Quenta Isilaranyëo

[Labster]

Quenta Isilaranyëo - The Story of the Moon Kingdom

An account of the Moon Kingdom, as founded by Eärendil the Sailor and his crew, and the society they created there.  Tells the story of the Telperanda, or Silver Millenium, under his daughter, Queen Serenity --  from its height across the all worlds of Arda, save Earth, to its tragic fall at the end of the Fourth Age.


(Sailor Moon/Silmarilion (Lord of the Rings))

---

A year a half back I had an idea about a crossover where Usagi's Ginzuishou was actually a Silmaril.  There were a couple posts that probably still sum up my basic ideas:
http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/s...#pid176305
http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/s...#pid176395

Anyway, I finally decided to write a little something, which is featured in the next post.  I think I was indirectly inspired by a statue I saw while location scouting for my other fic, but that's how inspiration goes.

Right now, I'm trying to decide which fourteen Senshi were appointed by which of the fourteen Vala.  Some are super obvious, like Ulmo: lord of the sea, sometimes doesn't get along with the rest of the Vala, best musician of the group... okay that's definitely Neptune/Michiru.  Others are more questionable, like Aulë of the Earth -- he kind of goes with Mamoru's mineral theme, but also forged the chain that held Morgoth so I'm leaning towards Venus.  It, um, gets worse when trying to consider Ceres, Juno, Vesta, and Pallas.

The second draft looks like this:

Mercury  Ami      Vairë
Venus    Minako   Aulë
Earth    Mamoru   Tulkas
Moon     Usagi    Varda
Mars     Rei      Lórien
Ceres    Ceres    Vána
Vesta    Vesta    Oromë
Juno     Juno     Nessa
Pallas   Pallas   Estë
Jupiter  Makoto   Yavanna
Saturn   Hotaru   Nienna
Uranus   Haruka   Manwë
Neptune  Michiru  Ulmo
Pluto    Setsuna  Mandos


I feel like I may be under-using Estë, who represents healing, and that maybe Usagi should have her patronage rather than that of Varda Star-Queen.  But that kind of throws the whole thing into disarray.  I guess the good news is it doesn't have to match exactly, these are people not ideals.  I guess I'm asking, is anyone here a big Tolkien fan who might have a better idea how to sort it out?

[Labster]

Most stories come to an end.  They have to, for some day, everything gets settled: the heroes get their goals, and the villains get their due.  And then the people themselves pass on, as do eventually the memories of those who knew them.  Only the story remains.

But when a story concerns an eternal thing, it cannot end.  It can only echo through time, repeat itself a little differently.  For the ages of the world pass, but the objects of great power and beauty are coveted by each generation anew, even unto the present day.  Perhaps, some future people can avoid this cruel fate.  And yet, even those people who suffer the most would never wish to part with the hope and joy the crystals bring.

The history of the Silmarili in the First Age and earlier is too long and convoluted to reproduce here, and another excellent work is already written on the topic.  But a brief summary may be illustrative, especially on those points embellished.

When the Ainur first arrived, the Earth was formless, and the Sun a dim glow across the realm of Arda.  As Arien kindled the sun, the Valar set about the task of preparing for the arrival of the Eruhíni, the children of Ilúvatar.  Thus they formed the Earth, sculpting its mountains and carving its oceans, populating it with plants and all of the lesser creatures.

The supposed lamps at each end of the Earth, Illuin and Ormal, ostensibly lit the world in these days.  However, this was just mere legend, likely a corruption of the story of the Trees.  The Sun was present in the earliest of days, though it was the only light.  When it was near time for the first children to arrive, Varda cleared the orbits of the heavens, gathering the gas and rock to fashion the wandering planets, and revealing the night sky.  This is how the Valië Varda first earned her title, Elbereth, or Star Queen.

Thus when the Elves first awoke, their nights were filled only with starlight.  However, as Melkor's dissension grew into outright rebellion against his fellow Valar -- and eventually against Eru himself -- the other Valar fashioned the Moon to limit the evil that could be accomplished under cover of darkness.

In commemoration of this achievement, Vala Yavanna cultivated two trees to light the continent of Aman.  The silver tree, Telperion, and the golden tree, Laurelin, dimmed and shined with day and night in Valimar. 

Meanwhile, Melkor repeatedly tried to tempt Arien, the maia who guided the Sun, as he had done with so many other fire spirits -- whom we now know as Balrogs.  Unable to win her over, instead Melkor ravished Arien, and as a result, the pure eminence of light in Aman was forever tarnished.

The Sun's light, though still borne by Arien and still warming and nourishing the world, became harsh and blinding.  Even the Moon's reflected light became weak and wavering, though still a guide in the night.  But on the highest mountain of Aman, the pure light of the trees still shone.

One day Fëanor, son of Finwë, perhaps the greatest of the Noldorin craftsmen, crafted three jewels, one a silver crystal bearing Telperion's light, another a golden crystal with the light of Laurelin, and a third gem that captured the light of both trees.  The jewels were called Silmarili, and each Silmaril was beautiful beyond compare.  It was at this point that the desire to own and control the true light of creation entered the world.

The great spider-being Ungoliant, at the prompting of Melkor, with her awful fangs poisoned the Two Trees.  Even Yavanna and Nienna could not save the trees, but with great labor preserved a small part from each tree:  Telperion's last fruit remained, and Laurelin's last flower blossomed and seeded, to grow into the White Tree of Gondor.

But pure light that had remained in the Two Trees was no more.  No more was the world bathed in the true light; the only pure light remaining in the world lay within the three Silmarils.

A lot of things happened at this point, with Finwë being killed, the Silmarils doing a stint on Melkor's crown, and the blood oath of Fëanor, sworn against Melkor (whom he renamed Morgoth), to reclaim the jewels.  And true to their word, they slew all else who possessed the gems, even their kin.

