#khazadweek

khazad week day 6: spirituality & religion

[Image ID: A banner showing a drawing of two blond dwarves with light skin, their arms interlinked; one wears a blue hood and has a short beard with three silver beads, the other has a longer, braided beard, his hair is long and in two braids, falling over his shoulder, with two golden rings at the end. Both are smiling. The banner is formatted so that we only see them from their chests up to the tip of their noses. Text is overlaid on the drawing, reading "KHAZAD WEEK 2022" and in smaller letters, below "DECEMBER 5TH-11TH". End ID]

Khazad Week is nine weeks away!

Khazad Week is an event all about celebrating Tolkien’s dwarves through your transformative work! Art, fic, edits, playlists, headcanons, moodboards and anything else you can think of are all welcome. To spark your imagination we’ve put together the following prompts, which you can choose to combine or use how you like. They are not mandatory- it’s all for fun! Since there are so few dwarves mentioned in canon, OCs are very welcome for every day. Still, atleast one prompt each day fits our canon dwarves. Any content is welcome!

5th December: First age // Family // Longbeards

6th December: Second age // Diplomacy // Firebeards

7th December: Petty-dwarves // Courtship // Broadbeams

8th December: Khazad-dûm // Dwarrowdams // Ironfists

9th December: Erebor // Environment // Stiffbeards

10th December: Music // Religion and Spirituality // Blacklocks

11th December: Folklore and Myths // Diversity // Stonefoots

Further explanation of the prompts can be found here

@khazadweek day seven | folklore & myths | the fates of galadriel’s gift to gimli

          ‘And what gift would a Dwarf ask of the Elves?’ said Galadriel, turning to Gimli.           ‘None, Lady,’ answered Gimli. ‘It is enough for me to have seen the Lady of the Galadhrim, and to have heard her gentle words.’            ‘Hear all ye Elves!’ she cried to those about her. ‘Let none say again that Dwarves are grasping and ungracious! Yet surely, Gimli son of Glóin, you desire something that I could give? Name it, I bid you! You shall not be the only guest without a gift.’            ‘There is nothing, Lady Galadriel,’ said Gimli, bowing low and stammering. ‘Nothing, unless it might be - unless it is permitted to ask, nay, to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine. I do not ask for such a gift. But you commanded me to name my desire.’            The Elves stirred and murmured with astonishment, and Celeborn gazed at the Dwarf in wonder, but the Lady smiled. ‘It is said that the skill of the Dwarves is in their hands rather than in their tongues,’ she said; ‘yet that is not true of Gimli. For none have ever made to me a request so bold and yet so courteous. And how shall I refuse, since I commanded him to speak? But tell me, what would you do with such a gift?’            ‘Treasure it, Lady,’ he answered, ‘in memory of your words to me at our first meeting. And if ever I return to the smithies of my home, it shall be set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house, and a pledge of good will between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of days.’            Then the Lady unbraided one of her long tresses, and cut off three golden hairs, and laid them in Gimli’s hand. ‘These words shall go with the gift,’ she said. ‘I do not foretell, for all foretelling is now vain: on the one hand lies darkness, and on the other only hope. But if hope should not fail, then I say to you, Gimli son of Glóin, that your hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion.’

For @khazadweek. The prompt about Dís took over my mind yesterday. With special thanks to @arofili!

----

Her name is honoured among and above the names of kings.

Ered Luin was too poor to attract a dragon, in the days when Thorin Oakenshield’s Company walked alone out of her gates of carved granite - lonesome, with all the pride and ambition of Dúrin’s Folk.

Dís made it so: all mining tunnels carefully monitored, and the trading quotas demanding. Let the wealth of the last Dwarven Kingdom flow from the mountain, in brooches and rings and safe-boxes! Let it pay for acorn flour, eggs and cured ham and succour. There was bread; there were hunting parties, and companies of travelling smiths, and enough food for five children born to the mountain every ten-year.

written for khazad week day 7, for the prompt “folkore and myths”. a third age dwarven fairytale.

do i think the hunted petty dwarves were eaten? not sure. do i think the dwarves think they were? absolutely.

