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Post by tkdco2 on Aug 12, 2022 0:13:53 GMT -6
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Post by tkdco2 on Aug 21, 2022 17:22:34 GMT -6
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Post by tkdco2 on Aug 26, 2022 17:05:10 GMT -6
Was the One Ring actually destroyed?
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Post by tkdco2 on Aug 26, 2022 17:10:42 GMT -6
If LOTRO players are okay with this character, they shouldn't complain about Harfoots appearing in the Amazon show.
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Post by doublejig2 on Aug 26, 2022 17:34:16 GMT -6
Good geophysicist presentation, applicable to the general volcano, but not to Mount Doom, which is a place of great and dark sorcery where the One Ring was forged - that's why it can be destroyed there.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2022 8:07:05 GMT -6
Good geophysicist presentation, applicable to the general volcano, but not to Mount Doom, which is a place of great and dark sorcery where the One Ring was forged - that's why it can be destroyed there. The types of people who over-analyze whether normal lava would melt the ring are the same types who ask "why didn't they just ride the Eagles to Mordor?" Those people deserve our pity. Society is failing them.
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Post by tkdco2 on Aug 28, 2022 12:47:44 GMT -6
Good geophysicist presentation, applicable to the general volcano, but not to Mount Doom, which is a place of great and dark sorcery where the One Ring was forged - that's why it can be destroyed there. The types of people who over-analyze whether normal lava would melt the ring are the same types who ask "why didn't they just ride the Eagles to Mordor?" Those people deserve our pity. Society is failing them. How is society failing them? I don't understand where you're coming from.
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Post by tkdco2 on Aug 28, 2022 12:49:38 GMT -6
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Post by tkdco2 on Sept 21, 2022 0:18:51 GMT -6
Here are a couple of worldbuilding ideas for my game. In TA 1640, kings still rule in Arthedain and Gondor. While correspondence between them is uncommon, it still happens. Despite any bonds of kinship being tenuous at best, the kings still use "cousin" when addressing each other. Letters would begin with "To Our Most Illustrious Royal Cousin" or the like. MERP has Orcs of the Flame in Southern Mirkwood, while LOTRO has the Ghash-hai (Fire Folk) in Moria and Mordor. In my timeline, those Orcs fled from Dol Guldur when the White Council drove out the Necromancer. They went to Mordor, where they underwent certain physical changes and many were sent to Moria and Angmar before the War of the Ring.
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Post by tkdco2 on Sept 22, 2022 12:47:47 GMT -6
It's September 22, Bilbo and Frodo's birthday. Happy Hobbit Day!
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Post by tkdco2 on Sept 23, 2022 23:47:33 GMT -6
My head cannon for a few characters and places:
Rivendell: After Elrond sails to the West, Rivendell is no longer hidden by the power of Vilya. It is still in a well-hidden and defensible location, so taking it by force remains a challenge. In the Fourth Age, Rivendell becomes a waypoint for elves traveling to the Grey Havens. It remains a place of lore. While the elves will take their knowledge of Middle-earth with them, they will leave copies of their lore for the Dunedain, who will inherit Rivendell when all the elves leave.
Elladan and Elrohir: The brothers will stay on Middle-earth long enough to make sure Elessar and Arwen are secure in their thrones. They will march with Elessar on his campaigns against any remaining enemies of Gondor. They will also deal with any remaining threats in the Misty Mountains and the Trollshaws. Eventually they will sail to the West with Celeborn.
Radagast: The Brown Wizard was not idle during the War of the Ring. He covertly sent intelligence to the Free Peoples via his animal friends. After Sauron's fall, Radagast made contact with Yavanna. Animals and plants also suffered from the ravages of Sauron's forces, and unlike the Free Peoples, they had no champion to heal their hurts. So Radagast requested that he remain in Middle-earth as a protector of nature, until the damage done to it has been healed. Yavanna granted his request, and Radagast began his new mission. Perhaps he too eventually sailed to Valinor.
I'm not sure if Thranduil eventually sailed to the West or remained in Middle-earth. He would probably stay with his people and either leave or remain depending on what the majority of his subjects wished to do.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2022 5:13:17 GMT -6
Another silly but funny LOTR meme. Political alignment chart for the First Age, yanked from Reddit:
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Post by Falconer on Sept 24, 2022 13:20:21 GMT -6
Excellent!!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2022 6:26:59 GMT -6
Posting fan-edits of movies is against the rules, but posting videos by the creators of those edits talking about their edits is not, so nyaaaaah *raspberry noises*
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Post by tombowings on Sept 25, 2022 8:08:11 GMT -6
Look at that alignment chart, Tolkien really must have had a thing for pointy ears.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2022 11:31:29 GMT -6
Look at that alignment chart, Tolkien really must have had a thing for pointy ears. Strangely enough, he never once directly states that Elves have pointy ears, but he indirectly does so by comparing Hobbit ears to Elven ears at one point.
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Post by tombowings on Sept 25, 2022 12:36:38 GMT -6
Strangely enough, he never once directly states that Elves have pointy ears, but he indirectly does so by comparing Hobbit ears to Elven ears at one point. My whole life is a lie! I have been deceived by the one who forged the ring of power. Those pesky writers and their typewriters.
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Post by tkdco2 on Sept 25, 2022 16:15:35 GMT -6
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2022 16:47:20 GMT -6
Strangely enough, he never once directly states that Elves have pointy ears, but he indirectly does so by comparing Hobbit ears to Elven ears at one point. My whole life is a lie! I have been deceived by the one who forged the ring of power. Those pesky writers and their typewriters. In all likelihood he very much intended them to have pointy ears. The fact that Hobbits have pointy ears that are compared to that of an Elf is a giveaway. It's just that it's always conveniently left out of every physical description of an Elf. It's also telling that the iconic artists the Tolkien Estate use over and over like Alan Lee draw them with pointed ears. Christopher Tolkien had veto power over all such artwork and was always fine with it.
