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Old 06-18-2018, 12:49 AM   #1
ArcusCalion
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Silmaril The Return of the Shadow

This is the first draft of the chapter The Return of the Shadow.

This chapter is a thoroughly mixed bag of sources, and so there is no base text. Because of this, I have marked every instance of any text used, so as to be easy to follow.

The markings are:
FY-HL-xx for all the headlines for the Fading Years.
RS-SL-xx for all expansions and changes to the narrative.

Some conventions of my writing:

Bold Text = source information, comments and remarks
{example} = text that should be deleted
[example] = normalized text, normally only used for general changes, as well as changes which are a part of replacement that is not grammatical.
Underlined Text = text changed for grammatical reasons in the process of combining and inserting and removing.
<source example> = additions with source information
...... = This section of the paragraph is unchanged from the source.

Quote:
FY-HL-04 < THE RETURN OF THE SHADOW>

RS-SL-01 <Of the Rings of Power (ORP) Only three of his people came ever back ..... these things might never come to pass.
Valandil took up his abode in Annúminas, ..... , and upon the Gladden Fields many had fallen.>
RS-SL-02 <Galadriel and Celeborn: Appendix B A long peace followed in which the numbers of the Silvan Elves grew again; but they were unquiet and anxious, feeling the change of the world ..... though he knew that it was now broken and deserted and under the vigilance of the Kings of Men, fear spoke in his heart that it was not conquered forever: it would arise again.>
RS-SL-03 <Galadriel and Celeborn: Appendix A Thranduil father of Legolas of the Nine Walkers was Sindarin, and that tongue was used in his house, though not by all his folk. In Lórien, where many of the people were Sindar in origin, or Noldor, survivors from Eregion, Sindarin had become the language of all the people. In what way their Sindarin differed from the forms of Beleriand RS-SL-04 {– see The Fellowship of the Ring II 6, where Frodo reports that the speech of the Silvan folk that they used among themselves was unlike that of the West –} is now of course not known. It probably differed in little more than what would now popularly called ‘accent:’ mainly differences of vowel-sounds and intonation sufficient to mislead one who RS-SL-05 {, as Frodo,} was not well acquainted with purer Sindarin. There may of course also have been some local words and other features ultimately due to the influence of the former Silvan tongue. Lórien had long been much isolated from the outside world. Certainly some names preserved from its past, such as Amroth and Nimrodel, cannot be fully explained from Sindarin, though fitting it in form. Caras seems to be an old word for a moated fortress, not found in Sindarin. RS-SL-06 {Lórien is probably an alteration of an older name now lost [though earlier the original Silvan or Nandorin name was stated to be Lórinand, see p.265, note 5].}>
RS-SL-07 <ORP In the south the realm of Gondor endured, and for a time .... and before that from Valinor in the Day before days when the world was young.>
RS-SL-08 <LotR Appendix A It was Ostoher the seventh king who rebuilt Minas Anor, where afterwards the kings dwelt in summer rather than in Osgiliath. In his time Gondor was first attacked by wild men out of the East. But Tarostar, his son, defeated them and drove them out, and took the name of Rómendacil 'East-victor'. He was, however, later slain in battle with fresh hordes of Easterlings. Turambar his son avenged him, and won much territory eastwards.
RS-SL-09 <Tradition of Isildur {Meneldil followed Isildur's counsel, and all the Kings that came after him, until Rómendacil I (the fifth after Meneldil).} In {his}Rómendacil’s time {Gondor was first assailed by Easterlings; and} lest the tradition should be broken because of war or sudden death or other misfortune, he caused the ‘Tradition of Isildur’ to be set down in a sealed scroll, together with other things that a new King should know; and this scroll was delivered by the Steward to the King before his crowning. [Footnote: It was also Rómendacil I who established the office of Steward (Arandur ‘king's servant’), but he was chosen by the King as a man of high trust and wisdom, usually advanced in years since he was not permitted to go to war or to leave the realm. He was never a member of the Royal House.] This delivery was from then onwards always performed, though the custom of visiting the hallow of Amon Anwar with his heir was maintained by nearly all the Kings of Gondor.>
With Tarannon, the twelfth king, began the line of the Ship-kings, who built navies and extended the sway of Gondor along the coasts west and south of the Mouths of Anduin. To commemorate his victories as Captain of the Hosts, Tarannon took the crown in the name of Falastur 'Lord of the Coasts'.>
RS-SL-10 <The Istari Note 7 {She}Queen Berúthiel was the nefarious, solitary, and loveless wife of Tarannon, {twelfth King of Gondor (Third Age 830-913) and first of the ‘Ship-kings’, who took the crown in the name of Falastur ‘Lord of the Coasts,’ and was} the first childless king {(The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, I, ii and iv)}. Berúthiel lived in the King's House in Osgiliath, hating the sounds and smells of the sea and the house that Tarannon built below Pelargir upon arches whose feet stood deep in the wide waters of Ethir Anduin. She hated all making, all colors and elaborate adornment, wearing only black and silver and living in bare chambers, and the gardens of the house in Osgiliath were filled with tormented sculptures beneath cypresses and yews. She had nine black cats and one white, her slaves, with whom she conversed, or read their memories, setting them to discover all the dark secrets of Gondor, so that she knew those things that men wish most to keep hidden, setting the white cat to spy upon the black, and tormenting them. No man in Gondor dared touch them; all were afraid of them, and cursed when they saw them pass. RS-SL-11 {What follows is almost wholly illegible in the unique manuscript, except to the ending, which states that her}Her name was erased from the Book of the Kings, but the memory of men is not wholly shut in books, and the cats of Queen Berúthiel never passed wholly out of men's speech. {and that} King Tarannon had her set on a ship alone with her cats and set adrift on the sea before a north wind. The ship was last seen flying past Umbar under a sickle moon, with a cat at the masthead and another as a figure-head on the prow.>

