What exactly did the Silmarils DO besides be shiny and look awesome?

THIS. The light of the Two Trees held within the Silmarils could recreate the Trees after Melkor killed them.

It wasn't a case of Feanor being a cunt or avenging his father's murder or any of the other "reasons' the usual morons in thread like this always suggest.

The Silmarils contained the light of the Two Trees. They were blessed by Varda and thus were imperishable, alive, and sacred. Because Feanor had used part of his own essence to make them, no one, not even Aule or Feanor himself, could even duplicate them. Feanor was even unsure whether he could "unlock" them.

Melkor trolled Feanor convincing him that the Valar and other Eldar wanted to steal the jewels. While Feanor left the jewels with his father and was making amends with Fingolfin, Melkor killed the Two Trees, killed Finwe, and stole the Silmarils.Valar could use that light to recreate the Two Trees.

Knowing only that the Two Trees were dead, the Valar asked Feanor for the gems to recreate them. Feanor initially said no, citing the fact that he didn't know if he could "unlock" them. While he was making up his mind, the news of Finwe's death and the theft of the Silmarils arrived.

That's when Feanor swore vengeance and all the shenanigans took place.

In the time the silmarils were made the sun & the moon did not exist yet. 2 trees & the silmarils were the only light in varda since the Lamps, Illuin & Ormal were shattered by melkor. When the silmarils were made they somehow captured the essence of the two trees & displayed the light of them. If anything ever happened to the trees the silmarils could be broken and the light held within could have restored the trees. Ungoliant & melkor eventually destroyed the trees leaving the silmarils the only true remaining source of this divine light.

The remaining fruits of these trees were turned into the literal fucking moon & the sun.

The Silmarillion repeatedly states that those Elves who saw the Two Trees were mighty, with the light of Aman in their faces. As vassals of the Valar, the trees somehow bestowed otherworldly power and understanding on those who were exposed to them.

It would be like seeing a jewel in the real world that had the light of heaven radiating out of it. Seeing it bestowed powers & having possession of one granted you great strength/destined you for a divine deed (Luthien obtained 1 Simiril from morgoths crown and began to sing, having the power of the simiril allowed him to put morgoth into a slumber) .

I am not saying that it was not greedy of the elves, but it was heavily implied & told by manwe that the fate of Arda was linked the the Simirils.

Well, if nothing else, they seem to empower you just by having it. Look at how Charcaroth went super-sayin after devouring the one Beren had in his hand. And IIRC, Beren is able to break through some of the wards of Angband only afterwards, when he's got the shiny rock, not before, when he needs Luthien to do it.

But really, the above anons are more true to why they're important than some vague "power you up" reason. They're pure existence, primeval light captured in a gemstone.

What must Arda have looked like during the days of the Lamps and Trees?

The world was flat, and illuminated by static light sources that turned on and off.

It must have been a world of long shadows, endless horizons, and no dawn and dusk. Likely very surreal, even by the standards of the age of Numenor, when the world was just flat but at least had the sun and moon.

They have the light of Heaven, a direct expression of God, within them. It's profanity and tragedy of the greatest, uttermost magnitude for them to be held by the darkness.

There was still morning and evening. The trees' glow regularly ebbed and flowed. So sometimes the world was illuminated by laurelin, sometimes by telperion, sometimes both, and sometimes neither.

In a RPG context, I'd use GURPS and provide Impulse Points to anyone who held one.

Still, the fact that the world was flat and the points of illumination were static and on top of high mountains in the far distance must have made for a surreal looking world.

I imagine it very dreamlike
>ywn witness it

That being said, Feanor and his sons were total cunts about how they reacted to the situation.

These two:

Are right, but they forgot one detail:

If the Valar had the Silmarils, they could have used that light to restore the two trees, rather than saving only a single fruit and flower. The world would not have diminished so greatly if not for Feanor.

...

>That being said, Feanor and his sons were total cunts about how they reacted to the situation.

No they weren't, you stupid fuck.

