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The Silmarillion

2020-07-02T14:58:45Z

2605:6000:1711:82E4:C85D:4B8:8D90:7AB4: /* Bejewelled */

{{Cleanup}}

The Silmarillion was a collection of world-generation notes by [[JRR Tolkien]]. Just like a modern passionate DM would do, he wrote many short stories about his own personal world inside of a journal. Most of it was incoherent and disorganized, as he wrote to it whenever whim took him in a writing mood. For the most part everything he wrote had strong christian influences, and many lines could be drawn between his own creation myth with that of Christianity's; makes sense since Tolkien himself was a Christian. You could easily say that Eru Ilúvatar was equivalent to God, and Melkor would be Satan (He's even described as being the most beautiful of the Valar!). Of course, Tolkien died before he could ever put any of this to a book, so his journal was stuffed into a box and forgotten.

But this was not the end of Tolkien's journal. Many years later, his son found the journal and decided to create a compilation of all the short stories. While there were many errors with timelines and such (Tolkien did not actually write it in any semblance of chronological order), his son made a great effort to organize it into the Silmarillion. It is widely considered a...difficult read to say the least and is very often considered very boring (because, as mentioned before, he died before he could assemble it into a coherent narrative). It's definitely written more like a collection of mythological tales like you might find for, say, Greek myths in a school library (only less accessible) or the Bible than it is like a novel.

== In A Nutshell ==
===The Creation Myth===
In the beginning, there was absolutely nothing. Then the god Eru Ilúvatar began singing. Of course this wasn't just any sort of singing, because to gods like him, 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, and Aule who created the Dwarves, though they were flawed. Some time after Ilúvatar found out and was displeased, as only he could make genuinely sapient creatures (that being the Elves and Men, who wouldn't be ready until the stars and sun were finished). Aule revealed he'd created them out of love for Ilúvatar and to help the latter's creations, so Ilúvatar infused Dwarves with the Secret Fire (true magic of life) to make them truly alive and fix their flaws.

Unfortunately, the First Dark Lord was also in this group. An Ainur by the name of Melkor; described as 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 show up Melkor. 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. As a result, his influence lingers even long after his eventual defeat.

===Bejewelled===
The Valar that still wanted to control everything got sick of Melkor's shit after he destroyed the two lights they were using to keep Arda (the Earth) from being nothing but shades of grey with chest-high walls. These lamps blew up when Melkor knocked them over, and split the formerly continuous landmass into three separate continents. 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 Aman (the western continent), built two trees to be the lights, and got to work. Eventually they got around to making stars, and managed to install Elves. Melkor gave no shits and purged them like insects. Eventually, the Valar beat his pussy ass up and brought him back as a captive (but not before he had a chance to corrupt some Elves, essentially turning them into Orcs. Maybe.). Elves were then drop kicked into Middle Earth(the central continent), and waltzed over to Aman in what was later to be dubbed "worst idea ever".

The Elves were working out really well, and became renowned smiths in their own right. Feanor, an elf king, 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. He immediately smote the two trees, killing them, and 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 and gave some of the ones who joined his group 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 perfect Glaurung, and used him as the prototype to create more dragons. Once finished, he [[Powergamer|spawned an army of them]] to rampage across Middle-Earth before multiple factions joined forces and thwarted Melkor's army, in an event later known as the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

Feanor was fukkin pissed, 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 said "Dude, just chill". His sons would later pick up his [[Kharn|teamkilling]] habits, the greedy little psychos. He traveled to Middle-Earth, played Angband over and over again trying to get his light-jewels back, and got himself killed. 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 whole teamkilling thing. They kept besieging and playing Angband for 400 years until Morgoth said "enough already!" and got those damn kids off his front lawn.

Meanwhile, back in Aman, the Valar hastily tried to replace the lost light tree thingies. This new 'sun' only works half the time, but it's better than nothing. (Also, their backups - the Silmaril - got stolen so what're you gonna do?) Besides, the bloody elves really liked the stars and would've bitched for Eons if they got completely replaced. They also decided to introduce a watered down version of Elves called Men.