RS-SL-12 <LotR Appendix A Eriador was of old the name of all the lands between the Misty Mountains and the Blue; in the South it was bounded by the Greyflood and the Glanduin that flows into it above Tharbad. RS-SL-13 <Galadriel and Celeborn: Appendix D Glanduin means ‘border-river.’ It was the name first given (in the Second Age), since the river was the southern boundary of Eregion, beyond which pre-Númenórean and generally unfriendly peoples lived, ...... plains of Minhiriath and Enedwaith. [Footnote: In the early days of the kingdoms the most expeditious route ..... It was called Lond Daer Enedh, the Great Middle Haven (as being between Lindon in the North and Pelargir on the Anduin). RS-SL-14 <Rivers and Beacon-Hills of Gondor (RBHG) It was the main entry for the Númenóreans in the War against Sauron (Second Age 1693-1701).>] A considerable garrison of soldiers, mariners and engineers had been kept there until the seventeenth century of the Third Age. But from then onwards the region fell quickly into decay; and long before the RS-SL-15 {time of The Lord of the Rings}end of the Third Age had gone back into wild fenlands. {When Boromir made his great journey from Gondor to Rivendell – the courage and hardihood required is not fully recognized in the narrative—the}The North-South Road no longer existed ..... if the river had not been there slow and shallow – but wide.
If the name Glanduin was remembered at all it would only be in Rivendell; .... If the river had any name it was in the language of the Dunlendings. RS-SL-16 {In The Return of the King VI it}It is called the Swanfleet river (not River), simply as being the river that went down into the Nin-in-Eilph, ‘the Waterlands of the Swans.’ [Footnote: Sindarin alph, a swan, plural eilph, Quenya alqua, as in Alqualondë. The Telerin branch of Eldarin shifted original kw to p (but original p remained unshifted). The much-changed Sindarin of Middle-earth turned the stops to spirants after l and r. Thus original alkwa became [i]alpa[i] in Telerin, and alf (transcribed alph) in Sindarin. RS-SL-17 <RBHG Glan: base √(G)LAN, ‘rim, edge, border, boundary, limit'. This is seen in Q. lanya verb ‘bound, enclose, separate from, mark the limit of; lanwa ‘within bounds, limited, finite, (well-)defined'; landa ‘a boundary'; lanë (lani-) ‘hem'; lantalca ‘boundary post or mark'; cf. also lanca ‘sharp edge (not of tools), sudden end', as e.g. a cliff-edge, or the clean edge of things made by hand or built, also used in transferred senses, as in cuivië-lancassë, literally ‘on the brink of life', of a perilous situation in which one is likely to fall into death.
It is debated whether gl- was an initial group in Common Eldarin or was a Telerin-Sindarin innovation (much extended in Sindarin). In this case, at any rate, the initial gl- is shared by Telerin and Sindarin and is found in all the derivatives in those languages (except in T. lanca, S. lane, the equivalents of Q. lanca): T. glana 'edge, rim'; glania- ‘to bound, limit'; glanna ‘limited, bounded'; glanda ‘a boundary': S. glân, ‘hem, border' (of textiles and other hand-made things), gland > glann ‘boundary'; glandagol ‘boundary mark'; gleina- ‘bound, enclose, limit'.>]>
RS-SL-18 <LotR Appendix A At its greatest Arnor included all Eriador, except the regions beyond the Lune, and the lands east of Greyflood and Loudwater, ...... dwelt with Círdan or in the seaward lands of Lindon. If any now remain they are few.>
RS-SL-19 <LotR Appendix A After Elendil and Isildur there were eight High Kings of Arnor. After Eärendur, RS-SL-20 <LotR Appendix A [Footnote: After Eärendur, the Kings no longer took names in the High-elven form.]> owing to dissensions among his sons ..... its bounds being the Brandywine, the Greyflood, and the Great Road.
In Arthedain the line of Isildur was maintained ..... Palantír of the North, and the other two were both in the keeping of Arthedain.>