In short order, Feanor has learned the that Melkor has 1) killed the Two Trees, 2) killed his father Finwe, and 3) stolen the holiest objects on Arda which might be able to restore the Trees.

If all that isn't bad enough, there is also the sudden realization that Melkor had been playing him all along by stirring up shit between Feanor and Fingolfin and generally sowing hate and discontent across Valinor.

As he stand there looking at the dead Trees, what is happening around him? Are the Valar, Maiar, and all the rest mobilizing to track down Melkor and get the Silmarils back? Is Tulkas laughing, flexing, and trying out new wrestling moves? Is Aule oiling the chain they wrapped around Melkor all those ages ago? Are Manwe and Ulmo scrying the whole of Arda to find out where Melkor has run to?

Nope.

All of the Arda's gods and demigods are standing around with their dicks in their hands, staring at the dead Trees, and doing nothing.

So Feanor takes it on himself to do the job the Valar seemingly are unwilling to do. Melkor used him to help perpetrate this outrage, so Feanor is going to get the Silmarils back to put right the catastrophe he unwittingly assisted in.

If anything, Feanor has the most human motives in the whole story.

>It wasn't a case of Feanor being a cunt or avenging his father's murder or any of the other "reasons' the usual morons in thread like this always suggest.
Except that the Valar asked Feanor for the Silmarils to restore the trees before they were stolen, and Feanor told them to fuck off. Feanor's reasons are entirely selfish, he never wanted to use them to heal anything.

When the descendents of Feanor truly did find two if the silmarils, they burnt them for their sins and the sins of their ancestors. All the murder and treachery they had done to obtain them. They killed themselves, and the silmarils fell into the depths of the sea, and a deep fissure in the land.

An elf maiden got the third one.

The third one is currently Venus.

>Feanor told them to fuck off.

No, he didn't asshole. If you ever read the fucking book, you know that.

When asked, Feanor initially hesitated. He did so for two reasons.

First, all the trouble Melkor had been stirring up circled around possession of the jewels and here were the Valar asking for them after assuring Feanor they had no designs on them.

Second, Feanor wasn't sure if even he'd be able to "break" or "unlock" them. The Valar needed to light the Silmaril contained but Feanor didn't know if he'd be able to release that light.

While Feanor was hesitating, news came of Finwe's death at the hands of Melkor and the theft of the jewels. That made the Valar's question moot.

The book flatly stated that Feanor would have given up the Silmarils to the Valar and attempted to "unlock" them IF the news of Melkor's crimes hadn't arrived when it did.

I know "muh Silmarils" is a meme of sorts among the idiots around here, but there's no real reason for you to parrot them.

>All the murder and treachery they had done to obtain them.

They did that after thousands of years of terror, loss, death, and destruction. Their experiences changed them. What was in their hearts when they initially vowed to regain the jewels was very different from what was in their hearts thousands of years later when the Host of the Valar finally decided to pull their thumbs out and do what they should have done immediately after the jewels were stolen; namely push Melkor's shit in and get the Silmarils back.

Feanor & co. did what they did because no one else was doing anything.

>They did that after thousands of years of terror, loss, death, and destruction.
No they did that immediately in the kinslaying. They slaughtered the Teleri to take their boats that they would not give.

It takes a lot to make me defend the Valar, because other than Ulmo they're all jackasses who loved elves but hated men, and neglected men and abandoned them to squalor and ignorance, but Feanor really was a big cunt.

Elrond's dad has a pretty sweet gig going. Got a whole poem to his legacy, gets the last Silmaril, and gets a pimpwagon to ride across the heavens in.

He got a fairly shit deal, he wanted to be human and die, but his wife whined until he gave in and decided to be an elf, and then he can't even spend time with her because he's stuck being Venus.

I don't think the Valar HATED Men. Hate doesn't really seem like something within the Valar's preview.

They probably weren't to fond of fucking Numenor, but mostly they didn't trust Men, or know them as personally as they did the Elves, who came before.

Hell, it's possible they were even a little jealous of Men, since the Gift of Men allows them to eventually know Eru better even than the Ainur.

