Keep Helevorn (Caranthir's Fortress)

Rhiannon

Well-Known Member
A few scenes this season happen at Caranthir's fortress, which the script team decided to call Keep Helevorn. According to The Silmarillion, "... the people of Caranthir fortified the mountains to the east of Maglor's Gap. There Mount Rerir, and about it many lesser heights, stood out from the main range of Ered Lindon westward; and in the angle between Rerir and Ered Lindon there was a lake, shadowed by mountains on all sides save the south. That was Lake Helevorn, deep and dark, and beside it Caranthir had his abode ..."

In the scripts, Caranthir's fortress has the road on one side of it and a steep slope to the lake on the other, which forces the Dwarves who want to use the road for trade to go right by Keep Helevorn and allows Caranthir to gate the road and demand tolls. Caranthir's fortress should be strong but smaller and rougher than the other Feanorian fortresses, which Curufin teases him about.
 
Here are a few lakes surrounded by mountains that could work for Lake Helevorn.

Lake Hraunsvatn in Iceland
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Lake Königssee in Germany
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Mirror Lake in Wyoming, USA
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Loch Shiel in Scotland
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As for the design of the keep itself, maybe it could look something like Conwy Castle or Cardiff Castle, both in Wales
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or Butrón Castle in Spain
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or Bled Castle in Slovenia, which happens to already be situated on a lake.
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I like the elevated position on a cliff/ hill...

That seems very noldoesque to me.So far most Noldo settlements we had were round, instead of Formenos...
maybe we depart from thar for the Feanorians and move on towards a more classic castle design.
 
Did a sketch of how what Helevorn might look like. Is that someone like what the script team imagined ("geografically, tactically")? Also, the atmosphere of the place? I'm quite vague still on the architecture, that could be quite different too. It's not really rough ("rougher than the other feanorian fortresses"), is it. Maybe a tiny bit rough for overabundant noldor standards but I don't have those style tendences down well enough yet. So the architecture is still quite generic. Also maybe it should be a bigger settlement, or also on the bottom on the cliff by the lake (for fishing & boating), and have a stair go up the cliff. Then there would already be three "parts of town", the harbour, the trader's/merchants, artisans quarter and the castle.

helevorn_skizze.png
 
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Did a sketch of how what Helevorn might look like. Is that someone like what the script team imagined ("geografically, tactically")? Also, the atmosphere of the place? I'm quite vague still on the architecture, that could be quite different too. It's not really rough ("rougher than the other feanorian fortresses"), is it. Maybe a tiny bit rough for overabundant noldor standards but I don't have those style tendences down well enough yet. So the architecture is still quite generic. Also maybe it should be a bigger settlement, or also on the bottom on the cliff by the lake (for fishing & boating), and have a stair go up the cliff. Then there would already be three "parts of town", the harbour, the trader's/merchants, artisans quarter and the castle.

View attachment 2508
It is a bit fancier than I imagined, but the basic idea is there. A fortification that controls the road.
 
Did a sketch of how what Helevorn might look like. Is that someone like what the script team imagined ("geografically, tactically")? Also, the atmosphere of the place? I'm quite vague still on the architecture, that could be quite different too. It's not really rough ("rougher than the other feanorian fortresses"), is it. Maybe a tiny bit rough for overabundant noldor standards but I don't have those style tendences down well enough yet. So the architecture is still quite generic. Also maybe it should be a bigger settlement, or also on the bottom on the cliff by the lake (for fishing & boating), and have a stair go up the cliff. Then there would already be three "parts of town", the harbour, the trader's/merchants, artisans quarter and the castle.

View attachment 2508
First of all, fantastic work. The colors of the landscape are gorgeous. I love the way the road goes right between the main fortress and the side of the mountain. That's exactly how I was imagining it. I also really like bridge from the fortress to the road.

Second, I have a few specific suggestions for additions and modifications based primarily on how I imagine Keep Helevorn. However, this is your work, and my imagining of the fortress is no more valid than yours, so I won't trouble you with them if you don't want to hear them. Just let me know.

Finally, just out of curiosity, what were you imagining as the geographical orientation of the picture? The light is coming from the sun on the left side, but I'm not sure whether that is sunrise in the east or sunset in the west.
 
I'd love to develop the actual settlement/fortress more because that is super "placeholder-y" at the moment. Please suggest away. It is definitely not rough as it is, but I didn't know if I should go full dark castle on a lonely rock with it or keep some attempt to make it look nice in the architecture. It definitely has to be much more practical and less luxurious, but I wonder what that might look like for Noldorin standards.

