It is -wolves- I am historically fond of, not hounds; though I have found the company of certain beasts agreeable. This is a recent development (domesticated animals, as a phenomenon, are a recent development by my reckoning). Dogs are part of the world of Men, and it was not until I joined their company that I made favorable acquaintance with any. They were bred largely to hunt and guard against intruders; a set of abilities usually pitted against me and mine– as you well know, given your last question. I cannot decide if its tone is impertinent or naively generous; ought I be flattered by the assumption that I *let* the hound of Oromë win? Or is this mockery? I shall give you the benefit of the doubt.
I could waste a great deal of paper expounding on the nature of Maiar’s abilities (for Huan is indeed a Maia), and predestination, and the circumstances of our battle– but I will spare you the long treatise and simply say that continuing to fight would have been deeply disadvantageous to me. Tol Sirion was an important holding in North Beleriand and its loss was grievous, but not so much so that I was willing to stake my physical body on the chance of its recapture. In short, it was not a hill I was ready to die on. So, I fled. I did not throw the fight; Fate itself was against me, and if two of the Valar bowed to Luthien’s charms, a Maia like myself need not feel shame forever over such a defeat. Besides, Huan is dead, his houseless spirit fled back to his master in Aman, while I remain.
After all that, I fear I did not answer your question, Lady Sath. I’m partial to the aloof energy of the larger Spitzes; Shepherds I admire for their intelligence and loyalty; and a Molosser is a grand, imposing companion for a lord to keep at his side.
I hope I have satisfied your curiosity on this matter. Should you wish to make further inquiries, you should find me at the University of Umbar.
Yours,
The Emperor of the Eastern Kingdoms, Lord of Mordor and its Vassal States, Zîgur of the Temple of Freedom
That is the difference between upholding a facade for many years, sensitive to every detail lest it betray your intentions, and performing a version of yourself that your enemies expect, while letting them do the tedious work of engineering their fate.
More was at stake in Eregion. I had to make myself quite vulnerable to infiltrate the elven kingdoms; my foothold was tenuous, my goals uncertain. Securing power in the west required the cooperation of at least one ruler, and depending on whose ear I gained, the method of influence would change to match. My plans had to remain flexible, my disguise absolute.
…I was very lucky to have gained the trust of the greatest smith of the Second Age. Of all the rulers of elfindom, wooing the grandson of Fëanor was more than I had dared to hope. If everything had gone as I desired, I could have formed a powerful alliance; our kingdom could have been iron-fast, a seat of industry and ingenuity. I admired Tyelpë very much. It was less a ‘seduction’ than a slow-formed bond. Many times I regretted the deception that lay between us; like a pane of clear glass… easy to forget, until one stretches out a hand.
“Annatar” was less a lie than an omission; he was comprised of truths, leaving out only what would compromise. What was built on those truths was genuine– but it was not enough. And I learned that too late.
…But the lesson I remembered. I will never again allow myself to become so close to my enemies that I feel sympathy on their behalf– not that this was very difficult. I despised Tar Calion. Only his grandfather was a more despicable despot, and he a less lustful conqueror.
This may surprise you, but the East is dear to me. Men, as a race, I do not love, but the people of Umbar, Harad, Khand, and Nurn are different from the Edain; they are less stuffed full of the presumption and arrogance of the Valar. They are rich with gods and heroes unheard of in the West; they have built temples to science and art, they reject no ideas for being too full of what fools call “Melkor’s influence”– as if my Master gave any thought to the taxonomy of nature, or mathematics, or industry. I find this refreshing. The country too is as rich and varied as its people. I have tried to be a good ruler; preserving the existing kingships and systems of governance and religion wherever I could.
The Sea Kings ran rough-shod over every foreign land they came across. Though the Numenorian influence has long since been integrated into the local milieu, most continue to begrudge the hierarchies brought with it. Their ships and dignitaries are no welcome sight.
Ar-Pharazôn came with armies and slave galleons. He routed my armies throughout Harad and where he did he left garrisons and exacted tribute, burnt heresies and forbade teachings. …I am no stranger to many of these practices. I have known ages of war, presided over a kingdom’s worth of prisoners. Yet this was a systematic purging of history and culture I have never seen before. I have come to loathe it.