RS-SL-21 <LotR Appendix A Eärnil I, RS-SL-22 {his} nephew of Falastur, who succeeded him, repaired the ancient haven of Pelargir, ...... came up with great power against that stronghold, and Ciryandil fell in battle in Haradwaith.
For many years Umbar was invested, .... Ciryaher then took the name of Hyarmendacil 'South-victor'.
The might of Hyarmendacil no enemy dared to contest ...... The realm then extended north to Celebrant and the southern eaves of RS-SL-23 {Mirkwood}[Greenwood the Great]; west to the Greyflood; ..... but was watched over by great fortresses that guarded the passes. So ended the line of the Ship-kings.>
RS-SL-24 <ORP Now of old {the name of that forest was Greenwood the Great, and its}the wide halls and aisles of Greenwood the Great were the haunt of many beasts and of birds of bright song; and there was the realm of King Thranduil under the oak and the beech. But after many years, when well-nigh a third of that age of the world had passed, a darkness crept slowly through the wood from the southward, and fear walked there in shadowy glades; fell beasts came hunting, and cruel and evil creatures laid there their snares.>
RS-SL-25 <Galadriel and Celeborn: Appendix B {when}When {a thousand years of the Third Age had passed and} the Shadow fell upon Greenwood the Great, the Silvan Elves ruled by Thranduil retreated before it as it spread ever northward, until at last Thranduil established his realm in the north-east of the forest and delved there a fortress and great halls underground. Oropher was of Sindarin origin, and no doubt Thranduil his son was following the example of King Thingol long before, in Doriath; though his halls were not to be compared with Menegroth. He had not the arts nor wealth nor the aid of the Dwarves; and compared with the Elves of Doriath his Silvan folk were rude and rustic.> RS-SL-26 <Galadriel and Celeborn: Appendix B Thranduil's realm {is said to have} extended into the woods surrounding the Lonely Mountain and was growing along the west shores of the Long Lake, before the coming of the Dwarves exiled from Moria and the invasion of the Dragon.>
RS-SL-27 <ORP Then the name of the forest was changed and Mirkwood it was called, ....... Sorcerer of Dol Guldur, and yet they knew not at first how great was their peril.>
RS-SL-28 <HoME 12: Tale of Years 4 About this time also the Periannath, of whom there are no earlier accounts among Elves or Men, are first mentioned in ancient tales. These were a strange small people, called by Men RS-SL-29 <per Note 15 (of whose kindred they were maybe a branch)> Halflings, but by themselves (later in the west of Eriador) Hobbits. They are thought to have long dwelt in Greenwood the Great or near its western eaves, and in the vale of the upper Anduin. But at this time they began to move westward over the Misty Mountains into Eriador. It is said that they moved from their earlier dwellings because Men increased much at that time; and because a shadow fell on Greenwood, and it became darkened, and was called Mirkwood, for an evil spirit stirred there. The Harfoots were the first clan of Hobbits to enter Eriador.> RS-SL-30 <HoME 12: TY4 The Fallohides, a clan of the Periannath, crossed into Eriador and came down from the North along the River Hoarwell. About the same time the Stoors, another clan, came over the Redhorn Pass and moved south towards Dunland.>
RS-SL-31 <ORP Even as the first shadows were felt in Mirkwood there appeared ...... Of these Curunír was the eldest and came first, and after him came Mithrandir and Radagast. RS-SL-32 {, and}In the Second Age had come others of the Istari who went into the east of Middle-earth, and do not come into these tales. Radagast ..... dwelt at Orthanc in the Ring of Isengard, which the Númenóreans made in the days of their power.> RS-SL-33 <UT Istari Note 4 Rhosgobel, {called "} the old home of Radagast {" in The Fellowship of the Ring II 3}, is said to have been {"}in the forest between the Carrock and the Old Forest Road RS-SL-34 <The Hobbit near the southern borders of Mirkwood>.>
FY-HL-04: I struggled to find a good title for this chapter, but I finally settled on this one because the entire end of the chapter is concerned with the return of Sauron to the world in the form of the Necromancer, so this title seemed fitting. It comes from the rejected title for one of the books of Lord of the Rings.