For the geography: I imagined it looking southwards, so that's a sunrise. If I got it correct, the steep clifface of mount rerir is to the north of lake Helevorn, so at our back, and the road goes along the southern border. (In my picture the lake narrower, longer and less straight as in the map I looked at, so you can't see the whole of it but it basically starts further to the right and then to the left goes a bit around the edge of that cliff and gets a bit wider there. I don't know why the road has to go exactly by here and not further south where there are fewer mountains, does it lead to a precise place in the ered lindon where you can't get otherwise? that's what I imagined
 
another question I have there: the fortress can be mere walls with basically 1 building within them to house caranthir + some soldiers at a minimum, plus maybe a little settlement beside, or you can have a whole settlement inside the walls, and then bigger settlement areas outside. So I didn't intend the whole structure inside the walls to be one palace but multiple buildings for different people & purposes. Probably there need to be radically less towers & fancy roofs there, or much fewer houses in total. I've no clue how big this settlement should be but from this thread I gather, much smaller, and much less luxurious.

Haakon, that's not supposed to be Mount Rerir, just a hill. The viewer is standing on the flank of it basically. If I've got the geography down, the road is not on the mount rerir side of the lake. A picture with mount rerir in view would have to look north, or looking south from much further away/higher up. That's just my preference for getting landscape & lighting like I wanted it in this picture but yeah, I could do a second one from the other side.

I'll go back and change some stuff this is very much a sketch to figure stuff out not my definitive opinion :)
 
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I agree that it should tend more towards fortress and less towards palace, although that does not mean the settlement is limited to a single building. I suggest having the buildings more consolidated in a defensible area and mostly behind a wall and moving the gate across the road much closer to the fortress. There could still be smaller buildings outside the walls, but I think they would be more like homesteads that could be evacuated in case of an attack. Since the hill is higher than the main fortress, maybe there should be a little outpost or lookout tower atop it.

While I like the variety in the heights and shapes of the buildings, I think they should suggest more control and planning. I feel like the Noldor would value symmetry or at least some kind of pattern in their architecture. Each building could still be unique and take advantage of the existing landscape, but I think everything would be designed to aesthetically fit with the rest of the settlement. Even if the Elves did not plan the entire settlement in advance, I think they would think carefully about the existing buildings when adding a new one to make sure it fit with the whole. Also, I think the buildings should be made of a little darker stone, maybe something that looks like it was quarried locally. I don't want it to look too much like Gondolin.

This might be too small of a detail for your picture, but I suggest adding a little staircase winding down the cliff to reach that bit of lakeshore that is not a sheer cliff. There could be a few fishing boats down there.

I'd love to develop the actual settlement/fortress more because that is super "placeholder-y" at the moment. Please suggest away. It is definitely not rough as it is, but I didn't know if I should go full dark castle on a lonely rock with it or keep some attempt to make it look nice in the architecture. It definitely has to be much more practical and less luxurious, but I wonder what that might look like for Noldorin standards.

For the geography: I imagined it looking southwards, so that's a sunrise. If I got it correct, the steep clifface of mount rerir is to the north of lake Helevorn, so at our back, and the road goes along the southern border. (In my picture the lake narrower, longer and less straight as in the map I looked at, so you can't see the whole of it but it basically starts further to the right and then to the left goes a bit around the edge of that cliff and gets a bit wider there. I don't know why the road has to go exactly by here and not further south where there are fewer mountains, does it lead to a precise place in the ered lindon where you can't get otherwise? that's what I imagined
Thank you for the clarification about the geography. I think the reason the road goes by Helevorn is that most of the Noldorin fortresses are concentrated in the North, and Helevorn it is the best place to reach them from the south. It also has the advantage of being the source of a tributary of the Greater Gelion. The Dwarves may not use the river to transport goods, but I think that Caranthir's people would certainly use it to ship the goods they get from the Dwarves to Maglor's or Amras' lands or even up the Little Gelion to Himring.
 
I do like the layout of this fortress!

I would want Caranthir's fortress to look lonely and a bit isolated, and I think this picture definitely portrays this.

As for the 'too pretty' issue, a darker shade for the stones might give the fortress a grimmer feel, if you want to try that. I don't know what type of rocks would be found in that area.
 
As for the 'too pretty' issue, a darker shade for the stones might give the fortress a grimmer feel, if you want to try that. I don't know what type of rocks would be found in that area.
I just meant that the walls of the keep should be closer to the color of the cliff faces or maybe a dark gray.
 
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