#umbar spoilers

[dalish-delight]

I am so very fond of them :)

[masterelrond]

E + D... Derufin had not even told Lord Duinhir of us before... oh Egnir :(

[pursuer-of-hope]

Big fan of getting to hang out with my two favorite non-Ranger NPCs, at the same time, in the new Umbar epic. Gift for me specifically.

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

hey-

[rohirric-hunter]

[maltheinielofgondor]

mal's journey to umbar!

[lotro-tooltips-daily]

[sweetearthandnorthernsky]

statements that are fun w/ a gondorian pc

[a-lonely-dunedain]

hey so Umbar has been. yeah it's sure has. I'm having a normal one tonight about this.

[essenceofarda]

Hi, I saw your post about modern Girl in Middle Earth and the first and fourth idea really made me curious. Do you want to talk more about them?

Yeah!! i'll be honest with you, those are the ones i'm most interested in writing, so I'm absolutely thrilled that they intrigued you in particular!!

(Link to the original post)

Okay, so the first fic idea, where the girl becomes a baker's maid... Like i mentioned, this one is very slice of life, and focuses on the normal, average inhabitants of Gondor/Rohan/Middle Earth. There's no grand epic 'saving the world' plotline... but the theme of this story, if i had to choose one, is that, no matter how grand or simple of a life may you lead, you are still an essential part of the grand story of life. Basically, that we're all important and we all make a difference.

The fourth fic idea I have is, like mentioned, more of a political fantasy story, with an emphasis of the love triangle (that def has poly vibes to it lol). At first, when King Eldarion returns with his pregnant lover, his queen is both shocked (and unbelievably happy) that her lover seems to have returned to life, but is also kinda devastated that her lover doesn't seem to recall who she is, and not only that, but is pregnant with the child of and the the lover of another person. At first she's like, "'"This woman just happens to LOOK like my lover, since i saw her die with my own eyes (hence trauma to the extreme), and while I'm protective of her, I can't let myself be jealous or expect her to remember something she cannot." (spoiler: she does get a 'bit' jealous lol). But then, she starts to get hints that this woman DOES remember some things, since the woman's dream memories become more and more vivid. And of course, she's not the only one who notices. Some of the bad guys back at the queen's homeland of Umbar/Harad catch on that the queen's dead lover seems to have come back to life, and that alone puts the now pregnant woman on a bit of a hit list 😱

Anyway, that's a little more on both of those stories 🥰

[dalish-delight]

spoilers for the song of waves and wind ahead! i'll tag them + anything from the new expansion as #umbar spoilers from this point on.

that's so metal, i love this new npc power couple, can't wait to see more of the-

WHY.

[lesbiansforboromir]

SPOILERS FOR LOTRO's KING'S GONDOR AND THE NEW BOOK QUESTS BUT as always I have a gripe with the major storyline, which is this mirroring of Arwen and Vidumavi. I understand the point of it, to inspire this xenophobic backlash that drives people to look to the heirs of Castamir in the first place and give us a reason to go to Umbar and I also get that the whole concept of middle men vs high men vs men of darkness has been somewhat scrubbed from the game's concepts of race and racism but STILL I JUST... Gondor didn't disapprove of Vidumavi because she was nebulously 'foreign'!!!

She was of a 'lesser' race of men, the movement against her in Gondor was a eugenicist one, they did not want to 'soil' the line of the kings with lesser blood that might incur issues like smaller life spans. This was an upper class southern dunadain issue! And in-text, Tolkien says essentially 'no don't worry, dunadain blood is stronger so it didnt effect their lifespans', as if we need that reassurance! As if the concerns were justified and needed to be assuaged for us! And Arwen, being both an elf of royal descent and literally the niece of Numenor's founder, is just fundamentally not the same.

Eldarion and Eldacar are not in the same position of mixed 'lesser' blood, the introduction of Arwen into the King's line is meant to 'reinvigorate it', what is the beef that gondorians have for her? If the common gondorian populace was looking for a 'foreign' figure to insight their ire, then why isn't Aragorn himself a target? He is just as foreign as Arwen is, both geographically and racially. The rohirrim are a descent of Vidumavi's people, why isn't Eowyn an issue?