Even the descendents of Beren, who stole a jewel from Morgoth's crown, faced the wrath of the sons of Fëanor.  With Beren's Simaril, Elwing narrowly escaped across the ocean to her husband Eärendil, sailor and half-elven.  Together they returned to Valinor, and persuaded the Valar to make war.  With the power of the silver crystal, Eärendil was able to destroy the dragon Ancalagon, whose power was Morgoth's last ditch attempt at victory.  After the War of Wrath, Morgoth was judged by his fellow Valar and cast deep into the void, far outside our galaxy.

As the First Age drew to an end, the Silmarils were scattered.  One was thrown deep into a volcano, to rest in the earth; another was lost in the sea.  But the silver crystal went into the skies, borne by Eärendil, aboard his flying ship Vingilótë.  Taking the fate of Elves, for the sake of his wife Elwing and the rest of his crew, they spread the light of the silver crystal in the night sky to give hope to those in darkness.

Eärendil and Elwing's son Elros chose the Gift of Men, and founded Númenor before passing early in the Second Age.  Their other son Elrond chose the Gift of Elves, and was instrumental in the defeat of Sauron, before leaving to Valinor aboard the White Ship, marking the end of the Third Age.

But up in the heavens, they had a third child, a daughter, whom they named Kalainë, though she is better known by her name translated to English: Serenity.  This is primarily her story.

As Eärendil and his crew founded the Moon Kingdom, the last kingdom of elves, they set in motion the events that would bring about the end of the Fourth Age, and yet another remaking of the world.  They could hardly help it, though.  The eternal Silmarils are fated to bring both hope and destruction to the world, again and again.


A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
-- "Endymion", Keats

---

Notes:

Quenta Isilaranyëo
Literally "The Tale of the Moon Kingdom" in Quenya.  Um, if I declined that noun right.  "Quenta": account.  "Isil": moon. "Aranyë": kingdom.

But when a story concerns an eternal thing, it cannot end.
Wow, that Utena reference came fast!  The silmarili meet all of the criteria: they are an eternal thing, they have miraculous power, they are a shining thing literally and figuratively, and have the power to overthrow order.  Thus, the power to revolutionize the world.  It's no wonder that Morgoth/Chaos' agents keep trying to get them.

realm of Arda
Okay this is a bit like saying ATM Machine (but only if you really know your elf-talk).  Later Tolkien considered Arda, the realm of Manwë, to be the entire solar system.  And that other star systems could have their own Ainur, and even people?  But Arda is special not just because of elves and men, but also because Melkor was here first.

Melkor ravished Arien, and as a result, the pure eminence of light in Aman was forever tarnished.
As an Utena fan I feel bad for writing this.  First of all, it's not my own idea, it's the eventual, more scientific version that Tolkien came up with at the end of his life: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Round_Wor...lmarillion

The other to remember here is that as they are both Ainur, this "ravashing" was probably not physical, but spiritual corruption.  And once touched by sin, her soul cannot become clean again without the help of Eru, the LORD, so it's kind of like original sin.  Yet still an act by the most powerful male in Arda against a female.  In some ways, her purity held up well against the corruption, if you compare her fate to the Balrogs or even the Orcs. So, um, Morgoth was kind of a bad guy, right?

Ainur
Essentially: angels.  Or powers.  Includes the greater order, Valar, of which there are 14*, and Maiar, which are more numerous.  Melkor is technically a Vala, in fact his power is unsurpassed among the Valar, but he got kicked out of the club on account of inventing evil.

Eruhíni, the children of Ilúvatar
God.  Also known as Eru. The first children are Elves, and the second are humans. But the Ainur are also His creations, as is everything else.  Except the bad stuff Melkor makes.  If you need more detail on how *that* works, see a Theology class.

[Rajvik]

very good very interesting, i look forward to more, especially as a very big Tokien fan

[robkelk]

"Silmarilis? Are they some kind of candy?"

Thank you, Usagi; you can sit down now.

[Bob Schroeck]

"Are they good to eat?"

Thank you, Kaolla, you can sit down, too.

Nice work, Brent -- that's a fusion I never expected to see, but you did a great job dovetailing them.

[Labster]

  silmaril-candies.jpg (Size: 66.61 KB / Downloads: 268)

[robkelk]

Thank you, Shima; you can sit down now.

[classicdrogn]

I am reminded of a certain fanifc... that was really quite good, actually. A pity Camwyn doesn't seem to have been active for several years now.

[Black Aeronaut]

.....

I'm gonna have to get one of my brothers in on this. He's a big Tolkien nerd and would find this utterly fascinating.

[Labster]

A recent repost of a post by robkelk noted that the goddess Artemis had likely been named after the moon cat. Which is pretty cool and all, but where did his name come from?  Let's go back further!

Rather than being his name, it was actually his court title, from artë beside them + mith gray/silver.  Thus, he was the privy councilor beside the Silver Throne, one of the advisors at the very top of the royal bureaucracy.  This title was borrowed by the Minbari for their Gray Councilors, and in later ages borrowed by Earthly Greeks whose goddess was ascribed merged traits of both Serenity and Artemis.  (To be fair, Artemis was a proficient hunter, but rarely caught anything larger than mice.)

So far as the character we know as Artemis, he does have a given name, but it has a certain purring sound in it that humans just can't get right.  So he was one of those guys known by his title (like the Master Chief or the Doctor).

[Bob Schroeck]

Works for me. <grin>

[Labster]

Geography and Prehistory
-----

One of the fun things about writing in Tolkien's mindset is all of the world-building he does.  Of course, the stories even exist at all in order to give the languages a place to exist.  So I start to think, what was the world like in the Fourth Age?

The word that Takeuchi used for the four Youma generals was Shitennou (四天王) -- literally four heavenly kings.  (I have no idea where that second "N" came from.)  This came over from Buddhism, and each represents guardian spirits of the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west (which Fushigi Yuugi watchers would know).  Of course, given the time between the Fourth Age and the present (Sixth Age?), the mythological attributes were mostly invented later.

Endymion was a prince, of course, but where where these other kingdoms?  Asia centered, maybe?  One thing to do is to look at Tolkien, and see what he says about it.

Middle-earth is Europe.