RS-SL-01: We open right where the other chapter left off, with the escape of Ohtar and the sword. The account given in The Sources of the Legend of Isildur's Death is longer, but I felt it was out of place, being a somewhat scholarly document, as well as the fact that it references events in the late part of the Third Age and the beginning of the Fourth Age. This account in Of the Rings of Power is the best we have left.

RS-SL-02 and 03: These additions set the stage of Thranduil's isolation and his frame of mind. It sets the stage for our return to him at the end of the chapter when Sauron returns. We get to see some of his character, as well as the origin of his halls. We also talk a bit about the transformation of the Silvan speech, which I promised to Fin when we were editing the very first chapter of the Second Age.

RS-SL-04: A comment of Christopher Tolkien removed.

RS-SL-05: I removed this reference to Frodo, since in our draft of the narrative, he will never be mentioned once, and so this reference to him is severely out of place.

RS-SL-06: We have used the other origin of the name of Lorien (as we should, as it makes much greater linguistic and etymological sense, and is in line with what Treebeard says in Two Towers). I also removed CT's comment.

RS-SL-07: Here we transition from Thranduil to Gondor, and set the stage for its earliest kings. There is no narrative of Gondor's doings before the seventh king, so this paragraph from Of the Rings of Power helps to convey the passage of time, as well as set the stage for Gondor's growth.

RS-SL-08: Here we begin with the first bit of narrative on the kings of Gondor from Appendix A. This chapter uses Appendix A heavily, as I think can be seen to be necessary.

RS-SL-09: This is a bit from The Tradition of Isildur that belongs here chronologically, and since we have only just finished that previous chapter, it will still be fresh in the mind of the reader. I edited the opening to flow correctly. Afterwards we return to the Appendix A narrative and introduce Tarannon Falastur.

