Silmarillion

Today I felt like going a littel extra nerdy and taking a trip to Middle Earth. By now we are all familiar with the world of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, but what many do not realiz is these were a smaller part of Tolkein's magnum opus, the Silmarillion. I actually read this book a while back and it reads like the bible of Middle Earth. Hobbit fans will be disappointed to find that hobbits aren't a part of the Silmarillion at all, but rather focuses on elves, largely before the coming of humans. Tolkein actually started this first, but never finished it, his son published it posthumously. Tolkein made up the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings in the world he created, but really the storie that made him famous were only the tail end of his great mythology of what is actually supposed to be our world.

Let's start at the beginning, Iluvatar. Iluvatar is basically God, the being that all of creation came from. Iluvatar(never referred to by gender) created a flat Earh and populated the world with four races. The first race was the Valar, eight males, seven of which had wives, making fifteen in total, and they are basically gods of a lower rank than their creator, but between them they have all of the power over the entire world, and because of their power and imortality, hey could nto reproduce, their numbers were fixed eternally. The two most important Valar in the grand scheme ofthings are Aule and Melkor, we'll get back to them later. The second race were the Maiar, and they were like the Valar, only somewhat less powerful because their powers were controlled by the Valar. The Maiar were actually very important, particularly five that ended up being the wizards of Middle Earth, yes, that's right, Gandalf the Grey was actually a third rank god, really puts that whole coming back from the dead thing in perspective huh? Next in line were the elves, also immortal, but significantly less powerful, weak enough to be able to procreate. Once elves reach maturity they do not age any further and wil only die if they are killed, but they still don't really die, they just go to the realm of the afterlife where they continue to live. This place is actually across the sea and living elves can visit. However, before the elves could happen, Aule became impatient and created the dwarves, seven, one for each Valar, at least the ones with wives, apparently the sons of the Valar. Iluvatar pointed out that he had overstepped his powers and created flawed beings, but then corrected the mistake, fixing the dwarves and giving them wives that these immortal beings could spawn mortal progeny, the only rule being that they must stay underground so the elves could be the first on the surface, which wasn't bad because the dwarves like being underground where they can mine mithril, pure silver. Dwarves have more complicated immortality, they are mostly a mortal race, but seven are immortal and if any of those seven are killed, they reincarnate as the next in their tribe.

Now that we have established the first beings, before humans came along, there was the terrible reign of Melkor, Vala of darkness. Melkor was all about corruption, his Maiar became Balrogs, the worst being Sauron, and Melkor was also the one who created orcs by corrupting elves, and made wargs out of wolves. Melkor's favorite creation was Ungoliant the giant spider, mother of Shelob and the giant spiders of Mirkwood that Bilbo slew in the Hobbit. Apparently, not having a wife really made Melkor a bitter old bastard because Ungoliant was made to eat light because he hates light. The biggest confrontation involved two trees, one gold and the other silver that glowed so bright that all of Middle Earth was illuminated by the trees from the other side of the world. The elves loved the trees so much that one named Feanor actually captured the light in the Silmaril, three stones which would become the crown jewels of the elves. Of course, Melkor had Ungoliant eat the light of the trees and cast the world into darkness. Everyone did their best to bring light back to the trees, but the best they could do was grow one gold fruit and one silver flower. Feanor encased them to be protected and two maiar became responsible for carrying them through the sky bring light to the world, and that is the origin of the sun and the moon. Yup, that's Tolkein's story and he's sticking to it.

After this the Silmarillion goes on to tell a grand epic about how elves defended the Silmaril from Melkor. The story follows two pairs of star crossed lovers, human men who fell in love with elven women who bore them half-elven children. Against all odds, the half elven children, one male, the other female, fell in love with each other and had two sons, one of which was Elrond who would later rule over Rivendell. This meant a totalof four half-elves, the only four that would ever be. After years of conflict, a group of elves finally realized Melkor was the problem and sailed across the sea tothe western paradise to request of the gods that Melkor be dealt with. Only Iluvatar had the power to do anything and refused unless someone could speak on behalf of men as well as elves. Of course, humans aren't allowed on the far shores of Valinor, so this was impossible, until the half-elves decided to go and make the request. Iluvatar responded by sending melkor into the void, but in turn also decided that the half-elves would have to decide what they wanted to be because they could not live as both humans and elves. Elrond obvioulsy chose to be an elf, but his brother chose to be a human.

Now there is actually a great deal of significance in the brother of Elrond, because even though he became human, his bloodline had a touch of elven grace, living three ties longer, aging three times slower, and having a bit of natural magic. They were given their own island called Numenor, halfway between Middle Earth and paradise. The elves of paradise had been cultivating lesser silver trees and gave one to the Numenoreans and it became their symbol. All was well for a long time, until one king was brazen enough to break the one rule of never setting foot on the shores of Valinor. Realizing the folly in advance, a group of Numenoreans set sail back to Middle Earth and established the kingdom of Gondor with yet another white tree near their capital of Minas Tirith, and connected their cities with the palantir, seven stones of seeing gifted to them with the tree. It was a smart move because the moment the foolish king set foot on the forbidden shore, Numenor sank beneath the waves along with the king and all his crew and the world was bent round so that any man who dared to follow would simply sail around to the other side and never reach Valinor.

This brings us to the era where the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings takes place and we know how that went. Now you know the whole story, or at least the highlights. If you want the rest, find your own copy of the Silmarillion and check it out for yourself. Warnign: for real nerds only.