Some of the Men got into Angband. Then [[Tolkien|the DM]] made a character for himself, named Beren, and started a romance with an elf king's daughter Luthien (the Dungeon-master's-girlfriend's character). [[H.P. Lovecraft|Elf-dad Thingol]] was a racist shit, 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 Luthien played together, almost got wrecked by a Maiar named Sauron (more on him later), but managed to pull it off. On the way back they encountered a werewolf named Carcharoth, so Luthien hit him with a sleep spell, and Beren tried to use the Simaril's light to fend the werewolf off when he woke up before the spell ended. Instead, Carcharoth bit off Beren's hand and swallowed it along with the Simaril, but touching Simarils is agonizing for anything evil (they scarred Melkor's hands) so Carcharoth fled in agony. The wedding was on a Tuesday, and afterwards Beren led a raid to kill Carcharoth once and for all, as well as get the god damned Simaril back, which they accomplished. But Beren and some other guy got killed by Carcharoth's poison bite. Luthien later became an hero... 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 elves were pretty sure that a Man and an Elf playing together was some kind of exploit, so they stopped being racist and actually treated each other well, even getting Dwarves in on the action. 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 totally racist. 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 Turin leaves home, blah blah blah loses his memory and hooks up with his mind-wiped sister, blah blah defeats the dragon Summer 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|a heroic]] pair. This was expanded on in the book The Children of Hurin, published well after Tolkien himself died. It started with Turin's dad Hurin, who had the massive steel balls to tell Morgoth to fuck off ''to his face'' when the latter tried to get him 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, Turin goes through some hard shit in his life before he dies, his mother loses her home and her mind and Hurin 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!

Bro-tier Man named Tuor 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 fucked over nearly every other Elf realm further north. Tuor and Idril's kid Eärendil ends up dating Beren & Luthien's grandkid Elwing, who has a Silmaril 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.

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 and, trying to hold the gems hurts them. The older brother Maedhros kills himself, while Maglor goes off to an unknown fate, finally bringing Feanor's kind to an end

Morgoth is currently forbidden from entering Middle Earth, though there's rumors 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.

===Civilization===
On the way back home from wrecking Melkor's shit, the Valar were impressed with three kingdoms of Men who joined the bro-quest to help elves, and gave them an island to play Numenor on, and gave them the title Dunedain with plenty of tech and weapon they could need. They easily defeated the Dark Lord Sauron, and patted themselves on the back because capturing Sauron was [[just_as_planned|totally their idea]]. Sauron's a Maiar, so killing him is impossible, he just chilled in the dungeons, and told the Men how awesome they were even though they aren't elves... cause elves are immortal, but it's so great you can still do stuff with your disability. The Dunedain started getting into fad diets and buying life-extension supplements on home-shopping channels, which in a sick twist of irony, made their lifespans shorter. "Well, if I was a Valar, I could make men essentially immortal," said Sauron, and the Dunedain totally [[Just_as_planned|came up with the idea on their own]] to attack the Valar to demand immortality. "My old boss Melkor is a Valar, maybe he could help if he was free," and the Dunedain fell for that bullshit too.

So the Dunedain prepared their armies, and sailed west. The Valar and Elves knew they were getting a full-on invasion, and appealed to Ilúvatar all-father to save their butts. Ilúvatar agreed and went kamikaze on the invasion fleet, and made Middle-Earth round instead of flat, and sunk the island of Numenor like Atlantis for good measure. Sauron was still in jail when the place was rekt, and had to start over in Middle-Earth. Some Men of Numenor managed to survive, and washed up on Middle-Earth. They still had their abilities, and easily became kings among men. One of them started Gondor in the south.

===Sonic===
The last story is about the gold rings. Sauron fooled people into thinking he was going change leaf, and made powerful magical objects for all his friends called "rings of power" (he actually did it before the Numenor mess. No way he could have pulled it off afterwards; after drowning with the island, he was resurrected without access to Disguise spells or his previous charisma). Each ring is actually a way to control the kings of men, dwarves and elves. He had a master Ring that could control all the others, hopefully to turn all the people of Middle-Earth into his personal slaves. The elven lords manage to isolate their rings, realizing their intent. The dwarf kings were partially immune, so while they didn't become Sauron's servante, the dwarves did get an extreme lust for gold and extra greediness, which made the dwarves go into sort-of isolation while they tried to fix the messes this caused. The kings of men were not immune, and [[edgy|became Sauron's dark servants, the Ring Wraiths]].

