#silmweek

S I L M W E E K ⤷ day 4: locations

silm week day #5 → villains: Mairon

       “Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.”

For Day 5 of Silmweek, I haven’t got enough time for a full meta, so I thought that I’d talk about some fun evil minions from the weird early versions of the Legendarium. Some of these are quite interesting figures, so I thought that fanfiction writers especially might be interested in rescuing them from the scrap heap, and polishing up some new background characters they don’t have to name. Remember that the early drafts are kind of crazy sometimes and often aren’t canonical to Tolkien’s later writings. It’s pretty great. 

Lungorthin was a balrog and Melkor’s Master of the Guard. He spent most of his time in Angband’s throne room, guarding his master. Why does a Vala need to be guarded by a less powerful being? Paranoia I guess. Lungorthin’s claim to fame is that he burns with white flames, rather than red ones like regular Balrogs. Since white flames are hotter than red ones, Lungorthin seems like an extra special kind of evil you should definitely avoid.

Langon was the herald of Melkor who was sent to negotiate with the Valar when they besieged Utumno in the Book of Lost Tales. Probably had a great voice.

Fankil - a proto-Sauron figure from the early outlines, he was Melkor’s lieutenant and the leader of dark armies in the East (Palisor). After Melkor was imprisoned, Fankil started corrupting the first Men with his Dwarves (who were evil at the time) and goblins, turning them against the elves, and starting the first war between Elves and goblins. In an even earlier version, he and his evil dwarves conquered Palisor. 

Fluithin or Ulbandi the Ogress. What’s an Ogre? In the early drafts, a race of cannibal giants. In later versions they don’t appear except in tales, and were probably either a mythological race, or possibly another name for trolls. I prefer to think of ogres as prototype trolls myself. Fluithin is from the earliest drafts, which were pretty weird, and in that version the Ainur had children and behaved more like pagan gods. Fluithin had a child with Morgoth, and that is literally all we know about her.

Kosomot/Kalimbo - the earliest version of Gothmog the Balrog, where he was the giant ogre son of Morgoth and Fluithin the Ogress and wasn’t on fire.

silmweek: day 4 ↳ Locations

Part 2 of my Noldor crown project - Feanor! Incidentally finished on the elf-themed day of silm week, so that’s cool.

Silmweek! 

Ainur