Tear Jerker / The Fall of Gondolin

• Rían flees from her house and into the wilderness when she hears rumors that her husband Húor and the whole House of Hador have been slaughtered in the Battle of Unnunmbered Tears. Rían meets a group of Grey Elves, and after leaving his newborn son Tuor in their care and confirming her husband's death, she heads towards the waste of Anfauglith, finds and climbs the hill where the slain Men and Elves have been buried, lies down and passes away.
• Tuor grows up happily with the Elves until they are ambushed by a great force of Orcs and Easterlings. Sixteen-year-old Tuor is captured and taken as a slave by Lorgan, the chief of the Easterlings. He will not see his beloved adoptive father and his childhood friends again.
• After three years of slavery, Tuor manages to escape, becoming an outlaw. Tuor spends four years living alone and harassing his homeland's invaders until he finds the Gate of the Noldor and begins his real journey.
• Tuor meets Voronwë, the only survivor of a shipwreck, and explains he is meant to lead him to Gondolin. Voronwë loudly states that, although he was ordered to leave the city, he does not wish to return. If he survived his voyage, he intended to travel Southwards to escape war.
• When Morgoth's army storms the hidden vale, his dragons and fire snakes set the beautiful fields surrounding the city on fire. Then the proper siege begins. No matter how bravely the Gondolindrim fight, most of them got killed or captured, and their beautiful city is destroyed and burned to the ground.
  Glory dwelt in that city of Gondolin of the Seven Names, and its ruin was the most dread of all the sacks of cities upon the face of Earth. Nor Bablon, nor Ninwi, nor the towers of Trui, nor all the many takings of Rûm that is greatest among Men, saw such terror as fell that day upon Amon Gwareth in the kindred of the Gnomes; and this is esteemed the worst work that Melko has yet thought of in the world.
• As watching his city overrun by enemies and consumed by flames, Turgon sorrowfully and loudly admits it is all his fault for disregarding Ulmo's warnings. He then asks Tuor to assume command of the survivors and evacuate the city. Nonetheless, Turgon will stay in his tower until the bitter end.
• After reuniting with Idril, Tuor wants to go and bring Turgon out of his tower in defiance of all Melkor's armies. However, Idril hugs him and begs him to consider her father dead, since they must lead the last Gondolindrim to safety. Suddenly, their attention is drawn by a deafening noise, and they turn around to see the tower being brought down by dragons.
  Then said Idril heavily: 'Sad is the blindness of the wise'; but Tuor said: 'Sad too is the stubbornness of those we love – yet it was a valiant fault.'
• When Tuor and Idril rescue Ëarendil, the seven-year-old kid asks where is Salgant, who used to play with him and tell him tales. But none could say where Salgant was. Ëarendil becomes sad and walks beside his mother in silence.
• The survivors from the battle flee from their city and manage to reach the hills. As going up to the Eagle's Cleft, they run into a pack of Orcs led by a Balrog. Fortunately, the Eagles deal with the Orcs, but Glorfindel dies as throwing the demon off the cliff.
• The group keeps climbing up the mountain pass, and then they turn around to watch their city for the last time:
  About the set of the sun the way so wound behind a shoulder of the hills that they might not again look towards Gondolin. There all that company turned, and lo! the plain is clear and smiling in the last light as of old; but afar off as they gazed a great flare shot up against the darkened north – and that was the fall of the last tower of Gondolin, even that which had stood hard by the southern gate, and whose shadow fell oft across the walls of Tuor's house. Then sank the sun, and they saw Gondolin no more.
• Tuor's family and several hundreds of war refugees escape from the valley, but they spend one year suffering from hunger and thirst as wandering towards the South until they reach a safe refuge: the Havens of Sirion, the only region of Beleriand which had not yet been conquered and ruined by Morgoth, where they mingle with the few Elves and Men who had survived their hopeless war against the Dark Lord.

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