Friends of Nimrodel: Tapestry of Dreams - Discussion

[mark12_30]

Blessed Good Friday and Happy Easter, everyone!

Just a quick clarification for tonight, and tomorrow I'll try to detail a timeline:

Ravion was in Rohan, and heard that the crazy blacksmith had gone north alone and on foot. Then he headed to Minas Tirith. Between the time he heard about Mellon-Amroth's departure from Edoras, and telling Mellonin about it, a full week went by.

Ravion sets out from Minas Tirith a full week after Mellon-Amroth sets out from Edoras. So Mellon-Amroth has a week's head start on Ravion.

However, right now, Ravion is one day away from Minas Tirith, and Mellon-Amroth is two or three days away from Edoras. So the journey is uneven, timewise.

Tomorrow morning I will make a timeline that corresponds to the map I drew. Don't let that stop you from posting! Just keep travelling for now; we're not about to meet up anyway. That'll be a bit further on down the road. So we can still have plenty of character interaction as we eat up the days.

Since today was Good Friday I saw "Passion" again. Tomorrow's the first day of fishing season, so my husband will be out near the water. I'll be watching ROTK with a friend.

Happy Easter!

Grace and peace, --mark12_30

[Nurumaiel]

Lovely, lovely, littlemanpoet! You've given Liornung the perfect opportunity to talk about his family, the pride of his life, dearer to him than his fiddle. I will be rather busy as can be imagined until about Tuesday, so if I can't come up with something before the game moves on I'm sure you'd have no objection if I PMed my post to you when it's done and you can put it below yours?

Have a lovely and blessed Easter, everyone!

[littlemanpoet]

I can do that, most certainly, Nurumaiel.

After I posted that up, I noticed my unintentional rhyme within Ædegard's own dialogue. I decided to leave it in as an interior joke. Enjoy my embarrassment!

[mark12_30]

Imladris, Aylwen & lmp: great posts!

Sorry I have yet to post a timeline. Busier day than I had planned.

Roughly:
The game begins in the late Autumn/ Early winter. Mellon dreams of Nimrodel, and Amroth's dreams and purpose take over, and he heads Northwest, but veers west and ends up at Edoras about two weeks after he left Minas Tirith. At Edoras he grows feverish and convalesces several days.

Four days after Mellondu disappears, Mellonin begins work at the Seventh Star. (She is joined by Raefindan during her first couple of days.) She is there a week and a half, and then she also takes fever and is sick, dreaming deliriously, for the same three days.

Mellonin and Mellondu recover at the same time, and Mellon-Amroth heads north from Edoras. Ravion departs from Rohan for Minas Tirith. Mellon-Amroth walks a day and sleeps one night before Ædegard, Liornung and Bellyn catch up to him.

A week later Ravion arrives in Minas Tirith, speaks with Mellonin, and they leave that night. (No rest for Ravion!)

Now, should we use a Middle-Earth months, or January, Feburary, etc? Personally, since Tolkien translated LOTR into English months, I have no problem using them, and I think it would be easier on all of us to do so. If anyone is passionate about using the elvish months, let me know & I'll edit the timeline to indicate that.

So let's say Mellondu disappeared in late November; how about Nov 21.

Here's a start on the timeline:

Nov 21: Mellondu disappears from Minas Tirith.
Nov 24: Mellonin hired on at the Seventh Star.
Dec 5: Mellonin and Mellondu both sick of a fever, & dreaming.
Dec 8: they recover. Mellon-Amroth walks northward from Edoras.
Dec 9: Ædegard, Bellyn, Liornung catch up with Mellon-Amroth. Ravion departs for Minas Tirith.

Right now, writers' time, Ædegard's Rohan group is on Dec 10 or 11: current time frame for Ædegard, Mellon-Amroth, Liornung, Bellyn. This team can post and travel with abandon, since Ravion is already pushing Dec 17.


Dec 15: Ravion arrives in Minas Tirith.
Dec 16: Ravion awakens with hangover, & speaks with Mellonin. They depart that evening. Mellon-Amroth arrives where the Nimrodel meets the edge of Lorien and is met there by Erebemlin.


Dec 17th: Ravion's group is heading northward for Rohan, a bit westward from the Anduin.

Once Ædegard's group catches up to Ravion's group on Game-Time Dec 17, they will have arrived at Lorien, met Erebemlin, and be heading southward along the Anduin. I'm imagining that Ravion will catch Mellon-Amroth's trail, or rumor of their passing, in the East Emnet at or above the Sarn Gebir. (See map.)

At this point, Ravion's troop needs horses or boats or something. If they travel on foot, the horses of Rohan will leave them far behind!
...More to follow later.

[littlemanpoet]

In some post way back there, featuring Ædegard leaving Edoras, I think, I have spring on its way and the snow disappearing. If I can find it, I'll go back and edit it.

I thought both parties were traveling northwards. ???

[mark12_30]

littlemanpoet wrote:
I thought both parties were traveling northwards. ???

In writers-time, Yes; today "as the gamers write", both parties are now going northward--because Ædegard's party is almost a game-week behind. How far out from Edoras is Ædegard, as of this writing? Three days? I'm calling it Dec 10 or 11, but I should go back thru and verify.

In four or five more days Ædegard-game-time, they will reach Lorien and meet up with Erebemlin who will steer them along the Anduin-- southwards. At *that* time (Dec 16 or 17) Ravion's troop is just starting out.

I'll edit below to clarify.

In the meantime, what to do? I suggest the Rohan writing team proceed with lengthened stride (but let's not be too hasty, hoom hom-- *enjoy* the character development while eating up the miles and the days.) Meanwhile, Ravion's writing team can proceed at a liesurely pace (writing-wise. The characters are still pressing to make up for lost time.)

