#the depository of plotbunnies

[galadhremmin]

was looking something up in The War of the Jewels and this caught my eye (section Annals of Aman);

‘The Noldor came at last far into the North of Arda, and they saw the first teeth of the ice that floated in the sea, and knew that they were drawing nigh to the Helkaraxë. For between the West-land of Aman that in the north curved eastward and the east-shores of Endar (which is Middle-earth) that bore westward there was a narrow strait, through which the chill waters of the Encircling Sea and the waves of the Great Sea flowed together, and there were vast fogs and mists of deathly cold, and the sea-streams were filled with clashing hill of ice and the grinding of ice deep-sunken. Such was the Helkaraxë, and there none yet had dared to tread save the Valar only and Ungoliantë.”

has anyone written fic about the crossing of the Helcaraxe feat. Unlight produced by Ungoliant?

Elves see well in the dark, and there were stars, so seeing where they’re going shouldn’t be too much of an issue. But with some patches of Ungolian residue involved... and the Grinding Ice being so noisy it becomes hard to find each other again if you’re lost. hmm. I just think there are some horror possibilities.

[galadhremmin]

horror fic idea where Eol becomes Like That because as an Elf he obviously tries to commune with the forest in which he lives, only this is the place where Thingol lost 200 years to gazing in Melian’s eyes. It’s full of old dangerous magic-- and it’s outside the Girdle. There’s this line about Nan Dungortheb, “Beyond lay the wilderness of Dungortheb, where the sorcery of Sauron and the power of Melian came together, and horror and madness walked.”-- and while Nan Elmoth is not quite that bad it is dark, and unprotected by anything but itself. It is always trying to protect itself, trying to find new protectors-- and full of both Melian’s old ensnarements and touched, perhaps, by Sauron. 

Open your mind to the gnarled old trees and become more like they are with every passing year (and an elf passes many a year), and the idea of trapping someone with spells lingers in the trees dreaming of Melian’s enchantment, the memory of joy twisted now by the encroaching darkness that seeps into the trees...

[galadhremmin]

So I thought of a fun AU last night... you see, Celeborn is a fairly irrelevant character. Galadriel might just as well have ended up with someone else while in Doriath.

What if she fell in love with Dior instead.

Set any odd feelings about difference in age aside; Nimloth likely was much older than Dior as well simply due to the fact that it takes Elves longer to grow up, and of course Lúthien is much older than Beren.

And Dior-- Dior falls for the radiance of Valinor in her hair, her sharp mind, her pride. Her pride. Which was always one of her chief failings; which set her against Fëanor before there was ever as much of a reason for it. Her fondness for her cousins is not much greater, not after Alqualondë. Not after having faced them with bloody swords, her sword dripping blood of its own, but spilled in defense.

And now she is Queen of a realm, as she always wanted, to order as she thinks is right; because Dior loves the way her mind works, he knows how close she was to Melian, how much she learned from her. Perhaps the two of them together-- he with his Maiarin blood bathed in the radiance of the silmaril and she with her brilliant mind and her hair like the shimmer of the Trees absorbing and reflecting that light-- can restore the Girdle.

If they have time. And they need time. Melian's mourning was a natural disaster. No matter how much Galadriel learned of her arts, she does not have her power; and Dior knows less of her arts, though he has a little of it. They work on the Girdle together. It is slow work, and they cannot do any while apart. The power and the knowledge how to conduct it. Together. It is slow work.

The first letter arrives too soon.

Maedhros, heir of Fëanor, demands his father's work. The wording is polite but the tone haughty; there has never been much love between the two of them, and Dior he knows not at all. He and his brothers, he says, were willing to let Lúthien keep it while she lived; and her Doom stayed their Oath. The power of the gem to heal the land she could have for the rest of her life in return for her valiant deeds. But, he says, those days have ended. And her deeds were not yours; nor was the jewel ever Thingol's to demand. It is the blessed outcome of a cruel request meant to mock Beren. And the jewels, of course, were stolen goods. Though more than goods. Silima is as a body to their spirit. They are alive, and they are not yours, cousin; your hair did not go into their making. They are more than beautiful to us. They are our Doom, our leash, and our last link to our father's spirit. Give us the jewels, Galadriel. Or you will see Alqualondë again.

Dior pales beneath the splendour of Nauglamír. Her brother's necklace. Her brother, who wouldn't have died if it weren't for her damned cousins. She puts her hand on his trembling hand. Refuse them, she says. They don't deserve to have this. They are already doomed, and I foresee the jewel would reject them for what they did to our kin in the Swanhaven. Reject them, my King. But do it slowly. They will want to keep talking; they are my cousins, and some of them are still capable of feeling guilt. In the meantime, we will rebuild the Girdle. In the meantime we will grow strong.