Well, that's pretty direct.  It is supposed to be a mythical history of the English, on the same level as the Eddas.  Even the word Mediterranean literally means "in the middle of earth".  But the geography looks odd at first glance.  Indeed, the first time I read the book when I was about, oh, college freshman age, I pretty much looked at Mordor and instantly laughed at the right-angled mountain ranges.

There're a couple of articles where a geologist takes a look at the mountains and rivers of Middle-earth.  I feel like a few criticisms are unfair, like how odd he thinks it is that a river parallels a mountain range — basically all of California's major rivers do this, due to the being the impact zone of the collision with the Pacific Plate.  But he makes one very good point, that when Tolkien was writing the theory of continental drift had not yet been established.  Had he wrote a few decades later, these maps may have been much better.  All he really would have known is that the land east of England, Doggerland, flooded, and that the land of Europe had gone through many changes in past eras.  In later writings he tried to accomodate some of this new knowlege.

Some fans have done some simulations of Middle-earth projected onto Europe. Well, let's see what we've got:



Okay that kind of works, but in other ways not at all works, like putting mountains in the middle of England's swampiest swamps.  Er, I mean, most ecologically critical wetlands.  One thing that strikes me here is that Mordor seems kind of like Asia Minor over there.  That sea in the middle seems a little like Lake Tuz (which apparently disappeared completely two years ago).  Minas Tirith seems close to Gallipoli (there are floodable lands either in Rhûn or Mordor), which probably makes the Anduin an analogue to the Danube.  Ancient England being connected to the mainland is A-OK -- Doggerland didn't flood until relatively recently.

But unlike in my youth, I now look at the map and think, you know, that's a pretty damn good map of Europe — particularly in terms of cultural geography.  One has to go back to the concept Tolkien was writing: the historical myth of the the Anglo people that would have been produced in the Middle Ages, had they not been invaded by the Normans.  Yeah, weird, but all of us authors are.  So while the events are supposed to have happened in the long distant past, you should look at this through the lens of the High Middle Ages.

Tolkien definitely changed the geography to suit the plot, and he did it very accurately.  In Bret Devereaux's very long series on the Battle of Helm's Deep, he basically comes to the conclusion that most every non-magic thing was appropriate to medieval warfare, from technology to army sizes to fortifications.  The characters only bother to explain what they're doing when some bumpkin hobbit is around -- it's not as if Aragorn and Theoden need to explain basics of siege warfare to each other.  But what you see makes a lot of sense.

If you zoom out on the Middle Ages, the defining event was the conflict between the West and the East, and Tolkien uses this terminology everywhere.  In particular, it was between the advance of Islam into Christian lands, and it felt more and more like an existential struggle for Christ against the forces of Islam.  I read The Song of Roland a while back, and I highly recommend it because of the insight you get into how medieval folks actually thought — therein it describes how the evil Moslem worshippers of Apollo [sic, so very sic] were defeated by soldiers and armed clerics.  Tolkien absolutely does not want to put Muslims in the evil role in a modern tale, so he replaces them with always chaotic evil orc race.  They are not the same, but do allow an East-West conflict.

And then the geography falls into place.  The lost realm of Andor is Western Rome, which once stretched though Gaul up to the Shire.  The many walls of Minas Tirith are Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, which makes Gondor the as yet unfallen Eastern Roman Empire.  The Black Sea has not yet flooded, and is the Battle Plain, a.k.a. Dagorlad.  Across the water from Minas Tirith is the land of Mordor, which is definitely Anatolia.  The east-west mountains near Gondor are the Alps, the North-South ones are probably an imagined German highland connecting through Jutland to the Scandinavian mountains.  Rohan is a migratory horse people from the Eastern steppes that moved into the Balkans, during the Migration Period.

All of that is well and good, but for this fic I need to strip all of that historic medieval context back out, as well as use actual geography of the last glacial period.  That said, I need to keep the original medieval context of Lord of the Rings, in terms of culture and technology.  It's a real medieval society, which means that by the end of the Fourth Age, where we set our story, we'll be in an Early Modern or Modern context.  The Earthlings have to get to space somehow so they can invade the Moon, right?

But back to the earlier question: there are other kingdoms, right?  But where?  Thematically, it makes sense to put Endymion on the throne of Gondor, which seems to be near Greece, and a cromulent place for an early civilization.  This more or less would explain why Minako ended up in Greece when exploring her past.

One thing of note is that Takeuchi-sensei actually assigns the Shitennou regions of Dark Kingdom operation.  Jadeite: Far-East; Nephrite: North America; Zoicite: Europe; Kunzite: Middle-East.  We know the Dark Kingdom is evil because they are completely ignoring the Global South!  This arrangement actually kind of works.  If Gondor is something of a Mediterranean civilization, and Arnor is like Western Europe... sure.

We know there were Men in the east, in the lands where the Elves woke.  Men ostensibly woke there too -- since the prevailing theory at the time the legendarium was being conceived was the Out of Asia hypothesis.  At least some of Men of the east had fallen under the sway of Sauron -- certainly there was little communication between the West and really anyone across the Anduin near the end of the Third Age, since Greenwood the Great fell under the Necromancer's influence and became Mirkwood -- later remembered in the Norse sagas as Myrkviðr.  But since Middle-earth is Europe, the people of the East are not really important except as adversaries and subjugated peoples in The Lord of the Rings.

In any case, we have what looks to be the heart of geopolitics in the late Fourth Age: One great kingdom on Earth, surrounded by four rather large vassal states.  This seems to me to me to be kind like the setup in CLAMP's RG Veda, but the only thing I can say for sure about that manga is that attractive people fell in love with each other, then fought each other because it was ordained by fate or something.  It's possible, and not to different from what happened with Alexander's empire.  I think this can exist in a Late Modern context — the current mode of geopolitics is American hegemony, so why not hegemony in the Fourth Age, Earth's first modern period?

Since when we talk about geography, we need to know when, because geography changes.  In human lifetimes, rivers change course and coastlines erode, but much more happens over longer time.  Tolkien would have been familiar with the loss of cities to the sea in East Anglia, for instance.  So he writes that the world was remade, and geography changes -- most dramatically in the War of Wrath, where nearly all of Beleriand sinks beneath the waves. 