Sound reasonable?

[alaklondewen]

Helen, would you mind attaching this to the bottom of post #68?

~*~*~
The golden forest was pleasantly quiet as Erebemlin moved soundlessly through the trees. He was following a set of deer tracks that were heading toward the river. If he found the animal delayed by the water’s edge, there would be enough fresh meat for the next few weeks. With winter on the way, the ellon knew the importance of having meat before he and the others found themselves without for the remainder of the season.

As he neared the river, its quiet murmur met his ears. He stopped momentarily, leaning against a mighty mellorn and loosely fitted an arrow to his bow. Steadying his hand, he inhaled deeply and swiftly stepped over bringing the weapon to his eye and pulling the arrow back in one sweeping moment. The buck stood only a few yards from his position, and he readied himself to fire.

The arrow, however, never flew. Just as Erebemlin began to loosen his grip, a cry filled the forest. Speak to me. O Nimrodel, Nimrodel, sing to me again. Then, as quickly as it came, the call was gone. The hunter lowered his weapon and opened his heart searching for its source, but the thought had departed.

Nimrodel. Erebemlin was perplexed by this mysterious cry. The thoughts were so desperate, but who would be searching for the maiden who had long been lost to the world. He could think of only one, but his King had departed long ago for the lands West of the sea.

[mark12_30]

...and I hope you feel better very soon. Get some sleep...?

[littlemanpoet]

The War of the Ring is pretty powerful a reason to pull up roots and change from farming to wayfaring. So if you're NOT going for the generational thing, that works fine.

My question is, what do the Wainriders, Easterlings, Wayfarers, and all, do to keep body and soul together? The options I can think of are herding, performing (a very tough life), or bartering. Anything else? Man, I don't know. Herding would be the securest, considering that you take your food with you on the hoof, but it also means that you need wide lands for pasturage that nobody else claims, or you run into squabbles with landowners, which I'm sure wayfarers do all the time.

Actually, this was the reason there was constant movement from Asia into Europe for so many centuries, because there was land to be had, and not so many people in the way. Such seems to be the case basically everywhere in known Middle Earth (from Rhun to Ered Luin).

As to specifics for Gondorians and Rohirrim, any mixture of ethnicities only occurs during times of extremity. Yes, a War of the Ring would be one such. Orc raids that destroy a homestead would be one way. One's lands turned into a battle field would be another (but very limited) way. One's bread winner being killed in the war might cause a woman to pick up roots and children and tag along with a passing caravan, a most desperate decision but not at all unlikely, given the context. Orc raids seem to be the raison détre, or however that phrench phrase is spelled - that most rpg'ers seem to fall back on. I'd like to see us be more creative than that. Sure, that could be the reason for one family, but let's try and think up others.

Having helped not at all and complicated matters further, I'll stop now.

[mark12_30]

Okay, I just realized something potentially *very* comfusing is going on.

On the one hand, I'm insisting that Nuru use a non-anachronistic, linguistically consistent name for her "gypsies"-- I think I'll call them "our wayfarers" because Amroth is about to start a conversation with a stray one-- but one post later, Raefindan's dog is being called "George". What's going on?

It all goes back to Raefindan's original character development.

Raefindan is a time-traveller-- who doesn't *know* he's a time traveller. littlemanpoet is using the "Lost Road" method of time travel (via dreams) to displace a 20th century man (Roy) to Middle-Earth. The variation in what lmp is doing, is that this 20th century man is remembering bits of 20th century language, and it is slipping out of him. This is the readers' only real clue that Raefindan doesn't belong in the Fourth Age.

lmp is using some *very* subtle signals to get this across. For one thing, notice lmp's use of contractions. (i think they're called contractions? Grammar was 20+ years ago...) -- words with an apostrophe made from two other words. Don't for Do Not, Won't for Will Not, It'll for It Will... etc. Anyway-- you'll notice that when lmp writes a post, the only character to use apostrophe-words is Raefindan. That's because it's a modern speech pattern. All the other characters use non-apostropheed words.

Any other kind of anachronism is designed to make Raefindan stand out like sore thumb; to show the reader that He Doesn't Belong. He's a stranger and an alein in this place.

So the dog is very anachronistically named "George", or Jorge because he can't remember how to spell it.

Another anachronism: Raefindan's strategy of slowly introducing the dog to Gwillion. I'm guessing (correct me, lmp) that Raefindan is attempting to de-sensitize Gwillion to the dog because he understands some amount of modern psychology-- although he doesn't know why or where it came from. Again, this will make him stand out. Mellonin will be bemused by it all, Aeron may be a bit surprised that it worked-- but pleased-- and Ravion will wonder where this redheaded stranger came from, anyway.

There is an order and a logic to the anachronisms, and it's part of the story being woven about time travel and dreams. Raefindan has traveled to Middle-Earth from the 20th century; *then* he travels back via dreams a thousand years and experiences the life of Imrazor. This is the thread for connecting Amroth and Mellondu, in the end; Raefindan will have lived out both timeframes and will understand both stories, better than any of the other characters (except Erebemlin, but he was only in the northern part of the story.)

And in the very VERY end, it'll be interesting to see what happens to Raefindan, and where he finally ends up.

Does it make sense? Please ask questions if you have them.

[littlemanpoet]

What a great post, Helen! That was downright fun to read.

Please, please, please, can we stop calling them gypsies and start calling them wayfarers? 'Cause if Raefindan ever runs across them in this rpg, guess what he'll call 'em?

Nur, I'm a little fuzzy on what's expected of Ædegard right now. He'll "introduce us to all of them"??? To all the wayfarers? If that's what Liornung expects, he doesn't understand Ædegard yet.....