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Silvan elves? I guess those are elves. Ok. Sure.
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Sep 28, 2016 12:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The implication seems to be that the elf economy revolves around 1) limited agriculture and hunting, and 2) extremely high-skill handicrafts. Yeah, this is pretty much it I think. Over *time* the wilds around an elven settlement have been carefully cultivated so that there is always something to just sort of pick up and eat. If you're feeling plucky you can take 5 minutes with your super bow skills and super stealth and kill something. Elven wine and bread are so exceptional because some elf actually took time out of their busy poetry slam schedule to do something productive. As far as hobbit feudalism goes I always just assumed that since they had no real external threats and their land was like the perfect fertile valley and they have a super valuable export crop that the pretty much gave no fucks and mostly just tithed stuff up the chain out of habit.
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Sep 28, 2016 14:51
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No they were part of and established by an explicit feudal monarchy and protected by the remnants of same on the request of Gandalf.
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Sep 28, 2016 15:09
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Meanwhile, the Dwarves just went "gently caress that noise" with regards to farming of any kind. They just focus on making awesome weapons, armor and various gizmos (I think I remember toys being mentioned) and trade them for food.
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Sep 28, 2016 15:15
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euphronius posted:As for elves I don't think they farm. They are much to blue blood for that. So they probably just don't eat much. But they make bread and wine so who knows. You can make bread and wine from gathering stuff that grows in the wild. I dunno, I mean elves revere Yavanna a whole lot don't they? I doubt they would see growing things as a lower class occupation. Although I wouldn't be surprised if their version of farming was less manual labor and more singing to the trees or some poo poo.
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Sep 28, 2016 16:58
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Elves convince the plants to farm themselves. They don't till soil, but they do harvest - probably mostly directly before mealtime. Everyone is a craftsman, and some people's craft is gardening. The garden is the entire forest. Doing things the hard way is for men.
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Sep 28, 2016 17:56
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euphronius posted:No they were part of and established by an explicit feudal monarchy and protected by the remnants of same on the request of Gandalf. Yeah, initially. A thousand years later though? Habit.
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Sep 28, 2016 23:31
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Radio! posted:I dunno, I mean elves revere Yavanna a whole lot don't they? I doubt they would see growing things as a lower class occupation. Although I wouldn't be surprised if their version of farming was less manual labor and more singing to the trees or some poo poo. I've read everything and there was no farms. But you are right signing to plants seems likely. No wait I think there was farms around gondolin?
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Sep 29, 2016 00:01
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A surprising amount of elves live underground, I figure they have like hydroponics going on down there. Sun lamps blessed with the Light of The Trees and poo poo. And obviously those hicks in Mirkwood eat spiders.
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Sep 29, 2016 01:42
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euphronius posted:Silvan elves? I guess those are elves. Ok. Sure. Bendigeidfran posted:And obviously those hicks in Mirkwood eat spiders. Legolas was clearly modeled after one of the Deliverance villains.
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Sep 29, 2016 16:33
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Legolas wasn't a silvan elf. He was a real elf.
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Sep 29, 2016 16:42
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Eh I guess the Sindar and Nandor are close in elf purity terms.
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Sep 29, 2016 16:49
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The helpful nerds at Stack Exchange have assembled most of the textual evidence for Elven diet here. We've gone over most of the answers in thread, though the mention of mead here:The Lay of the Children of Hurin posted:On a time was Turin at the table of Thingol there was laughter long and the loud clamour of a countless company that quaffed the mead, amid the wine of Dor-Winion that went ungrudged in their golden goblets; and goodly meats there burdened the boards, neath the blazing torches. suggests that bee-keeping for honey was also practiced.
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Sep 29, 2016 19:52
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If you ask me the Noldor reached Peak Elf. The Vanyar were closest to the gods but as a result barely did anything and just hung out on their mountain all day. The Teleri were silly beach elves with seashell houses and doing gently caress knows what, the others like the Sindar and the Nandor never even saw the Light of Aman. I mean what kind of elf is that. poo poo.
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Sep 30, 2016 03:34
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Was Thranduin Noldor? I can't remember.
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Sep 30, 2016 04:25
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Ynglaur posted:Was Thranduin Noldor? I can't remember. Sindar. Made king of the Silvan Elves of the Woodland Kingdom because there's a strict hierarchy of which elves are Better, and if a Better Elf is living among you, why, he's just naturally going to be in charge. The natural order of things. See also why Lothlorien, originally a Nandorin realm, was ruled by a Sindar and a Noldor. Them poo poo-tier elves just know their place.
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Sep 30, 2016 05:34
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Sindar. Made king of the Silvan Elves of the Woodland Kingdom because there's a strict hierarchy of which elves are Better, and if a Better Elf is living among you, why, he's just naturally going to be in charge. The natural order of things. I thought Celeborn was later retconned to be Noldor, and came over with Galadriel rather than hooking up in Doriath.
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Sep 30, 2016 05:46
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Ynglaur posted:I thought Celeborn was later retconned to be Noldor, and came over with Galadriel rather than hooking up in Doriath. Unfinished Tales has him being Teleri, but in Silmarillion he's listed as Thingol's great-nephew or something.