If we're going for a mistrust of elves as the root cause, well that's also an issue for me since Gondorians do not need to call upon xenophobic prejudice to have an issue with elves. Couldn't their worry be the precise opposite? It has been a long time since Gondor was a majority dunadain country, most if not all people are 'middle men' by SOME descent, and now here we are with a 'pure' dunadain king whom was born to an isolationist cult that spurned the company of the common folk and associated mostly with the high-beauty eldar.

What will these new rulers think about their subjects? How will this effect their politics, their plans? Aragorn is no Steward he has all the rights of a King including the DIVINE right, what will such a glut of power be used to do? And how will a previously-immortal queen relate to her very mortal subjects? These are all very pertinent questions, especially considering that Gondor was expecting Boromir 'the rohirrim are true and valiant, our allies' II to rule them once Denethor was gone. It's a big and unexpected shift towards Dunadain and elven supremacy for Gondor, would that not inspire political concern?

Like here;

Aithil mentions that an elven sense of superiority over humans is something she has encountered! Which could be a lie, if it wasn't for the player having been through in-game Lothlorien and witnessed the way elves treated Nona. So it just kind of feels like an a-historical loss to position Arwen as recieving the same animosity as Vidumavi, relegating it to undeserved bigotry when the issue of elven superiority is real and believed by many characters, including Aragorn himself! And also minimising the bigotry Vidumavi and her children suffered to just 'oh they just didn't like foreign people', there was a very specific reason they did not like her!! It frustrates me.

Though admittedly I understand LOTRO can't go too far into these issues, lest Aragorn's kingship begin to look a little less like a beautiful and noble thing that will bring peace and happiness to all middle earth. And in any case I want to go to Umbar so whatever it takes to get me there comrades, I'll kiss Aragorn on his dumbass baby head if I have too. BUT STILL!! I wish there had been some other way to do that.

[lady-of-the-spirit]

Please tell me more about your Tolkien-verse OCs????

HAPPILY!!!

I've got Athalia, who's for The Hobbit trilogy, and Kiana and Annunel, both for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They all exist in the same timeline, with Athalia's story meant to be a prequel to Kiana/Annunel's.

Athalia was originally written as the daughter of one of Bilbo's friends/neighbours and ended up raised by Bilbo after her parent's death. I scrapped that idea a few years ago, though, and made her his childhood friend instead, partly because her staying his niece didn't feel right to me anymore and partly so I could write them being snarky best friends.

Athalia's Not Like Other Hobbits. you know how the fandom characterizes Bilbo's mom as being an adventuring hobbit lady? Athalia is very much the same. She wants adventure in the great wide somewhere and - scandalously - actually goes off on a journey to see all of Middle Earth some 8 years before the start of the story. She comes back from her journey, reuniting with her best friend Bilbo, claiming she wants to settle down again, just in time for Gandalf to show up asking Bilbo to go on his own adventure. Athalia is immediately on board and claims that "surely two bandits is better than one!" And gets Bilbo on board (despite his many many reservations about the whole thing).

She has a lot of information on what she's seen of the world and is very eager to share and learn more, always, always jotting down notes in her journals (she has many) and collecting little trinkets when she can. Her enthusiasm, cheerfulness, and seemingly endless knowledge and opinions successfully seduces Fili after maybe a week on their journey.

Not everything is all sunshine, though. The background of her fic, most important, is that I was watching the Hobbit movies (for the first time) at the same time I was rereading Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden, in which the main character 1) uses a spear as a weapon and 2 (spoilers) ends up getting tuberculosis. I was so compelled by this character and the tragic nature of prequels that it ended up factoring into Athalia's story a lot. I created my own little plague that affects only the hobbit community and is very rare, but has no cure, and Athalia is slowly dying over the course of the story. She's known since before she returned to Bag End - it's the reason she returned, wanting to see her oldest friend before she died. But she doesn't want a peaceful, quiet death, withering away to nothing. So Gandalf's quest is a way for her to have both some time with Bilbo and doing what she loves, seeing the world, and making her last little bit of time on this beautiful earth matter. She's accepted her death.

Until she falls in love with Fili, and worse, finds out he loves her back, which makes everything so much harder. because now she wants to live.

