History Literature / BerenAndLuthien

** When Morgoth finds Lúthien sneaking around his fortress, he makes very clear what he does intend to do to her, rambling about "a pretty toy for idle hour", "crushing a beautiful flower" and "slaking the sting of his hunger with a morsel". Before he can touch her, though, Lúthien slips from his grasp and tricks him into letting her use her magic arts by stating that kings are supposed to listen to petitioners. Lúthien then performs a magic dance which puts Morgoth and his whole court to sleep. For when Morgoth wakes up, Lúthien is long gone.

** When Sauron sees twelve Orcs to march very, very quickly past his tower, without coming to report, he grows suspicious and commands that they are intercepted and brought before him. Sauron then asks their names and their captain's, and they answer they are under Boldog's command. Now certain that he is dealing with Elves disguised as Orcs, Sauron replies Boldog was slain some time ago.

* BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu:
** Finrod challenges Sauron to a magical singing duel, gets defeated, and thrown into a dungeon together with his companions.
** Carcharoth chews Beren's arm off when the latter tries to use the Silmaril's radiance to scare the wolf away.

* CatDogDichotomy: The earliest iteration of the character that would later become Sauron was Tevildo, the Prince of Cats, an evil, intelligent and sorcerous feline and a servant of Melko. Even in these early versions, Tevildo is already bitter enemies with Huan, the Captain of Dogs, whom he fights on several occasions before being defeated and depowered. His failure results in Melko exiling him and his followers, and cats remained bitter and hateful of dogs ever since.
* AChatWithSatan: Beren, Finrod and his ten warriors are captured and thrown into Sauron's dungeons, wherein the Dark Lord tries to torture information out of them. Every one of Finrod's men answers to Sauron's "Will you tell me what I want to know or I'll feed you to my wolves?" with a "I hope your mutt chokes on my bones", choosing death over betraying their beloved king.

* CurbStompBattle: Finrod tries to protect himself and his men from Sauron's spells with his own magic singing. Unfortunately, although Finrod is a gifted musician, his enemy is a fallen angel who helped sing the universe into existence and has little trouble to crush him Finrod utterly.

* TheDragon: Sauron is the commander of Morgoth's army which invades Dorthonion until driving Beren out, and invests effort in capturing Lúthien out.
* DressingAsTheEnemy: Beren, Finrod and his soldiers disguise as orcs to try to sneak past Sauron's fortress. Unfortunately, it does not work. Later, Beren dresses in the wolf-hide of Draugluin, a werewolf, and Lúthien dresses in the garb of the vampire Thuringwethil to travel to Angband without being spotted.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: When Lúthien introduces Beren to her parents, Thingol does not care for Beren being the former Lord of Dorthonion who waged a one-man war against the Dark Lord for years, despite losing his house, his family and almost his sanity. And he does not care either for Beren being obviously not a bad person, since he was able to walk through his kingdom's magic barrier. He only cares about his beloved daughter being wooed by one baseborn, scruffy mortal who creeps around as Morgoth's spies and thralls. When Beren protests he does not deserve such disrespect, Thingol still doesn't care, and sends him on an impossible quest to get rid of him.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Beren has to go to the Morgoth's stronghold and take a jewel from his crown to marry Lúthien. In the process, he gets imprisoned and tortured, loses one hand and ends up dying just to get this, but he gets better, and he and his wife live happily and mostly peacefully until their second and final deaths.

* EnchantedForest: Taur-nu-Fuin (Forest of Nightshade), as well known as Deldúwath (Deadly Nightshade), was a forest lying to the south of Dorthonion. The place became a highly dangerous and completely dark haunted wood after being corrupted by Morgoth's sorcery and overran by Sauron's orcs, werewolves and vampires. Beren was the only Human who managed to survive in the wood during years, and eventually he had to flee, too. After being defeated by Lúthien and Huan, Sauron "took the form of a vampire, great as a dark cloud across the moon, and he fled, dripping blood from his throat upon the trees, and came to Tar-nu-Fuin, and dwelt there, filling it with horror."

** Thingol told: "Bring to me in your hand a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown; and then, if she will, Lúthien may set her hand in yours." And Beren replied: "And when we meet again my hand shall hold a Silmaril from the Iron Crown; for you have not looked the last upon Beren son of Barahir." When they meet again, Beren cannot show the Silmaril because his hand got bitten off by Carcharoth, but he points his hand is still holding one, therefore he fulfilled his vow.
* FaceHeelTurn: Gorlim is so desperate to find his missing wife that, believing she has been captured by Morgoth, betrays the location of the Dorthonion's rebels' hideout to the Dark Lord.

* GenocideBackfire: Sauron wipes out the Men of Dorthonion, but he fails to catch Beren. Cornered by Sauron's forces, Beren flees into Doriath, meets Lúthien, and steals one Silmaril from Morgoth's crown to earn the right to marry her. Seventy-six years later, Beren and Lúthien's granddaughter Elwing and her husband Eärendil use that Silmaril to reach Aman and ask the Valar help.

