Editing The Silmarillion (section)

= In A Nutshell =
==The Creation Myth==

{{topquote|Eru, hand me the aux cord.|Melkor}}
{{topquote|Okay, but you better not play evil.|Eru Ilúvatar (in an uncharacteristic lapse of judgement)}}

In the beginning, there was absolutely nothing (except for [[Tom Bombadil]], but he doesn't mind). Then the god Eru Ilúvatar began singing. Of course this wasn't just any sort of singing, because to gods like him, [[Bonesinger|singing was a means of weaving raw magic into a pure and physical form]]. He began his singing by creating his children, the Ainur, who in turn joined him in a new heavenly chorus. There were many Ainur, who were divided into the older and more powerful Valar, and the younger and less powerful Maiar. (Many better-known LOTR characters that are Maiar include Gandalf, Saruman, the Balrogs, and Sauron.) The Ainur each sang a different part of the world into existence, such as Ulmo who created the seas and oceans, the only thing Ilúvatar added was the Secret Fire, the source of life that only he possessed.  The Ainur continued singing various into existence, including Aulë who created the Dwarves.  
[[File:Hades_Angry.jpg|right|300px|thumb|When your soulless song minions start creating their own songs.]]
Long dramatic pause.

Ilúvatar found out about the dorfs and was [[butthurt|displeased]], as only he had the ability to genuinely sapient creatures.  He had a vision of the world he was trying to create and his vision didn't include stumpy, uncouth beard people running around with picks and axes grunting "Genocide! Mining!".  Aulë was ashamed, explaining he'd made them due to love for Ilúvatar, but resolved to destroy them.  Ilúvatar saw Aulë's creations plead for mercy and stayed Aulë's hammer, allowing the dorfs to stay and refining Aulë's work by infusing the dorfs with the Secret Fire to give them true life.  Then Aulë's wife Yavanna found out the dorfs would have axes and that [https://1d4chan.org/images/2/2f/DF_Elf_Diplomat_1.png the elves would be no good in keeping them from her trees] so she made some [[Treeman|angry sentient trees]] of her own to fight her hubby's dorfs. How Ilúvatar handled hearing about THAT is not explored, but can't have been too bad since the Ents were allowed to stay. The dorfs would later wake up, around the mid years of Melkor's groundment.

But their antics were nothing compared to the troublemaker of the group. An Ainur by the name of Melkor; described as [[Horus|the most beautiful and gifted singer of all the Ainur]], decided that he wanted to create his own song. At first he was simply an arrogant prick, as he hated collaboration and wanted something that was wholly his own creation. Twice in a row he tried this, and each time Ilúvatar showed him a new, more beautiful song to both amaze the other Ainur and undo the disruptions Melkor caused [[Horus Heresy|(because upstaging your own creations for being too proud never, ever backfires)]].  Melkor first created Fire, hot and cold. As a consequence of the creation of Fire, evil was introduced into the world, but also beauty was created as hot and cold made Weather. The second of his singing served to seat evil in the world by warping many creations, such as granting scorpions their tails. For this, Melkor was cast out of the Ainur's Chorus. Embittered and emboldened by his failure, he continued to desire the Secret Fire for himself; lacking the ability to create life on his own, he instead chose to infuse his own power into Arda, attempting to corrupt all of creation toward his will.  At this, he was largely successful, even though the very act drained him of power until he feared even the power of mortals. As a result of this his influence lingers on in the world even long after his defeat; his dark power now so dispersed that nothing in Arda is truly free of its corruption.  It's particularly concentrated in Gold, which is why dragons love the stuff so much.  Then Ilúvatar stepped back and appointed the Valar - sans Melkor - to run Middle-Earth, only personally getting involved when the Valar asked for help, things went really pear-shaped or something really beautiful happened.

