In the Shadow of the Star: Discussion Thread (Part 1)

[Child of the 7th Age]

I've got a very Briny Notion
To drink myself to sleep.
Bring me my bowl, my magic potion!
Tonight I'm diving deep.
down! down! down!
Down where the dream-fish go
--Arry Lowdham

Helen---

We're down there with the dream fish, and I don't think things are ever too clear!

I've purposely avoided trying to respond to your question because I believe this is an enormously complicated topic. To give you a half-way decent reply I'd need to sit down and do research in the Lost Road and the Notion Clby Papers, and then write a scholarly treatise!

The only person who has written on this in any meaningful way (that I know about) is Verlyn Flieger, and I am heavily influenced by his thoughts. If you'd like, take a look at Tolkien's Legendarium (ed. by Flieger) and A Question of Time that he wrote.

First of all, on a purely practical basis, I don't think this is an issue we need to deal with directly in the RPG. When the story ends, it ends. What characters do or don't remember is open to conjecture. The only time this will actually come up is in the context of writing later RPGs or fanfiction. Give the history of the Star and the Star writers, it is possible, nay likely, that related stories will be written. How much our characters remember will vary from poster to poster depending on how they feel about it. I hesitate to specify that ahead of time.

I could tell you my personal thoughts but these only apply to me. Mith or Pio or Orual or Nurumaiel may see things totally differently, and have an equally valid view.

My views are really only important in the context of my own particular characters since those are the ones I write for and describe. For example, I may suspect that Mithadan (the character) remembers but if his creator decides he should forget in a later RPG, then so be it!!

Now, let's step back for a minute from the practical answer and get into a jucier question:

...my canon-friendly-hopeful-vote is, either a foggy dream, or complete forgetfulness.

I respectfully do not agree. Based on what I've read in the Notion Club Papers, I would argue that the exact opposite is true. For Tolkien, the essence of a true or deep dream is memory, especially since one of the key purposes of dream is the rebirth and dissemination of myth. For that to happen you must have memory.

At the beginning of the Notion Club, the characters discuss the meaning of dream. This is what Ramer has to say about memory and dream:

I was awake in bed, and I fell wide asleep: as suddenly and violently as the waker in my illustration. I dived slap through several levels and a whirl of shapes and scenes into a connected and remembered sequence. I could remember all the dreams I ever had, of that sequence. At least, I remember that I could remember them while I was still "there", better than I can "here" remember a long sequence of events in waking life. And the memory did not vanish when I woke up, and it hasn't vanished. It has dimmed down to normal, to about the same degree as memory of waking life: it's edited: blanks indicating lack of interest, some transitions cut, and so on. But my dream memories are no longer fragments, no longer like pictures, about the size of my circle of vision with fixed eyes, surounded with dark, as they used to be, nearly always. They are wide and long and deep. I have visited many other sequences since then, and I can now remember a great number of serious, free, dreams, my deep dreams....

In a related vein, look at Tolkien's "dream" narators. Memories are 'inherited' through the same family by the Elf-friend narrators: Elendil/Veronwe (Numenor); Aelfwine/Treowine (Anglo-Saxon); Lowdham/Jeremy (modern). And these inherited memories are often conveyed through the vehicle of dream.

Fleger has also argued that places like Bombadil's house and Lothlorien stand half-way between reality and dream in LotR. I certainly get that sense of dream when the fellowship comes to Lothlorien.

There is really no canon here, in that none of this was published by JRRT, one way or the other. But his unpublished writings strongly suggest that he saw memory as an important component of dream.

sharon