We know even more land must have be lost, because the Shire is not in the middle of a continent, but is on the island of Britain these days.  Not so long ago, it was connected to the mainland through Doggerland, but that land too was lost.  Much of my reasoning is in another thread, a post on the Language and Secret Prehistory of the Moon Kingdom.  But the time period where we have people in societies, but land yet to sink beneath the ocean, is the Younger Dryas event at ~ 12000 BP (~10000 BC).  This event sets the stage for another cataclysm at the end of the Moon Kingdom, which is very Tolkienesque.

So, where did cool stuff survive from the last ice age?  In Serbia and Romania, along the Danube, the Iron Gates culture had a large settlement at Lepenski Vir.  Göbekli Tepe, on the edge of Syria and Anatolia, is an ancient complex.  The city of Jericho has been inhabited and walled since the Younger-Dryas, with various periods of abandonment.  Pottery was being made in Japan in the Jomon culture (Korea/Jeulmun is just barely out of our time range).  Surprisingly there's no settled people with ceramics known in the Indian subcontinent at this time, but there's some caves in North Africa.

Some dating which has been, well, disputed in archaeology dates the megaliths at Gunung Padang on Java at around 10000 BC.  And then there's the hypothesis of not-an-archaeologist Graham Hancock that evidence of civilization from before the Younger Dryas was in land that is now submerged -- Sundaland in particular in what are now the Indonesian islands (apparently Borneo had glaciers in this period!), as well as perhaps sites in Doggerland (North Sea) and Florida/the Caribbean.  As I've been looking around at this period, I think he's essentially right that there was likely more civilization back longer, and we haven't seen most of the evidence.  Lots of places lack evidence because not enough locals are looking for it.  But that's not really an excuse to make up a larger story about a dying civilization.

Unless you're writing fiction, of course!

So as a first approximation, our five kingdoms could be Gondor/Balkans, Arnor/Western Europe, Harad (literally "South")/Arabia and Persia, Sundaland, and Japan.  I don't yet know what to name either of last two.  Japan is actually really convenient, because it means there's a reason for Usagi Serenity and her court to reincarnate in Japan, and it's also roughly where Hildórien is, the place where Men first awoke in Tolkien's history, and thus a place to reawaken.

There's a couple more notes on the geography: the D-Point is obviously either Angband or Utumno, a vast subterranean fortresses once inhabited by Morgoth and his host of nasties.  Utumno was theoretically destroyed by the Valar in the War of Wrath, but secret chambers existed where folks like Sauron hid and survived.  Where precisely any of those locations lie isn't all that important, but they're in the hyperborean tundra.  It seems exactly like the kind of place Metallia might renovate to make a bit more homey.

At the very edge of Aman, in interplanetary geography, near Pluto, lies the Door of Night through which Morgoth was ejected into the Timeless Void, and which Eärendil was left to guard.  If that's not the same as the Space-Time Door, I'll eat my hat.  Sailor Moon's Chaos (ultimate supreme big baddie) being Melkor/Morgoth is obvious, and it makes sense why Pluto cannot leave the door unguarded, and also why Chaos sends agents in from outer space rather than come himself.

Finally, let's address why I should even care about fitting geography into the real world when I'm trying to merge two mythic pasts together into one tale.  BSSM's setting in the modern day does rely on science and science fiction is part of the reason.  The main reason is, however, what kind of civilization exists in the period at the end of the Moon Kingdom.  The Moon Kingdom has, at a minimum, multiplanetary outposts, but as I argued in the other thread, it likely involves some degree of elven settlement on the outer moons.  And the Men of Earth must have a way of projecting power into space.

So we need to fix them in place, and similarly to fix them in time.  It wouldn't be too strange if a descendant of the Noldor managed to get computers working for the Mercury Computer, as the Noldor were always exceptional with craft.  But the Men are going to need to climb the technological ladder, even if they can "simply" get to the Moon with teleportation magic.  Yes, Tolkien does portray military tech as moving backwards at various points in the history of Middle-Earth, but the way to industrial progress ran right through the military technology of cannons to pressure vessels for steam power. 

And, well, some of the Men on Sauron or Saruman's side will have known how all those engines worked.  I'm not sure if Tolkien himself would have wanted that bell unrung through the destruction of Mordor and Isengard -- he talks both about the great workings of the ancient past and how awful the machinery is now -- but I think we need a higher technology level for humanity to face the half-elves of the Moon.

The other reason it should be higher is that the attack on the Moon seems kind of genocidal, which as I noted in the other thread, essentially implies nationalism.  The world then starts to look very nineteenth century, with entrenched nobility but imperial and racial ambitions.  And, like, by God if I can't make it interesting in a steampunkish setting what on Earth am I doing here?

We may not need intensive agriculture, or artificial fertilizer, given the relatively low populations of Middle-earth.  But they would be able to see the world as it is, and discard the geography of legend.  And Men would have built an industry of some kind, perhaps not as dark and noisome as the evil ones made, but some kind of machinery nonetheless.

And bringing it back to the time setting of the Younger Dryas, that temperature spike looks awfully familiar.  Could we detect this civilization from the geologic record?  Probably, if it was real, but it really depends on the the chemical signatures left behind.  We have some pottery, but on the other hand we hardly have textiles from 500 years ago.  Honestly prehistory is a pretty fun space to write into.

Open questions:

* How actually do Men get into space?
* Is mithril strong enough to make a space elevator?  (no, really)
* Is that orb Beryl is constantly holding a palantir?  (if so, likely the Orthanc stone due to the size)  If so, has Metalia found the others?
* What becomes of the other races?  (Dwarves and Hobbits; Elves have gone to Aman, natch)
* Is the Last Glacial Maximum caused by Metalia?
* What actually is Metalia's plan?
* Where exactly did the Blue Wizards go?  Paleo-Tokyo?

Any comments or feedback would be appreciated.

[Bob Schroeck]

Where exactly did the Blue Wizards go? Paleo-Tokyo?