==Bejewelled==
The Valar looking after Middle-Earth got sick of Melkor's shit and made two lamps to light up the world to keep Arda (the Earth) from being nothing but shades of grey with chest-high walls.  Melkor, destroyed these lamps and fled. The Valar couldn't chase after him to give him a well-deserved spanking because they were too busy trying to stop the world from exploding as a result of Melkor's shenanigans. So they decided that if Melkor was going to be a little bitch and destroy shit, they might as well turtle up in their own corner of the world. And so they went to the western continent (called Aman), and resolved to '''Make Aman Great Again''' by building a giant fuckoff wall of mountains to keep out all the <s>Mexicans</s> ''middle earthers'', and growing a couple glowing trees for mood lighting. Eventually they got around to making stars, and managed to locate the Elves.  Although not before Melkor found them first and took a few.  Then Tulkas came out with a folding chair, threw Melkor out of the ring and dragged him back as a captive (but not before he had a chance to corrupt some Elves, essentially turning them into Orcs. Maybe.). Elves had spawned in Middle Earth (the central continent), but the Valar invited them to Aman in what was later to be dubbed "worst idea ever", as basically the Valar's plan to keep the elves safe from all the monsters that Melkor had left behind was to keep the elves locked away in their house like overprotective parents.

Most of the Elves took the offer and for a while things were working out really well as they applied their creativity to all the crafting skills the Valar taught them. Fëanor, an elf prince, made three awesome jewels called the Silmarils that glowed just like the two trees used to light up the place. However, fucking Melkor decided to be a sneaky prick.  He pretended to apologize to the Valar, and asked if he could see what they were working on.  Caught off-guard by his apology, they accepted.  Bringing in a giant spider demon he'd met in the void called Ungoliant, he immediately smote the two trees while Ungoliant drained their sap, killing them.  Then he stole the Silmarils and fucked off to Middle-Earth to raid the elves there.  

He got his ass handed to him again, and holed up in the roguelike dungeon expansion pack Angband, due to his old Utumno version being too resource-intensive.  Then Melkor went on a crafting spree, creating beings such as werewolves and vampires for any Maia who helped him and started making dragons for himself who, who for some reason, took longer to make.  He then spammed the Maia with messages and gave some of the ones who joined him the gift of being "Balrogs", while the first dragon - code-named "Glaurung" - was successful enough to start testing on his enemies.  But Glaurung attacked Ard-galen too early, due to Melkor being a fail, which alerted the Valar to Melkor's plans.  Annoyed, Melkor managed to retrieve and perfect Glaurung, and used him as the prototype to create more dragons, the largest by far being Ancalagon.  Once finished, he [[Powergamer|spawned an army of them]] to rampage across Middle-Earth before multiple factions joined forces and were thwarted by Melkor's army, in an event later known as the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, though Ancalagon wasn't slain until the War of Wrath. 

Fëanor was pissed, as Melkor's theft of the Silmarils, so much that it would make Angry Marines look like pussies, and kept calling Melkor "Morgoth".   He was so pissed he picked a fight with another elf kingdom when they refused to give him their boats and said "Dude, just chill".  He even had some of his sons swear an oath that they'd get the gems back no matter what and would punish anyone who stopped them, even the Valar themselves.  They took this so seriously they would later pick up papa's [[Kharn|teamkilling]] habits, the greedy little psychos.  He travelled to Middle-Earth, raiding Angband over and over again to try and get his light-jewels back, and got himself killed by the captain of the Balrogs. His elf kingdom stayed there, split between his sons, his half-brother, his half-brother's sons, his ''other'' half-brother's sons, and a king named Thingol who wasn't related to him, and who was understandably [[Butthurt|salty as fuck]] when he found out about the teamkilling of his related kin. They kept attacking Angband for 400 years until Morgoth said "enough already!" and got those damn kids off his front lawn.
[[File:TolkienElves_at_Night.jpg|right|400px|thumb|I have seen the light!  AND IT BURNS!!!]]
Meanwhile, back in Aman, the Valar hastily replaced the lost light tree thingies with a fruit and a seed of the trees.  The fruit became the 'sun' and only works half the time, but it's better than nothing (If you say "they could've used the Silmaril", those were stolen and stashed away by Melkor, so what're you gonna do?) and the seed became the moon.  Besides, the bloody elves really liked the stars and would've bitched for eons if they got completely replaced. It was also around this time that Ilúvatar's second batch of creations woke up, a watered down version of Elves called Men. At some point Men got their first experience with encountering Angband and Morgoth.  Initially they worshipped Morgoth (the Original Sin for humanity in Middle-Earth), but some saw how much of [[That Guy]] he was and got away ASAP.  