Dior's hand stops trembling beneath hers. He is young, but he remembers the beauty of Doriath before the Girdle fell; his grandmother's arms around his own. He remembers his brave mother, his father, the way the Feanorians treated them; Maedhros' respect for Lúthien's rights comes not from nobility but fear, he thinks. His mother was very powerful. He is young, but he has grown into an adult at the pace of an adan. He is an able swordsman, fast, strong, starting to get a feel for Song, and sometimes, sometimes there is a hint of something more, and he can almost grasp it, like the fluttering of many wings--

They just need a little more time. And they need the jewel. Doriath will rise to its former glory again, and the then, with his new human ideas and Galadriel's innovative Valinorean ones-- will bloom into something strange and new, a little paradise beyond the sea, and this time from the start without prejudice. Perhaps, in time, they might even lift the ban on quenya without consequence. They will welcome his father's people, and Edain and Sindar will grow close and exchange their knowledge and love in ways not yet seen before.

This will take a long time, you know. This is not the Kingdom as it is now, full of brambles and with many patches now entirely unprotected. The Green elves don't always feel treated fairly, and have kin friendly with Fëanor's hunter twins; some of the grey elves fled into the Girdle after the Flame and changed their speech, but not their memory of Thingol.

Letters are exchanged. Galadriel is uncompromising as always. Dior, bathed in the light, grows confident and proud. The letters become shorter, and one day they stop altogether.

.

They arrive in the night, before the first bird starts to sing.

And when they leave there is no one left to sing of them.

[galadhremmin]

So in the Silmarillion Turgon keeps sending sailors to Valinor despite the Ban, resulting in all of them drowning except for Voronwë-- but why would they take the same route over and over? The Noldor are brave and inventive.

Arctic Noldorin expedition to find a way around the Shadowy Seas by sailing as close to the Helcaraxë as they possibly can, or maybe trying to break through it, trying to find a sea-route around Aman, a desperate attempt to land on the western coast instead.

The fog, darkness and the cold, the grinding and whispering of the Ice-- and then, if you were to somehow force your creaking ship through-- Ekkaia, the Outer Sea, the Walls of Night somewhere too close for comfort.

Through the mists of Oiomúrë, the chilly coast of Araman; and finally to land at the empty wastes west of West, near the house of Nienna full of tears.

And what welcome can an unexpected guest expect, no, one to whom the doors were barred?

[galadhremmin]

Tbh I think Orodreth is actually an excellent tragic character. Also given the importance of oaths to elves, and the army of the dead oathbreakers Aragorn commands in Lotr-- Finrod saying that the people of Nargothrond ‘break their oaths of faith’ .... I sense a haunted ruins of Nargothrond potential! 

Maybe a story in which Galadriel can release them, being the one surviving Finarfinian sibling. 

Or! Finarfin himself during the War of Wrath; a nice dramatic plot could be their shades helping the Valinorean army fight Mordor, and being released after having fulfilled their oaths of faith that way. 

[galadhremmin]

Oh fic idea based on the HoME quote in this post-- Lúthien frees Míriel from her loom and takes her with her wherever it is that mortal souls go, beyond the doors of the world.

[galadhremmin]

... a fun AU inspired by this reread interpretation would be if the herald does manage to convince the rest of the Noldor.

Now it’s only Feanor and his sons who leave Valinor. They cannot turn back. They have been banished. On their own, bound to an Oath they have already been told they cannot fullfill; there is no stealing of swanships possible, no battle to be won. Maybe Olwë is willing to give them a single ship. Not a swanship, no, and certainly not a fleet of them, but something capable of bearing them over the sea nevertheless. He refused to aid the people of the Noldor in crossing, which would doom them-- but the ones already banished? Perhaps he would help them. Or not.

In which case; Fëanor and his sons alone on the Helcaraxë, stumbling over the Ice. 

Or not alone. Though there is nothing to be gained this time; only lost. While Fingolfin very literally tried to follow the brother who tried to shake him off in while contesting his leadership in Silm, maybe he keeps his word in this version too. Though there is no longer any leadership to contest now, because there is no one following Fëanor but his sons.

No one but a stubborn, lonely figure, approaching on the Ice.

"I too have a father to avenge," he says when he reaches them at last. His braids are frozen stiff. "And if Melkor's lies you must unlearn, you will not unlearn them alone, in bitterness or not. I will follow."

