Tag: headcanon throwback hour

misbehavingmaiar:

Since this is becoming a reoccurring theme in several RPs and drabbles, I may as well just put it in an official headcanon post:

My Melkor can’t read or write.

As far as he’s concerned, he went into Mandos and elves were still knapping flint knives and developing spoken language, and when he came out again, they had three or more languages, writing, books, lamps, telescopes, steel, and delicious baked goods. 

A LOT happened in those three ages where Melkor was imprisoned; his development was a little stunted. Being a Vala comes with some gift of tongues and mind-reading perks, so the spoken languages couldn’t have thrown him off that much; however, the elves still developed their alphabet while he was in isolation, and their writing would have to be taught. 
(If the Ainur have their own system of writing, then he undoubtedly is familiar with this system.) 

He has time enough in Aman to learn to read and write— he’s a clever cookie, I’m sure he could pick it up quickly if he applied himself, but Melkor is not greatly known for his self-discipline or willingness to be instructed by others. (Part of the down-side of being a god is that you don’t really have a childhood or a period in which you’re encouraged to grow and change. Learning is HARD for beings who sprang fully formed from the mind of Eru!)

What this translates into in terms of the Wesleyverse is that Melkor has, at best, a third-grade Tengwar reading comprehension level, not because he can’t learn it, but because it never really became important to him. He can read minds and manipulate matter and pick up on all sorts of internal cues that make reading sort of irrelevant in most cases. He could probably pick up a book and just listen to what the author was thinking while they wrote it or something. But, Melkor is also very keen on gaining any knowledge that might give him the upper hand, which means he’s likely to WANT to learn at some point, which means either teaching himself or finding a tutor. 

In at least on AU, this tutor is Fëanor. (See #Linguistics Verse). In other ‘verses, I imagine it’s probably Sauron, who seems much more inclined to study languages and is busy inventing his own anyway. 

misbehavingmaiar:

1. What they smell like: Melkor (while embodied) smells like gold (or gold smells like Melkor???) to those species that can appreciate the differences in the scents of metals. He also smells a bit like a storm coming, and bit like a large mammalian predator, and just a tiny bit like burnt sugar. 
   Sauron (while embodied) smells like wherever he’s been (forge, kennel, dungeon, perfumed Numenorian baths, desert sands, etc.), plus your usual sort of wolfish, mannish musk. 
   As Ainur, neither would be terribly effected by natural heat or cold but their bodies are constructions based more or less off the Children (or whatever they’re imitating) in form and function. Depending on how invested they were in a given shape, they might sweat and bleed and stink like any mammal, or they might just be uncannily clean and statue-like and smell like roses, just a mirage of a human-shape for the convenience of interacting with humans. The amount of biological similarity between their bodies and human bodies depends on how familiar they are with the subject matter, how much effort they’re putting in to blending in, and how fully immersed they are in those bodies (Melkor is pretty much as immersed as you can get in a body— he’s mostly stuck in it, able to change size and shape with effort, but always snapping back to the same body with the same injuries).  
   Long story short: Bodies have smells, while unembodied Ainur probably smell like their respective elements, or nothing at all. 
2. How they sleep (sleeping position, schedule, etc): Sleeping, like smells, is a trait that is tied to having a body. Melkor sleeps because he’s trapped in a body that needs it; he has wounds that never heal and without rest he’d just hemorrhage energy and become pitifully weak. He doesn’t need to sleep often, but once every couple of months he has to recharge. After Luthien spell-songs him to sleep I think he’ll want/need sleep more; a sort of lingering narcolepsy that he resents and dreads.
   Melkor sleeps like a totally exhausted person— sprawled or sitting or however he landed when he hit the pillow. He takes his crown off and uses it as a nightlight; there is almost no one he trusts enough to watch over him and his treasures while he’s sleeping, so he tends to sleep alone, without guard, in a doorless, windowless room in the heart of Angband that can only be reached by secret Dark Lord means.  He might snore just a teensy weensy bit? And twitch like he’s chasing strange lights in his dreams. 
   Sauron sleeps only recreationally or because he’s in a body that requires it. He thinks of sleep as an enjoyable novelty, a way to relax the mind and let it come to conclusions that might be lost in conscious thought. He does not like to sleep alone, and seldom does; there is almost always an obliging little spoon around. Barring that, he might sleep while in his workshop. 
    