So yeah this fic and her character were VERY tragic in nature, as prequels often are. I never could decide on an ending - killing both her and fili, just killing her (through various means), or in an alternate ending AFTER the tragic one was posted, saving them both.

I totally meant to start writing this fic, but then covid hit, and it just seemed inappropriate to do so after that.

Now onto the happier ocs- Kiana and Annunel! Originally, Kiana and Annunel were supposed to be two separate stories. But then I went well why not put them together? And they ended up together, same story. And together as in they're in lesbians together 💖 because why not???

Kiana is unrelated to the rest of the main cast, princess and heir to the throne of a foreign kingdom in the south. I think canonically it's Umbar but I didn't know that when I made her and chose a random place on the map, and I've just stuck with that. Her kingdom was inspired by ancient Persia. Smth fun about her is that in her country's language their term for "King" is a completely gender neutral term so she's gonna be a woman king. she's very emotional but hides it behind her royal persona and only lets it slip the longer she's with the fellowship. She's also besties with Boromir because their countries are friends with each other and I was fucking sick of all the ocs hating on Boromir, my beloved.

Annunel is the twin of Aragorn. They used to be much closer when they were younger but as they got older they drifted apart. (They're both rangers though. Her nickname with the rangers is "West" which is a little reference to her name which means "west/sunset" in Sindarin. Or says the website I found years ago which I can't find now.) She gets herself tangled into the fellowship before Frodo gets himself stabbed, when she finds them in the woods - Gandalf called her. It's the first time she's seen her brother in years. It's weird. but hey. she's here. (and then she sticks with him when Frodo takes the ring because she's invested now.)

There's a little onesided beef on Kiana's part with Annunel because she and Boromir are both of the opinion Aragorn/Annunel abandoned Gondor and that's a big no-no in her book. But they get past that over time.

(Eowyn gets a little crush on Kiana and Annunel is jealous that's important to me.)

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

more than a few people are also on the hunt for calatirion huh lol

[rohirric-hunter]

Okay and now that I've got that monstrosity of an ask game response out of the way. I can post about something I noticed while reviewing quests for it.

At the beginning of this questline, Arwen tells the PC she has concerns that there will be some kind of assassination attempt on Aragorn.

Traveling through post-war Gondor, the PC encounters many individuals who lost spouses or lovers during the war, and the quests dealing with this often get into people's reactions to this loss. How they go on to deal with the world while dealing with their grief. Both in the main quest and in innumerable sidequests. The ways in which we lose loved ones and how we react to it is a running theme.

Our first encounter with one of the Heirs of Castamir has her talking about marriage in this sort of way -- "I do not begrudge Elessar his choice of wife! Were he not King, he could marry anyone he wished, and he would have my blessing. But if he is to be King, he should put the needs of Gondor ahead of his heart's call. If Gondor is to have a Queen, she should be a woman of Gondor."

Leading into the Heirs of Castamir portion of this questline we learn that Aragorn is in genuine danger of being assassinated -- "To have another member of Elessar's court among our number seems almost too great a gift to be believed, but I will not turn it down!" However when we tell Aragorn this he brushes it off. He's not concerned about it because of Arwen.

The PC goes on to encounter many many more instances of lost lovers and loved ones. I'm not even going to try to list them all. This post would be way too long. it's So Much. The principle ones are, of course, Nakási and Tumúldo. The game even drags other, unrelated stories along these themes into it, like Nimrodel and Amroth.

Anyway, Chekov's Gun, that's what I think. We know that while we've been off in Umbar someone close to Aragorn has been conspiring against him. There will be an assassination attempt, that much is certain.

My theory is that this assassination attempt will appear to be successful. Aragorn will either be injured or lost when it happens, or choose to fake his own death, perhaps to gather information. In the absence of an heir, the duties of ruling will presumably pass to his wife. Which will go over so well with certain parties.

Unsure where else things will go from here. Maybe someone else (Sakalphêl?) will come forward with a "more legitimate" claim to the throne and it will turn into a situation where Gondor must quite literally choose between a stranger who cares about them and one of their worst enemies. Maybe not. I've been hung up on how Nakási works as a foil for Hathellang, but maybe within the framework of the story she's meant to be a foil for Arwen. That would be interesting.

