I know you fear my gifts, Cousin, but believe me– the silly tricks I made to ensnare mortals are nothing compared to the powers of storm and tide. Surely you do not think yourself on the same level as greedy, power-besotted kings and petty warlords? Men are weak. Tyrants who fear death the weakest of all. Nothing could humble you, O Terror. No pitiful trinket can tame the sea.
Ah, Tyelpe… Remember you the white lilies that grew in Aman? There are none like them in Middle Earth, not now– but someday, when we have built Valinor on earth, they might bloom beneath white towers and bring hope to the exiled. Do you not want to see them again? Do you want to make that future come to pass? With my gifts and your skill, we will build it together.
Wear this clasp, so our dream will be close to your heart.
But
Morgoth hated the new lights, and was for a while confounded by this
unlooked-for stroke of the Valar. ~ The Silmarillion, Chapter 11 (Morgoth by
JMKilpatrick on deviantART)
“Father, all the Arts have their patron but this one.”
Oropher raised an eyebrow at his son, and a shadow creased his smile. “Do you not give your thanks to Aulë when the wire bends true, and mere metal becomes a song in the hand?”
“Of course,” said Thranduil, but he was a perceptive boy, and he saw the shape of something he was not being told.
~
The boy, bending wire into spiraling baubles, became a youth; the youth began to learn the arts of fire, and mere baubles became gleaming jewels, more suitable for wear than for dangling to adorn a window’s arch. He wore them in deliberate contrast to stark and elegant Oropher, and when he ran and danced with the other youth of Nivrim, often the chime of metal on metal accompanied him.
Still, the thought did not leave his mind that all other Arts had a patron; that all other patrons had a shrine, be it Aulë’s grotto tucked away beneath the roots of the greatest oak, or the open, living structure of intertwined trees dedicated to Elbereth herself. Aulë was the master of all crafts, yes – but in his shrine were the loom and the brush, the chisel and the potter’s wheel. The forge was conspicuous by its absence.
Still he could not find the answer; still the shape of something hidden teased at his mind. Asking bore no fruit, for the elder Elves merely frowned and asked why he wanted to know; pushing for an answer received only his mother’s gentle remonstrance, and an overheard argument wherein she wanted to tell him… whatever it was… and Oropher did not. “He is still too young,” Thranduil heard, and he clenched his teeth and crept away silently through the branches. He did not hear “I do not want to burden him yet,” nor did he hear “Our little wild thing will fly to the forbidden, so best we do not forbid.”
None the less, he was drawn to the vacuum, and in a surge of great feeling he ran. Down the boughs, into the carved and ornate cave that served his family as home, flying like the deer before the hounds. He took up his tools, and took a great breath, and ran again.
Past his own room, half sheltered in stone and half shaded by great trees, and out into the forest, to a place he and few others knew, he darted. It was a quiet limestone hollow, its entrance a low arch crowded by unshaped roots and hidden beneath an exuberant spray of flowering canes. A hollow in the trunk above let in light, filtered by leaves.
Inside was a low bench, crafted of twisted wood and carefully planed and polished. He swept aside the few bits of wire that adorned it.
What did a shrine need? Open space – the oak wood had that aplenty, and this little chamber had some of its own. Quiet seclusion – that was here also. And something to direct the mind, to focus the thoughts. To guide the work.
Thranduil knew not what he was focusing on, save that he felt keenly the lack of something to which to dedicate himself. Yet, he had a thought, and in careful secrecy he assembled it.
A ceramic tray, blackened from the fire below and glossed irregular white with flux above; a hammer, a delicate thing with a handle of silvery wood; a pair of copper tongs, impeccably clean, but their tips rainbowed with heat. Last, a single unburnt rod of charcoal, still showing the texture of the bare wood it had once been.
At last the youth arranged the tools upon the tray, blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he held, and sat back.
