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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
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I'll probably go poke it, but not until I am very prepared for the consequences.
I'll probably go poke it, but not until I am very prepared for the consequences.
purposeful_glory
If nothing else, once I can teleport I ought to be able to go rescue you before the Valar and Maiar minding the alarm notice anything.
Without intending any insult, I don't really want to put myself in the position of needing your rescue again either.
purposeful_glory
Wouldn't blame you. Wait until you have artificial gravity or something.
By the end of the Age it would astonish me if my father isn't more-or-less caught up on whatever the galactic standard is and working out how he can use it to overthrow Eru.
Vows are held by Eru. Taking down the Valar wouldn't be sufficient to free orcs.
What's the record for the speed at which a civilization has ascended from forging their first sword to destroying their gods?
purposeful_glory
Don't remember offhand. The gods are usually a little more small-time than Eru, too. I could convince some people I was a god if I wanted. I am actually not sure I didn't do that accidentally on Midgard, although I was just telling stories from home in the third person.
You're going to go see the Men over the mountains, right? Flying, healing, illusions, older than the Sun and Moon - it's going to be their default assumption. I could probably do it and Macalaurë definitely could.
purposeful_glory
I'm not sure the right question isn't just 'what do you mean by god'. But surely most of the Men must be older than the Sun and Moon. They're, like, a few weeks old. Or did the Men appear as adults?
When I said I'd run into Men I didn't mean I'd found a grassy lawn filled with infants. They had tribes and were looking for food and so forth. The Elves appeared as adults. I've been assuming that's what happened with them as well.
purposeful_glory
Huh. I will have to ask them about that. It sounds disorienting.
The Unbegotten describe not having internal - voices, at first, because they didn't yet have language. I find it hard to imagine.
purposeful_glory
Did you notice if the Men had a language? If they don't I'm not sure how far I can get without badgering them all into learning Asgardian, which is not the most useful language they could pick up here but the only one I actually know.
They did. One of the things Melkor said of Men was that they can't learn language as adults, so it makes sense that Eru had this batch born knowing it.
Melkor lived in Valinor for a hundred Valian years before things came to a head and he was exposed and then the war began. He started out just doing menial work, then he started expounding - truthfully, he was sworn to it - on any subject people cared to ask him about. In hindsight everything he said was aimed at convincing us that it'd be awful for the Elves still living here for Men to become the things he said they were destined to become. Feeding our desire to leave Valinor with the fear that our homeland was being overrun by fast-breeding, less intelligent, less competent, vicious, cruel and miserable creatures.
It's possible to do quite a lot of that without telling any lies.
It's possible to do quite a lot of that without telling any lies.
Ironically, one thing he said was that eventually Men would design weapons that could rip cities apart and kill everyone in them. And now we are trying to do that. To be fair, he also said that Men would use the weapons against each other, and that we're not planning on, but as far as dangerousness was a concern that motivated us -
purposeful_glory
Quendi have an unusually low background level of intraspecies conflict. I'm not sure why, because there seems to be a perfectly normal range of reactions to its presence once it's instigated.
Maybe immortality makes people less inclined to risk their lives on killing other people. Maybe growing up in genuine absolute safety has benefits that almost make up for all the drawbacks of Valinor.
purposeful_glory
Can't be immortality, there's other realms that have or have achieved that. Growing up in safety wouldn't explain why the Quendi who didn't go to Valinor are peaceful among each other too.
Then I really don't know. I have to say, being one of the only murderers in the history of your people isn't fun but I wouldn't want to fix it by having more of them.