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Post by Falconer on Sept 25, 2022 18:20:28 GMT -6
Read the Michael Martinez. Not sure what all he is worked up about. “The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than [human]” — good enough for me.
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Post by tdenmark on Sept 25, 2022 19:25:24 GMT -6
Posting fan-edits of movies is against the rules, but posting videos by the creators of those edits talking about their edits is not, so nyaaaaah *raspberry noises* He's right. That Gollum scene is a masterpiece. Peter Jackson at his finest. If only the rest of The Hobbit had been told with that level of artistry it would indeed have rivaled LotR. For what it's worth I still love the Hobbit, it just feels like the studio didn't give PJ the time he needed to do what he's capable of.
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Post by tkdco2 on Sept 25, 2022 19:44:19 GMT -6
Yeah the part about Elf (and Hobbit) ears being pointed and leaf-shaped are fine, as long as elf ears are like those in the Peter Jackson films. The giant elf ears found in Record of Lodoss War are an abomination, although it is otherwise an excellent series.
Interestingly enough, in The Fall of Gondolin, Voronwe recognizes Tuor as a mortal by his eyes. There was no mention of ears or even a beard, which Tuor would have grown after living in the wilderness for years. Perhaps Elves being beardless was a late addition?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2022 9:21:07 GMT -6
Cirdan has a prominent beard. It could be that beardlessness is more cultural than genetic.
edit: Too many Elves with "C" names in this universe.
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Post by tkdco2 on Sept 26, 2022 14:55:16 GMT -6
Cirdan has a prominent beard. It could be that beardlessness is more cultural than genetic. edit: Too many Elves with "C" names in this universe. Mahtan, Feanor's father-in-law, also had a beard. One of Tolkien's ideas was that elves had three cycles of life, and elven men grew beards on the third cycle. Cirdan was already well into his third cycle, hence the beard. Mahtan was unusual because his beard grew during his second cycle. However, in The Nature of Middle-earth, it's stated that beardlessness was an elven trait, and those Dunedain with any amount of elven blood couldn't grow beards. This group included Aragorn and Boromir. So it was another case of Tolkien changing his mind again. On the subject of elves, here's another video about them, although I'm sure we all know most of it already. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrgRmxq8Nqs
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2022 15:02:00 GMT -6
Seems like Tolkien never quite made up his mind on a lot of these subjects, then. Kind of like the identities of the Blue Wizards, and what time they arrived, and whether they succeeded in their tasks or not. Or the origin of Orcs. I bring those two up because "Rings of Power" seems to be going a certain direction with certain subjects by making decisions that match some of the things he said some of the time, which is pretty much what you have to do. Just pick one and go with it, because they contradict.
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Post by tkdco2 on Sept 26, 2022 16:04:31 GMT -6
That's how I do it. I use some of the later material for entertainment and reference, but my canon materials are The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales. This is important because books written by other authors like Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-earth and Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-earth reference the novels. Since I often run games set in Middle-earth, and the reference books are available to my players, it's important to keep things consistent for the campaign. That said, Michael Martinez has stated that there is no Tolkien canon. The Hobbit and LOTR are the only works that can truly be considered canon, since they were published during the author's lifetime. Besides, canon is overrated anyway. Modern fans seem to be obsessed with it, but but it never bothered the ancients. Aphrodite has two origin stories, and Arthurian legends has so many different versions.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2022 15:34:59 GMT -6
I would add that Aphrodite has two origin stories that we know of. Imagine all the ancient tales Humanity have shared around camp fires over the millennia. I'm sure that what was actually passed down to us is the merest fragment. I read an article a while back that one candidate for the oldest surviving story from Humanity's infancy is the story of the five sisters who became a constellation, since it appears in every single culture on the planet, including Native American ones. And of course, people becoming stars is a thing in Tolkien as well. (And maybe vice versa in the new tv show.)
But yes, there's no Tolkien "canon" outside Hobbit and LOTR, since he never actually published any of his other material and it contradicts itself in so many ways. The Appendices thankfully cover a lot of that in broad strokes, but The Silmarillion is the literary equivalent of finding a rough draft of a movie script and making a fan film based on it. I'm really glad it was published and I've read it three or four times but I don't see it as "canon" in quite the same way as the other two.
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Post by tkdco2 on Sept 30, 2022 21:25:47 GMT -6
Some ambience (music + sound effects) for Minas Tirith. Pictured is the Court of the Fountain on the top tier of the city, with the White Tower of Ecthelion behind it. Just to the left of the fountain is the sapling of the White Tree Aragorn and Gandalf found. The scene is from Midsummer Festival soundtrack, celebrating Aragorn and Arwen's marriage in the game. It's good background music for your game in any case, even if your game isn't set in Middle-earth. www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3kPEWiZ98k
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Post by tkdco2 on Oct 3, 2022 17:40:56 GMT -6
While browsing this forum, I ran into an old thread about expanding the creature list. There was a link to creatures encountered in LOTRO, but that link has expired. Here's a LOTRO Wiki link to a list of creatures by genus. Note that many are regular animals. Others may be giant versions of them, like giant bats or bugs. Some, like the Bog-lurker, are truly bizarre. Take what you find useful and assign whatever stat block you see fit.
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Post by tkdco2 on Oct 7, 2022 22:51:37 GMT -6
Elven genealogies from The Silmarillion explained in just under an hour.
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