Calion was an arrogant, brutal little man. It became clear to me that the easiest way to manipulate him was to give him the semblance of victory wherever he sought it. My attacks became feints, my retreats led him farther and farther inland, until he came to my very gates. The sea of tents and banners that stretched into the desert was a glorious, chilling sight indeed… but if it had come to battle, that bloated army would have sunk under its own weight crossing the Mountains of Shadow. But I came to him like a tame horse, and stretched out my neck for him, and let him parade me through the streets of Armenelos; a vanquished god, an exotic beast. He would have me perform transformations for his amusements, sing songs for his court like a minstrel or a trained bird. I obliged his every whim, and the more he was reminded of the power he had conquered, the more besotted with he became. I was his private wishing-well, a genie at his command. Calion was a man of many violent passions; he considered himself a great lover of women and, occasionally, young men of certain castes (there was little distinction made in the laws of the land). I do not believe he was ever attracted to me, as I was… but the thought of a powerful warlord on his knees was a potent drug to him; enough to bring him panting and fumbling at his laces– at least, until old age withered such impulses at the root.
I took a long-steeped and subtle pleasure in the reversal of power; sweet as Umbarim tea. Each submission was a victory, every humiliation I endured became a knot around his soul. He was a clever man, a cautious, paranoid, ambitious man… but precious easy to bind, if one had a little patience. Even while he thought me his toy, I had his ear. How tame he was, how easy to steer once the hooks were in.
It was his wife that was the true obstacle to my designs. Lucky was I, that time and the chains of propriety had done their work long before I came to power. Her rebellions were toothless, lacking the support or structure necessary to supplant me. Still, she worried me more than Calion and his armies ever did. What an empress she would have been…
But as I said, no enemy since has come close to my heart. Tormenting her with my victories was part of a daily game that brought me great amusement.
Sending that whole hateful island to hell almost made my loss worthwhile.
Melkor and Luthien? 😀 we’re all used to Melkor being a smooshy darling and we love him, but it would be REALLY neat to see how he would be written from the POV of someone who finds him sincerely terrifying… Or rather, acknowledges that “Yeah help He’s objectively terrifying but I’m Gonna kick his ass anyway”
THIS!!!!!! ◊____◊ IS A GOOD IDEA!!!!! I!!!! WOULD LIKE TO DO THIS IDEA!!!!!!
Sketching Children of Húrin because I needed to draw something truly for myself today. What’s more fun than drawing your favorite tragedy?🙃 Its been ages since I sketched dragon daddy Glaurung so I really enjoyed that✨🐉
On Twitter: (x) On Instagram (x) – Do not use or repost my art (esp. on other sites) without my permission –
Having now written about Dogs, I am now consumed with a desire to write about other weird Silm meetings and interactions, but fuck me if I can think of what
There’s a version of this here but let’s try a different take.
“I thought,” Maglor said conversationally, “That the Havens were the lowest we could sink.” He shifted his feet, careful not to splash the knee-deep ditchwater.
“Ingenuity has ever been the hallmark of our line.”
The ground was wet and the heavy rain and heavy cloaks they wore against it did much to mute all sound, but they could still the pound of marching feet and the shrill of warhorns as the host assembled. A snatch of sentries’ conversation came from above them, too close and in a language that made Maglor and his brother flinch and crouch lower in the muck.
It was long and long since they had heard Vanyarin.
“Maybe he’ll be pleased to see us,” Maglor whispered when the guards had passed on.
His brother had his hood pulled so low, all Maglor could see of him was the rigid line of his jaw. “You’re welcome to chance it.”
“When you think about it, Finrod’s fate was not our fault. Angrod and Aegnor died well, and Galadriel lives yet. His losses have not been so great that he might not forgive what little of our family is left.”
“It’s not me you must convince, and you’ve not even managed that.”
Maglor hadn’t convinced himself either, which was a poor accounting for a bard.
There was a little brown toad patiently climbing the ditch’s rain-slick side. It would paw its way up an inch or two and then the sodden soil would crumble, and it would slide back down into the mud, to begin its climb again. The brothers watched it for a ten count, and then Maedhros said, “It would be cleverer to coordinate our efforts.”
“Our efforts?” Maglor shifted his position with such grace, he hardly felt the leap himself. They were used to squabbles with more participants and now must argue every part themselves. “Our efforts barely amount to stealing scraps from Morgoth’s larder.”
“We know the land,” Maedhros said, with no particular conviction. The horns were growing fainter but it would be at least an hour before the rearguard was safely past.
“So do any number of refugees who’ve attached themselves to the host.”
