Stat them tg

Before the Years of the Sun? Not much of one, no, mostly a few scattered jottings from Tolkien here and there, very little systematic.

>Only I'm trying to figure out how long it was between Feanor's people arriving in Middle-Earth and Fingolfin's people turning up.

If you consider the Annals of Aman a good source, (HoME volume 10, in Morgoth's ring) 3 Valian years, which comes out to about 28.5 normal earth years.

>If you consider the Annals of Aman a good source, (HoME volume 10, in Morgoth's ring) 3 Valian years, which comes out to about 28.5 normal earth years.
Well, shit.

That's really going to complicate things.

>That's really going to complicate things.

Hmm? What for? Part of the reason I mentioned it with caveat is that it seems to be WAY too long a time, both for how long elves should be able to make the journey itself and because it doesn't seem like Feanor's following is kicking about under the stars for nearly that long, giving some cause for doubt.

>Hmm? What for?
Idea I'm thinking of. I keep running into this problem over and over again, I need to think of a workaround.

What are you trying to make? And what's the recurring problem?

Crossover story. The problem is that the characters being brought over are probably going to die of old age before the third battle with Morgoth.

Especially since I'm considering have some of them end up with Fingolfin's people in the Grinding Ice, and I don't think I could make a good arc out of them spending thirty years trying to cross the distance with the elves.

So at the very least claim that it's a bad chronicle and ditch it. The entire Silm is Bilbo's translation of Elvish legends, which do not have a 100% guarantee of accuracy in the first place even if we're sure that Bilbo got them right in the first place. At least going by the Atlas of Middle Earth, the Helcaraxe isn't that wide; 45-60 miles or so. They should be able to handle that in a week, tops, even groping around in the dark and trying to figure out how to cross grinding ice like that as they go.

>characters being brought over are probably going to die of old age before the third battle with Morgoth.

That, however, is quite likely, as long as you're using normal human lifespans. Dagor Aglareb is about 60 years after the rising of the sun; so your guys are probably pretty old even if they just turn up when Fingolfin does.

>So at the very least claim that it's a bad chronicle and ditch it. The entire Silm is Bilbo's translation of Elvish legends, which do not have a 100% guarantee of accuracy in the first place even if we're sure that Bilbo got them right in the first place. At least going by the Atlas of Middle Earth, the Helcaraxe isn't that wide; 45-60 miles or so. They should be able to handle that in a week, tops, even groping around in the dark and trying to figure out how to cross grinding ice like that as they go.
Yeah, that makes sense, and I could work with it.

>That, however, is quite likely, as long as you're using normal human lifespans. Dagor Aglareb is about 60 years after the rising of the sun; so your guys are probably pretty old even if they just turn up when Fingolfin does.

Yeah, that's a definite problem. I could probably wring a few more decades of life out of the characters without anyone complaining, but them still being present for all the time where nothing much happens would be a problem in of itself.

The best idea I've had so far is for them to keep jumping forward along the timeline, as a result of whatever doodad I think of that gets them there in the first place.

Where are these crossover guys coming from and what is the general mechanism of dumping them in Arda? Are we thinking magic or some sort of technology or something exotic and dimensional warpy?

Probably magic, easier to justify them not being able to control it.

...

Loki himself goes from a relatively benign trickster to a corrupting Satan-type. It seems to be a common thread for mythological tricksters to eventually take things past the point of no return.

Gandalf also talks about things that "Eat at the roots of mountains" before going into Moria, in what seems to be a reference to things specifically not orcs/goblins or the balrog.

...

about 3 years, according to this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Arda

Yeah, I always thought of them as a kind of relative to the more basic lovecraft monsters (not aliens or overly smart critters)

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Arda

Those are valian years before you get to the years of the sun. There are about 9.582 solar years in a valian year.

That artist has the worst case of sameface.

I know there are only so many variants of orcs you can fight until your game gets dull but that thing is stupidly out of place for LotR.

Yeah, they had to make up a lot of stuff to keep that game interesting.

One thing I saw in this guy's dA was this (supposed to be succbi) and another thing that was apparently a tribe of men who all believed that they were wolves.

I thought it was "gnaw at the roots of the world" which is so much better.

...

...

>a tribe of men who all believed that they were wolves.
Gauredain. They don't believe to be wolves, but revere and emulate them, and wear wolf hides.

R-right.