Silly idea: Luna and Artemis.

[Vulpis]

Hmm. I haven't read Tolkien for a while, but IIRC isn't part of the mythology that the orcs, etc, that Morgoth has are just corrupted elves and other creatures, he's unable to actually *create* new ones?

[classicdrogn]

Except for Shelob, yes. Shelob is an eldritch horror who no one knows the origin of, according to what I remember reading about it.

[Mamorien]

Except for Shelob, yes. Shelob is an eldritch horror who no one knows the origin of, according to what I remember reading about it.

The way I remember it, Ungoliant is the eldritch horror; Shelob is just her last known personal spawn. (The spiders of Mirkwood are her grandspawn or something of the sort.)

[Labster]

Correct, Ungoliant came from beyond Arda, but likely from somewhere else in Eä -- which in your words means she's came from somewhere in darkness of space outside the solar system.  Shelob is her spawn, and Charlotte is her great-great-great-grandspawn.  She's powerful enough that she is a Spirit, which is to say of the race of Ainur but fallen.  I can't imagine how something like that could fit into the Sailor Moon universe.

The origin of orcs is a plot hole, and one that JRR himself realized.  He wants true creation of souls to only happen through the Flame Imperishable (read: Holy Spirit) held by Illúvatar alone.  But I mean, come on, we need some good baddies for our story.  And where do the fell creatures come from?  Over his life he went across a lot of potential origin stories for the orcs, for which the corrupted Elves is only one.  Possibly they're not really "alive" in the same sense, lacking the souls, similar to Manwë's Eagles.  But then there's that whole scene where the orc commanders are talking to each other and they seem kind of sentient.  Maybe men were bred in there later?  Perhaps the orcs were automatons when first made by Morgoth, barely smarter than the average Russian conscript, then perfected later by Sauron?  Perhaps youma are in somewhat of the same category.  Speaking of which:

Open questions:

* What are the youma and where do they come from?
* For the seven great youma, are they people possessed by youma, or did they become youma, or are they only possessing people in the Seventh Age but were fully monsters in the Fourth Age?

[Vulpis]

Correct, Ungoliant came from beyond Arda, but likely from somewhere else in Eä -- which in your words means she's came from somewhere in darkness of space outside the solar system.  Shelob is her spawn, and Charlotte is her great-great-great-grandspawn.  She's powerful enough that she is a Spirit, which is to say of the race of Ainur but fallen.  I can't imagine how something like that could fit into the Sailor Moon universe.

The origin of orcs is a plot hole, and one that JRR himself realized.  He wants true creation of souls to only happen through the Flame Imperishable (read: Holy Spirit) held by Illúvatar alone.  But I mean, come on, we need some good baddies for our story.  And where do the fell creatures come from?  Over his life he went across a lot of potential origin stories for the orcs, for which the corrupted Elves is only one.  Possibly they're not really "alive" in the same sense, lacking the souls, similar to Manwë's Eagles.  But then there's that whole scene where the orc commanders are talking to each other and they seem kind of sentient.  Maybe men were bred in there later?  Perhaps the orcs were automatons when first made by Morgoth, barely smarter than the average Russian conscript, then perfected later by Sauron?  Perhaps youma are in somewhat of the same category.  Speaking of which:

Open questions:

* What are the youma and where do they come from?
* For the seven great youma, are they people possessed by youma, or did they become youma, or are they only possessing people in the Seventh Age but were fully monsters in the Fourth Age?

Hmmm. Maybe we need to make up two more Great Youma, to bring the total up to 9.. :-) (Or...hmm, I can't remember how many Rings the dwarves had...I know the Elves had 3, and Man had 5..

Also...Charlotte? For some reason, I'm ending up a certain pig-advertiser being related, here. :-) Talk about crossovers...

[classicdrogn]

Seven rings for the Dwarves in their halls of stone, so, you know, that could fit, if it's the angle you want to take. As for generic youma, I'd lean toward them being constructs like the later Cardians or Lemures, with what they have in the way of intelligence (it does seem to vary quite a bit) being either from the shard of (insert BBEG here; Metallia or a LotR repalacement) that was used to animate them, or some sort of creature used as starting material.

edit:

non-embedded

[Labster]

I can't use the dwarven rings, because all of the Rings of Power made by Sauron lost their power when the One was destroyed. And indeed the rings from the same process not directly made by Sauron — Narya, Nenya, and Vilya (the Elven Rings) — also lost their power at the same time. Unless I pull a "somehow, Sauron returned", those particular artefacts are no more than mathoms in the Fourth Age, a mathom being a Hobbit word for thing that is no longer useful, but you don't want to throw it away.

That said, history may start to rhyme, as they say. And there should definitely be new artefacts of power, both magical and technological.

[Labster]

I still think about this story, and may eventually write some more.  There are a couple of articles that made me think more about the setting, because it's a historian doing an analysis about what this the cultures of Middle-Earth believed from the writing they left behind, so to speak.  Basically Dr. Deveraux's patrons forced him to watch Amazon's Rings of Power, whereupon he wrote a five part series on how this season failed on every level.  But that's not the important part!  On reflecting on the setting, he ended up writing about the internal values of the Arda, and Tolkien himself:

The first, Why Celebrimbor Fell but Boromir Conquered: the Moral Universe of Tolkien, explores how people's moral choices matter much more than their greatness -- and how the scriptwriters seem to have no clue compared to the fandom.  Someone in the comments linked this post on SV -- the TL;DR is that someone asked what would happen if the 1860s era Union Army showed up as the only defenders of Minas Tirith, would they win?  People went back and forth about whether they would be able to resist the fear attack of the Witch King, but then someone notes that Union soldiers have been bathed in the blood of the Lamb, posted a video of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and flat out completely won an internet argument.

I think it's worth noting that we live in this same world, and even in times as dark as these, we need not have mortal fear from any power on Earth.

