S02E08:The Trial of Melkor

The problem with moving water to a higher location is that it wants to move back down...sometimes catastrophically so. If Melkor has created a reservoir higher up Taniquetal than Valmar, there is the potential for a dangerous flood if the dam breaks.

An example would be the Johnstown Flood (1889):
https://www.nps.gov/jofl/learn/historyculture/south-fork-dam.htm


For a more sinister example of a unique type of danger, there is Lake Nyos (in Cameroon). It also is in danger of causing a massive catastrophic flood if seismic activity destroys its natural dam, but....it has the fun addition of accumulating CO2 from volcanic activity in the area. I don't think that 'chained' Melkor has access to his volcano-making abilities, though, and don't know what Tulkas would destroy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
 
...but *luckily* Melkor would have had channels in place to redirect the water away from the city. As a safety measure in case the dam failed or something.

So Tulkas' destructive act is dangerous, but the outcome is just the water rushing through all of the irrigation channels between the terraces and everyone sighing and going 'Tul-kas, what was *that* for?' rather than rampant death and destruction.


Or there is always Lake Natron, if we want a particularly deadly lake:
Contrary to Popular Belief, Lake Natron Does Not Instantly Turn Birds To Stone

But it does do this to them:
o-CALCIFIED-FISH-EAGLE-900.jpg
 
That's... evocative and horrifying, but maybe something we want to save for the outskirts of Angband? I can just see Beren and Luthien creeping past vultures exactly like that on their way to Morgoth's throne.
 
Also, we forgot to ask the question, "What does Nessa think of all of this?" As Tulkas' wife, she should be in at least one of these scenes (preferably the Tulkas-as-detective bit or at the end.)
 
Exasperated fondness, perhaps? I don't know... I'm still not sure I have a grasp on her personality; I keep thinking of her as very much like her brother, but she married Tulkas, so...

We have Nerdanel in this season, so maybe we don't want another angry/yelling "I can't believe you, what were you thinking" wife character -- too many of those could make it seem we're saying something about the nature of married women we don't intend to. But a healthy eye-roll and order to clean it up and to "play nice" might not be out of line.
 
Early next season, we will get Uinen being decidedly *not* that wife, as she wrecks as many swanships of the Noldor as she can in retaliation for deaths of the Teleri at Alqualondë.

But I hear you - Nessa's relationship with Tulkas isn't really all that clear. They're friends, they dance and fight together, and probably neither of them is the brightest bulb ever.
 
Could we have her laugh? She's associated with deer, forests, and the wild. She might not "get" the point of structured, constructed beauty such as Melkor was making, and see Tulkas' actions as no big deal. Buildings, perhaps in her mind, are for staying dry when it's raining or having a quiet place to sleep -- beautiful things are outside.
 
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I think that's not a bad idea. We would just need to have her laughter rebuffed by someone "wiser" to make sure the we don't make light of Tulkas' misstep.
 
I'm just saying that there should be some indicator that laughter is not the appropriate reaction at the time. The audience should feel embarrassed for Tulkas, not necessarily amused.
 
Right, Aulë can be appropriately horrified, I think.

Nessa does not need to be present at the climax, necessarily, I just think she should appear *somewhere* in this episode (I mean, outside the Ring of Doom). And, whatever angle we take with her, she should be Tulkas' partner. Even if she's not as concerned about the Melkor-is-loose! development, she would support or at least tolerate his detective activities...at least to a point.
 
personally i liked the UT version in which was humiliated by having to serve as Tulkas servant, I#m also pretty sure Tulkas wasn't happy with having Melko all the time beneath his eyes... he may have told him to **ck off and later felt sorry because he left him out of his control.
 
So this episode still needs some work. We could have Tulkas destroying a dam at the end, but then we would need to rework what Melkor was doing that raised suspicion in the first place.

But mostly I just stopped into this thread to share this image, which seems to be just about where we are in the story 😛

c9678aed04bdbb1d6cb6b8091b63660a.jpg

Usually, I hate sharing art without attributing it, but I haven't tracked down the artist yet. There's a bunch of different images, obviously all by the same artist, but I can only find them on Pintrest and foreign language sites, so no luck. Obviously, the style is very chibi, but the age ranges look pretty good to me. Caranthir, Turgon and Finrod all being about the same age (and 'little kids' right now) fits. We probably don't need Curufin born yet, but other than that, here's where we would be.

I realize that the request is that Fingon be older, or rather, Maedhros and Maglor be younger.
 
Is there really that much of an age difference* between Maedros and Fingon? I hadn't realized...

*canonically, that is. I know we might be tweaking ages.
 
The ages (well, birth years) of the sons of Fëanor are not given in canon. So, we don't know what the age gaps are between the brothers, or between the brothers and the cousins.

However, we do know that Fëanor married young, and that Fingolfin and Finarfin are significantly younger than him. So....unless Fëanor and Nerdanel waited to start their own family, it would stand to reason that Maedhros, at least, would be significantly older than the other cousins.

Relevant dates from the Annals of Aman (in Years of the Trees)
[Note that Tolkien did have multiple versions of the Annals, so I'm not saying that all of this is beyond dispute. After all, there are versions of the story where Fëanor never saw his mother (ie, she died immediately after the birth), and versions where she lasted until he was full grown. The version here implies something in between.]

1169 Birth of Fëanor
1170 Death of Míriel
1185 Marriage of Finwë and Indis
1190 Birth of Fingolfin
1230 Birth of Finarfin
1280 Marriage of Finarfin and Earwen
1300 Birth of Turgon (2nd son of Fingolfin) and Finrod (eldest son of Finarfin)
1362 Births of Aredhel (youngest daughter of Fingolfin) and Galadriel (youngest daughter of Finarfin)

So, from this, we learn that Fëanor is 'only' 21 years older than Fingolfin, while Fingolfin is 40 years older than Finarfin. (Keep in mind there are also sisters.)
We see that Finarfin was 50 years old when he married, and their first child was born 20 years later. Their last child (4th or 5th, depending) was born 62 years after that.

So, it's possible that Fëanor married when he was 49 (1218) and waited 5-20 years to have a child (1223-1238).
If Fingolfin also married at age 50 (1240) and also waited 20 years to have a child, then Fingon would be born in 1260.
We don't know what 'normal' spacing of elvish children is. Arwen is over 100 years younger than her brothers.
So, yes, it's quite possible that Maedhros would be nearly full grown (age 50) by the time some of his younger cousins are born. It's even possible that he's older than Finarfin, though he is explicitly *not* older than Fingolfin.
 
curufin probably already has a child, celebrimbor and feanors brothers also have children who already have children of their own, turgon and angrod... i suggest feanors sons are possibly young adults, vaguely the same generation as fingolfin and finarfins children.. and celebrimbor, idril and orodreth are still pre-teens or even younger.
 
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We are releasing Melkor a little earlier in our version, so, no, some of Finwë's grandchildren aren't born yet. Galadriel, Aredhel, Amrod and Amras will be children in the next episode, the making of the Silmarils. Celebrimbor will be a child in Episode 11 (Formenos), and Idril will be a child in Episode 12.

We will have to decide whether Orodreth is a son of Finarfin or a son of Angrod at some point. That decision hasn't been made yet, but we're certainly not introducing Orodreth as a character in Season 2. If we do decide he's a son of Finarfin, we'll make him a silent background character, if he's onscreen at all. Technically, we haven't introduced Finrod, Angrod or Aegnor yet, though I hope to remedy that tonight.
 
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