Although I did like that they included these guys, who are supposed to be in the canon.

> Ungoliant
-10 hp

> Melkor
Exiled; no longer relevant to the game board

Yeah, the Lossoth of Forochel are canonical, though only mentioned very briefly by JRR off somehwere. While the game adds stuff that doesn't have much to do with the books (like the rune-keeper class, monster such as the nameless weird shit from deep under the earth creeping into Moria, drakes, morroval, and cargul aka people drawn into shadow by the nazgul, and beornings as a class) the plot sticks very closely to what you have in the books (plus digressions, such as helping the Grey Company as they journey south to aid Aragorn).

Currently, the game's at the point where Aragorn is marching towards the Black Gate.

Wow, it's still going?

Pretty impressive.

Neither of you guys, but what game are you talking about?

Well yes, LotRO's got 10-year anniversary coming up next year. Naturally it is showing its age, but the environmental artists are still able to whip up some impressive stuff with the engine. They managed to pull off Pelennor battle with that aged thing.

LOTR: Online. The MMO they made nearly ten years ago now. I was surprised that it's still going.

Thx.

>Hey, you know those indescribable abominations that even a primordial fire demon was spooked by? Let's make them mooks to grind.

MMOs for you.

Just look what they thought of for what's supposed to be a High Elf from the Elder Days.

...

She looks high as fuck to me.

The Nameless Things are probably based on Nidhogg the dragon who gnaws at a root of the world tree, Yggdrasil.

Honestly he uncertainty of Ungoliant's origin makes her even more terrifying to me.

Even Melkor, the setting's surroget-Satan figure, comes from SOMEWHERE and used to be SOMEONE before he became who he is, but Ungolian is just this...unholy 'Thing' that exists on its own terms. It wasn't corrupted or created, that we're aware of; it just 'Is."

Begs the question if it was even really killed or merely displaced.

The nameless, eldritch lovecraft monsters are analogous to the biblical leviathan imo - embodiments of primordial chaos, or mainfested emptiness or what have you.

I can't think of Ungoliant in the same terms, she seems more awful than the Watcher in the Waters, the only eldritch entity we directly encounter.

>stat them

you're what's wrong with D20

Melkor and the Balrogs just scared her away, it's never really explained what exactly happened to her. And it's implied that she may have devoured herself to still her hunger.

the devouring herself thing was just a rumor/speculation. neither her end nor her beginning are ever really explained. everything about her is pretty vague and open-ended. even her daughter shelob has a really ambiguous ending.

it's weird. tolkein was usually pretty thorough in killing off evil characters. i wonder why he consistently let the spider demons off the hook

He really hated spiders, supposedly. Can't permanently kill off your greatest terror, not really.

well the Silmarillion and all that were never really finished were they? Her eating herself does seem very in place of the mythology Tolkien drew inspiration of.
Some fuckhuge spider got all up in his shit in Africa is what I heard about it. While he was fighting in WWI I presume.

>While he was fighting in WWI I presume.
Nope, while he was a toddler growing up in South Africa.

>He really hated spiders, supposedly.
No, he didn't. This is just one of those myths that refuses to die despite the only existing sources that mention it being the ones that refute it.

>"...when Ronald [Tolkien] was beginning to walk, he stumbled on a tarantula. It bit him, and he ran in terror across the garden until the nurse snatched him up and sucked out the poison. When he grew up he could remember a hot day and running in fear through long, dead grass, but the memory of the tarantula itself faded, and he said that the incident left him with no especial dislike of spiders."

>"I knew that the way [for Frodo, Sam, and Gollum] was guarded by a Spider. And if that has anything to do with my being stung by a tarantula when a small child, people are welcome to the notion (supposing the improbable, that any one is interested). I can only say that I remember nothing about it, should not know it if I had not been told; and I do not dislike spiders particularly, and have no urge to kill them. I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath!"

>"I put in the spiders largely because this was, you remember, primarily written for my children (at least I had them in mind), and one of my sons [Michael] in particular dislikes spiders with a great intensity. I did it to thoroughly frighten him and it did!"

>He was once bit by a big ass tarantula
>Spiders don't scare me, it takes a lot to intimidate a guy that saw the somme
>I did it to fuck with my kid, and it worked great

IIRC an early draft of the Silmarillion had possibly Tuor sailing to the far south and finding her there and slaying her, her power having long since declined.