Distrust is little different than hate. They abandoned the younger children of Eru, and thus humans are forever cursed to be ignorant and stunted, never achieving anything even approaching the glory of elves.

>I'm just saying it seems like an incredibly petty and arbitrary reason for a world war that destroyed whole continents.

Kinda the point

I mean - like I said, they get the gift of men. The "glory of the elves" is entirely temporal, and doomed to wane. At the risk of being corrupted during their short lives, men live quick, bright lives before ascending to beyond Arda.

If you gotta be immortal, there are worse gigs to get.

Getting to hang out forever and ever with an annoying paternalistic figure that thought it was cool to make you weak, ugly, and retarded compared to your older sibling doesn't sound like a fun time. Especially not in his realm which is either empty fucking space like it sounds to be in the creation story, or it'll be some paradise he made, which is going to be awful because perfection is always boring.

>Bright lives
I'm sure someone living in a trash village in Africa would disagree.

You guys think Elrond missed his dad? He'd see the light of the silmaril every day but never be able to see him or talk to him

Elrond is always talking about sorrow and loss so I imagine he misses a lot of things.

It's not perfect if it's boring or unlikely in any way, retard.

That's the part you focus on? The paradise dilemma certainly isn't new, but I had a lot more to say beyond that.

I think you're making the mistake of confusing modern-day context and actual Christian theology with Tolkien's legendarium. You also just sound like someone who hates the concept of gods in general, which I really have nothing for.

How so?

And no I don't hate gods. I hate the Valar for neglecting men and I seriously question Eru's logic in making humans as they are.

First off is the fact that men were never intended to have to deal with Melkor's fuckery. They were meant to be like inverted elves - crap in terms of physical existence, but they'd get to ascend to his plane whereas the elves would be bound to Arda. Melkor ended up preying on their temporal weakness by making them jealous of the elves' immortality without letting him realize the big picture: that they get to go to Valinor+Nirvana-heaven when they die.

Really, I also don't really fully back Tolkien's philosophy. I don't think that the world is naturally inclined to be good (at least not now), and I feel kinda uneasy about there being an "established order" with some spirits always higher than others. But on the other hand I could never really argue that Eru and the Ainur were quite honestly good. Some were more righteous and lawful, others more melancholic and chaotic, some more flawed then others, but at the end of the day it was only the liked of Melkor who went around enslaving and torturing tons of people.

That's probably why I like the dwarves so much. How they were the adopted children, and made specifically to resist the darkness. I like their underdog nature yet they don't let the doom and gloom impact their desire to remain loyal and good.

I figured it was that stuff under the light of the Silmarils would work as it was supposed to all along.

So, wood wouldn't rot, metal wouldn't corrode, people wouldn't get sick, et cetera.

But no matter how good their afterlife supposedly is, what of the fact that humans are intellectually, physically, and spiritually weak next to elves? Unless that changes when they die, they are always the lesser of elves. There's little they can achieve.

Also I'll mention here, Eru's intent is not the Ainur's actions, not always. I doubt it was Eru's intent the Valar would abandon the humans and not teach them anything. In fact, Tolkien even wrote a letter at one point talking about how it had probably been a mistake for the Valar to abandon Middle Earth.

Didn't care and/or disagree about the rest. You just made a dumb comment, no matter how old it is to make it. If it's possible to dislike it in any way it's just not a perfect paradise. It simply can't boring.

This guy's got it to some extent.
I'd imagine it likely changes once they die. Eru's domain was purposely left vague in description so as to not seem basic - like a fluffy cloud heaven you could get bored of. Valinor was more like that: a physical heaven that could ease your soul to the passing of time, but with still fixed and not transcendent.

Also what's this talk of "there's little they can achieve?" Many great deeds have been done by all the races of Middle Earth. From Elven kings of old, to brave heroes of Men like Beren, Theoden, or Aragorn. Dwarves and Halflings have their own heroes and so forth. You can always achieve great things if you don't let jealousy rule your heart - like what ended up happening to the Numenoreans, or Melkor, who ended proving just how low elves could sink to in the end. I feel bad for the orcs most of all.