He contemplated his work for a short time, smiled, and took out a hair-fine wire, and a tiny glittering stone to spin upon it, to craft an earring. This was no place for hot work, not yet- but it could be, and perhaps it would.
In all innocence, he sat and worked his project, in contemplation of his new shrine to the Maia of the Forge.
It began like an itch, something tickling up the spine. There was little to do in the darkness of the keep but wait, patient as a stone, for scouts and messengers to bring tidings from afield. The sensation burned brighter in the absence of distraction.
The throne room was cold. The castle was empty of servants to tend and maintain it. The marshland air was damp and the wet crept up every wall and grew on every tapestry. Wolves gnawed bones in the courtyard and orcs patrolled he halls. With a sudden intake of breath, Thû was filled with a sudden longing for heat, for the ringing of metal; cold ashes swirled in the dead fireplace and he ached to set it ablaze. What was it that had snuck into his brain like a gadfly? And why did his exile to this wet, chilly island feel so especially unbearable today?
The smithy here was pitiful; a peasant’s excuse for an anvil rusted unused in the abandoned court. Who stoked the fires in the Great Forge in Angband, now that he was gone? Was his workplace too gathering dust, abandoned now that he’d been dubiously ‘promoted’? Unbidden his heart recalled the rush of ignition, the oxygen-devouring inferno, the shimmer of convection and the white heat of molten ore. He remembered his forge– not at the heart of Thangorodrim, nor even Utumno, but farther back in the reach of his past; a place he’d tried to forget, the memories interlocked with the sight of familiar red hands, rough as sandstone, guiding him, offering support and direction.
Thû closed his eyes, growling with a shake of his head that sent stray guard-wolves cowering. Behind his eyes, he sought the source of this irritation, isolated it to a single point. And as he focused upon it, it grew; like a knock at the door, like a stranger calling his name.
He was not accustomed to being the recipient of prayer. He was not like Ossë, to whom the Falathrim built shrines, who sailors praised and offered supplication. Nor was he Melian, whose name was thanked day and night by those she sheltered, lending her strength. He was The Cruel, The Abhorrent; loved by none save those as removed from the Valar’s light as himself, and that had been the nature of his existence since before the first elf opened their eyes to see the stars. That was perhaps why the feeling took him by surprise, why the faint brush of acknowledgement against the walls of his spirit eluded naming.
But whatever it was, it had a child’s voice. And it came from just beyond the border of Melian’s Girdle, on the edge between forest and fen.
It was a long, long way from Tol Sirion as men might travel. But for a spirit unclad, it was a short journey, and in a grove shaped by water and stone and root, he found the source of his peculiar, gentle torment.
He moved without shape, without sound, and watched the oak-dark fall of hair over delicate shoulders stooped in concentration, observed the silverwood hammer, to tongs, the tools of his trade set into a hasty-made shrine, built with both impudence and sincerity. And the little nut-brown prince, all fawn-limbs and intense eyes, whose nimble fingers bent jewelry out of spider-silk wire, attentive yet carefree.
Curiosity moved him more powerfully than caution or cunning.
“Boy,” he asked, moving the air with thought rather than sound, “what are you doing? Why do you build to me, whose name you do not even know?”
Since this topic is swiftly becoming essential to several of my threads, I figured I’d put some actual thought into my headcanons for Ainur shapeshifting and bodies.
What we know from canon: 1) Ainur can change “raiments” as easily as one might change a garment, or discard them and walk unclad. 2) They can get stuck in their body if they invest too much of themselves in worldly materials; e.g. Melkor. 3) They can lose those bodies if they’re too damaged, or their spirit is removed by force; e.g. Sauron, on like 5 separate occasions get it together buddy, and also Saruman.