The Elves and the survivors of Numenor got tired of Sauron's shit, teamed up and proceeded to wreck said shit. Just as the elves started thinking maybe not all Numenorians are greedy shits like the ones that tried to attack Aman, the king of Men Isildur decided the One Ring is too awesome to destroy after cutting it off from Sauron, and kept it for himself. Elves gave up on Men totally. Isildur himself died on the way home in a stupid horse accident, losing the One Ring.

[[The Lord of the Rings|And ''that's'' when the hobbits came in.]]

[[Category:Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]

The Silmarillion

2020-07-02T14:49:06Z

2605:6000:1711:82E4:C85D:4B8:8D90:7AB4: /* Bejewelled */

{{Cleanup}}

The Silmarillion was a collection of world-generation notes by [[JRR Tolkien]]. Just like a modern passionate DM would do, he wrote many short stories about his own personal world inside of a journal. Most of it was incoherent and disorganized, as he wrote to it whenever whim took him in a writing mood. For the most part everything he wrote had strong christian influences, and many lines could be drawn between his own creation myth with that of Christianity's; makes sense since Tolkien himself was a Christian. You could easily say that Eru Ilúvatar was equivalent to God, and Melkor would be Satan (He's even described as being the most beautiful of the Valar!). Of course, Tolkien died before he could ever put any of this to a book, so his journal was stuffed into a box and forgotten.

But this was not the end of Tolkien's journal. Many years later, his son found the journal and decided to create a compilation of all the short stories. While there were many errors with timelines and such (Tolkien did not actually write it in any semblance of chronological order), his son made a great effort to organize it into the Silmarillion. It is widely considered a...difficult read to say the least and is very often considered very boring (because, as mentioned before, he died before he could assemble it into a coherent narrative). It's definitely written more like a collection of mythological tales like you might find for, say, Greek myths in a school library (only less accessible) or the Bible than it is like a novel.

== In A Nutshell ==
===The Creation Myth===
In the beginning, there was absolutely nothing. Then the god Eru Ilúvatar began singing. Of course this wasn't just any sort of singing, because to gods like him, 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, and Aule who created the Dwarves, though they were flawed. Some time after Ilúvatar found out and was displeased, as only he could make genuinely sapient creatures (that being the Elves and Men, who wouldn't be ready until the stars and sun were finished). Aule revealed he'd created them out of love for Ilúvatar and to help the latter's creations, so Ilúvatar infused Dwarves with the Secret Fire (true magic of life) to make them truly alive and fix their flaws.

Unfortunately, the First Dark Lord was also in this group. An Ainur by the name of Melkor; described as 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 show up Melkor. 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. As a result, his influence lingers even long after his eventual defeat.

===Bejewelled===
The Valar that still wanted to control everything got sick of Melkor's shit after he destroyed the two lights they were using to keep Arda (the Earth) from being nothing but shades of grey with chest-high walls. These lamps blew up when Melkor knocked them over, and split the formerly continuous landmass into three separate continents. 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 Aman (the western continent), built two trees to be the lights, and got to work. Eventually they got around to making stars, and managed to install Elves. Melkor gave no shits and purged them like insects. Eventually, the Valar beat his pussy ass up and brought him back as a captive (but not before he had a chance to corrupt some Elves, essentially turning them into Orcs. Maybe.). Elves were then drop kicked into Middle Earth(the central continent), and waltzed over to Aman in what was later to be dubbed "worst idea ever".