They kept watching the toad. Maglor considered lifting the poor, wretched thing up onto the bank but did not move to do it. “Why did they come now?” He had thought it often as of late. He knew the way of music, themes and subthemes, the build to a crescendo, and yet- “Why did they not save us when there was still something to be saved?”
“We would have hated them for that as well.”
“Yes! We would have! Think how Caranthir would have raged, think of the circles Finrod would have talked himself in.”
Maedhros maybe flinched again, maybe shook water off his hood. “I’d rather not.”
“No. I suppose not.” If they craned their necks, they might see the bright sunburst of their uncle’s heraldry sink beneath the horizon, but Maglor preferred not to turn his face into the rain. “How long do you think this will last? If it keeps up, all of Anfauglith’s like to wash away.”
“If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.”
This all seems to make good sense. Northwestern Middle-earth (the area covered by the stories of The Lord of the Rings) is a sort of pseudo-Europe, so it matches up naturally to the location of real Europe on our world. And the directions given by Tolkien further match the climates that our characters experience as they traverse the land. We can see this from the climate map in Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth:
But if you know anything about global climate, you know that the climate of Europe is weird. Transposed to the other side of the Atlantic, Tolkien is telling us that Hobbiton is at the same latitude as Goose Bay in Labrador, while Minas Tirith is at the same latitude as Portland, Maine. (Or of Irkustk and Vladivostok, to go eastward.) A rather different picture of the region emerges from those parallels!
Europe’s climate is unusually warm for its latitude, because of the North Atlantic Drift – a warm current that begins as the eastern US’s Gulf Stream and then carries on across the ocean.
The reason that Europe enjoys the effects of such a significant warm current can in turn be traced back to the shape of the American continents. The warm water of the North Atlantic Drift forms in the tropical Atlantic, and flows westward due to the Coriolis Effect. If the Americas had simply a flat coastline, this equatorial current would hit it and divide evenly into two warm currents, flowing northward and southward. However, the northern coast of South America is sloped NW-SE, coming to a point a good bit south of the Equator. This means that a disproportionate share of the warm water is directed northward, creating an especially powerful warm current that eventually comes to Europe’s shores. In other words, if you prefer the climate in Britain to that of the Alaskan Panhandle, thank Brazil!
So if northwestern Middle-earth has Europe-like climates, then we can infer that Middle-earth has an equivalent of the North Atlantic Drift. I propose to name this the “Feanor Current,” since it’s a spirit of fire/heat coming out of the west. And having inferred the existence of the Feanor Current, we can then draw conclusions about the shape of the coastlines of Aman, and of the new lands across Belegaer after the world was made round. (The coasts were presumably of roughly similar shape, since there is no evidence of widespread climatic changes associated with a strengthening or weakening of the Feanor Current at the end of the Second Age. I kind of wish Tolkien had incorporated such changes into his works, as that would give a pop culture reference point for concern about the weakening of the North Atlantic Drift due to climate change in our world!)
Most maps of Arda depict the coastline of Aman as a gentle concave curve, with a small, sharp notch near the equator forming the bay of Elvenhome. But to make the Feanor Current work, we need to rearrange the coastline, sloping it outward south of the Equator. Here’s a proposal, drawn over top of Fonstad’s Second Age map:
(Note that the Feanor Current and the southward return current along the coast of Middle-earth end up placing Numenor in the very center of the North Belegaer Gyre. This means that any plastic waste that fell into the ocean would ultimately wash up on the shores of Numenor. This provides an alternate explanation of why Ar-Pharazon was so keen to conquer both Middle-earth and Valinor. To think, all that unpleasantness could have been avoided if Ingwe had provided bio-degradable straws for his feasts …)
One last point of interest is found if we look at Tolkien’s very first sketch map of Arda, published in The Book of Lost Tales I. Unlike later maps, the coastline of Aman has a noticeable asymmetry, with a significant eastward bump south of Tol Eressea. I have commented before on how this parallels the shape of the Bay of Balar, hinting at a plate tectonic history in the same way as the corresponding shapes of South America and Africa. But it also lends weight to the Feanor Current theory. The eastward land is located too far north of the Equator if we take the map literally, but some allowance can be made for the fact that it is an extremely rough sketch. This eastward land lies outside the Pelori, and was – in Tolkien’s original conception of the afterlife – where Men who were neither good enough to be sent to Valinor, nor bad enough to be sent to Angband, would spend their days. Later it became the empty land where Ungoliant lived.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 