3. What music they enjoy: They enjoy their own music! Sauron sings at the forge and for spell-casting, and can improvise music in nearly any mode or tradition (it helps when you’re trying to ingratiate yourself to kings and chiefs and elven smiths). He is particularly fond of the music of the Second Born.
   Melkor also has an innate sense of music, able to pick up, harmonize with, manipulate, repeat, riff off of, etc. any sort of music he hears without really having to think about it. He grows less and less fond of music as he loses his ability to sing, but he still loves to hear his balrogs chant and his orcs make warmusic and Sauron sing his forge songs. Melkor is enamored of complicated instrumental music, particularly string instruments and brass. A well-tuned voice intrigues him, though he is usually indifferent to lyrics. 

4. How much time they spend getting ready every morning: They don’t really gauge their productivity or schedules based on night or day— the cycle is too quick to matter to them. And “getting ready” takes about as long as it does to think about it. 
5. Their favorite thing to collect: Sauron collects strange bits of machinery, kinetic sculptures, biological samples that he finds inspirational, torture devices, whips, and finely crafted things that have caught his attention. 
   Melkor collects people that have caught his attention, for better or worse. 
6. Left or right-handed:  Second-Age Sauron gets in the habit of using his ring-bearing hand, and later, the hand with the more fingers.
   Melkor has no preference. His palms are equally sensitive on both.
7. Religion (if any): Melkor believes it’s a dog-eat-dog, every-Vala-for-himself world, that God is superfluous and anarchy and self-determinism should reign instead of kings and he’s willing to burn everything to the ground to achieve this goal (burning everything to the ground is really its own goal…). Sauron is in nominally in favor of this as well, but thinks that everyone would catch on to the whole self-sufficient, anti-Valar system much quicker if he just controlled everything and everyone obeyed his every word on pain of death. 
8. Favorite sport: None of the games they’re good at are nice games, except for the ones played in bed. 
9. Favorite touristy thing to do when traveling: Seducing authorities, checking out the local smithing customs, seducing the public, giving gifts, more seducing, singing, dancing, and killing everyone. 
10. Favorite kind of weather: Melkor misses the globe-wide, primordial volcanic hellscape of his youth, and nowadays Sauron enjoys a good sandstorm. 
11. A weird/obscure fear they have: Sauron is wary of spending his powers. He’s seen what happened to Melkor, and even before then he was fairly thrifty with his creative essence (I mean, later he blows it all on one project and that doesn’t exactly work out well either, but…). Any time he can get away with doing something by hand or by sorcery that doesn’t deplete his spirit, he’ll do that even if it requires getting dirty. He fears being purposeless, and helpless. He hates being unproductive or without a goal. 
    Melkor has many, many fears. He becomes increasingly paranoid that his minions can sense how weak he is and are just waiting for a chance to usurp or devour him. He hates silence and feeling constrained.  Being bored, having no stimulation to keep his mind from turning in on itself terrifies him. 
12. The carnival/arcade game they always win without fail: Sauron wins the hell out of the hammer-bell even when it’s rigged, and Melkor caught a very nice goldfish. We’re all very proud of him. It was the best goldfish. 

misbehavingmaiar:

( This is a headcanon that’s been bouncing around in my drabbles and RPs for a while now and I thought I’d just nail it down in its own post.)

Mairon— and later Sauron— in his quieter moments would make strange kinetic sculptures for his own amusement;  recreating natural, organic motions using mechanical means, finding ways of mimicking biology with technology.