The Elves were working out really well, and became renowned smiths in their own right. Feanor, an elf king, 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. He immediately smote the two trees, killing them, and 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 and gave some of the ones who joined his group 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 perfect Glaurung, and used him as the prototype to create more dragons. Once finished, he [[Powergamer|spawned an army of them]] to rampage across Middle-Earth before multiple factions joined forces and thwarted Melkor's army, in an event later known as the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

Feanor was fukkin pissed, 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 said "Dude, just chill". His sons would later pick up his [[Kharn|teamkilling]] habits, the greedy little psychos. He traveled to Middle-Earth, played Angband over and over again trying to get his light-jewels back, and got himself killed. 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 whole teamkilling thing. They kept besieging and playing Angband for 400 years until Morgoth said "enough already!" and got those damn kids off his front lawn.

Meanwhile, back in Aman, the Valar hastily tried to replace the lost light tree thingies. This new 'sun' only works half the time, but it's better than nothing. (Also, their backups - the Silmaril - got stolen so what're you gonna do?) Besides, the bloody elves really liked the stars and would've bitched for Eons if they got completely replaced. They also decided to introduce a watered down version of Elves called Men.

Some of the Men got into Angband. Then [[Tolkien|the DM]] made a character for himself, named Beren, and started a romance with an elf king's daughter Luthien (the Dungeon-master's-girlfriend's character). Elf-dad Thingol was a racist shit, 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 Luthien played together, almost got wrecked by a Maiar named Sauron (more on him later), but managed to pull it off. On the way back they encountered a werewolf named Carcharoth, so Luthien hit him with a sleep spell, and Beren tried to use the Simaril's light to fend the werewolf off when he woke up before the spell ended. Instead, Carcharoth bit off Beren's hand and swallowed it along with the Simaril, but touching Simarils is agonizing for anything evil (they scarred Melkor's hands) so Carcharoth fled in agony. The wedding was on a Tuesday, and afterwards Beren led a raid to kill Carcharoth once and for all, as well as get the god damned Simaril back, which they accomplished. But Beren and some other guy got killed by Carcharoth's poison bite. Luthien later became an hero... 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 elves were pretty sure that a Man and an Elf playing together was some kind of exploit, so they stopped being racist and actually treated each other well, even getting Dwarves in on the action. 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 totally racist. 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 Turin leaves home, blah blah blah loses his memory and hooks up with his mind-wiped sister, blah blah defeats the dragon Summer 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|a heroic]] pair. This was expanded on in the book The Children of Hurin, published well after Tolkien himself died. It started with Turin's dad Hurin, who had the massive steel balls to tell Morgoth to fuck off ''to his face'' when the latter tried to get him 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, Turin goes through some hard shit in his life before he dies, his mother loses her home and her mind and Hurin 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!

Bro-tier Man named Tuor 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 fucked over nearly every other Elf realm further north. Tuor and Idril's kid Eärendil ends up dating Beren & Luthien's grandkid Elwing, who has a Silmaril 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.

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 and, trying to hold the gems hurts them. The older brother Maedhros kills himself, while Maglor goes off to an unknown fate, finally bringing Feanor's kind to an end

Morgoth is currently forbidden from entering Middle Earth, though there's rumors 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.

===Civilization===
On the way back home from wrecking Melkor's shit, the Valar were impressed with three kingdoms of Men who joined the bro-quest to help elves, and gave them an island to play Numenor on, and gave them the title Dunedain with plenty of tech and weapon they could need. They easily defeated the Dark Lord Sauron, and patted themselves on the back because capturing Sauron was [[just_as_planned|totally their idea]]. Sauron's a Maiar, so killing him is impossible, he just chilled in the dungeons, and told the Men how awesome they were even though they aren't elves... cause elves are immortal, but it's so great you can still do stuff with your disability. The Dunedain started getting into fad diets and buying life-extension supplements on home-shopping channels, which in a sick twist of irony, made their lifespans shorter. "Well, if I was a Valar, I could make men essentially immortal," said Sauron, and the Dunedain totally [[Just_as_planned|came up with the idea on their own]] to attack the Valar to demand immortality. "My old boss Melkor is a Valar, maybe he could help if he was free," and the Dunedain fell for that bullshit too.