The second post is actually more interesting, How Gandalf Proved Mightiest: Spiritual Power in Tolkien.  Magic systems!  Finally, a clear explanation of how it works!  While I think he uses Seen and Unseen somewhat wrongly here, that's kind of semantics.  The moral universe can directly affect the physical universe, and simply stating the truth with power behind it is the core of Gandalf's magic.  He also talks about elven craft-magic, for lack of a better term, which can do wondrous but not miraculous things.

This has very interesting connotations when viewed through Sailor Moon.  For one thing, it means that the speech that Sailor Moon gives at the beginning of the fight is the deepest magic going on.  Actually, it also means that we've been mistranslating Japanese to English all along, as well.  Tsuki ni kawatte, oshioki yo doesn't have any pronouns at all, and Japanese future and present tense are the same.  So maybe we should say, "In the name of the Moon, you are punished".  And reality bends towards punishment, and hopefully reconciliation.  Reality bends towards justice.  It still takes work, because choices still matter.

The other point in the article talks a bit about dark magic, which is more or less a branch of celestial magic, but largely derived indirectly from Morgoth, from something or other he left behind, some dark lie that he introduced to the world.  This is more or less exactly how BSSM gives out its dark powers, which are all ultimately derived from a being called Chaos.  And it's certainly not a stretch for Metaria and Pharoah 90 to be fallen Ainur.  Wiseman is basically doing the entire Sauron as Annatar schtick.  Galaxia is the only mortal dumb enough to make a deal with Morgoth directly.

It also means that most of the miraculous powers, including most of the attack spells, likely come from celestial sources -- which I had already established in the first post was from the Valar.  (Even though Sauron didn't corrupt the Three Rings, they still stopped working because they in some way relied on his presence in the world, his power.)  Which means that if I'm going to make a magic punk setting on prehistoric Earth capable of reaching and destroying the Moon Kingdom, most likely it's going to run on dark magic.  Perhaps with a bit of craft magic mixed in as well.

So Endymion is a prince of a civilization powered by dark energy, fallen Maiar tempting nations with more power and individual men with false visions of their own greatness.  And then he falls in love with a girl.  Endymion's end doesn't come in victory, but he still conquers, just as Boromir did.  He let love and justice into his heart.

[Labster]

Since I lost my hard drive yesterday, I thought that I'd post some of my recent thoughts directly the to the forum, so that I'd have a backup somewhere.  I do have a backup, but it doesn't include this.

Oh, right, since it's a Tolkien fic I didn't think I needed this, but: Trigger Warning: Linguistics

So lately, I've been thinking about the The Æsir–Vanir War.  Or rather, there's a whole set of similar wars among the gods/powers all throughout history.  In Indian mythology, the good devas oppose the evil asuras.  In Persian mythology, you oddly get the opposite!  There, the evil daevas are fought by the ahura.  These terms seem to carry across PIE cultures.  Asura, Aesir, and Ahura are all the same word, and relate to an Old English word for god, ōs.

On the other side, you get a lot of references to devas that you may recognize: daeva, div (Middle-Eastern baddie), deus, zeus, dieu, Tiw (Anglo-Thor), Tiwar, Thor, Tyr.  Tuesday literally means "God's day", at a stretch. Note that the devils do not quite go in the "div" category, since it comes from ancient Greek diabolos, to slander or throw across, which you might know due to certain practitioners of the diabolo in Kaliedo Star.  But the conflict shows up in a lot of different cultures, all descended from Proto Indo-European speakers.

Prehistorically, what probably happened is that PIE speakers were among the first (but probably not the actual first) steppe culture to tame horses, and used horses to attain something akin to a vast empire.  Basically, what Genghis Khan did the in the middle ages, but against populations completely unprepared against horse warfare.  Likely, it wasn't a real empire, but a series of conquests from groups/families/bands of this same culture expanding into new areas, and replacing the local elites.  And from there, largely replacing the languages.

And more importantly to this discussion, cultural replacement.  So when you look at stories like the Aesir-Vanir war, it can be an echo of the gods of the new culture subjugating the old gods.  Just like the Olympians defeated the giants in Greece, and the other conflicts.  Notably, the Norse war ended in compromise, and they functionally serve as one pantheon.  Of course, "Vanir" is close to "ven*", friend, which is possibly connected to the Veneti of Venice, various other groups of Veneti in the ancient world (near Vannes in France, Gwynnedd in Wales, the Baltic Sea), and Venus.  I did a deep dive on that word when trying to figure out what Saber would think of Venetians in my other fic, but it's just extra here.  I think, perhaps the Vanir are just a little bit different than the devas.

But now it's time to leave (pre)history behind, and ask what I can actually do with this.  And instead, the war between the devas and asura is actually a cross-cultural memory of an ancient conflict.  And that conflict is the one that brings the end of the Fourth Age.

So my first order of business is to determine the good guys and the bad guys by name.  Asura seem to come from PIE *h₂ń̥suros, meaning lords, and Devas come from PIE *deywós, meaning gods.  Okey dokey.  Can I just say that "Seiraa Muun" sounds a bit like asura?  "Sera" to "sura" is not really that far, and matches with my earlier idea that they are effectively elf lords from space.  Which means that the antagonists in our story will be devas (which again, sounds a bit like devils).  (From my time as a web developer, I should have known they were evil from how much I had to fight <div>s.)

I seem to have come to the ancient Persian view, then.  I guess I should loop history back in, and this time, actual written history!  The old religion in Iran is Zoroastrianism, founded by its namesake prophet, Zarathustra.  He probably lived in historic times, but Pliny the Elder places Zoroaster in 6300 BC, and a second Zoroaster much later.  Like Friedrich Nietzsche, I'm thinking, aha, I can use that!  6300 BC is so distant that it's effectively c. 10,000 BC, and I can put Zarathustra in the scene, as an actual character in the story.

So what did Zoroaster teach?  Largely that there was a Great Lord, or an Ahura Mazda in his tongue, who created everything and represented goodness on a plane above us.  And that there was another great entity, Chaotic Spirit (locally Angra Mainyu), which tries to tear down and destroy the divine order.  And here, finally, we find a religious nexus between Tolkien and Sailor Moon.  The overall cosmology of Sailor Moon casts Usagi as a messianic figure that a cosmic horror called Chaos sends incarnations and lesser demons to try to destroy.  Good and evil are absolutely clear, clear as Crystal.

