin and Fionn are handling the fallout that they can, but they won't be home until late, either.

Klint van Zieks, the great white wolf that has raised Hyacinthe in his brother's stead, who allowed through no choice of his own for someone else to raise his eldest daughter, takes the two girls home, and explains to Iris who he is, and who, thus, she must also be.

It takes the two girls six months to build a life-sized balljoint doll for Hyacinthe to haunt, so she may be as close to alive as a dead girl may get. Mary Shelley's methods are, alas, some years' away from being viable.

Decades later, they can be found in Greece as tenured professors at Saint Shion's University, one as a pioneer of necromagy and artificing, and the other a magical theoretician who studies whatever catches her fancy. They'll argue with everyone and each other, send letters to their younger siblings and occasionally be cajoled into telling the story of Ryunosuke Naruhodo and the Time He Blew Up Iris' Invention Of An Electric Toaster.

They cannot, tragically, be cajoled into playing themselves when The Adventure of Ryunosuke Naruhodo, directed by Katsuhito Naruhodo, hits theatres in late 2000. But they do show up on set a few times for pictures and autographs, despite being over a hundred years old and looking like they're in their early seventies at best.

Hyacinthe, however, can still be cajoled into doing her best impression of Barok, and can pitch a chalice accurately at thirty yards behind her without looking. Because she's Hyacinthe van Zieks and she can do that.

[arafinwean]

THE NOLDOLANTE

Timeline of the First Age – The Silmarillion to the tune of 'We Didn't Start the Fire' by Tim DeMarco (bardofarda)

[eilinelsghost]

(Medium) Hot Take: "Did the Oath actually condemn Fëanor & his sons to the Everlasting Darkness" is the wrong question because it has a clear textual answer: which is "no."

Did it have the power to do so? That's another question entirely and a fun one to debate.

But did it? Absolutely not.

Because each of the sons of Fëanor (and Fëanor himself) fulfilled their Oath. Nowhere in the various drafts of the Oath is there a version where they call down the Everlasting Darkness if they fail to retrieve a Silmaril. What they actually swear is:

an oath of enmity for ever against any that should hold the Silmarils The Book of Lost Tales, Part One

shall no law nor love nor league of Gods, no might nor mercy, not moveless fate, defend him for ever from the fierce vengeance of the sons of Fëanor, whoso seize or steal or finding keep the fair enchanted globes of crystal whose glory dies not, the Silmarils. The Lays of Beleriand, The Flight of the Noldoli

no law, nor love, nor league of hell, no might of Gods, no binding spell, shall him defend from hatred fell of Fëanor's sons, whoso take or steal or finding keep a Silmaril. The Lays of Beleriand, The Lay of Leithian: Canto IV

neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself, shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor's kin, whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh, finding keepeth or afar casteth a Silmaril. This swear we all: death we will deal him ere Day's ending, woe unto world's end! Our word hear thou, Eru Allfather! To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth. Morgoth's Ring; Fifth section of the Annals of Aman

they swore an oath [...] calling the Everlasting Dark upon them if they kept it not; [...] vowing to pursue with vengeance and hatred to the ends of the World Vala, Demon, Elf or Man as yet unborn, or any creature, great or small, good or evil, that time should bring forth unto the end of days, whoso should hold or take or keep a Silmaril from their possession. The Silmarillion; Of the Flight of the Noldor

Every version of the Oath that includes the Everlasting Darkness calls it down upon them only if they do not pursue the perceived thief with vengeance and hatred. The only variance from this is in the version from the Annals of Aman where one could conceivably link the Everlasting Darkness with a failure to kill whosoever took a Silmaril. But this version is replaced by the consistent form shown in all other iterations (the same form that is included in the published Silmarillion) and consequently doesn't hold much weight for the argument.

Fëanor and each of his sons (save Maglor who survives the First Age with a Silmaril in his possession) met their ends in pursuit of this exact clause - pursuing those who hold a Silmaril with vengeance and hatred - and consequently dying in fulfilment of their Oath. Which is to say that even if we do hold that the Oath had the power to damn them to the Everlasting Darkness (which it very well may have!), it would not, could not, and did not do so because the terms were met.

And even setting the specific wording of the Oath, the text tells us exactly what happens to one who dies in pursuit of the Oath while still not regaining a single Silmaril: "...[Fëanor's] likeness has never again appeared in Arda, neither has his spirit left the halls of Mandos" (The Silmarillion, Of the Return of the Noldor).

So yes, the Oath might have had the power to send them into the Everlasting Darkness, but it did not have the grounds to do so. And so it did not.

[jeonwonwoo]

Sauron was greater, effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First. Morgoth squandered his power of being in the endeavour to gain control of others. [...] Morgoth at the time of the War of the Jewels had become permanently incarnate; for this reason he was afraid, and waged the war almost entirely by means of devices, or of subordinates and dominated creatures. Sauron, however, inherited the corruption of Arda, and only spent his (much more limited) power on the Rings; for it was the creatures of earth, in their minds and wills, that he desired to dominate. In this way Sauron was also wiser than Melkor. Sauron was not a beginner of discord; and he probably knew more of the Music than did Melkor, whose mind had always been filled with his own plans and devices, and gave little attention to other things. 

[glorfindel-of-imladris]

(tw: death, gore, horror)

I love how downright creepy Sauron is.

He's your neighbourhood psychopathic genius, a skilled sorcerer whose allegiance was realigned once (to his true alignment imo) and then never since waivered.

Unlike Morgoth, who was more straightforward in his execution, Sauron's style is insidious, and in a sense more horrific for how slow and personal his tactics can be. His temper is such that he can play the long game, even play at being weak in order to earn trust or make his enemies complacent, and then next thing you know he has an old friend's corpse up as a war banner, or he has sunk a once great island down the Sea.

He bred the Orcs. Tolkien played with different version of the origin of Orcs, but what I like best is the version where they were corrupted Men, maybe even Elves, and although they were Melkor's idea, it was Sauron who had the ability, patience and tenacity to make the idea come to fruition.

He built cults. Do you know what cults are like? How they draw people in, what they make people believe, what they get people to do? From an outsider looking in it must have looked truly bizarre, but Sauron was able to turn a powerful nation against the Valar and painted Morgoth as the true god. Eru Ilúvatar was denied as a false god, and the Valar made to be liars. There were blood sacrifices, human sacrifices—all for a religion Sauron invented, but was so successful that, once Númenor was gone, Sauron brought the cult with him to Middle-earth.

He was called The Necromancer. What made him garner the title? Who gave it to him, and what had they seen? Surely the Nazgûl were not the first of their kind, not when the Nine were already so well-made. What manner of experimentation had Sauron done in order to make them, and what did the "failures" look like? What knowledge did he use to corrupt and circumvent the Gift of Ilúvatar, which gave Men free will and death, allowing their spirits to transcend Arda? And yet the Nazgûl were unable to die, and as wraiths they also lost their free will, bound to Sauron and the call of the Ring.

He corrupted kings. He corrupted his own kind. Curumo could not have been the only one, and we know Curumo was a powerful Maia in his own right, the leader of the Istari. Sauron played mind games with the best of people, and won. His ability to seduce even the most powerful beings and get them in his service was unparalleled.

Now imagine being a native of Mordor and witnessing the poisoning of the lands. And then an age later, imagine being from one of the villages around Rhovanion and experiencing the slow haunting of Amon Lanc. At least the Eldar could see Sauron and his agents; none of the Men can do so. What defense did the common Man have against such insidious evil? There must only have been odd sensations, a dread settling in, dreams that lure them in before turning into nightmares.