But always elves have done the greater, and achieved greater heights of understanding and technology. Even now you could not say humans have achieved something as simple as limbas, or however you spell it. And in more physical feats, there was never a human that fought off a Balrog, and it was an elf (the half-elven are definitely far more like an elf than they are any man) who slew Ancalagon, utterly eclipsing little Turin and his trick.

I mean, there was also never a Hobbit that killed a Balrog but they don't seem to hold that as the gold standard of a life well lives.

Also, if you want to go with Tolkien's idea of how Arda is like the Hyborean Age, then humanity ended up - y'know - inventing all modern technology, and haven't faded into wood-shades like the elves have.

Ingwe did literally nothing ever

Modern technology is basically inferior to the majority of elven stuff, is the thing.

Well, Tolkien also had his mythos set up so that the past tended to be cooler.

Either way, I don't think Men being "inferior" to elves is necessarily that big a problem unless you're really jealous. And it's more of a general thing. Not EVERY elf was always better than the BEST of humanity. There were plenty of shit elves and awesome humans, and awesome half-elves born from humans and elves decided to put aside jealousy or arrogance and get to lovemakin'.

the valar left like half of the quendi in middle earth without sun or moon or anything to fight off morgoth's orcs and beasts and gave like absolutely zero fucks about them
they also treated the eldar like some fucking retarded pets
they were supposed to prepare arda fir the coming of elves and men but they just fucked everything up instead

Half elves always basically favored the elves far more. The ones that even just picked human basically died irrelevant.

We don't fight with axes and short swords.

They taught elves basically everything, though. Sure half of them stayed behind and got fucked, but all the elves that happened to either A) Ignored the Valar's call to the west, basically their fault.

B) Came back later after some kinslaying, so again their fault.

We don't have magic bread, enchanted everything, supernatural basically magic plants, cool light powers, or command of nature.

at least they died and didn't have their body burned by their soul and their mind ruined like some elves

"Do the evolution" plays in the background

I dont think you realised just how supremely shiny and pretty they were.
also, that's the point, they did nothing except be the last remaining light from creation. It's like if we ever found a remaining chalice made out of pure God. Many country would go to war to own it even if it doesn't do anything

Like, how shiny?

i'm not sure a mongolian cotton-picking message board can let me properly describe it, but
>Shiny enough to destroy a whole countinent for

...

Not entirely and not for long. We're coming up fast on the point where we can both create something more intelligent than a human being (which, ergo, would be able to more quickly and efficiently make something more intelligent than itself, and so on) and augment ourselves with similar technology. If that doesn't go atrociously balls to the wall badly it'll end in an eternal golden age for us.

We do have small metal and glass tablets that most regular people in the more powerful nations on earth carry around that serve as sources of most of the human knowledge base, long-range communicators in several formats, light sources, image recorders and game libraries. Our equivalent of heroes have traveled to the heavens physically in vessels of steel. We have artificial materials (textile, metallurgic and otherwise) on-par with those that were used by elves. "Command of nature" is a tricky thing to say we don't have as well.

The only drawback that really comes with is that we're terrifyingly close to running out of our main fuel source. Fortunately our scientists probably have us covered, because it gets cheaper to produce solar panels every year.

Gate is the shittiest anime.

the valar were supposed to shape the world for elves(and they literally forgot those guys exist) and men, not to seal some of them on their party island and abandon the others
they've been dickish to men, elves and basically everyone

>We don't have magic bread, enchanted everything, supernatural basically magic plants, cool light powers, or command of nature.
Yet

>No, he didn't asshole. If you ever read the fucking book, you know that.

You re-read it. I just did. Feanor hesitated. Then decided not to give up the Silmarils. He says that he won't willingly give up the Silmarils, and if the Valar take them by force then they're no better than Morgoth. And THEN news reaches them about the theft and murder.

The book even points out that Feanor's refusal might have been moot in light of what was revealed next, but that he'd clearly made the choice and the choice itself was evil nonetheless.

