Session 4.02 - Season 4 Episode Outlines

He does have a significant role in the Beren and Luthien story.

Granted, part of that role is that nobody listens to what he says. (It's a theme with him.) But I don't agree that we should push him further into the background or minimize him more than he already was in the Silmarillion. We have the space and time to flesh out his character more, like we're planning to do for Celeborn, and Aegnor (who is basically nobody in the Silmarillion itself. He expresses no opinion during the Rebellion, does nothing of interest, and then dies. The only reason he's slated for more focus than Angrod in SilmFilm is his romance with Andreth.)

I think that, part of the purpose of fleshing out named background characters is to make their deaths hurt. When Nargothrond falls, the named characters who die are: Finduilas, Orodreth, Gwindor, and Guilin. That's all. The best way to make a slaughter of nameless thousands heartbreaking for the audience is to make sure multiple characters they really care about die there as well. If we follow the Narn story, they'll care about Finduilas and Gwindor. IMO, it would be good to make audiences care about Orodreth as well (Guilin too, if we could pull it off, but he's a much more minor character and we have fewer opportunities to make him matter.)
 
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He does have a significant role in the Beren and Luthien story.

Granted, part of that role is that nobody listens to what he says. (It's a theme with him.) But I don't agree that we should push him further into the background or minimize him more than he already was in the Silmarillion. We have the space and time to flesh out his character more, like we're planning to do for Celeborn, and Aegnor (who is basically nobody in the Silmarillion itself. He expresses no opinion during the Rebellion, does nothing of interest, and then dies. The only reason he's slated for more focus than Angrod in SilmFilm is his romance with Andreth.)

Part of the purpose of fleshing out named background characters is making their deaths count. When Nargothrond falls, the named characters who die are: Finduilas, Orodreth, Gwindor, and Guilin. That's all. The best way to make a slaughter of nameless crowds heartbreaking for the audience is to make sure multiple characters they really care about die there as well. If we follow the Narn story, they'll care about Finduilas and Gwindor. It would be good to make audiences care about Orodreth as well (Guilin is a much more minor character and we have fewer opportunities to make him matter.)
The other main thing that’s said about Aegnor is that he and Fingon are friends, and since Fingon is going to Middle-Earth, Aegnor goes.

Orodreth makes me think a bit of Edmure Tully in ASOIAF : a pleasant enough guy who cares about his people, but terrible at leading armies. The two times we hear of Orodreth in command of a battle, he gets his ass kicked by Sauron at Minas Tirith in Tol Sirion, and the second is the battle that is part of the Fall of Nargothrond, where he is KIA. Maybe we make him an administrator.
 
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Yeah, OK, I can see where y'all are coming from. It could be useful to have Orodreth be the "face" of Nargothrond at the end.
 
You know for a villains plot line, maybe Sauron is working on technological stuff since Morgoth is making dragons?...
 
Tomorrow we will be determining the content of the thirteen episodes of Season 4 - mapping out the season outline, essentially.
 
What is Gothmog’s idea in Episode 8?

And what do you guys think of my small suggestion for Sauron working on something technological? Saruman’s work in Lord of the Rings is supposed to echo Sauron in The Silmarillion.
 
Maybe Melian and Luthien for reconciliation and/or forgiveness? We should give Luthien something to do.

How about making bigger, stronger Orcs? And mass production?
 
Now, I’m not really in favor of switching the Ban and the Dagor Agraleb, since the Ban could be tension on its own on whether or not the Elves can put aside their differences to face the Orcs.
 
Oh man, the awkward bit in the Hobbit film (hey, narrow it down a bit there Mike haha) where the Elfses jump over the Dwarf shield wall.
 
Commenting as stuff comes up in my listen-through. Regarding people who are captured by Sauron/Morgoth and turned (unwitting) collaborator. What about the guy who gives Nargothrond away through weakness and/or bad decisions? Orodreth is a good candidate.......


ETA: Hahahahaha he just came up. Great minds lol.
 
Commenting as stuff comes up in my listen-through. Regarding people who are captured by Sauron/Morgoth and turned (unwitting) collaborator. What about the guy who gives Nargothrond away through weakness and/or bad decisions? Orodreth is a good candidate.......


ETA: Hahahahaha he just came up. Great minds lol.
They talked a lot about having one of the wives getting tortured and turned unwitting collaborator. I’m not in favor of that. Ecthelion was suggested at some point, but that wouldn’t fly because Maeglin appears to be the only traitor in Gondolin and if Ecthelion is unwittingly working for the enemy, Gondolin’s security would be compromised much sooner.
 