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Sep 30, 2016 12:10
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are the bog elves actually any different from the orcs?
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Sep 30, 2016 13:05
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Hogge Wild posted:are the bog elves actually any different from the orcs? *looks at Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsijänkä* No.
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Sep 30, 2016 13:32
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Thranduil was king based on skull measurements.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:42
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Ynglaur posted:Was Thranduin Noldor? I can't remember. Sindar.
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Sep 30, 2016 23:12
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Tho Sindar are still under Noldor because they never went to Aman.
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Sep 30, 2016 23:13
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Ah, finally found the Tolkien thread. I knew there had to be one somewhere on these forums. No idea if any of you know about it, but my old school and Tolkien's alma mater, King Edward's, made a short film about his time at the school and then Oxford and WW1 https://vimeo.com/110810980
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Oct 6, 2016 23:39
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Shibawanko posted:If you ask me the Noldor reached Peak Elf. The Vanyar were closest to the gods but as a result barely did anything and just hung out on their mountain all day. The Teleri were silly beach elves with seashell houses and doing gently caress knows what, the others like the Sindar and the Nandor never even saw the Light of Aman. I mean what kind of elf is that. poo poo. 0/10 would not sail into the west with
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Oct 8, 2016 08:57
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Sindar. Made king of the Silvan Elves of the Woodland Kingdom because there's a strict hierarchy of which elves are Better, and if a Better Elf is living among you, why, he's just naturally going to be in charge. The natural order of things.
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Oct 8, 2016 09:43
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There's going to be a Christopher Tolkien edited standalone The Tale of Beren and Lúthien in 2017.
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Oct 19, 2016 21:57
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Roark posted:There's going to be a Christopher Tolkien edited standalone The Tale of Beren and Lúthien in 2017. Good. I love that story.
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Oct 19, 2016 22:05
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Roark posted:There's going to be a Christopher Tolkien edited standalone The Tale of Beren and Lúthien in 2017. I hope Sauron appears as Tevildo, Prince of Cats and forces Beren to do the dishes in his kitchen.
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Oct 20, 2016 03:43
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New Tolkien biopic's being planned, with the somewhat uncreative name of Middle Earth. Not sure if it'll get off the ground honestly. While I find Tolkien to be a very endearing person and would def. enjoy a good film about him, his estate is a bit...touchy about these things.
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Nov 14, 2016 22:26
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It would be fine if there was the slightest hope that his story would be treated with respect, but as it is...
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Nov 15, 2016 04:49
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Shiretalk: the only reason the Shire was safe was because of centuries of protection by the Rangers. It's not that it is a backwater with no evil, its safety is an artificial creation. Also it is kind of a post-apocalyptic wasteland: it's mentioned a few times that they used to have more machines and stuff but now all that is in a special museum.
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Nov 15, 2016 14:59
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Brainiac Five posted:The History of The Hobbit, John Rateliff. Seven bucks for the Kindle edition. Guy did his doctorate on Lord Dunsany and was a close personal friend of Taum Santoski, who gets a lot of mentions in the LOTR sections of the HoME volumes. Santoski started working on a textual history of The Hobbit and Rateliff ended up completing it. In the middle of reading this BTW, great recommendation! Rateliff kinda cracks me up from time to time though—he adheres like a motherfucker to the HoME footnote format for all his coverage of the various manuscript versions and he is clearly very well read, but he has apparently never encountered the words "burbling" or "whirring" and feels the need to put glossary footnotes for them with OED citations  I mean gently caress me  WHAT IS THIS NEW MYSTERY Data Graham fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Dec 1, 2016 |
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Dec 1, 2016 17:20
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sat on my keys! posted:Actually, Orthanc was built the way it looks in the Fellowship at the start, complete with the claw/fang bits on top. Numenoreans were mean colonial overlords. I was reading backwards and saw this post: This is actually something I've wondered about for a while. I actually remember reading the Middle Earth Role Playing game book, and it giving a description of the effects of the ring, in typical roleplaying game fashion (increases the effects and duration of all spells by three times, etc.). I think the ring works better as a metaphor for spiritual corruption than by treating it in the mechanistic way of roleplaying games. One thing about the ring: how did the Last Alliance succeed against Sauron while he had the ring? Was it because there were more elves and men in Middle Earth, and they had better technology and organization? Was it because the elves and men had stronger "magic" to resist Sauron on that level? Because if we take the ring as being something that reflects the corruption of "Arda Marred", a way that Sauron was tapping into the evil tendencies of the world itself, then it seems odd that his armies could be destroyed just by having a few more Numenoreans with sharper swords.
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Dec 1, 2016 21:20
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if you try to come at LotR in terms of strict logistics rather than as constructed mythology and repurposed catholic doctine you're going to come up short imo has anyone read tolkien's Lay of Aotrou and Itroun?
