Melkor and Thû React to Noldor Sass, Part 1 of ???– RivkaZ 2016
My blog’s reaction sketches are getting out of hand. I need to do some real costume sketches for Sauron’s wolfy warlord outfit because I like where that cape idea was going…
“I fear that to me Siamese cats belong to the fauna of Mordor, but you need not tell the cat breeder that.“― J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 219
“Moon-Diamond Cats”, the emissary called them; one of seventeen types of auspicious cat that could bring prosperity and luck to their keepers. Six breeding pairs, and one litter of kittens (born during the long voyage over the Encircling Sea), had come on the trading convoy of a great king from lands far to the south east of Harad– a gift to the Lord of Mordor and its vassal states.
“I am more accustomed by far to the company of wolves, but these creatures also are to my liking,” said the Lord of Mordor, and promised they would be treated with utmost hospitality, and that for however many generations the cats chose to make their home in his kingdom, they would be welcome. Gold and iron and scrolls of lore were given in return, many times the weight of the lissome beasts they bought. From then on, cats would live in the grand palaces of Umbar, and as guardians in the Temple of the Giver of Freedom, and even in Barad-dûr at the foot of Sauron himself, for they delighted him.
And so it was, even after the eastern empire fell, and rose for a time in shadow, and fell once more, the cats of Mordor, who live still in the crumbling gardens at Umbar and run feral in the port cities of South Gondor, have ink-dipped points, and a diamond stain over the bright moons of their eyes.
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.
“…I’ve also created a variety of music boxes and automata in my time… Take your pick!
It’s a weakness of mine; reproducing natural mechanics with engineered devices. I have quite a collection by now, all gathering dust in my workshop. The war effort has made it impractical to spend much time on frivolous devices, no matter how fascinating they are to build, or soothing to watch.”
Ainur do not need sleep, yet neither are we barred from it. The Eruhini require it to maintain energy and sanity. For us, it is merely a pleasant reprieve from the flow of time, a chance to lose ourselves in memory, dwell in Irmo’s realm to gain inspiration, clarity. (As I understand it, Irmo has never banned my Master from his realm– not even Manwë can command Irmo to close the dreaming.)
For Melkor it is different. His wounds are great. They do not heal, and they wear on him and his remaining energy. He must sleep; it is the last and only method of rejuvenation left to him.
I do not know what my Master dreams of, only that he sometimes glows golden as he did in the Beginning… it fades when he wakes. I have not told him this. It would… I do not think any good would come of it.
You may have heard that the Dark Lord never removes the iron crown, nor rests his eyes. For obvious reasons, we prefer it this way– it is a most beneficial rumor. But nay; the crown rests beside him while he sleeps, in a chamber with no doors or windows, far within the heart of Thangorodrim. Only he has the secret of its entry. The room is black, draped in silk and lined with the hides of giant beasts from the days before the sun and moon. It is more a nest than a bed chamber.
I have been there, when he allows me to stay with him. He is oft restless, and though exhausted, cannot find silence in his own mind. I do my best to comfort him.
Once upon a time (last winter during the holidays) I sat down to re-read the Silmarillion, and that night I had a dream about the origins of Sauron/Mairon the Maiar, and his time spent in the service of Aulë the Smith. I decided to work some of that dream material into a comic.
I finished the first draft of these pages a month ago, but then I decided that the pages needed to be retouched and re-lettered before I posted them all together (I was learning and making things up as I went along, and the difference in style from the beginning of the comic to the end was pretty severe).
So here, at last, are the finalized pages, hand-lettered, in all their painstaking, flawed, and glorious detail. It’s been a hell of a ride! Now all I have to do is tell the rest of the story…. *wobble*.
Enjoy!
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UpdateFeb 2014: If you look carefully you’ll notice I’ve made some edits for character continuity, typo-correction, and awful-inexcusible-messy-word-bubble surgery. I also took out the tengwar inscription on the forge because it had no business being there in the first place.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 