Corey Olsen mentioned three potential outcomes for our 'catch and release' elf program in Angband.

1) The elf escapes as a hardened warrior, convinced by this experience to fight even harder against Morgoth, and all the soft/gentle parts have been burned away. In other words...forging soldiers through battlefield ordeals.
Maedhros is a canon example of this. He is more of a fighter afterwards than he was before, and while he was clearly maimed/damaged by his ordeal, he was *not* broken in spirit.

2) The elf is cowed by Morgoth, and his will is now subject to Morgoth's influence. He becomes an unwitting traitor, responding to the whispers and prompts of Morgoth, and being terrified of failure to obey.
The canon example is Gorlim the Unhappy or Maeglin, both of whom became traitors after some personal time with Morgoth or Sauron. We are going for more of the 'Spell of Bottomless Dread', which has no named victims - and leaves them compromised, but not traitors.

3) The elf is broken by his ordeal. When released/escaped, his will is his own, but he is clearly hurt and aged and no longer able to fight due to his experience. The elf suffers from PTSD, but is not Morgoth's pawn.
The canon example is Gwindor of Nargothrond.


If we are going to institute the 'catch and release' plot whereby Morgoth (and Sauron - this has his fingerprints all over it) tries to create moles within the Noldor camps, we will need to choose characters for this to happen to. NAMED characters. And, preferably, we don't *only* use a character for that. So, it's tricky. We're looking at creating a character who is an unwitting traitor.

While it is easy to think of what that would look like in case#1 - Ecthelion gets captured in battle, and comes back as Rambo the super-fighter - it's a lot harder for case#2.

The Orodreth suggestion is very strong. We could make that story play out in such a way that we sympathize with Orodreth and feel sorry for him, rather than despise him as a weakling. He could have been just as gung ho and eager for a fight as the other Noldor...prior to his ordeal. And afterwards, he's confused by dreams and confounded by the nightmare he's trapped in, rather than a willing traitor.

I don't like the idea of using someone's wife this way. But I would like to make the wives (we don't have many of them) into actual characters. Most of the Noldor's wives stayed behind in Valinor. But we're allowed to have *some* here in Beleriand, so....we should make use of them in some way. Angrod's wife (and possibly Orodreth's mother?) Eldalotë is one candidate for a character we could tell a story with.


So...if Orodreth is going to be captured and then released....WHEN? We could have Orodreth meet Meril at the Feast, and then marry her immediately thereafter, only to be captured during the Dagor Aglareb (somehow). So, even though it's a massive victory, there are some elvish losses. There could then be a 'prison break' when Glaurung gets loose, where it might *seem* like the prisoners escaped, but the audience knows Sauron wanted them to go back to the elves. We would then deal with the fallout in Season 5.

That still doesn't answer the question of 'how does Angband find out about the Kinslaying?', though.
 
I like the word "confounded" to describe Orodreth. Or, perhaps, post-imprisonment Orodreth if we go that way.
 
I think Dagor Aglareb should be Morgoth's idea, not Gothmog's. I think that even if Morgoth is gone to Hildorien, he should come back and start Dagor Aglareb himself -- as he does in the books.

Does anyone else think it would work for Cirdan to send a messenger to Doriath in Ep 1, separately from Angrod's later diplomatic visit? Making the messenger spend 2 episodes just in travelling necessarily requires Eps 1 and 2 to flash by in just a few weeks, instead of a few years. I prefer to let them take years, which is more plausible for all the stuff the Noldor have to do during that time (scouting most or all of Beleriand, organizing their forces together, having meetings, Maedhros getting better). I just don't think all of that can possibly be finished in just the 2-3 weeks it takes Annael to boat to and from Doriath. And every other episode in the season will span years, or be separated by years from the previous episode.
 
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I have to say I'm not comfortable with Orodreth being under the Spell of Bottomless Dread. I think it's better to invent a character for this rather than drastically rewrite the story arc of an existing character. I really want to avoid unnecessary drastic rewriting that erases entire character arcs written by Tolkien.

In the books, Orodreth does nothing to compromise Nargothrond until Turin arrives. But the Spell of Bottomless Dread (by whatever name) is already a well-known problem before Beren arrives in Doriath. So to use Orodreth for this you would have to destroy or reveal the location of Nargothrond, and kill Orodreth, before the Dagor Bragollach. I do not want to mangle the plot like that!
 
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