Cuiviénen

We will have to think through that idea about the rafts and canoes. Remember, Ossë teaches the Teleri how to make ships. That should probably be a big step for the elves. Any boatlike creations must be very undeveloped I think. On the other hand, there's of course a great difference between a canoe and a large ship.
 
Yes - I chose raft and canoe (and have posted pictures of tanaka [reed boats] here) specifically to shy away from any elaborate ship-building skills. I have not suggested giving them little sailboats to sail about Cuivienen, and then just 'upgrade' to larger ships when they have to cross the ocean.
 
Here's a couple of pictures of lakes in the Dolomites.
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But perhaps we can save the last one for the Mirrormere.
 
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Lake Qaraoun seems to be an artificial lake, which perhaps shouldn't make a difference, but for some reason it bothers me. Couldn't we just take Lake Ritsa and put an island in it?
 
There's also this lake in Turkey, Lake Van. It has an island in it, but regrettably someone has built something (an Armenian church) on that island. (There is apparently a monster living in the lake, by the way)
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Is this still under discussion or all decided up now?

I like the freshwater plan. The lake could have a more complicated shoreline, with inlets and peninnsulas and a larger bay, in addition to one or more large islands.

I suggest some forests to be old growth but mostly under the Sleep of Yavanna, dormant. The living (awake) woods could be more open woodlands. I think there should also be plenty of more open land outside the woodlands. JRRT mentions both fir and birch and I don't like the idea of a subtropical climate or landscape -- the first map from the first page of the thread is based on the pre-LotR Ambarkanta, but the map concepts in that text seem to have been later changed by JRRT -- it isn't clear at all what replaced them because he never drew another map on that scale, but he switched Hildorien from equatorial East Asia to Mesopotamia (well north of the equator), and Cuivienen was supposed to be far enough north and east of Hildorien that the Men awoke "in regions which neither the Eldar nor the Avari have known". It specifically can't be the Mediterranean, since that is probably the basis for the Bay of Belfalas. At the same time Cuivienen can't be so far north that there's no room for Utumno to be even farther north, where the rays of Illuin were dim.

(The second map in the first post is so goofy I don't know what it's supposed to be.)

In the Cuivienyarna (a post-LotR legend in The War of the Jewels, History of Middle-Earth vol. 11), the Elves are described as awakening on a green sward in a dell, in a larger dell, in "a birch grove by a stream", "a sweet-smelling firwood on a hill-side", and beside a waterfall coming down from a cliff into a lake. They lived beside a lake rather than saltwater sea, both in Cuivienyarna and the companion text Quendi and Eldar, so that fits the freshwater lake decision above.


In Quendi and Eldar "...before the Separation [the Nelyar] never moved far from the lake and waterfall of Cuivienen..." Meanwhile, I vaguely remember Noldor liking hills and Vanyar liking flat plains, but maybe that's only where they lived in Aman. If anyone is going to build rafts and canoes and reed-boats, it should be Nelyar/Lindai. If anyone lives up in trees, I think it ought to be the Tatyar (though they could also build stone huts) or Vanyar. Flets are supposed to be an innovation of Lothlorien, so maybe whoever lived in them before stopped living in them later, or were all Avari.

I get the impression that Elves at Cuivienen did not cut down trees or hunt beasts or birds, because the Laiquendi got quite upset when mortals did those things in Ossiriand. I'm guessing they ate fish (sturgeon!), plants, and mushrooms, and perhaps things like frogs and beetle larvae that the Eldar may later turn their noses up at*. For clothing I think they would not wear leather, but plant fibers (flax, bark-cloth) and weave or felt hairs shed by large animals (like woolly Ice Age megafauna...). I imagine the Elves are friends with animals (especially if they don't hunt) and can just walk around among herds of them picking up shed fur.

I can't recall whether they were supposed to know anything about smelting metal. I thought the Valar supplied the Eldar with or taught them to make metal weapons on the March, for self-defense. It would be reasonable to thoughtfully make those available to the Avari who stay behind in the monster-haunted wilderness, too.



*I also have an idea that, because there is no rot in Aman, there are no mushrooms, so the Noldor born in Aman are disgusted to learn Sindar and Nandor eat these things -- especially when they learn that most fungus is poisonous. It could be funny, or just show the snobbery of many Noldor towards the Moriquendi.
 
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If this needs a "filming" location, I suggest Khövsgöl Lake, at least for the Bay. It has forests that probably include fir and birch, some open grassland, and I think mountains. Also it isn't very much developed or polluted.

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If there need to be wider shots of the large part of Helkar beyond the Bay, there's Baikal, which also has mountains and possibly cliffs or waterfalls closer to the water's edge:
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or Balkhash:
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My concept of putting it in southwest Siberia has no direct support in the texts, but if anyone likes it I can tell you what birds and trees I think would live at a great lake there.
 
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Well, I feel like there could be both rivers that meander through valleys into the lake, and one that falls down a cliff from the mountains right into the water. Maybe there is one arm of the mountains that comes right to the shore? I dunno, I like that you put a space of coastline between the shore and the mountains, and it could even be expanded in places with lowland penninsulas. What's beyond the mountains, or should we not care? Are their peaks snow-covered?

