This is what I picture Angband looking like from the top-down. Most of the fortress is subterranean, making this not even the upper most third of the map. Near the top of the center spire is where you will find Hurin’s chair. (Other above-ground structures that didn’t make it into the picture: Dragon hatchery and stable, Maethros’s shackle, and secret passage ways.)
I want my Angband to look like it was a solid, fugly square brick of a fortress that has been retrofitted with spare Utumno-parts and upgraded to suit all Melkor’s Beleriand-Conquering needs.
It’s a mix of designs: impossibly grand scaled pseudo-gothic architecture (to let you know that a Vala lives there), with battlements that are still the old no-frills anti-Oromë defense system left over from the Utumno days, all stuck in a blender with a bunch of lopsided spikes and melty Giger-esque doom.
Sauron provided the architecture and floor plan (complete with indoor plumming and practical considerations like “where do we put all the orcs”), and Melkor provided the asymmetry, the underground caverns, and the carelessly assembled volcanic hellscape.
Only four Thracian inscriptions of any length have ever been found, this ring being one of them. It’s from Ezerovo, Bulgaria and it has an inscription in Thracian but the letters used are ancient Greek: ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΕΑΣΝ / ΕΡΕΝΕΑΤΙΛ / ΤΕΑΝΗΣΚΟΑ / ΡΑΖΕΑΔΟΜ / ΕΑΝΤΙΛΕΖΥ / ΠΤΑΜΙΗΕ / ΡΑΖ // ΗΛΤΑ
The words have been separated as: ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΕΑΣ NΕΡΕΝΕΑ ΤΙΛΤΕΑΝ ΗΣΚΟ ΑΡΑΖΕΑ ΔΟΜΕΑΝ ΤΙΛΕΖΥΠΤΑ ΜΙΗ ΕΡΑ ΖΗΛΤΑ
Thank you, Herald. This brings me comfort; more than I can say. I too, know your loyalty, and how my Master counts on you. A more devoted servant he could not wish for.
Hah. Even the Valar could not find fault with your service; it is impeccable.
Are you suggesting that Luthien and Beren’s legacy was free of violence? I wonder if Thingol would agree, or Dior, or Elwing. Or the free wolves whose packs were decimated, bereft of their father.
In any case… what would our resistance be without violence? Would anyone care for orc martyrs, dying passively to promote their right to live? Would any of my Master’s works have survived, if he had not fought for them? Would the Valar not have erased him from history, as they did from their ranks? And if I did not fight to remind them that their injustices were not forgotten, that I lived yet to avenge my lord, would they take notice at all from the comfort of their removed paradise?
Of course my legacy is a bloody one. So is yours. So are theirs.
Shriek– RivkaZ 2016
“…And Huan released [Sauron]. And immediately he took the form of a vampire, great as a dark cloud across the moon, and he fled, dripping blood from his throat upon the trees, and came to Taur-nu-Fuin and dwelt there, filing it with horror.”
Melkor spoiled Glaurung and lavished him with the most affection, but as a hatchling I found him unbearable. Ancalagon was a greedy little thing; all maw and hunger and very little else. Not much of a conversationalist, but then, not all of Melkor’s dragons were inclined towards speech.
I suppose…. Smaug was the most agreeable, and easiest to handle out of the egg. He liked me well enough when I gave him scraps from the forge.
I find the connection between Melkor and his children to be very beautiful, one of the foremost reasons I believe in his cause and the necessity of protecting that which differs from the Theme.
Tell me, if you saw your lover giving affection to their children, would you love them less? Are you jealous of the child?
As you recall, I am an interloper in my Master’s court. Many of his children had no love for me when I chose to enter his service, and sought to chase me off, or else bend his ear against me. Who was I? Another turn-coat drawn to Melkor’s glory, a cog from the Valar’s grand machine who would lose its taste for hardship. No one believed I would stay for long; redemption was too near, the comfort of easy service to the one who made me still alive in my heart. Gothmog in particular held me to be no more than a petty rival, soon to be chased back whence I came. “Aulë’s tinkerer” he called me, long ago.
…I bear him no grudge today. We have long since learned to accept and even enjoy each other’s company– I understand how Gothmog must have felt. Indeed, I held the selfsame position when my Father brought another Maia to him from the Halls. I was his Right Hand, and here was one who was to be his Left; a latecomer, a spoiled youngster, a threat to my place as apple of my Father’s eye. And he, Curunír, wasted no time in filling my seat when I defected. I can feel nothing but contempt for such an opportunistic worm…
But I do not waste much time thinking of betrayal, except as a theoretical precaution. Unlike the elves, my Master’s people have long been a united front.
I have always had Melkor’s favor. I am not anxious, nor jealous of the affections he reserves for others, for I hold a position that cannot be usurped.
…I suppose… in a purely hypothetical scenario, Langon the Herald would be my greatest threat, were he to conspire against me. He has not only Melkor’s ear, but a position of utmost trust. He could weave a web of suspicion around me that might be enough to threaten my tenure, for our lord has had… increasing fits of paranoia in the recent ages. It might be possible to convince him that I…
But no. No.
The herald and I share an understanding, and my Master knows I am pledged to him until all is Unmade. I am his until Time unravels, and after. He knows this. He must know.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 