So the Dunedain prepared their armies, and sailed west. The Valar and Elves knew they were getting a full-on invasion, and appealed to Ilúvatar all-father to save their butts. Ilúvatar agreed and went kamikaze on the invasion fleet, and made Middle-Earth round instead of flat, and sunk the island of Numenor like Atlantis for good measure. Sauron was still in jail when the place was rekt, and had to start over in Middle-Earth. Some Men of Numenor managed to survive, and washed up on Middle-Earth. They still had their abilities, and easily became kings among men. One of them started Gondor in the south.

===Sonic===
The last story is about the gold rings. Sauron fooled people into thinking he was going change leaf, and made powerful magical objects for all his friends called "rings of power" (he actually did it before the Numenor mess. No way he could have pulled it off afterwards; after drowning with the island, he was resurrected without access to Disguise spells or his previous charisma). Each ring is actually a way to control the kings of men, dwarves and elves. He had a master Ring that could control all the others, hopefully to turn all the people of Middle-Earth into his personal slaves. The elven lords manage to isolate their rings, realizing their intent. The dwarf kings were partially immune, so while they didn't become Sauron's servante, the dwarves did get an extreme lust for gold and extra greediness, which made the dwarves go into sort-of isolation while they tried to fix the messes this caused. The kings of men were not immune, and [[edgy|became Sauron's dark servants, the Ring Wraiths]].

The Elves and the survivors of Numenor got tired of Sauron's shit, teamed up and proceeded to wreck said shit. Just as the elves started thinking maybe not all Numenorians are greedy shits like the ones that tried to attack Aman, the king of Men Isildur decided the One Ring is too awesome to destroy after cutting it off from Sauron, and kept it for himself. Elves gave up on Men totally. Isildur himself died on the way home in a stupid horse accident, losing the One Ring.

[[The Lord of the Rings|And ''that's'' when the hobbits came in.]]

[[Category:Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]

H.P. Lovecraft

2020-07-02T14:32:14Z

2605:6000:1711:82E4:C85D:4B8:8D90:7AB4: Added Cool Air to the list

{{Awesome}}
[[Image:Lovecraft.jpg|thumb|right|This is the closest he was able to pull to a smile.]]
{{Topquote|For I have always been a seeker, a dreamer, and a ponderer on seeking and dreaming...|H.P. Lovecraft, defining what is to be, at core, an elegan/tg/entleman}}

'''Howard Phillips Lovecraft''' was a SUPER racist American writer of horror fiction for 1920s pulp magazines, mostly the now defunct but famous at the time ''Weird Tales''. He is lauded one century later as the pioneer of the idea of "cosmic horror". In his stories (and the genre that evolved from it) the horror doesn't arise from prosaic fears of death and dismemberment, but from the idea that the universe itself is utterly alien and either indifferent or actively malevolent towards mankind, full of incomprehensible horrors that our minds are ill-equipped to cope with because some asshat didn't make it OSHA-compatible. This idea replaced the traditional spooks, werewolves, vampires and psychos with tentacled monstrosities from beyond space and time, dark gods sleeping beneath the ocean, and secretive cults carrying out terrible rites to bring their masters back to the world of the living. His influence can be felt throughout our culture as cosmic horror became a core concept of both fantasy and science-fiction - Mind Flayers in D&D, the insidious cults and corrupting influence of the gods of Chaos in ''Warhammer'', and of course ''[[Call of Cthulhu]]''.

The message of most of his writings is: life sucks, history and culture are precious but religion is harmful, and foreigners are weird and having children with them is an abomination (Lovecraft was outspokenly racist even for his day,[[#References|[1]]] [[Skub|and that's all we'll say, lest we invite flame wars otherwise]]). Most importantly of all: man is hugely smaller and weaker than he thinks he actually is on the cosmic stage. Essentially, cosmic horror's [[grimdark]] value comes from the fact that really bad, really powerful things exist, and we can neither fully stop nor understand them. Sure, lesser things of his Mythos aren't all that bad, relatively speaking. You can exorcise a ghost, kill a werewolf, or bring down a Deep One with the right knowledge and equipment - but Lovecraft's ''big'' monsters can't be stopped. They're essentially immortal gods, you are at their mercy, and the best that you can do is, maybe, briefly, slow them down or temporarily boot them out of the world. Worst of all is that you either know this or are made painfully aware of it as the story unfolds: you might know these eldritch beings exist and their plans down to the very letter, but you also realize you can't do anything about it, like knowing the exact yield and placement of every nuke in World War III. Therein is most disturbing thing in Lovecraft's stories: the simple fact that the entirety of human existence is microscopic to the universe, its true nature beyond the physical scope of our comprehension.