Then [[Tolkien|the DM]] made a character for himself, named Beren, and started a romance with an elf king's daughter Lúthien (the Dungeon-master's-girlfriend's character).  Elf-dad Thingol was [[H.P. Lovecraft|a cultural elitist and a snob]], but that would look bad, so he said "sure you can date my daughter, IF you can finish a run of Angband by bringing a Silmaril jewel back to me."  Beren and Lúthien did the quest together, almost got wrecked by a Maiar named Sauron (more on him later), but managed to pull it off with disguises and a sleep spell.  On the way back they encountered Carcharoth, the world's mightiest werewolf, and since Lúthien was exhausted from her sleep spell, Beren tried to fend him off with the Simaril's light.  Instead, Carcharoth bit off Beren's hand and swallowed it along with the Simaril, but touching Simarils is agonizing for anything evil (they permanently scarred Melkor's hands) so Carcharoth was wracked with so much pain that he fled. The wedding was on a Tuesday, and afterwards Beren led a raid to kill Carcharoth and get the god damned Simaril back, which they accomplished. But Beren and a heroic Valar-blessed dog got killed by Carcharoth's poison bite.  Lúthien later became an heroine... but she sang some Goth poetry to the Grim Reaper-equivalent who, with Ilúvatar's permission, gives them an extra life for finding the Simiaril, and they both live as mortals until they died a second time. 

The rest of the grey elves were pretty sure that a Man and an Elf playing together was some kind of exploit, so they actually started treating them well, just like they had kindly treated the Dwarves, at that time. Unfortunately, Melkor was able to appeal to the inherent evil and greed of Men and got them to do all kinds of stupid shit.  Still, not every Man was an idiot, some had great skill or wisdom, so the elves didn't go back to being total pricks. Some men picked up Morgoth's trollish habits and became his underlings, but there were also three bro-tier clans of men closely allied to the elves and fought on the front lines of the siege, who were collectively known as the Edain.