(Side note: In various versions of the Lay of Leithian, Sauron’s wolf-form is described as a “wolf-hame”, a term taken from Icelandic sagas, which (I believe) means something like “hide” or “skin”. There’s equivalent references in the Loki myths about him borrowing a cloak of feathers to take the form of a falcon. Lots of myths have figures that literally wear a skin or cloak to change form– and while I’m tempted to use this mechanic because it’s super cool, I don’t think that full Maiar would need to use a magical totem to change shape, unlike Beren and Luthien with their stolen skin-cloaks.)
Most important take-away from the Lay was that Sauron’s wolf body was physically left behind when he fled in the shape of a Vampire, leaving a big ol’ dead maia-wolf corpse in its wake. We also know that the body he made after Numenor wasn’t very good; he lost the ability to use a “fair form” from that point on.
This means several things for my ‘Verse: leaving aside the idea that Sauron is now “more corrupt” and therefore less able to appear beautiful, because we’ve elected to ignore this association, given that it is gross– he is simply out of juice. He just used a considerable amount of power to make the One Ring, that’s his major tie to the material world now, and he can’t access that power for making himself a new body. But even if he could, it still wouldn’t be as versatile and awesome as his original body, because that body was created by Aulë.*
To get to the heart of the matter, the way I think Maiar shapeshifting works is this: They have their original, Vala-made body that was created to house their spirits on earth. This body is their base body, and it can be taken off if they want to walk unclad, but if they wish to interact with the world, they must return to it.
(Edit: This is further demonstrated by Olorin’s “death” at the hands of the balrog; when he returns to Middle Earth, it is in a new body– still recognizably Gandalf-shaped, but different, because it was made fresh by the Valar in Valinor. It’s a big deal that they made him a whole new body just to continue the war against Sauron!)
What maiar can do, with sufficient power, is craft themselves a “skin” (not a tangible item, but more a blueprint that they keep on file in their mind) to fit over their base form, which transforms them completely into whatever shape is intended (i.e. not an illusion or glamor– which they could probably also do as a low-energy alternative to a full transformation). If that “skin” is damaged irreparably, they can leave it behind. That skin is now essentially “dead”, they can’t fit back into it. Sauron’s wolf body is killed by Huan; he changes into a bunch of different shapes to try and escape, but this uses a huge amount of energy and eventually he’s tired out and reverts back to his base-shape. Luthien threatens to destroy his base body as well, and “send him back to Morgoth sniveling and houseless, etc etc”. When he escapes as a vampire, the “dead” wolf body is left behind, useless to him. If he wants turns into a monster wolf again, he’s gotta make a new one.
Without a base form, transformations are not possible. They need the base form to put the “skin” over, or else it’s like trying to install a program without having a computer. There’s nothing to transform, nothing to put it on. So when Sauron loses his original body in Numenor, what he has to make afterwards is his own home-brewed base form. It’s not as good as the one Aulë made him, because it can’t be. He’s not a Vala, he doesn’t have the same demiurgical abilities to make a whole new working Maia body. He just does the best he can with scraps and superglue and duct tape; it’s not pretty, it’s not very flexible, or capable of changing shape– but it gets the job done, and allows him to maintain a physical presence on earth. Until he loses that one too GDI SAURON THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
The reason Sauron can go from shape to shape so quickly, and sneak out of situations by transforming into another skin without endangering his base-shape, is the same reason he’s known as being a mighty Wizard or Sorcerer: he is insanely fucking powerful. It takes a lot of energy to change shape. Most Maiar don’t even do it once. (Some, in Huan’s case, can’t even speak without expending energy permanently– see my Huancanons). Thû does it all the time, rapid fire, without pausing to catch his breath in his real body until he’s practically bled out, and then he takes off flying. What a showoff, right? The first time the Silmarillion mentions him, he’s described as being the most powerful of all Maiar. He’s got a lot of spare power, and he’s smart about how he uses it– UNLIKE Melkor. That’s why he’s still a big deal in the Second and Third Ages. That’s why he’s still kicking even after the Valar slam-dunk him into the Marianas Trench and tell him to stay down.