Long before the Sun and the Moon were young, the first of our forefathers awakened. And after they awakened, they multiplied and formed the seven great clans that stand strong even today. Longbeards, Blacklocks, and Firebeards; Broadbeams, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, and Stonefoots.

Day 7: Stonefoots, Diversity and Folklore & Myths

I haven't been able to do the other prompts this week because of time constraints, but ended up doing all the prompts for the last day in one go!

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It wasn’t typical for Ajin to stay out of the limelight when a party was in full swing, but here he was, trying his best to blend into the corner. He felt his heart beat faster inside his ribcage and he tried to hold his breath, letting it out slowly after a few moments to quell his rising anxiety.

So many people were here, and he’d seen so many new things on his journey from Harabza, the Stonefoot halls, to Minas Tirith. Gondor was a place as foreign to him as the other side of the world, but at least dwarven travellers to Ered Luin or even those that took the shorter roadway north-west to Erebor had their own kind to mingle with and a sense of familiarity once they reached the Longbeards. Here in the kingdom of Men, there was no such solace. He remembered when he had arrived a few days ago with the dwarven wagon train, and the curious eyes that gazed from every street corner and building. Some were friendly, old men remembering, perhaps, the times when as boys they had welcomed dwarves into the city, or children laughing and screaming as they ran alongside the wagons, waving up at him raucously. Others less so.

Go back to your own kind, Southron, someone had hissed at him, though he had been conversing with another dwarf and had only half-heard the muttered curse. As soon as he had turned his head, the person who had spoken had melted away into a crowd of Men, where they all looked the same. Tall, dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin. Southron, Easterling. To the Men of Gondor, those from the East were all the same, and he had both terms thrown at him by drunken warriors who lounged, broken from battle, outside taverns, or younger veterans who had lost blood-brothers in the war. To them, with his braided and shaved black hair that fell to his elbows, dark brown skin etched with striking red-ink tattoos, and the glimmering array of gold rings set in his lips and nose, an Eastern dwarf was no better than those who had served Sauron. Ajin spoke little Westron, but he understood enough to know he wasn’t welcome. At least those of the zulmâ-khazâd were treated with the respect that artisans, craftsdwarves, engineers and masons deserved.

For the most part, he ignored the comments directed towards him and the few Eastern dwarves who had journeyed at Gimli’s behest to help restore Minas Tirith to its former glory. Gimli he knew — his mother was a family friend, her sister marrying one of his uncles over a hundred years ago, and Gimli had visited Harabza where he had been instructed on some of the finer techniques of preparing vorn, the granite-hard, obsidian substance only native to some of the mountains and hills in the far south of the kingdom. It was for this reason that Gimli had chosen Ajin. Guarded by a garrison of Stonefoot mercenaries and weighing several tonnes, a king’s ransom of the precious eastern metal had been procured by King Elessar to build into the gates of the city and construct several major fortifications. Ajin’s eyes watered when he thought about the price.

At least his hosts had been gracious enough. The King had shown customary dwarven respect and could get by in khuzdul, and the house-keepers for the lodgings they had been provided hadn’t commented on Ajin’s appearance, even if they kept their thoughts to themselves. “Ignore them, Aji. Our way of life and theirs — we cannot compare them. Dwarves and Men are as different as rats and salamanders,” remarked Kurin one evening, a slow-voiced, tall Ironfist dwarf, who, with his rich ebony colouring and wild beard, had got his own share of frightened looks. He was the youngest foregemaster in Nazbukhrin, and had been part of the elite team to craft His Majesty the King of Nazbukhrin’s new axe. To Men, just another Easterner.

Ajin reminded himself this as he watched the Men in the guest-hall dancing, laughing and talking together. A few of them he’d made polite conversation with, but Kurin’s words kept coming back to him. As different as rats and salamanders. Don’t expect them to comprehend you. That was easily done though, as Ajin could only nod politely, and stutter a few words of Westron here and there. Mostly though, he kept himself to the other dwarves and to his drink.