[galadhremmin]

Do you think the elves ate eachother on the Helcaraxë, Franklin expedition style?

Well good morning to you too! I love asks like these. 😁

My answer is simply; if you want them to! And I do, because I'm fascinated by real polar expeditions, and also think they were very badly prepared for the Helcaraxë. They spent all their lives in Valinor, where there is no true winter at all; freezing is itself one of Melkor's influences on the world (which just shows how much Arda is Morgoth's Ring! And how sheltered they have been from the world).

The only people to have some experience with colder temperatures were likely the Fëanorians, given that Formenos is north near the halls of Mandos, and Fëanor was prone to wandering. Still that is nothing compared to the Helcaraxë, and they did not pack up with the intention of that journey. They thought they would sail on the Telerin ships.

So...there are notes on Elvish bodies in LaCE that indicate the older the elf the greater the dominance over the body by the spirit. But I think most of the Noldor willing to cross were likely to be fairly young. Still probably a lot of adults, so presumably with the ability to do things like walk on snow, go without food for a long time, and withstand a great deal more cold than any of us. Still, the Helcaraxë is a very harsh environment even for them, the arctic but cursed, so things even out.

Also, I'm fairly sure the Fëanorians stole their horses (in my personal interpretation of events). And some other goods. In WoJ the wording is specifically that Maedhros returns Fingolfin's goods to them, whereas in published Silm it's that he gave horses in atonement. I think I prefer the stolen horses, for the simple reason that Fëanor was trying to force Fingolfin to back off. Maedhros returning them is still atonement, after all.

Burning the ships was a political move; it prevented his rival king from following and contesting his leadership + prevented followers from giving themselves over to doubt about trying to go back if things got frightening, or going over to Fingolfin's side. He was not trying to force Fingolfin to cross the Ice. The Ice was supposed to be uncrossable. He was trying to force him to tuck his tail between his legs and crawl back to the Valar. That Fingolfin and his people crossed was quite the surprise! They did the supposedly impossible.

Anyway, if I wanted to force my rival to crawl back I'd steal his extra blankets and food to encourage a swift journey back to temperate Tirion. It just makes sense.

Which is to say.

Fingolfin's host entered the Helcaraxë entirely unprepared. A lot of people died. We don't even know if anything remotely edible lived there; that is, except for their fallen comrades.

There is a note on Elvish bodies just sort of swiftly disappearing after death, which just means they'd have to be very quick about it! Unless the unnatural cold of the Helcaraxë prevents that somehow, which I prefer tbh. There is drama in not even being able to let the body cool, though...

Something I'm fascinated by is how Elves might see a sort of horror version of their tendency to want to arrest change/time, to 'embalm' as Tolkien put it in his letters in the freezing temperatures of the Helcaraxë. If you've ever seen human remains found in the arctic you know what I mean; I find them very touching myself. Their faces are preserved, their clothes...it's as if there is suddenly very little distance between you and someone on the other side of the gulf of time. Maybe they even found it inspiring in a way, saw a perverted version of something that they could accomplish in the changing world of Middle Earth in it...elvish cryogenics of very early Eregion, before they really learned to arrest change without freezing or arresting life? Many ideas...

Anyway you should watch The Terror if you're into arctic cannibalism haha. It was a good series!

[galadhremmin]

fic idea...like of one of these myths in which a deity disguised as an old person asks or shelter from the cold to test people. but it’s sauron or morgoth.. just uniquely frightening concept somehow. Something about the pity/desire to help and trust in their inability to hurt you very old people more or less instinctually inspire.

Morgoth appears as a very old man, coming in from the snow. You don’t know that, of course. To you he is just an old man, almost frozen to death thanks to your inhospitable neighbours. You usher him inside, slamming the door shut against the howling winds. But when you set this old man in front of the fire and given him a thick blanket to wrap himself in-- for a moment his eyes seem to shine strangely, just odd glimmers too cold to be a a reflection of the flames. But surely that must be your imagination running away with you again. His head turns to follow your every move, watching intently while you pour tea. Your skin breaks out in goosebumps despite the fire. You shrug it off, you give him his tea. He is just an old man. His hands are mottled and shaky as he takes it from you. He asks after your family, your pets. The hour is late, the fire is warm. you are almost asleep. But suddenly you are awake again.

he tilts his head strangely. there are cold blue glimmers in black, black eyes, and when he opens his mouth-- his words are incomprehensible but their sound like shards of ice---

[galadhremmin]

Fic idea based on this note in the Lays of Beleriand;

In both texts Tinúviel is now explicitly the Elvish word for ‘nightingale’; and Maglor, again in both texts, is the name of one of the three greatest singers of Elfinesse:

he who harps upon the far forgotten beaches and dark shores where western foam for ever roars, Maglor whose voice is like the sea (506-9)

In the rough draft of this passage the name of this minstrel is however Ivárë (though Maglor is written beside it), and Ivárë was named in the Tale of Tinúviel (II. 10), with Tinfang and Dairon, as one of ‘the three most magic players of the Elves', who ‘plays beside the sea’.