I was reading the very late text "Cirdan" and it says some stuff about boat-building. It agrees with what you all said earlier:
"...the Teleri developed a craft of boat-making; first as rafts, and soon as light boats with paddles made in imitation of the water-birds upon the lakes near their first homes, and later on the Great Journey in crossing rivers..."

I'm not sure if this contradicts my assumption that the Elves at Cuivienen never cut down trees. Could they have made rafts and boats solely out of fallen logs and reeds? Ancient Egyptians made reed-boats that could carry multiple people. But I don't know how you'd make paddles without cutting down at least small trees. Hm. They could have invented pollarding or coppicing, to harvest wood without permanently killing entire trees.

Coppicing and Pollarding both keep trees young and make them longer-lived. Pollarding produces wood that's good for boat-building and poles, but also makes trees ugly. Maybe Elves invented their own unique way to prune trees to keep them youthful and beautiful and also get useful wood?

Not that they knew how to make seaworthy ships that could survive an ocean crossing, as the Valar later warn Cirdan when his first impulse is to sail across Belegaer to catch up with Eressea.

Interestingly, Cirdan is implied to have lived at Cuivienen and said to have "ever been the foremost and most inventive and skilful" boat-builder. "Cirdan" is a nickname, but nobody knows his original name. It might have been Nōwē. Oh, and Elwe is Olwe's older brother, whatever that means. He woke up 5 minutes earlier? I mean, if they had parents, why weren't those people leaders instead? o_O (Even some of the Valar are elder siblings to other Valar, despite being created before time itself.) :confused:
 
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Interestingly, Cirdan is implied to have lived at Cuivienen and said to have "ever been the foremost and most inventive and skilful" boat-builder. "Cirdan" is a nickname, but nobody knows his original name. It might have been Nōwē. Oh, and Elwe is Olwe's older brother, whatever that means. He woke up 5 minutes earlier? I mean, if they had parents, why weren't those people leaders instead? o_O (Even some of the Valar are elder siblings to other Valar, despite being created before time itself.) :confused:
Let's see... We did have Círdan at Cuivienen but I think he developed his shipbuilding skills later. We've talked about him as Nowë but I don't think he has been called by that name in an episode (although that might of course still happen in later scriptwriting). I know there's a text which describes how he gets his nickname during the Great Journey after building a ship (or more) to enable the elves to cross the sea of Rhun. That's not in our story though.
We did discuss which generation Ingwë, Finwë and Elwë are and whether we should use the text about the elf-fathers but Corey wanted Ingwë to be the first elf and it was decided that we shouldn't use that story.
 
Yeah the storyline in Cuivienyarna is supposed to be a fairytale, and it's hard to take literally, with only 144 Elves existing. Come on, there had to be more than that! Even there I just assumed Imin, Tata, and Enel had to be fairytale names for Ingwe, Finwe, and Elwe, rather than their probably-nonexistant fathers. But then if Elwe wasn't even asleep in the same location as Olwe and Elmo, they couldn't be construed as his brothers, so it still doesn't make sense. (The only time JRRT addressed the question, the Kings explicitly had no parents.)

I still prefer the Cuivienyarna's description of Cuivienen as a setting, though.
 
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I like the story of tata, imin and enel and to be honest: i even used the 144 elves theme to calculate population stats for the elves.

The first three don't need to have been leaders. Why? We don't even know if they were still around when orome found the elves..


I always like to see ingwe & sister as the children of imin& iminye, ingwe& morwe as sons of tata& tatie and nowe, nurwe, olwe& elwe as sons of enel& enelye, but that's just my personal fanfic headcanon...

Well what is decided is decided, however this series will never go into production, though i vaguely see a script published in some form of possible book at the horizon...

It is not relevant for this project however... We can still modify and update maps and illustrations if we need / wish to... Other things are decided so far and i'm fine with most decisions. I'd have liked the one or ather actor better, but as the cast is purely hypothetical it's not important. It shows how a majority on the board sees and interprets tolkien, so it's interesting from that point if view.
 
I'm confused. Do you mean that this whole topic has been Decided and closed, or only about the three Kings? I don't want to comment on topics that are closed, but it didn't seem closed...
 
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I can't remember exactly but we discussed this in a session that is available as podcast. It was during one of the first sessions last season, so it would be one of the first general discussions, or one of the first epsiode sessions.
Basically, it was decided that the story about Imin and Iminyë, Tata and Tatië and Enel and Enelyë is a story with truth in it but not expressing the truth. The proportions, for example, that Haerangil mentions above, was taken to represent the proportions of the three groups of elves at Cuiviénen. But the first elf to awaken was Ingwë, not someone called Imin. I can't recall now if we decided exactly which (or indeed if anyone else but Ingwë) of the elves in our story were of the first generation, but we don't get to see the awakening itself I think so in our story, that's shrouded in mystery.
I don't know if this is helpful.
 
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