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sassassin posted:Gondolin had a thriving sweatshop industry dedicated to making decorative swords for export to the lower classes in the East. Good scam, the RMAs just end up at the dead letter office
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Sep 20, 2018 01:32
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sassassin posted:Gondolin had a thriving sweatshop industry dedicated to making decorative swords for export to the lower classes in the East. I don't see how this is possible given that Gondolin was a xenophobic theocracy that banned all immigration and trade.
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Sep 20, 2018 01:37
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Elves live a long time, have a lot of swords It's like "flags flown over the capital," technically he wore but only for, like, 30 seconds, then he signed the certificate of authenticity and sent it off and thus was born Weta Workshop
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Sep 20, 2018 01:37
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sweet geek swag posted:I don't see how this is possible given that Gondolin was a xenophobic theocracy that banned all immigration and trade.  And also after Gondolin was razed and burned the entire continent sank into the sea after being destroyed by the War of Wrath.
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Sep 20, 2018 01:41
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Snark aside, Glamdring was probably recovered during the war of wrath then lost again at some point during the wars with sauron in the second age. I have no explanation for how the goblins in the misty mountains recognized it though
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Sep 20, 2018 01:44
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cheetah7071 posted:Snark aside, Glamdring was probably recovered during the war of wrath then lost again at some point during the wars with sauron in the second age. I have no explanation for how the goblins in the misty mountains recognized it though Golbins are orcs, i.e., corrupted elves, and thus physically immortal.
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Sep 20, 2018 01:45
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I’m not being snarky at all.
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Sep 20, 2018 01:45
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Gondolin had an extremely well-stocked armory, and who knows what might've been carried out during or after the sack?
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Sep 20, 2018 02:00
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Bongo Bill posted:Gondolin had an extremely well-stocked armory, and who knows what might've been carried out during or after the sack? Yeah, I feel like the easiest explanation is that it was taken from Gondolin during its fall and carried by various people ever since. e: Though wasn't Glamdring Turgon's sword? He died in Gondolin's fall too.
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Sep 20, 2018 02:18
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It’s never been identified as Turgons. It was made up in the hobbit as flavor and isn’t connected to the “real” gondolin.
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Sep 20, 2018 02:25
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Vavrek posted:A month? I always sort of pictured it as two or three days. Trin Tragula posted:As ever, I live to pull out precise quotations when someone does this. They're eight days out of Lorien when Sam realises that the Moon's gone wrong.
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Sep 20, 2018 02:31
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euphronius posted:It’s never been identified as Turgons. It was made up in the hobbit as flavor and isn’t connected to the “real” gondolin. I don't find it too far fetched, carried out of gondolin during the fall, it could have been hanging over some random elfs fireplace for a couple thousand years, then gifted to someone in arnor as a trinket, witch king fucks some poo poo up it winds up being used and lost and now some trolls have it or whatever.
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Sep 20, 2018 12:04
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Regarding Gandalf's ring, I figured Saruman didn't try for it because he was hoping Gandalf would come around after he sat in the tower for a while. I assume Saruman had some fraternal affection for the old bastard and if nothing else Gandalf was a powerful wizard and Saruman would probably want his help in matters of wizardry, warlockdom, pipeweed-lore and cultivation of the Hobbitry-at-arms. While if Saruman tried to seize the ring, Gandalf might (based on the behavior of other ring-havers) defend it desperately, and Saruman isn't indestructible.
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Sep 20, 2018 12:24
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It’s inconceivable an elf would gift such a sword to a man. I mean ... as a trinket ?? It would literally be the oldest artifact in middle earth at the time is was gifted and certainly would have been when Gandalf found it and it’s sister sword. Don’t forget. Your tenuous and unbelievable chain of ownership through 6 thousand years would have to apply to two swords. Not just one. euphronius fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 12:36
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More than that I’d say. Considering Elrond’s fairly blasé attitude when appraising it, it would have to be reasonably common to find swords like that floating around.