This whole conflict in general is actually hysterical considering Arwen's uncle was literally the founder of Númenor, making her more Númenorian and Gondorian by blood than most people living in Gondor today.

Anyway.

Fascinating storyline. I'm interested to see where it goes.

(Also I wonder what the Heirs of Castamir's position would be on Gothmog. Could be funny.)

[the-rings-of-power-rewritten]

The Master List

One list to guide you all:

*updates often*

Introduction and a bit about me

Written Works - Crafting

Characters

Reworking (from the show):

Finished

Arondir, Bronwyn, Disa, Halbrand

Working on still

Tar-Míriel, Theo, The Hartfoots, The Femguls

- The Stranger (Wizard) will not be included since they had not arrived until the Thrid-age. (Replacing them with Tom Bombadil)

Creating:

Äléndjíã, Elündjíá & Súrëhîr

Including from the books:

Adar, Galadreil, Celeborn, Celebrían, Celebrimborne, Sauron, Isildur, Elendil, Princess Silmariën, Gil-galad, Elrond & Elros, the Nazgul, Tom Bombadil, Morgoth

...

My take on how to chronical the Second Age (SA) thousands of years worth of events and where these characters come into the story spanning thousands of years:

Spoilers below for the events happening during the SA:

Season 1 - The Great Kings of Men

(SA 1-2251)

Why were they so great? How were they temped by Sauron? Let's explore that shall we?

- Primarily will be focusing on Halbrand and Alendja's realtionship.

-creation of the 16 rings of power by Sauron and Celebrimborne.

-how the 16 rings of power were distributed and might have been used. By men and dwarves.

Season 2 - Return of the Darkness

(SA 500- the war of the last Alliance)

We follow the Hartfoots travels and see how the world has become a harsher and more dangerous place because of Sauron's influence.

-We see how affected some of the drwarf lords have become more reclusive, greedy and dig deeper-- because of their rings of power. Since the Hartfoots travel through the mountain passes to find a new home and a place to settle. (Also they meet Tombomabil after they cross the mountains)

-forging of the three elven rings (fordged last and in secrect)

-the fall of Eregeon

-wars of the rings starts

-Sauron is captured by Nemnorians and taken to Numenor to then be taken to the undying lands to recieve his punishment from the Miar that he already had espaced from once.

Season 3 - The Fall of Neumenor

(SA 3265-3319)

The real reason why Neumenor fell

- not because the elves took their jobs but because they were jealous of their immortality and were tricked by Sauron to sail west towards the undying lands (which they were forbidden to do) and like Atlantis they were punished by the gods for their hubris and their city and people who were there at the time were taken by the sea. Because you know... the sea is always right :P

Season 4 - The Rise of Gondor and other great kingdoms of middle earth.

(3320-3429)

From the ashes of destruction the people and men of middle earth rise again.

-Bronwyn and Arondir meet during this time.

-Founding of Gondor and Arnor as realms-in-exile by Elendil and his sons, Isildur and Anárion.

-Umbar remains a stronghold of the King's Men, now the Black Númenóreans.

- Sauron's forces launch a surprise attack and capture Minas Ithil, burning the White Tree. Isildur sails to Arnor while Anárion defends Osgiliath. The War of the Last Alliance begins.

Season 5 - The War of the last Alliance

(3429-3441)

The hope to put an end to Sauron once and for all... Though we all know how it went...

- The Last Alliance of Elves and Men is formed.

- Sauron's forces are defeated in the Battle of Dagorlad and Siege of Barad-dûr begins.(Oropher and Amdír are slain.)

- Elendil and Gil-galad perish in single combat with Sauron. Isildur defeats Sauron by taking the shards of his father's sword Narsil and cutting the One Ring from Sauron's finger, destroying Sauron's physical form and winning the war.

In the aftermath of the War many Elves of Gil-galad's following depart to Valinor: end of the Ñoldorin realms in Middle-earth.

- Also the black skinned elves from the easteren lands, who participated, are welcome to sail as well.

-Arondir chooses to stay in Middle-Earth with Bronwyn and her son Theo. Until Bronwyn passes from old age and Arondir moves onto the undying lands.

End of the second age

Got any questions for me? Ask away!