Sauron’s Masks: Tol-in-Gaurhoth – War of the Last Alliance– RivkaZ 2017
“There now he brooded in the dark, until he had wrought for himself a new shape; and it was terrible, for his fair semblance had departed forever when he was cast into the abyss"
I wanted to showcase my idea for different battle masks worn by Sauron; one for striking fear in the elves of Sirion, and one to disguise his misshapen visage after the Akallabeth. I thought it would be poetic to see his fair form to wear a fearsome mask while his monstrous form wears a beautiful one; maybe for the sake of vanity, or simply to be recognizable after his imperfect re-embodiment. It seems like something the leaders of the Last Alliance who knew him from before would comment on, while facing him down on the slopes of Orodruin.
More lineart previews for my Beleriand Numismatics project! This time, Khazad coins from Belegost and Nogrod, featuring a grimacing battle mask and a profile of Azaghal.
Sauron probably feels responsible for the annihilation of the werewolves at Tol-en-Gaurhoth. It a massacre, they lost their ancient pack elder and probably whole generations of wolves, and there would have been no way to go back and retrieve the bodies (to bring back to their clan for ritualistic eating, or whatever it is that werewolves do with their dead).
Sauron does not handle the loss of control well. Defeat is one thing, but when he’s personally lost the reins on something, he… well, goes into the forest to sulk for a year, or holes himself up in a fortress crafts a whole new body made of fuck you.
I can just imagine the delicious soul-rending angst it would cause to have him come across any surviving wolves from the tower while he was busy having a tantrum in Taur nu Fuin… especially if he had to put one down and return it to its pack, like…. he really genuinely loves his woofs, man IF YOU WANT TO SEE A GROWN MAIA CRY, YOU HAVE HIM NURSE A WEREWOLF THROUGH DEATH
FUCK IT NO I MADE MYSELF SAD THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA
Obligatory Caveat: These are headcanons pertaining mostly to Wesleyverse.
Sauron’s relationship with the werewolves is a working relationship. I think when he’s first sent to besiege Tol Sirion with a bunch of wolfy reserve troops, he’s actually rather resentful.
I mean, he’s been working in Angband, at the right hand of a Vala, with his own forge and command of central operations, and suddenly it’s like “GOOD NEWS, YOU’RE BEING PROMOTED TO LORD OF THIS BACKWATER ELF CASTLE IN THE MIDDLE OF A SWAMP! 😀 Here are your new subjects, the wolf-people. Please wear your flea collar at all times.” Like, that can’t have felt like a step up in the world. XD
I imagine that there were werewolves native to that area anyway, wild ones that had been living there for a long time and just never made themselves a target for elvish extermination. They are a useful resource for Melkor to utilize for the takeover of Tol Sirion because if he can leverage their help, he can move fewer orc troops out of the North. They’re also much faster, scarier, and more maneuverable than orcs, but they require special handling– hence the necessity to put a reliable maia on the job. Needless to say, the job, and the werewolves, grow on Sauron/Thû over time, to the point where he’s comfortable taking a wolf shape and running around as part of the pack. …I also think he gets used to having Tol en Gaurhoth as his personal bachelor pad for awhile; just him and the puppies and Thuringwethil and some orcs, holding down the fort, throwing house parties and letting it all hang out. It’s a friendly working relationship; Thû and his wolves are pretty tight and he identifies with woflish things from then on.
Melkor’s relationship with his dragons is a little different in that they are his actual children. In Wesleyverse!Canon I’ve gone with a very myth-Loki interpretation of Melkor’s creations. He is both father and mother of dragons, made with his unique and slightly unsettling demiurgical reproductive abilities. No, he doesn’t have Eru’s Secret Fire, but he does have his –own– fire, which he has a lot of, an especially in the early days when he felt infinite and invincible, he parceled that out like cheap candy at Halloween to his various monster babies. This is similar to how Aulë first made the dwarves as meat puppets before Eru intervened and gave them an independent source of life– but Melkor goes a step further and makes his dragons separate, autonomous entities by giving birth to them, using his own life energy spliced into new bodies made in that kinky way that mythical creatures and gods do by, idunno, eating a pebble or frothing up seafoam or shagging a dinosaur or whatever (DAMNIT LOKI, YOU SET A WEIRD PRECEDENT HERE).
Anyway, TL;DR: MYTH MAGIC + PARTHENOGENESIS + MELKOR BEING KINKY = DRAGONS and other beautiful monster children.
He adores them and spoils them and treats them like special snowflakes that can do no wrong. I mean, they’re basically shiny, scaly clones of himself, and Melkor LOVES himself. And dragons love THEMSELVES. And they love Melkor. And they all loooove each other– and that’s cuz none of them got enough love in their childhoods. And that’s showbiz. Kid.