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Sep 20, 2018 13:31
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Data Graham posted:More than that I’d say. Considering Elrond’s fairly blasé attitude when appraising it, it would have to be reasonably common to find swords like that floating around. Actually considering the swords - had they actually been from gondolin- would have been a priceless heirlooms of Elrond’s House (the half elven - he’s directly related to Turgon ) that is just more evidence they actually are not Gondolin swords
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Sep 20, 2018 13:36
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Oh neat, you say these are priceless heirlooms of your family once wielded by the greatest elf-kings of old? Elrond...if you want the sword just ask for it man Also don’t forget that the topic only even comes up in the context that Gandalf couldn’t identify the swords himself. What, did he leave his reading glasses at home? skasion fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 13:47
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Can someone post the hobbit part where he talks about the swords.
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Sep 20, 2018 13:49
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They find the swords:quote:There were lots of clothes, too, hanging on the walls—too small for trolls, I am afraid they belonged to victims—and among them were several swords of various makes, shapes, and sizes. Two caught their eyes particularly, because of their beautiful scabbards and jewelled hilts. And having not read the runes themselves, take them to Elrond. quote:The master of the house was an elf-friend— one of those people whose fathers came into the strange stories before the beginning of History, the wars of the evil goblins and the elves and the first men in the North. In those days of our tale there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors, and Elrond the master of the house was their chief.
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Sep 20, 2018 13:54
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In the perspective of the LOTR and the complete incorporation of the Silmarillion legend, those passages are absurd to the point of farce. I don’t know why he didn’t rectify them when he retconned the Hobbit.
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Sep 20, 2018 13:59
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No more absurd than Bilbo finding the One Ring. Far less so, really. This is a universe controlled by a Divine Will after all.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:11
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So a couple of things worth noting there: Neither Glamdring nor Orcrist was “a famous blade” in any real sense when this was written. They don’t appear in any version of the Lost Tales or later Quenta; one would assume that the later “Tuor” would have had to include them but it never reached the point of actually doing so. Elrond’s ancestry is obviously much less direct than that of the “actual” Elrond, who was the great-grandson of the King of Gondolin. The situation portrayed here is not of a single pair of brothers whose descent comprises all those men with elvish blood, but of a much later stage where Elrond is just one — the Chief — of many men who have some form of elvish ancestry. His elvish ancestry here comes across as more like that of Strider, someone who keeps the memory of ancient elves alive, than someone who was literally there and whose father is a sidereal demigod. In that light his unconcern about the blades makes sense. Remember, and this may seem somewhat contradictory, that the idea of a 6000 year time difference and a different, lost land between the wars in Beleriand and the “present day” of The Hobbit did not exist at all. There was no firm timeline or consistency here, but when Tolkien brought in things from the Quenta while writing The Hobbit, he generally brought them into the fairly recent past. So in drafts when the Necromancer is said to have been driven from his tower by Beren and Tinuviel, it happened not long ago and quite close by. Gondolin didn’t fall two ages of the world ago and the swords didn’t somehow stay together that long; the whole timescale is vastly shorter and would remain so for quite a long time (for example, in the drafting for the Argonath passage in Fellowship, when the Aragorn character has his moment of transfiguration he recites his ancestry and is basically Isildur’s great-great-grandson). euphronius posted:In the perspective of the LOTR and the complete incorporation of the Silmarillion legend, those passages are absurd to the point of farce. Because he didn’t intentionally retcon it; he sent the draft for his new version of the Gollum scene to the publisher to see what they thought of it and they misunderstood and just stuck it in the book without further consultation. This prompted him to go try and bring the rest of the book into consistency with LOTR but, in true Tolkien style, he started over from the beginning and thus never came close to finishing.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:11
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Thank you. That is exactly what I am saying but more eloquent. They story in the hobbit is perfectly fine and consistent. It all falls apart tho when you “retro” fit it.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:17
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Incidentally here’s the version from the unfinished 1960 Hobbit draft. Gandalf’s blushes are spared:quote:But hidden behind the door they found a number of swords and knives of various sizes and strange shapes. Two caught their eyes, because of their beautiful scabbards and their jewelled hilts that seemed to shine in the shadows. However they never get to Elrond, so we can’t say how a post-LOTR version of the Lord of Rivendell would have reacted to some ragamuffin dwarf trying to claim finders keepers on his poo poo.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:18
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euphronius posted:Thank you. That is exactly what I am saying but more eloquent. I mean, the end point of the discussion is that Bilbo was a fatuous chump at the time when he experienced the events of the Quest for Erebor (and one could make a strong case for afterwards, when he wrote the book) and was more thinking of the delight he could inspire in his audience of children with his eccentric tales of adventure than whether he was providing a reliable account of the Elder Days, or even of his traveling companions (the “Quest for Erebor” section in Unfinished Tales rather amusingly reveals that Thorin’s rudeness to Bilbo was more than just hauteur and injured pride; he absolutely hated him). The authors of the later parts of the Red Book are of different character and writing for a different readership.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:26
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Maybe they're not the famous Glamdring/Orchrist of legend but are Gondolin-based blades with similar names? Not like there can't be more than one blade with the same name.