Blah blah a Man named Túrin leaves home, blah blah blah loses his memory and hooks up with his mind-wiped sister, blah blah defeats Glaurung, totally not his fault he killed his best friend, totally not his fault he knocks up his own sister, when they both find out they become [[meme|an heroic]] pair. This was expanded on in the book The Children of Húrin, published well after Tolkien himself died.  It started with Túrin's dad Húrin, who was captured by Morgoth after a battle but had the massive steel balls to tell Morgoth to piss off ''to his face'' when the latter tried to get Húrin to sell out a hidden elf city so Morgoth could purge them.  Morgoth, like a GM angry no one wanted to play by his rules, cursed his whole family resulting in a story bleaker, but better than Game of Thrones.  That's not a lie either, Túrin goes through some hard shit in his life before he dies, including his mother losing her home and her mind and Húrin is restrained "And I Must Scream" style and forced to see only the worst moments of his children lives.  You thought the Starks had it tough? Think again! Morgoth, having had his Butthurt over Húrin insulting him, releases him several decades after the big battle where there were a lot of tears and Húrin was captured. Húrin, pissed off beyond belief, goes to Gondolin and asks for Turgon's help, who doesn't even let him in the barrier. So he turns towards it and tells Turgon to go fuck himself like the ungrateful bastard he is, which causes a change of heart on Turgon and so dispatches eagles to pick him up but he leaves. Morgoth, watching Húrin, [[Just as Planned|finally learns the general direction]] of Turgon's Hidden City. Húrin goes to the grave of Túrin (near where he killed Glaurung), where his wife Morwen is mourning all three of their children (baby Lalaith died due to infected winds sent by Morgoth); Húrin barely catches her last moments to have one last talk and buries her as well. Húrin goes to Nargothrond and kills the last Petty-dwarf Mîm (a sub-race of Dwarfs) for betraying Túrin (though Túrin's gang had killed one of his sons by accident; his other son and most of Túrin's gang were wiped out by an Orc war party), takes the super Dwarf necklace Nauglamír from the broken elven city, goes to Doriath and gives it Thingol, insulting him by saying that it's the price for keeping his children safe. Melian shows him pity and uses her angel powers to unfuck his mind, at which point he apologizes and sees how his rage-fuelled mini quest only helped Morgoth. He formally thanks Thingol and leaves to kill himself by jumping into the sea. Thingol hires dwarf smiths of Norgod to plant the Silmaril into Nauglamir. The Dwarfs demand the end product as payment, lusting to atain the Silmaril for themselves, but Thingol says no, so the Dwarves kill him. After being  chased and hunted down, the survivors go their hold and say that the Elves betrayed them by denying the original payment and playing up the "these guys killed most of the petty-dwarves, who were ours even if they were exiled" angle, kicking off a war and starting the Elf-Dwarf enmity. Melian, grieving Thingol's death, leaves for Aman, dropping her protective magic. Without Melian's girdle, the angry Dwarven host enters Doriath and ransacks Menegroth, taking the Nauglamir. However, on their way back, they are ambushed by Beren with his son, the green elves and the Ents, killing all the Dwarves and recovering the necklace.
[[File:Gondolin.jpg|right|400px|thumb|First stop, Starbucks.]]
Bro-tier Man and war hero named Tuor (Túrin's cousin, Húrin's nephew and Huor's son, you can easily see which side of the family got all the luck) weds a hot elf shortie named Idril, after a Vala tells him how to get to the Elven version of Seattle, which is where the elves move to after the Angband MMO servers shut down and they lost all their kingdoms. They have a son they name Eärendil. Naturally, since this is a tragedy, Elf Seattle also falls when Eärendil's a kid, all because Idril's creepy cousin wanted to bone her.  Again, [[FATAL|incest is most definitely not wincest]]. Together with many other fleeing elves Eärendil ends up south in what was essentially a giant Elf refugee camp, since at this point Morgoth had ruined nearly every other Elf realm further north. Tuor and Idril's kid Eärendil ends up dating Beren & Lúthien's grandkid Elwing, who has a Silmaril (specifically, the one in Nauglamir) from her grandparents' adventures. Eärendil and Elwing end up with two kids, Elrond and Elros, but due to the way Eru wrote the code for souls and metaphysics the kids had to choose to be either elven or human.  Later, some of Fëanor's sons, still wanting to reclaim their family bling, attack the Elf refugee camp, because they know Elwing has it. Eärendil was out at sea while this happened, but Elwing threw herself into the ocean with the Silmaril and transformed into a bird to escape, leaving her kids behind. It worked out though, because one of Fëanor's sons suddenly grew a conscience and decided to take care of them.
[[File:Tirion.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Yelp Review: This place is like heaven.]]
Eärendil, sick of how everything was getting steadily more [[grimdark|grimdark]], sails to the western continent with his wife to petition the Valar for aid. Moved, they break forth their wrath and smite down Morgoth. They smite him so hard that the continent they were playing on, Beleriand, broke and sank into the ocean. The remaining two Silmarils were also brought out, and Feanor's two remaining sons saw their chance for an easy attack on Angband. They're told it's a bad idea, they have a quick discussion about whether they'll get banned for this, then raid the camp and pull off the quest, but when they try to use the Silmarils they find they've become evil, so trying to hold the gems hurts them. The older brother Maedhros kills himself, while Maglor goes off to an unknown fate, finally bringing Fëanor's kind to an end. Eärendil is allowed a choice on whether to be an Elf or human, he chooses elfhood for the sake of his wife who chose to be an Elf. Their sons also choose, Elrond stays and Elf and Elros chooses humanity. The Silmarils thus find their places, Maedhros having tossed himself into the ground while holding one, Maglor tossing his into the ocean before disappearing and Eärendil taking his across the heavens on his nightly voyages. Eventually one of the Silmarils maybe gets dug up by [[The Hobbit|the Dorfs in the Lonely Mountain]]... the continuity is kinda unclear cuz this book was mostly notes and half-formed ideas.

Morgoth is currently removed out of, and forbidden from entering, Middle Earth, though there's rumours that he'll eventually come back.  There's also talk that this will happen when Ilúvatar decide to rebuild the world and fix Morgoth's damage to the world, and then Morgoth will be defeated once and for all.