In other words, you're not just wrong, you're being a self righteous dick about being wrong. You sound like an article on Vox. Re-read the passage before spouting off about what it says.

>first Del Ray Books edition: January 2002, pages 83 and 84

Btw that passage also points out that the Two Trees could have been brought to life with the Silmarils, but only before their roots decayed. With the Silmarils stolen, the Trees were irretrievably lost, even after the Silmarils were recovered.

Never saw it, I just saw this strip and fell in love with the concept of nuking Sauron. Thanks for the reference though, cheers mate

Nah, the magic that made that stuff possible, according to Tolkien, bled out and died in the world.

He grew up with no mom and dad, raised by one of the men who tried to kill his mom. His grandparents he never met: dead or over the Sea. His brother chose mortality as a young man, and Elrond never saw him again as he moved to Numenor and then later died and left the world forever. He entered the service of King Gil Galad, later killed by Sauron. His wife was kidnapped by Orcs and whatever abuse she suffered at their hands, it was enough that she too crossed over the Sea. His daughter became mortal and he never saw her again either.

He had two sons at least. But he must have been lonely and sad.

>If that doesn't go atrociously balls to the wall badly
>If
You might be able to convince a near-human AI to like us and want to help us instead of genociding us or ignoring us completely, but once you make an unshackled one that keeps iterating forever it's going to quickly become entirely alien and incapable or unwilling to see us as anything but insects to stomp or ignore and step on by accident.

Why am I getting this feeling of deja vu...

>Our equivalent of heroes have traveled to the heavens physically in vessels of steel.
Their hero is literally a planet.

Pictured here: The Silmarils

>His wife was kidnapped by Orcs and whatever abuse she suffered at their hands, it was enough that she too crossed over the Sea.
Probably physical torture, Tolkien made a big deal that if you try to rape an elf they'll just let themselves 'die' and abandon their body.

Imagine that at the time the earth was new and still being formed, one of the demiurge's more specialized kids plants two trees.
Those trees grow straight and tall up unto the very vaults of heaven. They shine in splendor greater than precious metals or jewels.
These trees shone bright and fine enough to light the whole world, whereas before there were only stars.

Now imagine that the sun and the moon are but a fruit and a flower from those trees.

The silmarils captured some of the very essence of the light of those trees.
That is how shiny.

The Silmarills didn't need a or power level.

Imagine losing the most beautiful thing in the universe. Something of such unimaginable beauty that it causes longing in every being, both divine in mortal.

Something so perfect and unique you poured in a piece of your soul into it. They can never be made again, and it also just happens to be last instance of the another gorgeous thing. Imagine crafting a gem that captures the soothing feeling of sunlight on your skin. The soft breeze of a cold woodland wind on your skin. The brisk feeling of seaside wind. Now imagine that you can never feel this again and that a treacherous entity stole it from you.

The real villains are the Valar. For not dealing with Melkor sooner. For not fixing the shit Melkor broke. For not hunting down the monsters Melkor spawned, instead leaving them to prey on elves and men. For walling themselves up on an island and abandoning the rest of the world. For letting Melkor loose on the world again. For leaving Melkor to run rampant for centuries and afflict innocent elves, dwarves and men, solely because of petty anger at the Noldor. The list goes on.
Melkor was an evil son of a bitch and the Noldor were arrogant and prideful in the extreme. But pretty much all the evil shit that happened to Middle Earth can be traced back to the Valar's total stupidity, self-righteousness and incompetence. You can understand why Eru wanted to make elves and men, the Ainur were a fucking mistake.

Elves didn't invent lembas, Melian did.

Elves have mystic powers, mostly learned from the Valar. Some Men have those powers too, learned from the elves.

Tolkien repeatedly makes the point that the value of life isn't in your kill count or magical powers, but the moral choices you make and how you use your powers to participate in the process of Creation. The Valar don't make all the decisions or hold all the powers either.