Much of the horror of his works plays on the fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar. Considering just ''how'' weird and incomprehensible a majority of the antagonists are, though, it's no surprise that protagonists of his stories tend to end up batshit insane under the burden of the knowledge that, even though they might have temporarily disrupted those things' plans, it is but a hollow and temporary victory at the very best, and in some ways they were better off not becoming aware to begin with. Lucky(?) for us, most of these beings don't know or don't care enough about us to ruin our day, and some are even benevolent - by comparison, at least. With his concepts being all but public domain, it's not uncommon to find later media in what would come to be considered "Lovecraft Lite" that take liberties with the themes of cosmic indifference and hopelessness, [[skub|for better and for worse]]; sometimes the existential and extra-terrestial horrors are more actively malevolent towards humanity and its domain, and sometimes they can be dispatched in a more permanent manner. [[Sanity]] loss will definitely still occur, though.

Being a recluse, Lovecraft was also a prolific writer of letters. Lovecraft corresponded with many of the other authors of the time, including [[Robert E. Howard]], [[Clark Ashton Smith]], Frank Belknap Long, and even a young Robert Bloch (Psycho). While his writing was associated with nihilism and hopelessness, he was described as a decently happy and pleasant, albeit occasionally neurotic, guy to be around, and even though he much preferred being alone he was part of a sizable social circle of writers with whom he developed strong friendships. Howard's suicide in particular was known to have affected him greatly, and in turn Lovecraft's passing was met with deep mourning by his fellow authors, who aimed to make his otherwise obscure legacy known to the world by leading efforts to collect and publish (or republish) his writings.

Many of his correspondents wrote pastiches of his distinctive style of horror; in fact, Bloch and Lovecraft each wrote stories in which the other made an appearance (and died in a suitably gruesome way). This in turn helped some authors, borrowing many ideas and notions from Lovecraft and added them to their works as well: the most famous example would be the Conan universe, which is also set in the Mythos that Lovecraft created (although in this case a much, much earlier time). Lovecraft himself encouraged his friends and other authors to draw from his work and made no attempts to keep it as purely his own, spurring on his posthumous popularity and influence in media. Though he didn't have much financial success in his lifetime, he resolved to write when and what he wanted to, and to not [[Awesome|"set down the dream for a boarish Publick."]]

==Some of Lovecraft's stories==
*Call of Cthulhu - Artists round the world go mad as an eldritch god stirs in its slumber.
*The Shadow over Innsmouth - Man goes on trip to backwater ancestral hometown to learn more about his family. What he finds is not what he was looking for. Also clearly demonstrates Lovecraft's fear of sea creatures (which is the reason so many aliens and ancient eldritch beings in his stories have these features - especially the recurring tentacle motif) and his [[/pol/|disapproval of interracial/inter-ethnic mixing]]. Important background for [[Delta Green]].
*The Colour Out of Space - A meteorite whose color cannot be described lands on a farm, contaminates the soil and water, drains the crops and livestock of their vitality, and drives the family into insanity before consuming them. Then it flies away to do the same thing to some other world. Was made into a relatively faithful film adaptation in 2019, starring Nicholas Cage. It’s as awesome as it sounds.
*Dagon - Short story on one of the Deep One gods.
*The Dunwich Horror - A physical manifestation of the cosmic order had a baby with a normal human. As investigation on this strange boy deepens, people realize things are horribly wrong, as the blood and noises around the house suggest.
*The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: An intrepid investigator showing a certain [[Matt Ward|descendant]] how to be [[awesome]].
*At the Mountains of Madness - An Antarctic university expedition went missing, so a second mission is sent to find them. Little do they know about the billion-year-old horrors in wait. John Carpenter's ''The Thing'' was not an adaptation of this work, but it shares a lot of common elements.
*The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath - AKA Adventures of Mary Sue. It is nice though. Also clearly demonstrates Lovecraft's immense love of cats.
*The Cats of Ulthar - Don't ever kill a cat, especially not if the cat belongs to a gypsy. You will pay!
*Herbert West: Reanimator - Mad scientist insists on reanimating the dead, despite the fact that they make it very clear that they would rather not come back and the reanimation makes them violent and cannibalistic.
*Nyarlathotep: Introduced the title character, who is basically [[Just as planned]] personified. The only one of Lovecraft’s deities to have a human personality, Nyarlathotep is the go to villain in any adaption of the franchise.
*Cool Air: A wealthy young man who is probably a Lovecraft self-insert moves into an apartment building filled with immigrants, where he meets one he actually doesn’t hate, an old doctor with a literally quite cool room. Time goes on and the air conditioner for the room breaks, sending the Doc into a panic. When they come back to fix it, he’s become goop on the floor, because surprise surprise he was using this (for the time) radically new technology to postpone his inevitable death, and had been for 18 years. Cue dreadful realization.