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.
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.)
NAME OF YOUR MUSE: Sauron / Thû – He left the name ‘Mairon’ behind when he took up service to Melkor, and finds it patronizing when people use this name for him (unless it is Aulë, but he hasn’t spoken to his father in eons).
ONE PICTURE YOU LIKE BEST OF YOUR MUSE: ……I have… a lot >>
TWO HEADCANONS YOU HAVE FOR YOUR MUSE YOU NEVER TOLD ANYONE:
1) I haven’t told this to anyone because I only just thought of it! >w> When Melkor was first coming around to “encourage” Mairon’s free thinking, he suggested the maia should try making something of his own, rather than something Aulë told him to make. His first attempts were small crystal formations, then simple geometric shapes out of metal, then pieces of jewelry, then rudimentary machines and clockwork. Finally he made something almost entirely new, rearranging known substances to create a unique gemstone. He was going to give it to Melkor as a gift, but their forbidden meeting was interrupted by Aulë. Mairon, like a teenager caught with a naughty magazine and his trousers down, panicked, and flung all his creations into a furnace and threw the gemstone into the waste-gutter of magma that flowed out of the Great Forge (to Melkor’s dismay). Aulë is not mad, he is disappointed; Mairon is grounded, Melkor firmly shown the door, and the gemstone is lost to Arda’s geology until waaaaay later, during the Third Age, where it is discovered by Thrór.
2) At the top of Barad-Dur, both in its original and reconstructed state, is an astronomical observatory. “The Great Eye” of Sauron is two things; it is the feeling of his intense, psychic concentration upon the lands of Mordor, and also the glinting light from the lens of a huge telescope, sometimes visible through the clouds of volcanic ash. When his shade is not busy micro-managing the troops, searching for the One Ring, and haunting the palantir, Sauron is charting stars; specifically, one red star that is only visible when the light of the star of Eärendil is on the far horizon. From long observation and tracking, he has determined that there are actually two sets of stars; one set that represents physical suns and planets that appeared after the world was globed, and those of Varda’s heaven as it was in the beginning. These two spheres have a complex, subtle interaction that represents the alignment of the old Arda and the new. With long planning and careful preparation, he thinks it is possible to find the Door of Night, marked by this dim red star, and reach it during the correct intersection of celestial planes.
THREE THINGS YOUR MUSE LIKES DOING IN THEIR FREE TIME:
Making kinetic sculptures, musical instruments, and automata.
Organizing his work spaces, inventory, treasury, armory, and anything that isn’t tied down. (This might be more of a compulsion than a hobby, but it relaxes him.)
Singing; songs of his own or songs he learns from around the world, and forge songs that he learned from Aulë that help him with his craft.
Sparring with other Umaiar, or practicing feats of balance and precision.
Human/Eruhini things! Eating, sleeping, bathing, making love– all those earthly pleasures Ainur are supposed to eschew for healthy, ethereal living.
SEVEN PEOPLE THAT YOUR MUSE LIKES/LOVES: (I’m going to keep this to Wesley!Verse Canon for simplicity’s sake– there are many more he likes in RP)
Melkor, the master he chose to serve, who liberated him from believing himself only a tool with a set purpose, who he will love as long as he is capable of loving.
Aulë, the master who he was born to, who he considers his father and teacher. He cannot help but love Aulë, even if they are estranged forever and their bond severed.
Draugluin– old grey grandfather of werewolves, he taught Thû many things, not the least of which were filthy wolf-jokes, and was a valued friend.
Gothmog, Thuringwethil, Langon, etc. Generally speaking, he gets along well with his co-workers and enjoys their company. (Telvido and Glaurung may be exceptions…)
Maeglin– in my own verse, Maeglin is rescued from his fall and taken back to Angband to continue his apprenticeship under Sauron and become a captain of Angband. He and Sauron bonded over designing blueprints for draconic siege machines, and Sauron likes having him as an assistant in the forge.
Salgant– in this same verse, Salgant is spared from imprisonment at Maeglin’s behest, working first in Sauron’s forge and later as a caretaker of hatchlings and wargpups. He has endeared himself by being a surprisingly hard worker, a good influence on moody apprentices, and because zaftig elves give Sauron the vapors.
Celebrimbor. It’s complicated.
TWO THINGS YOUR MUSE REGRETS: Being unable to come to Melkor’s aid when the Valar imprisoned him is Sauron’s most profound regret; his second is losing Celebrimbor’s trust (that is what he tells himself; it’s easier than admitting he let his need for vengeance overpower him and destroy what had become a genuine relationship).