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Sep 20, 2018 15:12
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Ginette Reno posted:Maybe they're not the famous Glamdring/Orchrist of legend but are Gondolin-based blades with similar names? Next you're gonna say it was only a different Glorfindel who just happened to have the same name
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Sep 20, 2018 15:23
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Bilbo got the name wrong.
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Sep 20, 2018 15:25
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Data Graham posted:Next you're gonna say it was only a different Glorfindel who just happened to have the same name It was Arwen all along, the Red Book writers just excised her name out of sexism. The blades have to have been Glamdring and Orcrist because Glamdring becomes a relatively major player later on, survives encounter with a Balrog (which makes sense given that's what it was made for, etc). It seems like an unlikely coincidence but that's the hallmark of Illuvatar; he knew Gandalf would need a sword capable of fighting a Balrog and so he made sure he had one. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 15:26
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A
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Sep 20, 2018 15:51
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Interesting that in Tolkien’s rewrite Gandalf goes from being unable to read the runes ok the swords to being unable to read the runes because the swords are dirty and need cleaned . A big change which shows to me Tolkien was thinking of the glaring inconsistencies to put it mildly of the original hobbit passage with his later grand incorporation of his myths into lotr.
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Sep 20, 2018 15:53
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Turgon had a shitload of good swords, and elves will make a song about anything that got killed by enough orcs. Elrond probably had a shed full of famous Gondolin weaponry that somehow or other wound up in the hands of various looters. He's like, "Sure, what's one more of my great-grandfather's knives?"
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Sep 20, 2018 15:57
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The provenance tho is important It can’t possible be as in the Hobbit, that the swords were looted from gondolin by ... orcs?? ... and somehow survived. 1. Orcs can’t even handle the swords. 2. The orcs of that time were completely destroyed by THE VALAR and the continent they were on is on the bottom of the ocean. So, the Hobbit story is right out. It’s fanciful nonsense. Now you could construct I suppose a secret provenance that doesn’t have any textual evidence of you wish. Something like 1. Tuor et al took the swords from the burning destruction of Gondolin and escaped with them to the mouth of the Sirion. Ok all good so far. But remember these are famous swords, heirlooms of Tuor. What happens to Tuor? A. He goes over the sea to Valinor. I would argue he would have taken his famous swords with him. Ok maybe Tuor didn’t take them. Well then they would belong to Eärendil. What happened to Eärendil? B. He ended up in the Sky. I would argue again had these swords existed they would have been with Eärendil if not with Tuor. So ok maybe Tuor and Eärendil didn’t care about the swords and just left them in the Mouth of the Sirion with the other noldori exiles. C. Their camp is completely destroyed and they are slaughtered by Maedhros and Maglor in the third Kinslaying. So if these swords existed and of Tuor and Eärendil didn’t take them off middle earth, it seems inescapable that they would have been claimed by Maglor or Maedhros. D. If Maedhros took the swords they never would have left Beleriand as he never did. He threw himself in lava and died. E. If Maglor claimed the swords either i . They never would have left Beleriend and followed him to the bottom of the sea where he died or ii. He would have bequeathed them to the rightful owners and his wards : Elros and loving ELROND
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Sep 20, 2018 16:12
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euphronius posted:The provenance tho is important Can Orcs not handle Elvish weapons? I thought Sting just glowed when Orcs were close by. Gondolin falls in 510 of the First Age while The War of Wrath lasts from 545 to 587. Plenty of time for a couple of Turgon's surely many swords to make it over to Lindon, especially with all the populations of Elves, Men, and Orcs that would have been displaced by the war.