* HauntedCastle: The fortress of the Isle of Werewolves home to an army of werewolves and vampires led by a Fallen Angel.

* IHaveYouNowMyPretty: When Beren and Lúthien reach Morgoth's throneroom in the bowels of Angband, Morgoth's lust by Luthien helps buy her enough time to sing him to sleep and steal back one of the titular Silmarils. Earlier in the story, Lúthien had been captured by Celegorm and Curufin, who intended to force her to marry the former in order to manipulate her father into an alliance. Celegorm's sentient hound, Huan, helps her escape before anything happens.

* ImpossibleTask: Beren is told to return to Doriath with a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown in his hand if he's to be allowed to marry Lúthien. His quest involves sneaking into the world's most dangerous fortress and stealing the most prized treasury from the most powerful and most evil being ever to walk the Earth, a task which whole armies have failed to accomplish during several centuries of war. Beren gets further than nobody could possibly have been expected, thanks to his badassery and, mainly, Lúthien's help.

* JustSoStory: "The Tale of Tinúviel", has it that the enmity between dogs and cats stem from Huan humiliating Tevildo and undoing the spell used by the evil cat to hold all felines under his sway and fill them with an evil power.

** Finrod is wounded to the death as wrestling with a werewolf and slaying it with his bare hands and teeth.

* ThePowerOfLove: Several centuries after swearing defeating Morgoth and getting the Silmarils back, the Ñoldor armies are being crushed and all their power has not availed them to even see from afar the shining of one Silmaril. Enter Beren, who does not care for shiny jewels but is given the impossible task to bring one Silmaril to Thingol in exchange for his daughter's hand, and Lúthien, who has no use for Silmarils either, but will not leave Beren alone...and they achieve out of love for each other what whole armies driven by pride, ambition, greed and revenge failed to do. Their love also proves to be stronger than the laws of metaphysics when Beren dies and his soul lingers in the Halls of Mandos instead of abandoning the world forever -as Humans are meant to-, because his wife asked him to wait for her.
* PriceOnTheirHead: After becoming an outlaw, Beren does such a good job at harassing the Morgoth's forces overruning his homeland that the Dark Lord sets a price upon his head no less than the price upon the head of the High King of the Noldor. Even so, the Orcs fled rather at the rumour of his approach than sought him out.

** Huan was only allowed to speak human language three times before his death, so he made it count: he told Lúthien his plan to rescue Beren; he explained Beren that Lúthien has voluntarily tied her fate to his Doom, whatever it may be, and he must accept her decision; and he bade Beren farewell before dying.

* SelfGuardingPhlebotinum: The Silmarils were hallowed by Varda the Star-Maker and burn any evil creature touching them while sparing good creatures. Hence, Beren suffers no harm whatsoever when he grabs a Silmaril, whereas Carcharoth begins burning from the inside out when he bites Beren's hand off and swallows the Silmaril down.
* SenselessSacrifice: Finrod's retainers died in the Tol-in-Gaurhoth's dungeons because they would rather die than reveal their leader's names and their mission's goal. When only Beren and Finrod are left, Beren considers confessing everything in exchange for Finrod's life and freedom, and he is promptly chastised by his King for believing Sauron would let the lord of Dorthonion and the king of Nargothrond go. An evil chuckle lets them know that Sauron has heard everything, meaning Finrod's men died in vain.

* StayInTheKitchen: After being reunited with Lúthien, Beren tries to convince her to return home without him because his quest is too dangerous for her...even though she has just rescued him from the dungeons of Sauron (whose fortress she blew apart and away). Beren tries to sneak away while Lúthien is sleeping, but she catches up with him and gets it through his head that she is not letting him go through his mission alone (and good thing she did because Beren couldn't have stolen a Silmaril from Morgoth without her help).

* ToServeMan: Wolves and werewolves raised by the Dark Lords eat people. Morgoth hand-feeds Carcharoth with Elvish and Man flesh until he becomes the biggest wolf ever; yet the most chilling example has to be the werewolf that comes back again and again to drag away and eat Beren's companions, one by one, until only he and Finrod are left in the Sauron's dungeon.

* TrueCompanions: When the nearly whole population of Nargothrond turned on Finrod, ten elves refused to abandon him. They accompanied him and Beren in the quest, even though it was a suicidal mission. Eventually they got captured, jailed and tortured by Sauron but they would not turn on Finrod. When Sauron threatened each one of them with being fed to a wolf, all of them chose becoming wolf's morsel rather betraying their king.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: After getting beaten by Lúthien and Huan, Morgoth's lieutenant Sauron flees and is not seen heard of again for the remainder of the First Age.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: When Tevildo decides his castle's doorkeeper, Umuiyan, has become too old to being of some use, he carelessly pushes off his minion off the castle's walls so that Umuiyan falls to his death.