Tolkien's cosmology is clear, but has some complexities.  Obviously, he's a Roman Catholic.  But his books are written into an older, pagan world.  Intentionally before Christ or messianic thought, though occasionally heroes become just a bit messianic.  But the good God, Illuvatar, exists and was the primary force in Creation.  Melkor exists on a lower plane, the devil for whom most of his awful power can't reach Earth.  While he wouldn't write the story to be directly dualist like a Zoroastrian, we're not that far. Tolkien, along with friends like C.S. Lewis, found the moral and religious values of the pagan world to be much preferable to modernism, from a Christian perspective.

Modernity is something of a hobgoblin to Tolkien and the Inklings.  While he wrote, modernism had become the dominant global philosophy.  But of course, it ushered in all sort of bad things that we see in his books: industrial waste and extractive industry, seen in Isengard; air pollution, in Isengard and Mordor; dehumanization, seen with orcs; nationalist pride, seen in Numenor and Mordor; a climate of surveillance and fear, as with the Nazgul, and sycophants for authoritarian regimes, like Wormtongue.  And an overall turning away from old morals, old faith.  The complete collapse of modernism in academic circles by the 1980s came just a bit too late for Tolkien to see, but just in time for Sailor Moon, which is largely postmodern.  The romantic past looks forward to a messianic future in Crystal Tokyo.

So it looks like our enemies are probably proto-fascists, rebuilding a great nation that was taken away.  As I write this, it occurs to me that their founding myth is probably Numenor, and probably by people who weren't actually descendants of Numenorians.  The thing about evil, and this is 100% a real world thing too, is that every evil plan is so dreadfully familiar.  There's always false pride which excuses pointless cruelty against outsiders who somehow don't count as people. 

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of Hitler documentaries on the History Channel (for the kids: it used to have actual history), and wondered how on Earth people bought into that garbage.  Being in America right now, I see people buying into the same exact garbage with the most minor of reskins.  And, like, I see it and recognize it, and understand how it infects people, and it still makes no God damned sense to me (and I do mean God damned).  Like, for fundamentalist Christians, immigrants are literally your fellow immortals, and so many of them think it's okay to imprison them for picking strawberries without a paper.  Like, how do you think you'll feel about that when God asks how you treated your neighbors?  How do you think you will feel about that a thousand years from now, when you meet the immigrants in heaven?  How about when you meet them again, a trillion years later?  Oh, they didn't have a paper, lock them up in a Salvedorean prison.  For God's sake, really?

But I digress.  What we get is the first trip through modernism and industrialization about 12000 years ago.  The War of the Ring is able to postpone this push to conquer the world, but only for so long.  Melkor's role in the song of creation means that his patterns are always around, and there is always a path to the Dark Kingdom.  While peace and prosperity hold on Earth, wars shift more and more towards the skies.

----

The elves and half-elves who remain in Aman proper, those of the crew of Eärendil, take their flying ship, and settle in the safe harbor of the Moon.  At this time, it is a living world, one of shallow seas and silvery ferns, and broad pale-leaved acacia trees.  All of the worlds of Arda had life in those days, though none had been prepared with beasts and walking creatures, nor fruits nor fields of grain, for only Earth was fully ready for the children of Illuvatar.

Elwing, Eärendil's fair bride, returned to Earth from time to time on his voyages.  One trip, she convinced the Entwives to come with her to the Moon, to make the Moon truly bloom, a home for the remaining of the first-awakened people away from the strife of Middle-Earth.  It took centuries of hard work, but together, they were able to build gardens and farms on the Moon, and make more than an outpost, and make it in fact a home for their people.

The elves settled down and had families, and grew and multiplied, though not nearly so hastily as the humans on the world below.  Children of the Noldor, they continued to make the great ships which could sail the heavens, and ventured to the worlds beyond.  And in this way, the Eldar became "Children of the Stars" in an entirely new way.  They set foot first on the golden world, then the red world, then the one quick as water.  But past the moons of the Great Giant, they began to notice trouble.  Fell beasts had come to the outer planets, strange misshapen creatures whose tentacles were vicious, poisonous, evil.

The barrier which sealed Morgoth out of Arda could not seal out all of his minions.  And come they did.  To some, they offered delusions of power and glory, but those of strong heart chose to stay, and to fight for their homesteads on the inner worlds.

----

In this war against evil aliens (I guess they have tentacles?), the elves win, but at great cost.  Eärendil and Elwing are among the slain, and their daughter Serenity takes the throne.  But there's a bit of a demographic crisis, as the remaining (half-)elves are young and predominantly female.  The society shifts to become more matriarchal, largely by necessity.  A major problem was how to get to the sort of feminine vision of a kind of pagan moon goddess from a male-dominated elven culture in the Third Age -- this is my solution.

The next sort of problem is: what about the remaining elves in Aman-the-former-continent (where is that anyway, Europa?  Attempt no landing?) and the various Ainur.  Especially the Valar.  They are like pagan gods in a sense, but pay homage to the Most High (except that one dude, you know who), which is all Tolkien's way of making it a pagan world that leads to Christ.  But the bigger part is that I need those roles freed up for mortals to take, as sailor suited warriors of planets.

Here, I'm going to use a little divine help, and simply say that Illuvatar called them away, and that they are needed on other worlds, currently under occupation by Morgoth in his other forms of Chaos.  Without realizing it here I borrowed a little bit from C.S. Lewis, though in his reckoning, Earth is the true occupied territory under the Devil's forces and the aliens are probably better off than we.  But Sailor Moon canon supports this view of the cosmos, in all sorts of ways.  The cosmic horrors are real.  Morgoth can't reach inside the solar system unless we follow his offspring and let him into our hearts.  But there are other worlds in need of dire help (thanks Galaxia-chan (though she hasn't been born yet)).