He’d have experimental musical instruments and perpetual motion devices and material tests all in his workshops, in varying states of completion and abandonment (but always precisely organized, catalogued, and covered).

While he was Aulë’s apprentice, he was discouraged from playing around too much. He had a job to do, a function to fulfill.  In his early years under Melkor he therefore took the opportunity to experiment and play with mechanics quite a bit, because no one could tell him not to, and he was full of ideas. “Tinkerer” is Gothmog’s favorite derisive term for him, while their rivalry lasts. 

As the War of Wrath progressed, these projects were gradually abandoned or repurposed for military use. The more entrenched they become in Angband, the less he has time for experimenting for its own sake, and the less innovative his designs became. 

During his time as Annatar, and as a king of men in Barad-dur, he suddenly had time and space and inspiration again for experimenting, but his ideas now tended to be less whimsical and more cruel.  Not that he was ever especially whimsical; most everything Mairon creates is practical, but the ideas that gave him pleasure before were more innocent,  the questions that drew his attention more benign, and the discoveries he valued were more open-ended. “How might one achieve mechanical flight?” as opposed to “How might one utilize a flying spy, or weaponize a flying machine?”  Still, he has his moments of joyful abstraction. He has not yet been robbed entirely of his capacity for wonder or his love of creating new things.  He dabbles in biological engineering, experiments with new alloys, and with new sciences that are not immediately under his purview; agriculture and architecture and navigation— things that become useful in his capacity as a giver of gifts and a king in the east. 

Many of his projects are lost forever in the destruction of his various residencies, but remnants and papers and ideas sometimes make it through. There are still fragments of silver-backed mirrors and impossibly large lenses that might see far into the Outer Dark. There are still clockwork birds that can be wound up and used to listen and spy behind enemy walls; still compasses and clocks and aqueducts; still stringed and keyed instruments that survive, though no one now knows how to play them anymore; and a fully articulated prosthetic hand made of silver that has never known a wearer. There are still devices that once set in motion mimic perfectly the sea’s waves, or a bat’s wings, or a cat’s claws; there are clever torture devices disguised as gifts of great beauty; there are still black tulip bulbs in the vaults of Barad-dur. 

misbehavingmaiar:

:

Melkor lusts for chaos more than I.  I wish to bring order to this world from within, though I know it is doomed to be shattered.  Through such experiments, I shall perfect my plan for Arda Remade.  

But you know well that order and structure are not the same.  Structures accumulate debris.  Rot and mold, rancid flesh, dead wood that must be cut away.  Thus order descends into petty chaos, which only great firestorms of chaos can cure.  Then let the decaying remnants crumble and be burnt, as the world shall burn at its ending, and tend new order as it rises from the flames.

My twin, you are as articulate and wise as ever. 

Arda Unmarred is a myth, a pathetic mirage for the hopelessly nostalgic to wander towards. But with our knowing hands guiding the tiller, Arda Remade will exist in controlled flux, its order ever adapting, its strength rising from its ability to analyze itself and move forward… A brilliant alloy of structure and mutation and order that we will prepare, and make ready for the return of Melkor. 

And in the meantime of course, our enemies are those who would case the world in amber rather than see it change, who themselves abhor progress and fear it, who use all their powers to cling to what they are familiar with rather than forging anew. These elements are brittle and must be discarded from the bloom if we are ever to make good steel. 

This conveniently agrees with my “Kill Most Elves*” policy— which brings me to the final part of our meeting!  Boldog, if you’d kindly advance to the next slide…

*(“Reeducation” of the elves is still on the table, obviously.)

((As is “Repurposing the elves”, or as Master liked to call them, “Proto-Orcs”.)) 

((( Speaking of which, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce a new prototype I’ve been working on that should significantly improve the turn-around time on elf-rehabilitation. Ring-modules are the future, my friends. )))