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Dec 1, 2016 21:29
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glowing-fish posted:I was reading backwards and saw this post: Well by the point of the Last Alliance, basically none of the Free Peoples were willing to listen to Sauron anymore. He kind of had to get a "foot in the door" as it were, once you started taking his advice it was hard to stop, but if you didn't in the first place he had to physically beat you which he wasn't very good at doing. The remaining Elves were survivors of the war in Eregion (where Sauron had betrayed the remaining Noldor and stolen the Rings from Celebrimbor) and the Numenorean refugees were the Elf-friends who hadn't listened to Sauron about trying to assault Valinor. Since they weren't willing to give him the figurative time of day, he had to use his armies against them. Ar-Pharazon had already smacked the poo poo out of Sauron's forces earlier, and there were more Elves left in Middle-Earth at this time. As well, even the refugees from Numenor (Elendil and his sons and their people) were "better"/"stronger" than the best humans of the late Third Age you meet in LOTR. The Last Alliance beseiged Barad-dur for years and years, and only when all his armies were destroyed did Sauron come out to fight them himself. He kind of sucks at physical confrontations (even with the Ring), so Elendil and Gil-Galad were able to beat him though they died in the process. To add a little bit more to this: How easy it was for Sauron to convince you it was hopeless to fight and you had to do what he said depended on both how strong-willed you were and how good a person you were. The Elves and freshly-minted Arnor/Gondorians were very good and very strong-willed people. In LOTR, it takes Sauron ages to convince Denethor that it's hopeless to resist, because he's good and very willful. In fact, none of Sauron's other servants were strong enough to use the Palantir and fight with Denethor in this way. But Saruman was (relatively) easy to corrupt, even though he was very strong-willed, because he'd already kind of independently come around to the idea that it was OK to dominate weaker people into doing what he wanted (something he used his super-charming voice/really high CHA score for). The Elves immediately took off their Rings of Power once they realized what had happened to Celebrimbor, so Sauron couldn't attack them that way. sat on my keys! fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Dec 1, 2016 |
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Dec 1, 2016 21:46
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glowing-fish posted:I was reading backwards and saw this post: Sauron was quite a bit weaker at that point. As Elrond says during the Council of Elrond, "had I a host of Elves in armor of the Elder Days it would do little but arouse the wrath of Sauron." Sauron at the end of the Third Age is strong enough that the army of Gondolin would be useless against him. But the armies of Lindon didn't get steamrollered, and Galadriel and Elrond could hold him off without using the Three. He didn't dare venture past Calenardhon for 1500 years or so after his defeat by Tar-Minastir. So Sauron was weaker back then. And it makes sense. He didn't have three thousand years of working to inspire Morgoth-cults, he didn't have the major political fracture between Gondor and Harad to exploit, Pelargir was safe enough for the Faithful to use as a harbor, he may not even have had that many orcs based on the last. In addition, there were more Elves for sure, since we know that after Sauron's overthrow most remaining Noldor and many Sindar left for Eressea. Their technology was "better" in that they had a lembas equivalent, and the ability to make structures like Isengard and the outer walls of Minas Tirith, Minas Anor, and Osgiliath. But I don't know if that necessarily translates into hugely superior military equipment.
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Dec 3, 2016 03:33
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Brainiac Five posted:Sauron was quite a bit weaker at that point. As Elrond says during the Council of Elrond, "had I a host of Elves in armor of the Elder Days it would do little but arouse the wrath of Sauron." Sauron at the end of the Third Age is strong enough that the army of Gondolin would be useless against him. But the armies of Lindon didn't get steamrollered, and Galadriel and Elrond could hold him off without using the Three. He didn't dare venture past Calenardhon for 1500 years or so after his defeat by Tar-Minastir. So Sauron was weaker back then. And it makes sense. He didn't have three thousand years of working to inspire Morgoth-cults, he didn't have the major political fracture between Gondor and Harad to exploit, Pelargir was safe enough for the Faithful to use as a harbor, he may not even have had that many orcs based on the last. Part of the legendarium's charm is that so many things are never really described, especially the power levels of the Maiar and what they actually do. Gandalf fights off the Ringwraiths on Weathertop? How does he do it? By casting fireballs? By meditating on the music of the Ainur and defeating them on a spiritual level? We aren't supposed to know. Some of it seems to be Tolkien's own evolving mythology. We have Morgoth presented as an enemy commander who could have possibly been defeated by Fingolfin, and is also a gnostic spirit greater than all the Valar put together, whose being infused all of Arda. I think Sauron is kind of treated the same way: on one hand, an agent in the world, with limitations, but also as someone who has an intrinsic control of the world.
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Dec 3, 2016 17:56
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It's metaphorical, like how that horn brought down the walls of Jericho compared to galadriel laying bare the pits of dol guldur.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:33
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glowing-fish posted:Gandalf fights off the Ringwraiths on Weathertop? How does he do it? By casting fireballs? By meditating on the music of the Ainur and defeating them on a spiritual level? We aren't supposed to know. Personally, I like the idea that half of Gandalf's magic is knowing how to make explosives. He's always packing a few homemade hand grenades.
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Dec 4, 2016 09:37
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