The One Ring, which in my opinion was a poor move on his part, reduced his flexibility considerably for the sake of having direct sway over people’s minds and bodies. A calculated decision, made by a guy who’d lost all his safety nets, and no longer had a Vala backing him up. He wanted to have all his power accessible to him to use in manipulating armies and enemies– but it came at the expense of using his favorite First Age tactic of changing shape to avoid damage. Third Age Sauron is actually much more powerful than First Age Sauron, but he takes a lot more hits, and is a lot less sneaky and directly involved in the action (something he probably learned the hard way in the Second Age).
Valar, on the other hand, don’t have as much thinking to do about shapeshifting. They’re the original shapers, with direct power over matter. They don’t need skins to alter their bodies’ core shapes, they can manipulated the core directly. But as Melkor demonstrates, they can also deplete their power sufficiently that transformations becomes impossible. For my Melkor, his inability to change shape comes gradually over time– it’s a loss of elasticity; the material he’s made of just doesn’t stretch as far as it used to, and it can’t hold on to different shapes without snapping back into place after shorter and shorter periods of time.
*(In WesleyVerse, all maiar are given their original bodies by the Vala they chose to serve. The body is crafted, then given the sacred fire/life by Eru, and then filled with the unique consciousness that was drawn down out of the collective consciousness I call the Sea of Maiar, which exists in the Halls of Eru. This is my compromise between the Silmarillion canon, and an idea from the early drafts where the Valar behave much more like the Aesir, and the maiar are their physical children.)
Eru: regardless of how anyone feels about it, things continue to happen
Morgoth: place your most powerful gems, jewels, and amulets into a box, you should sense strong energy emanating from within, then send the box to me
Manwë: just because i caused the problems doesnt mean i have the solutions to them
Míriel: i have to lay low for a while, by that i mean lay on the ground and not move
Fëanor: learning from mistakes is for people who recognise that they make mistakes. i dont give a shit
Fingolfin: it happens to the best of us, the best of us such as me, out of both of us im the best one, probably too great to give you usable advice
Finarfin: the “drama” fiasco is over, we learned nothing from it and nothing changed but we can safely say it is over for sure i hear that
Maedhros: its time to forget the mistakes of the past and start making the mistakes of the future
Celegorm: survival tip: you can sleep in an unattended birds nest for free
Caranthir: have to stop saying “how am i going to kill my way out of this one” everytime there is trouble going on, or at least not out loud
Curufin: instead of saying what you are all thinking i say what everyone would be thinking if they were as cerebrally intelligent as me
Finrod: you have to be cruel to be kind, no wait the other thing, you have to do nice things. phew, could have caused a lot of problems
Galadriel: some say killing people is the answer to the problems, me personally i think killing people is bad to do because im not a horrible monster
Fingon: tired of people always telling me go to hospital and that i’ve lost a lot of blood, its my severe head injury not yours stay out of it
Turgon: hey kids, i know youre struggling right now but im here to tell you, everything gets worse forever
Aredhel: dont speak i know just what youre saying, something about how beautiful and strong i am probably
Eöl: if someone betrays me i will turn on them with revenge in a second, sometimes even before that, its just the way it goes in this drama life
Maeglin: maybe i am the one to blame, on the other hand maybe every one else is the ones to blame
Luthien: looks like things are always happening once again
Turin: where people like you see a problem i see opportunity to create worse problems
Nienor: i am going to lay completely still on the forest floor until either things start going my way or i disintegrate into nothing
Elwing: “i’ll take this to my grave” – me, holding a bunch of jewels, gems and amulets
Sauron: there are few things in life that can’t be achieved with occult dark magic
Erendis: if you want something done you have to just forget about it and move on with your life, theres no point in expecting anything from anyone
Mîm: sometimes the only real friend you have is your countless enemies
The Silmarillion, as a whole: its all fun and games until its not that anymore
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 