==Influences on Tabletop Gaming==
Not counting the games directly based upon his work:

* Any number of ''D&D'' monsters -- Mindflayers, though inspired by an image of tree roots growing from beneath a skull, gradually became stand-ins for Cthulhu and his spawn, gibbering mouthers are low-grade shoggoths, kuo-toa are much like the Deep Ones minus their strange breeding habits, etc...

* The [[Far Realm]] of D&D, a place outside creation home to unspeakable madness.

* The Jabberslythe in Warhammer Fantasy (shoggoths, in conjunction with the titular creature from the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky")

* The concept of [[Chaos]] in both the Warhammer Fantasy and 40,000 settings owes much to his work, in conjunction with [[Michael Moorcock]].

* Magic the Gathering's entire [[Eldrazi]] set, as cheesy as it was, was about the Old Ones awakening.

* The [[Pathfinder]] RPG gets a lot of mileage out of Lovecraftian themes, like the stuff about [[Wat|aboleths creating the human race]], the Vault Keepers, Aucturn the Stranger, and the Dark Tapestry. Eventually, many Mythos figures, including the C'ster himself, made appearances as pants-shittingly dangerous endgame bosses, and their creatures got (mostly pretty good) write-ups as encounter-able monsters. You can even play a Deep One Hybrid or Yaddithian.

* Xoriat, the Realm of Madness, home of the Daelkyr, from the [[Eberron]] setting is pure Lovecraftian horror.

* While [[Genestealers]] originally took their inspiration from the horror movie Alien, their cults are most definitely reminiscent of ''Shadow of Innsmouth'' mixed with the more apocalyptic cults devoted to alien gods.

* The lord of nerds and [[just as planned]], the Chaos God [[Tzeentch]] is very reminiscent of some of Lovecraft's strangest creations, most notably Nyarlathotep.

* The C'tan derive some features from Lovecraft's Old Ones, such as being ancient aliens that can warp the fabric of reality (but without the dimension the Warp). The Deciver, like Tzeentch, also owes a lot to Nyarlathotep, even being a weaker member of its group with a more human-like sadistic personality just like Nyarlathotep.

==See Also==
* The [[Cthulhu Mythos]] and works based on it, including:
** ''[[Call of Cthulhu]]''
** ''[[Trail of Cthulhu]]''
** [[Arkham Horror]]
** [[Delta Green]]
** [[CthulhuTech]]

Other /tg/-relevant sci-fi authors:

* [[H.G. Wells]]
* [[Robert Heinlein]]
* [[Isaac Asimov]]
* [[Arthur C. Clarke]]
* [[Philip K. Dick]]

==References==
# Take this poem of his, for example:

[[/pol/|"When, long ago, the gods created Earth
 In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
 The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
 Yet were they too remote from humankind.
 To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
 Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
 A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
 Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.]]

==External Links==
*[http://www.hplovecraft.com/ The H.P. Lovecraft Archive]
*[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/ Complete Works at Dagonbytes]

[[Category:Writers]]
[[Category:Literature]]