#palantír

[autistook]

Pippin & the Palantír

[ratsarecute4]

Chapter 25- the aftermath of the Palantír. Took me a while to get this out because I am busy making my Éowyn cosplay for Fan Expo next month. Chainmail makes my fingers hurt :( maybe i will show you guys the finished costume

[negreabsolut]

Carregant un palantír a la nau.

[gil-estel]

denethor and saruman were doom scrolling before it was cool

[dual-domination]

As thanks for a favour, Wu Xie is given an ancient foreign artifact. (He's convinced it's cursed from the moment he lays eyes on it.) (It's a Palantír.)

Waves of smoke, ash and fire unfurled within the translucent sphere, in glow and shadow remaking an unclear image, which tried to take shape and move among the jumbled sounds that overlapped - the screams and clash of thousands of swords, the tear apart mountains and seas.

Wu Xie saw many cursed things during his lifetime, but that 'gift for a favor' - an ancient crystal ball that displayed a long crack on its surface, as if the vision inside it could escape, - was certainly something he had seriously considered just not touching.

The destruction of an age far older than the world he knew seemed an illusion, - a trick of that artifact to draw the horror that, again, the world would be consumed in the same way, - but if the vision was true, the fallen ruins where he, strangely, could read 'Minas Tirith' carved into the stones, somewhere must exist to be found.

(Oh gods, Fixa, thank you so much for this prompt! And I'm sorry for the overuse of commas to keep this in 3 sentences kjsskjs. Now this will live in my head for a while...)

[shadow-usagi]

Happy New Year everyone! 🎉💛✨

I hope you all have a wonderful 2024 coming your way~

[anghraine]

kazaera replied to this post:

See, my first thought was definitely "oh man epic star-crossed lovers romance if Númenor is generally isolationist and doesn't want to get involved with Middle-earth affairs" and I don't even usually ship Aragorn/Arwen! But I may have missed the mention of Tar-Elessar and had a more adversarial Númenor in mind, with the descendants of the Lords of Andúnië still being lords (maybe?) but not ruling, insert political intrigue here.

Oh, interesting!

I'd definitely always imagined that Aragorn is King of Númenor as Tar-Elessar when Éowyn arrives. But how exactly he got there is a lot fuzzier. I did imagine that contemporary Númenor's Middle-earth policy is basically "not my circus, not my monkeys" and has been for awhile, rather than antagonistic. But I feel like I'm missing some major event that led to them dialing down from overt imperialism to wishy-washy centrism, and placed the line of Silmariën in power, which seems likely to require a number of Elrosian families higher in the succession getting wiped out along the way, somehow.

It might make more sense for this if the Lords of Andúnië weren't the ruling family in Aragorn's youth—even in really different circumstances, it's hard to see him as a war-agnostic centrist who doesn't know what's going on in his own holdings. And Aragorn/Arwen is a lot more interesting in this scenario if it's not just him loving someone "above" him, but politically awkward for him to do so.

One of the things I find interesting about Aragorn is how, in the book, he's allowed to have ambitions he's actively working to achieve and great skill at adapting his presentation of himself to the situations he finds himself in, without it really denting his heroism. He's ambitious without being short-sighted or immoral about it, he slips between very different personas without lacking integrity or authenticity. And that intersection of qualities might be a lot more interesting if he's just one of multiple great lords, but one who is privately frustrated by the continuing policy of disengagement from the rest of the world.

At the time, he wouldn't be the king Éowyn is seeking, but no other great lords except (hilariously) Denethor are as receptive to the appeal from Rohan or perceive the situation as grave for everyone the way they do. (Sidenote: the prospect of AU Aragorn and AU Denethor as grumpy political allies on Númenor is just wildly entertaining to me.) So it could take some doing for him to end up as Tar-Elessar, but would probably be more credible and more interesting.

And if he's been trying to avoid giving away the extent of his desire to join the war in Middle-earth, marrying Elrond's daughter is the last thing he should do! So it might not be star-crossed lovers exactly, but I could see a 'dangerous concealed romance' version. In fact, the whole Númenor side of the story could probably be told entirely through Elessar's secret messages to Arwen—epistolary secret relationship political drama!

[helenvader]

This "epistolar something" by @oroniel is an absolute delight!

It's totally unique, both hilarious and thoughtful, very cleverly woven with fandom references and you should all read it! 😊

[rohirric-hunter]

Actually Golodir had to die on the Pelennor because if he had found out that Denethor tricked the PC into looking into a Palantír he would have caused several Diplomatic Incidents that would have irreparably broken canon and thrust LotRO solidly into AU territory.

[peregrin-nook]

WIZARD WARNING. You are all gonna have to stop pondering your damn orbs. The Gremlin is blessed by the narrative to cause your downfall unless you have a great sword and beard and your name rhymes with Baragorn

[lotr-calligraphy]

Pippin was silent again for a while. He heard Gandalf singing softly to himself, murmuring brief snatches of rhyme in many tongues, as the miles ran under them. At last the wizard passed into a song of which the hobbit caught the words: a few lines came clear to his ears through the rushing of the wind:

Poems in the Lord of the Rings [58/82]

[holytrickster]

the way i started trying to ..start. the silmarillion again and i got so distracted writing my silly little notes in it and then i went down a google rabbit hole about the heraldic devices in it and then about the writing systems that come even before early tengwar and suddenly i look down at the book and I'm not even on the ainulindalë yet 😂

[ratsarecute4]

Chpater 24 is out! Now that I'm graduating, I have more time to write! This is my take on the palantír scene

[none-ofthisnonsense]

Even now he looked at the stone trolls with suspicion, wondering if some magic might not suddenly bring them to life again.

Poor Pippin... He already somewhat disbelieved the story, and now has added trauma from the barrow downs...

[almostlookedhuman]

[oldschoolfrp]

Saruman the White ponders his palantír. "You are the trusted apprentice to one of the greatest Wizards in all Middle-earth" in A Spy in Isengard (Angus McBride cover art for Middle-earth Quest gamebook #1 by Terry K Amthor, Iron Crown Enterprises, 1988). McBride has been memed more than once.