...in which Ivárë is this minstrel who has made it her specialty to play music beside the sea. She does sea-side performances, solo communication with the waves/sea-maiar, has built all sorts of Sea-inspired and operated instruments. This is her thing. 

And then this Feanorian shows up. 

He’s sad, and he’s loud. And also an infamous murderer, as well as a prince; what this means is that it takes approximately two years for the verse to change from  Ivárë whose voice is like the sea to Maglor whose voice is like the sea in local taverns. She absolutely hates it. This is her life’s work! This is her thing.

The usurper generally seems to try to evade her (and his very determined audience), but Ivárë is a good tracker. She knows he’s supposed to be dangerous, but he doesn’t look it now, skeletal beneath his ragged tunic. He can’t use one of his hands. She’ll be fine. This is her territory. 

She finds him in front of a lousy campfire, his back to the night. He is humming tunelessly to himself. His dark hair is barely held together in what she supposes he thinks passes for a bun...

Ivárë creeps up behind him, a rope in her hands.  

[galadhremmin]

has someone written a sort of...hm i don't even know how to call this because I don't mean time travel AU or entirely, definitely our world. The uncertainty of it would be the entire point.

Just taking all the elements that are seem dream-distorted from Tolkien's WWI experience (like toxic fumes from Morgoth, the quotes where the dragons seem like machines --he even designed a Mordor Special Mission Flying Corps Emblem. You know) and writing a First Age wars or Last Alliance story where the line between pseudo-medieval and WWI society is continuously and purposely blurred. It would be very hard to do this well but I think by describing what becomes more and more clear are the surroundings WWI in a fairytale-ish language and the ~old elements in a way that reads as modern in turn!

You're not sure if you're in the mind of a soldier experiencing some sort of break with reality or in an actual different world that is just like yet unlike our history (both the distant and less distant history), not because of any strange emotions on the soldier's part-- but because of the way the world itself is written. The first few paragraphs seem normal silmfic like enough familiar names, with all the same grandiose language and enough vagueness not to notice anything...odd. Then the details start being described and, hmmm.

There are a lot of possibilities -- like you can make elves wear coats yk. Describe a gas mask without ever calling it that way. Even fashion-- describing call it trousers, not breeches, a shirt not a tunic when the scene otherwise reads as particularly archaic-- and no one said all elves had long hair, just beautiful hair. You can give Maedhros a wrist watch, only slowly make it clear that's what it even is through description- there are palantírs so that doesn't seem above their level of technology. But in the next sentence someone is talking about an Oath, or there's a sword.

Oh! And of course the thou/thee/thy thing BUT also 1914s slang in the same sentences. Someone refers to Angband as 'lie factory' (trench slang for German propaganda). 'Thy PBI' ,('poor bloody infantry'). Morgoth's whizz-bangs. Maglor talking about there not being enough 'iron rations.' Soldiers avoiding saying "killed"(---becoming a landowner, going home, being buzzed or huffed, drawing your full issue, being topped off, or clicking it).

[galadhremmin]

Imagining a moon landing on a gigantic blossom really is Much To Think About though.

I suppose the blossom has been enclosed in a hollow sphere by Aulë, and that is the vessel mentioned in the Silmarillon.

Which brings me back to yesterday's focus; adapting existing conspiracy theories to Middle Earth.

Because of course Hollow Moon theory is something that exists both in literature and as a conspiracy theory.

Anyway... I propose a first moonlanding in Middle Earth crossover with an early 20th century scifi book featuring a hollow moon-- H. G. Wells' -- The First Men in the Moon.

Only of course in this story the insectiod lunar inhabitants are somewhat of a recently arrived pest. The moon has been looking decidedly less bright lately, and some brave souls set out to find out why.

As it turns out, an intelligent species of insects has recently arrived from another region among the stars entirely, and started living inside the hollow moon. And gnawing on the blossom.

It falls to the protagonists to negotiate a peaceful relocation.

[galadhremmin]

What if Nienor Níniel became Goldberry? Short idea, possibly to be explored further.