A PHOBIA YOUR MUSE HAS: Helplessness, and great, towering waves of water.
If you’re new to this blog, I definitely recommend checking out my tags for a more definitive answer. 🙂 I’ve had this blog a long time and the way I play Sauron (he prefers “Sauron” over “Mairon” for reasons that you can find in the headcanons tag and the character bio) has developed over time, but for the most part I can say he is painfully lawful evil.
-He- doesn’t think he’s evil; he is confident that his actions are justified and fit well within his own criteria of acceptable conduct. He is aware that terrible things happen during war, and he is also aware that he is responsible for many of those terrible things, but for the most part he considers those to be in service of a greater goal (with a few personal indulgences here and there because sometimes shit gets real and vengeance is tasty. Also he’s a sadist and he likes to treat himself.)
Sauron thinks of himself as reasonable, accommodating, and pragmatic. The ends always justify the means, though he does have regrets about avoidable mayhem and deaths. He has a fully functioning sense of empathy and compassion, it’s just that he doesn’t let those things stop him from achieving his, and his Master’s, goals.
He is terribly manipulative, and will stack odds in his favor whenever possible, but he always uses the veneer of truth, the letter of the law, to mask his deceit.
Again, he doesn’t consider himself evil. He doesn’t make grand displays of villainous pomp unless it will gain him something. He doesn’t use force when force is not necessary, he isn’t cruel when it is in his interests to be kind, and he is loathe to waste resources on senseless acts of brutality. (Mind you, this attitude changes by the time he’s a bitter old shadow lurking in Barad-dur in the Third Age). He has seen what stubbornness and pride get you, and he prefers to be flexible– something Melkor had a hand in teaching him.
It’s important to note that his own perception of himself changes considerably once Melkor is imprisoned in the Void. He loses a great deal of his confidence without a definite cause to rally behind. He begins to see himself more as a force of vengeance, with the goal of carrying out Melkor’s wishes in his absence and punish those he views as responsible for his downfall.
And yes, he’s a bit cuddly sometimes. XD My Sauron is very much a hedonist, and enjoying the pleasures of the material world is something he considers in line with Melkor’s values and his own. He likes bodies, and what bodies can do with other bodies– an attitude that is regarded as distasteful and dangerous by the Valar and most Ainur. Indulging the flesh is an act of rebellion and part of Melkor’s grand vision of freedom. Plus, it’s just dang fun! And he’s got a lot of time on his hands as an immortal. He enjoys pleasing others; he’s still sort of essentially built for service, even if he’s a rebel. He can be quite romantic and has formed many close bonds over the centuries, some mortal, some immortal, some lasting, some fleeting, some that end in bloodshed and betrayal, some that he will treasure forever– but none that overshadow his abiding love of Melkor and his desire to free him from the Void.
And he will never, never, ever let anyone shave off his body hair. Ever.
For Melkor, each new scar is a humiliation. They are constant reminders not only of each time he’s been defeated or punished, but also the fact that he’s lost too much of his power to fully heal. They remind him that he’s trapped in a flesh prison that will only diminish as time goes on. He does not allow people to touch his scars, and he prefers no one see them, at least for the first half of his reign. At some point he loses his sense of shame because he’s resigned himself to being a monster; he’s hell-bent on taking Beleriand and squashing all resistance, he’s grown frail and ugly and obsessed and paranoid and he starts to take a perverse pleasure in the horror his scarred visage causes.
For Sauron, his scars are an inconvenience. They are something that requires maintenance, or concealment. They are identifying marks that interfere with his ability to disguise himself. They are a low-key drain on his energy. The loss of his ring-finger, however, is a source of deep bitterness. It’s a wound he worries, an absence that gnaws him, a visual insult that reminds him every hour what he has lost and what he must get back. It reminds him who he must annihilate in revenge for taking it from him.
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.
If I had not met Melkor… If he had taken no notice of me, and we had never spoken….
I suppose I would have continued on as I was in the beginning: Admirable-One of Aulë, first of smiths. I would be with him still, perhaps in Valinor, questioning not my duties, working in the Great Forge to complete my father’s designs.
Perhaps I’d invent things of my own. Perhaps not. Certainly, I would have to do so on my own time, never taking precedence over the work of the group.
Would I have seen Melkor in chains paraded through the city of bells, and thought it right and just? Would I have met Fëanor? Mahtan, Nerdanel, the great smiths of the Calaquendi? Would I have seen the Two Trees, bathed in their light, mourned for their destruction?
I’d be no different from a thousand other Maiar, whose stories are not told, whose love has moved no mountains nor made ripples through history.
Perhaps I’d have been happier, though poorer for it.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 