RS-SL-10: This is the story of Queen Beruthiel as given in the Note to the Istari. I removed the descriptions of Tarannon Falastur from the beginning, since we have just given them in the previous paragraph.

RS-SL-11: Editing to turn CT's description into a narrative.

RS-SL-12: This discussion of Eriador is very brief in Appendix A. In that work it sets the stage for the discussion of Arnor which occupies that area. It does the same thing here.

RS-SL-13: I decided to include the rest of the Galadriel and Celeborn Appendix D here, since it describes the area, especially during the Third Age. I know it jumps around in time a bit, but as it is discussing geography and not history, I think it is ok.

RS-SL-14: This was a bit left out of Unfinished Tales and printed in the Rivers and Beacon Hills of Gondor essay.

RS-SL-15: I removed the references to The Lord of the Rings in order to preserve the historical nature of our text.

RS-SL-16: another LotR reference removed.

RS-SL-17: This ending to the footnote was left out of Unfinished Tales and given in the Rivers and Beacon Hills of Gondor essay.

RS-SL-18: We return to Appendix A's discussion of Eriador and how Arnor fits into it. We begin by laying out the geo-political status of the land: who owns what.

RS-SL-19: Here we begin to talk about the history of Arnor. Like in Gondor, there is no history written about the first few kings, and so the first thing we hear about Arnorian history is the fracturing of the realm.

RS-SL-20: This footnote is sourced from the lists of the Kings' names in the beginning of the Appendix, but I found it to be important and so I included it.

RS-SL-21 and 22: Here we return to Gondor, and I added a clarification to the 'his' in 'his nephew', since we have inserted a bunch of Arnorian history in between the last reference to Falastur.

RS-SL-23: In the next few paragraphs we will detail the change of name from Greenwood the Great to Mirkwood, so it is important that we are consistent and change it here.

RS-SL-24: Here we go back to Of the Rings of Power where we are given the first narrative introduction of Sauron's return: as a Shadow (making the title choice, I think, even more fitting). I edited it lightly since we already talked about Greenwood in the last paragraph. This is smoother, I think.

RS-SL-25: Here we see Thranduil's response to the arrival of Sauron to the forest, and we detail the origin of his Halls and his kingdom as it is in The Hobbit.

RS-SL-26: This detail about the extent of his realm was, I thought, important to include.

RS-SL-27: Here we return to Of the Rings of Power where we finally detail the change of name from Greenwood to Mirkwood.

RS-SL-28: This addition is from the early drafts of the Tale of Years, which were much longer and more text-heavy than the final versions were. I used this because it is the only place I found that detailed the origin or arrival of Hobbits, which is an incredibly important event and happens (according to the final Tale of Years) at this time. I therefore think it fits to use this here.

RS-SL-29: This additional detail is given in the note, and I think it is an interesting and important detail to add in.

RS-SL-30: These movements happen very close together in the timeline (within a few years) and I figured it made sense to include them in this paragraph.

RS-SL-31: Here we come to the arrival of the rest of the Istari from Of the Rings of Power. This was my original placement for the material which is now the chapter Of the Five Wizards, but now this is much reduced in content. This is fine, however, and I think this nice simple account fits nicely here.

RS-SL-32: I added this addition here to reflect the changes of Tolkien's which we have incorporated that say that the Blue Wizards came in the Second Age. I think this is enough to make the situation clear, but I am open to other alternatives.

RS-SL-33 and 34: I thought it was only fair to include the details of Radagast's dwelling, since we are given Gandalf and Saruman's. I took the text from Note 4 of The Istari in Unfinished Tales, and added in the tiny snippet from The Hobbit to create a quick description of Rhosgobel (as much as can be done).

That brings us to the end of the chapter. All in all, I am actually very proud of this chapter, since it took a lot of cross-checking and timeline measuring to make sure the narrative flow was accurate to history. Making a chapter out of so many different snippets is a challenge, but I think it turned out quite well. Hopefully you enjoy!

Last edited by ArcusCalion; 06-18-2018 at 01:05 AM.
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