-

Perhaps she drowned, perhaps she did not. Goldberry truly does not know, and remembers very little. Though that does not hurt her as it has in the past, or as she thinks it might have hurt. There is a place in her that feels like danger. There is a self escaped, and a world with it. But mostly there are only the little fish, and pebbles smooth as rain. A blessed forgetfulness, and a protective one; dissolving something sharp into the current that makes old women ache and dream of marsh-lights dancing. She knows only this; from the moment she started knowing the water has embraced and surrounded her, and sometimes called her daughter. She shimmers near transparence between the reeds on warm summer nights, chasing frogs that come to sit on the waterlily pads beside her, singing odd little songs and becoming a little stranger and more bearable to herself with each passing century.

When she falls at last in love again, after long years during which the wreckage of civilisation drifts only occasionally through her changing sidestream-- it is with the land itself, which is kinder now, and changed, without its ancient malice. Cornflower-blue nods in the breeze like a wink, and so she leaves at last, shakes her tail and takes to walking; though never without taking something of the water with her against grief or memory.

[galadhremmin]

what if the Lay of Leithian, a known in-universe ballad about a couple who supposedly came back only to live on an isle where no one alive ever saw them again was wrong, and actually Beren became immortal, and Lúthien just came back more fully a maia, thus easily able to change her appearance... yes... i am suggesting it...

a Tom Bombadil and Goldberry As Beren and Lúthien, Somehow fic.

- live in the middle of nature, in isolation without caring about anyone but each other, no interest in politics, or magical rings - wholesome yet slightly unnerving - uninterested in following the natural or in fact any other law of the world, so they don’t - goldberry is a maia...probably, sort of. But she’s specifically referred to as the daughter of a more unambigious maia, a personified river -Melian, at Thingol’s death cried so much she turned into a river from grief now, no flying away to Aman for this fic - Lúthien was reborn and could so be referred to as the ‘river daughter’

yes i will write this god now i have to 

[galadhremmin]

Related put court jesters in Silmfic idea: girl falls into middle earth but it's just a middle aged man with no fashion sense and an unquenchable need to make annoying comments on everything he witnesses. No redeeming features, only an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Silmarillion used solely for deeply annoying and mildly offensive comments he thinks are funny, as men of that age are bound to do.

He ends up Turgon's court jester after an exhausting 'Team Bonding' rock climbing day with collegues somehow shifts dimensions and ends up in the Crissaegrim. To his mixed horror and delight his manager is eaten by an Eagle; the Gondolidhrim take pity on him and take him in just in time. They soon come to regret it.

Turgon (in a fit of utterly misplaced nostalgia for Finwë's court, a description easily applied to the entire city) appoints him court jester mainly so no one will unlawfully kill him for his running commentary. He also soon regrets this.

[galadhremmin]

ever since I started thinking about Sauron’s I Am The Best Wolf prophecy mistake, an awful little story idea has started to take shape in the back of my mind about Finrod becoming Carcharoth. 

not a story but plot ideas under the cut

 - ‘Sauron brought werewolves, fell beasts inhabited by dreadful spirits that he had imprisoned in their bodies;’ he was a necromancer capable of trapping spirits and did have Finrod defeated in his dungeon.

- Morgoth then breeds Carcharoth specifically to defeat Huan, and later puts a spirit into the monster; ‘then Morgoth recalled the doom of Huan, and he chose one from among the whelps of the race of Draugluin; and he fed him with his own hand upon living flesh, and put his power upon him. Swiftly the wolf grew, until he could creep into no den, but lay huge and hungry before the feet of Morgoth. There the fire and anguish of hell entered into him, and he became filled with a devouring spirit, tormented, terrible, and strong. Carcharoth, the Red Maw, he is named in the tales of those days, and Anfauglir, the Jaws of Thirst.’

- ‘ But Carcharoth looked upon that holy jewel and was not daunted, and the devouring spirit within him awoke to sudden fire;’

- What if Morgoth managed to capture and twist Finrod’s spirit until almost nothing but a fragment of the Oath to help Beren gain the Silmaril for Luthien’s sake remained, and that is why the spirit inside the monster is tormented, thirsting and responds to the silmaril as it does.

-  I just enjoy writing a bit of horror every now and then. But I do like it when I can just squeeze it into canon without making it entirely AU. I do know it says Finrod walks with Finarfin in Eldamar, but the story at this point can still be taken as one written in middle earth, so I think I can squeeze my awful little horror idea in without making it fully AU, especially as I think I want Carcharoth/Finrod’s spirit to be freed by his second death (and return to Eldamar to walk with Finarfin).