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Sep 20, 2018 16:30
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The swords were left at the Mouths of Sirion (who takes priceless family heirlooms on fruitless sea-voyages from which you may never return? Well, Elendil did, but that’s a bit different) and looted by Maedhros and Maglor’s retainers, who were vile and inferior people (cf their abandonment of Elwing’s brothers to die in the woods, which appalled even their lords), concealed their thefts from their masters, and fled into Eriador at the coming of the Valar and the ruin of Beleriand. There they were robbed/murdered by orcs with a less developed historical tradition than the deeply erudite populace of Goblintown, who didn’t know that they were supposed to be outraged about it. If I were to take a total shot in the dark I’d say that if Tolkien had advanced much further with his rewriting of The Hobbit, he might have removed the element of the swords in the troll-hoard and had them given as guest-gifts by Elrond.
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Sep 20, 2018 16:32
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If we're going to nitpick the Hobbit and how it fits into the rest of the lore how about: Giants - Don't exist anywhere else. I guess it's possible that the Giants in The Hobbit were meant to be a metaphor for a big thunderstorm but they're described so literally by Gandalf et al that I doubt it. And also Gandalf talks later in the Hobbit about hoping to find a "more or less decent Giant" to block up the new Goblin cave entrance. Seems like Tolkien initially wanted them in the mythology but later dropped them. Wereworms: The gently caress is Bilbo talking about? There's no shapeshifting dragons elsewhere in the lore. Could be just Hobbit legend I guess.
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Sep 20, 2018 16:58
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Giants are a case of The Hobbit being consistent with the backstory at the time but getting left behind later. Giants, ogres, etc are among the various spawn of Melko that get swept under the rug in the LOTR era when Tolkien decides evil can’t truly create anything and everything that serves the Enemy must either be one of the Ainur that fell in his service, or good creations that he ruined. Evil giants and even trolls, which he was unwilling to ignore, don’t fit as easily into this understanding. Nonetheless there are giants in Middle-earth — the ents, whose name is after all just OE for giant, are wood-giants who live in a forest, and I see no reason not to have stone-giants who live in the mountains as well. Maybe Aule put them there to keep the rocks in good order, moved to top Yavanna’s effort to protect her work. There’s wereworms in the Gobi Desert, obviously.
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Sep 20, 2018 17:28
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Talking handbags tho
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Sep 20, 2018 20:08
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skasion posted:Giants are a case of The Hobbit being consistent with the backstory at the time but getting left behind later. Giants, ogres, etc are among the various spawn of Melko that get swept under the rug in the LOTR era when Tolkien decides evil can’t truly create anything and everything that serves the Enemy must either be one of the Ainur that fell in his service, or good creations that he ruined. Evil giants and even trolls, which he was unwilling to ignore, don’t fit as easily into this understanding. Nonetheless there are giants in Middle-earth — the ents, whose name is after all just OE for giant, are wood-giants who live in a forest, and I see no reason not to have stone-giants who live in the mountains as well. Maybe Aule put them there to keep the rocks in good order, moved to top Yavanna’s effort to protect her work. Maybe giants are like Hourns, except mountains. "Goddammit Glindorf! Stop singing to the loving mountains. Everytime you do our village gets leveled by giants."
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Sep 20, 2018 20:31
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skasion posted:The swords were left at the Mouths of Sirion (who takes priceless family heirlooms on fruitless sea-voyages from which you may never return? Well, Elendil did, but that’s a bit different) and looted by Maedhros and Maglor’s retainers, who were vile and inferior people (cf their abandonment of Elwing’s brothers to die in the woods, which appalled even their lords), concealed their thefts from their masters, and fled into Eriador at the coming of the Valar and the ruin of Beleriand. There they were robbed/murdered by orcs with a less developed historical tradition than the deeply erudite populace of Goblintown, who didn’t know that they were supposed to be outraged about it. I like this. Could be simplified a bit: Maedhros and Maeglor's retainers get murdered by . . . trolls
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Sep 20, 2018 20:39
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