Karolina

Commission: VTM Nosferatus be Prowling

Some vampire commission I did. Rather pleased how it turned out.

some people don’t deserve fanfics, much less for free.

also even if authors didn’t tag any specific warnings but they used the “creator chose not to use archive warnings” tag, then that is your warning.

Don’t get me wrong, what Eowyn did was badass. No argument.

But uh… Lemme point a thing to you.

So Eomer gets banished, right? Takes two thousand of his men, and rides through the Westmarch, killing Uruks as he goes.

Gandalf rides up, and basically says, “Hey, I fixed your uncle, but the Uruk-hai are marching to attack him at Helms Deep; he needs you, or he’s gonna die.”

So Eomer rides two days, nonstop, and then him and his men dive right into a battle against 10,000 men. And they win.

They march back home, spend a day celebrating. Gandalf rides off, and Eomer thinks, “Hey, maybe I can relax for a bit now.”

Nope. Two days later, the beacons are lit. Eomer is sent to rally the men of the countryside, then meet Theoden. They’re there approximately two days, in which time, Eomer -as Marshal of the Mark, the king’s nephew, and now heir -presumably helps with planning, logistics, and inspection. He rides three days, breakneck speed, into the battle of Pelennor Fields. They crush the orcs…

BUT THEN… the mumakil (elephant) riders show up. So without taking more than a few deep breaths, he rallies his men to turn and keep fighting.

In the books, during that battle, he finds Theoden, and basically says, “Protect his body, we’re gonna get him off the field. This is important.” Then he finds his sister, and basically Hulk rages out, and runs off alone, slaughtering as he goes until he runs into Aragorn, and they then have a Bro It Up slaughter-fest.

Finds out his sister is still alive after the battle, and stays by her side until Aragorn calls him to a meeting. It’s at that meeting when the suggestion of taking their few remaining men, and marching on the Black Gate is suggested.

And Eomer… This dude probably hasn’t slept in at least two days, slept in a horse for almost a week before that, who had maybe two or three days of non-fighting/non-planning. Who fought a massive battle he was supposed to lose two days ago, and another massive battle against a force that out-numbered him a week before that, with only two days of down time in-between…

That dude right there says, “Fuck it. Let’s do it. I’m down.”

Like this dude had the fortnight from Hell, and he still marched into every battle, fought like an absolute beast, survived, and then was down to march into his third unwinnable battle in less than two week’s time.

And what makes this even more impressive? His men loved him enough to go, “Hell yeah dude. Let’s do it.” All three times.

Éomer comes across Théoden’s bodies and tells what the book frames as his “knights”* off the field while extemporising a mourning poem[1] (while also crying, despite starting it with “mourn not overmuch”). 

Shortly thereafter he does indeed find what he thinks is Éowyn’s dead body and does in fact lose his shit for a while in a “you wouldn’t like me when I’m nihilistically enraged and believe everything is hopeless” and kills a lot of the enemy but he also manages to get himself WAY over his head and ends up surrounded on a small hill with more or less his werod/knights backing him up and the rest of his people kinda scattered, and shakes off some of his Hulkout and realizes huh, MAYBE that wasn’t wise. 

But. BUT. 

Then we have this: 

[Éomer] let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark. So he rode to a green hillock and there set his banner, and the White Horse ran rippling in the wind.

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day’s rising I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. To hope’s end I rode and to heart’s breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people. And lo! even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them.

In other words when he realized he was totally fucked (and let me be clear: he was at that point totally fucked) Éomer had the same reaction that his sister did (although she had a much more pervasive, soul-eating and all-encompassing pathological sense of “everything is fucked and nothing has any point”) which was “fine fuck it I’m dying fighting to the last breath without fear in a way that would make my ancestors proud even if nobody ever knows about it!” 

And then! 

Because we are not done! 

He looks at what he knows at that point is his absolute doom (the black ships) and basically shouts COME ON IF YOU THINK YOU’RE HARD ENOUGH! at what he knows is the army that’s gonna smash him and the last of his army to red ruin. In verse. 

WHEREUPON. 

Because Manwë is a marshmallow. 

The wind catches the banner on the lead ship. Which is … not the Corsairs of Umbar’s banner. But is, in fact. 

Aragorn Elessar’s banner. Made by Arwen Undómiel, descendant of both Lúthien Meliansdaughter and of the House of Finwë, who made it embroidered with gold wire and mithril and complete with actual gemstones just for extra ability to catch attention to say, in fact, “HEY LOOK MY BOY’S HERE TO FUCK YOU UP”. 

Whereupon Éomer Éomundson whoops, throws his sword in the air AND CATCHES IT, while laughing why in the name of GODS did you not stick to the damn book PJ and cuts his way across the space between him and the landing! So he can go HOLY SHIT DUDE I DIDN’T THINK YOU’D MAKE IT. 

After which not only did he and Aragorn sort of slaughter their way across the field but also, “such was their skill at arms” that neither of them even got a minor wound.

He’s also man enough to admit, at the subsequent meeting, that all this shit is WAY over his head but Aragorn is definitely his bro and he and Gandalf are both very smart and he, Éomer, is pretty good at fighting things and they’re suggesting fighting things so yeah let’s go with that. 

And to be totally fair to him he also took Gandalf going “ … .kid, YOU got to ride around doing shit while everything went to hell, whereas your sister got stuck at home, RIGHT THERE WITH WORMTONGUE, looking after your uncle, with nothing to take any of it out on - yeah, no, Aragorn was not what fucked your sister up.” at him later with pretty good grace for such a horrible revelation. 

*as Tolkien certainly knew but which would have been hella confusing to put in there, “knight” was essentially a later-Old-English remix of the much older werod and hearthwerod, so think less “guys in shining armour” and more “the king’s personal warband” - in sending Théoden’s men to take his body off the field Éomer is both acknowledging their intense personal fealty to his uncle AND HOWEVER at least temporarily losing at least a handful of his baddest ass fighters. 

[1] 

A reminder that sell-buy dates or best-used-by dates are not the same as expiration dates.

The website puts a link to the USDA site which links to foodsafety dot gov who really wants you to use the app, but you can bypass it.

Also a link to the Canadian government's advisory on best-before dates.

Point of order.

King of Horses ran 450 fucking miles at almost entirely a gallop, without more than a few minutes rest, in 4 nights and basically was like "wait why are we stopping?" when Gandalf took him into the city and he ended up in a stable.

This was not his top speed, nor did it push any limits on his endurance.

@samplerbot

DMC Color Key: ■ 3750 Antique Blue Very Dark ■ 3840 Lavender Blue Light ■ 3842 Wedgewood Very Dark

Dimensions: 139 by 79 stitches. Font: 'pepminus10.ttf' by Peplum. Border: Adapted from Elizabeth Holland's sampler, 1737.

Cloelia

“Cloelia”, illumination from the manuscript “Des cleres et nobles femmes”, ms. Spencer Collection 033, f. 29v, ca. 1450