And so each of the Valar, as a parting gift, are allowed to bless one of the children of Illuvatar with a bit of their power.  Much like Sauron, this power invested actually leaves the Vala, leaving them a bit diminished.  And, well, there's one more catch.  Each blessed person becomes a guardian tied to the worlds of Aman.  Which means that they must forsake both the Gift of the Elves and the Gift of Man, in order to receive this gift of the Valar.  Or in more concrete terms: they may never die and pass to the realm of Illuvatar, nor may they live in the blessings of the undying lands.  Instead, they are to be reborn, again and again, a guardian until the end of time.

This is actually the part where it's important that they're half-elves.  See normally, you just get the gift you were given by God, death or fading off to fairyland.  But half-elves may be granted a choice.  And so to those chosen, they are granted a third option.  This is not an easy choice -- for Venus, it means that romantic love can never follow you to the next life.  For Mars, who lost so many of her family in the war, her passion makes it the easiest choice ever.  Die painfully a thousand times?  Sure, as long as I can stop Morgoth another day.  I'm sure I can get some great stories out of this.  Tulkas, naturally, doesn't choose a champion right away, but waits until the time is right.  Later he chooses Endymion, of course, one of the last princes of the old Gondorian line, and the one that remains truest of heart.  This line, of course, goes back to Arwen, so half-elven.

Eventually, people on the Earth make contact with those on the Moon.  At one point, the princess of the moon visits Earth, lands in a bamboo field, gets found by a bamboo cutter, and everyone likes her.  The king tries to marry her, but she has to go back to the Moon.  She's still interested in dating humans, just not any of them.  Later on, someone builds a telescope, and eventually after discovery there is something like formal visits to Earth.  Maybe radio.

Here I start to remember my earlier technical constraint -- could a civilization exist only 12 kYA that we couldn't detect today?  Even those things I just mentioned have consequences -- a radio would probably decay and oxidize away.  A telescope might survive, because glass is a rock, but not if it submerged and became sea glass.  Which is a key reason to set things at the Younger Dryas, because we can bury a lot of the material culture in a way that's effectively irretrievable.  If we're talking 20 meters of sea level rise, well, you all saw Evangelion, right?  So many population centers are at low altitude.

Here, the plot proper needs to start.  I don't entirely know what happens here, because it depends on characters.  But the end is a foregone conclusion: the complete destruction of the Moon Kingdom; the loss of livable environments on all but Earth; rapid heating on Earth leading to sea level rises enough to sink major cities entirely; the end of "civilization" on Earth for the next 5000 years (and radio for 12 kyr).  It's really bad!  But not out of line for either story, which saw Numenor and most of Beleriand sink, and Sailor Moon where Galaxia set the high score record for planets glassed.  And it's not even a loss for the good guys, though it's certainly rather Pyrrhic, because people survive and evil ideas die, and Usagi carries Serenity's light into the far future.

There are a lot of elements I want to work in here:
* A steampunk setting in general, possibly as magic punk
* What is the mysterious energy powering the world?  Dark energy (anime kind, not astrophysics kind)
* Rise of nationalist and fascist movements
* Some excuse to slaughter any dwarves and hobbits still around

The key thing driving the conflict is a really old trope: immortality.  The elves who live in space stole immortality from us.  We are proud Numenorian race, and that immortality should be ours.  If we can just retrieve that silver crystal/silmaril, we can have the deathless existence we deserve (even though for some reason we celebrate death a lot and have no problem sending people to die for "the people").  This, naturally, is all bullshit, in-setting and out.  This is also the kind of bullshit you can convince a lot of people to follow.

Naturally a lot of people will taking names that oppose the Eldar (literally "people of the stars"), based on the goodness inherent in the deep earth.  You know, Beryl, Jadeite, Nephrite, Micah... those sort of names, reminder of the true gem that was stolen, the silmaril.  Finally, a reason for geological theme naming: political propaganda in the Silver Millennium.  And with this, a support for the chthonic deities, or devas, phrased as a return to the old gods, and a turning away from the a'sera, or lords of the elves.  And especially against Sera Moon, who is wrapping poor innocent Endymion around her twisted little finger.  For Beryl, the woman spurned, this is the flaw in her heart that sets the whole tragedy in motion.

Of course this is driven by those evil daevas, particularly Metalia, who is Melkor/Morgoth/Chaos's latest hope to take over Earth.  She is more competent than the male ainur who tried before.  And very nearly successful, not expecting the last chance spell by Serenity, who is essentially sacrificing herself to save humans.  Devils never really understand that kind of magic at all.  But Beryl's jealousy and pride, yeah.

There is still a decent amount of world building to do.  I really need a world map, and areas for the four generals to conquer. Something for the Blue Wizards to do.

And then there's Zoroaster, a human prophet who preaches not to follow the deceivers.  I think he survives, and tries to save civilization, fails, but settles for saving their souls instead.  He teaches people to follow the true cosmic order, and to grant deference to the holy elements (like fire, which can grant visions in BSSM).  Graham Hancock talks in his Atlantis conspiracy stuff about how there are stories of a great teacher to visited the people in different parts of the world.  Why not this guy, as a Noachian figure?  If he has access to the same stasis tech which Artemis and Luna used, maybe both of Pliny's Zoroasters are the same person? And because of people like Zarathustra, maybe there's a reason the Aesir-Vanir war ended in acceptance and reconciliation.  The evil beings couldn't be saved, but some great Earthlings stood with the Elves (a.k.a. blood traitors).  It would perhaps appeal to Tolkien's sense of Northernness.

Also people lose a lot of technology in the catastrophe.  This can happen -- the natives of the Canary Islands lost their boat technology, and were stuck there.  But they kind of have to, if I'm going to get from a world which is high medieval back down to rejoin history as she is, already in progress.  I think if you were to try to explain spaceships which hold a magical messenger from the planet Mercury, I think only parts of that get preserved, and not the spaceship part.  So we also get to use mythology as an echo of history.

Anyway, that's why I was thinking about the Aesir-Vanir War.

[Bob Schroeck]

As always, good ideas and musings here, Brent.

And that first section, heavy on the linguistics, would make a great Analysis subpage for the War in Heaven trope over on ATT.