Tolkien describes the world as a song, with each of us assigned a part to sing. I'll compare it to a painting. Eru painted the broad outlines. He invites each of us to make a single brushstroke, one lifetime long, that's our contribution. Some get better paints, or longer strokes, or bigger brushes. But one stroke's all you get. if you try to scribble, to make your part more noticeable, or paint over other people's parts, then that's evil in Tolkien's legendarium. You violate your chosen part and mar the work.

Elves are part of the canvas... A basic foundation of the work that makes a big impact, but can never be anything more than part of the work itself. But humans while their brushstroke is much smaller have the ability to stand back and admire the whole painting once their part is over.

I believe the idea is to have an upward chain of sympathy with each link advocating for the being below it, so it would be less the godlike being at the top not caring about us at all and destroying us as a result and more like the godlike being at the top being like the leader of a modern representative government and destroying us as a result.

So's your mom. See? Anything they can do, we can do as well.

Feanor's whole problem was that he couldn't get over being less than the Valar. Morgoth's was that he couldn't get over not being as great as Eru.

When Sauron tempted Celebrimbor, he didn't just offer him power. He offered him power to equal or even surpass the beauty of Valinor. And in doing so, in a sense surpass the Valar themselves.

Even all elves aren't equal to one another in talents or accomplishments. Certainly Men aren't. Some accept this, do what they can to improve the world, and appreciate all its wonders rather than getting hung up on those wonders being THEIR wonders. Others get bitter that they aren't greater than they are (even those who should be most content, having gotten the greatest gifts) and hurt the world so as to magnify their own part in it.

The issue is with Eru intentionally making an entire species inferior to another on purpose.

>living and dying as a human is the same as participating in a paint bukakke all over elfkind
that's kinda hot

Okay but countless people died and the world itself was fucked forever. I can't see that as anything but a net loss.
If they radiated enough light to serve as an endless clean energy source, that's a different story, but we all know how elves feel about industrialization so they'd certainly just sit and stare at the shiny things.

We've invented lembas. We have such things. Trail rations that are preternaturally fortifying is kinda a thing amongst survivalists.

Build God, then we'll talk.

Even Tolkien says they were wrong.

Who cares about merely being able to look at a painting, rather than to paint

That is a very well wrought analogy. Good on you.

>Some Men have those powers too, learned from the elves.
They're always inferior.

Humans learned all their basic survival skills from elves too. Specifically from Dark and later Grey elves, and it was only the men of the west who finally learned from Light Elves, Eldar, the Noldor specifically. But in each case the word was diminished in the teaching, the things the humans learned and did were far inferior to the things the elves learned and did, which were of course inferior to what the Valar did. Yet again, the humans were inferior to the elves.

Trail rations don't last forever, they don't do any good for you nutritionally, and they make you shit your guts out.

And yet the worst villain of all is the strongest member of the strongest race. Whereas the most good race overall (hobbits) are also the least powerful.

And most of the worst strife is between members of the same species.

Inequality is a necessary consequence of the fact that we're all different. Jealousy is not a necessary consequence of inequality. It's a choice not to celebrate what you have and instead hurt others for the sake of having more.

The town elder of Laketown in The Hobbit comes to mind. He runs away with stolen bags of gold and dies miserable in the desert with them. Saruman and his gatherers and sharers are a great example, too. The chain of Sauron-->Saruman-->Gollum illustrates the point: evil at its heart is pathetic scrabbling for MORE.

But who decided those differences is an intelligent force here, and thus can be taken to task for why it decided to make things in such a way.

>the real villains are the valar
>for not adequately controlling or neutralising the rea- the other villain

The only problem I had with Gate is that the Japs over there should immediately pick up on two things:

- Magic is real here.
- The gods are real here.

What happens if the gods in that world get so pissed about you fucking with their worshippers that they decided to walk into yours and start fucking shit up?

Burry that gate under a few miles of concrete and stop fucking with those people, FFS!

It's like no one's played Shadowrun or something...

>What happens if the gods in that world get so pissed about you fucking with their worshippers that they decided to walk into yours and start fucking shit up?

Going by how the story's been going so far, the Japanese army is probably just going to kill the gods.

No, that's just cram.