Line #8 Awesome/TheSilmarillion


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ted_nasmith___morgoth_and_the_high_king_of_noldor_1992.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:''[[Music/BlindGuardian Lord of all Noldor! A star in the night and a bearer of hope, he rides into his glorious battle alone! Farewell to the valiant warlord!]]'']]
3	The Silmarillion is packed with so many moments of concentrated badassitude & awesomeness that it's hardly possible to list them all. Some of the more prominent ones are:
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5	* The first and greatest one: Tolkien had worked on this series for [[DevelopmentHell DECADES]] before it was finally published it [[SavedFromDevelopmentHell after more than 50 years]] and four years after his death. Chronicling the entire history of a literary universe, it shows just how dedicated Tolkien was to his work.
6	* The ''second'' greatest one: Christopher Tolkien spent another few years after his father's death going through stacks of handwritten pages, fragments of story, margin notes, letters and personal recollections to try and make a history of Arda as close to definitive as he could, even (reluctantly) inventing himself when necessary. And (unlike with his later, more scholarly ''History of Middle Earth'') he made it work as a single volume accessible to the casual reader. Without his tireless work, Tolkien's grander vision may have been confined to obscurity and literature buffs, but instead the tales of the First Age reached a wider readership.
7	* The arrival of Tulkas the Strong.
8	--> ''So came Tulkas the Strong, whose anger passes like a mighty wind, scattering cloud and darkness before it; and Melkor fled before his wrath and his laughter...''
9	** And when Melkor finally fights Tulkas, Tulkas wrestles him into submission.
10	** While Morgoth is spending his penance in Valinor, almost everyone believes him to be reformed. Tulkas and Ulmo are the exceptions, and it's said that Tulkas frowns whenever he sees Morgoth walk by. Whether Tulkas' case is TooDumbToFool or HiddenDepths, it's awesome that he could see right through Morgoth.
11	* When Morgoth shows up at Fëanor's house, the latter spurns him with, "Get thee gone from my gate, thou jail-crow of Mandos!". And the book points out that he ''slams the door in the face of the most powerful being in the world''.
12	* Fëanor's speeches -- hell, Fëanor in general -- are, if possible, ''subverted'' Moments of Awesome. They would be textbook Moments of Awesome, except that he's hot-tempered, ruthless, completely obsessed with revenge and his Silmarils, and at least a little crazy. Things don't go very well for his followers, not to mention their neighbors. Even so, he was arguably the biggest badass in the ''Silmarillion'' (the only ones who possess the badassitude to compare with him are Beren, Húrin, Fingolfin, Finrod, and Eärendil). Let's take stock shall we? He reinvented the system of writing that his people used, invented the palantíri, and forged the Silmarils, gems that imprisoned the light of the Two Trees of Valinor, and even he doesn't know how he did that. He slammed the door in the face of the most powerful being in Arda. His speeches have been talked about; he also chased a routed army alone for who knows how long, and the army was too afraid to turn around and fight him. And to top it all of, he has the most badass final fight of any character in the franchise: he fights the balrogs. Not one, like Gandalf or Glorfindel, oh no, he fought ALL of them (ambiguous as their number might be, though Tolkien's later writings has them at 7 total.). At once. For hours. While covered in bleeding wounds and also '''[[IncendiaryExponent ON FIRE!!!!]]''' And even after he gets brought down (which took the arrival of the most powerful balrog, said to be on a similar power level with Sauron), it takes him hours to die of his injuries. And then his corpse spontaneously burns to ash due to his sheer [[HotBlooded hot bloodedness.]].
13	** The reason Fëanor's body burst into flame? His spirit was struggling not to leave, and it shined so brightly that his shell simply couldn't contain it. In other words, Fëanor ''refused'' to die. His dead body thrashed and melted, all because his will was so strong that his soul was rebelling against the natural order. Very in-character.
14	* The [[AwesomeEgo audacity]] of Morgoth is truly something to behold. After the Darkening of Valinor and the theft of the Silmarils, he was beset upon by Ungoliant after a disagreement over the matter of her payment. After being saved by his Balrogs, surely he realizes that he's not so great and hides away in defeat? No. In the ultimate display of his pride and as a [[BringIt challenge to Fëanor himself]], he creates an iron crown and embeds the three Silmarils inside of it. At that moment he declares himself '''King of The World''' in direct defiance of his brother Manwë, the true King of Arda. His brush with death didn't break him, it only made him that much more dangerous.
15	* Speaking of said huge embodiment of darkness spider: When Morgoth tried to fight her, she nearly beat him. Nearly because he screamed so loud ''every Balrog in existence (yes that thing that killed Gandalf temporarily) came to help.'' Even then? They (combined) only ''held her off.''
16	* [[PunyHumans Beren]], son of Barahir, is tasked by Thingol to retrieve one of the Silmarillion in order to be able to marry his daughter. Beren vows that he will not return until he has the jewel in his hand, and sets upon a quest that leads him to the heart of Morgoth's realm. After suffering torture and the deaths of his companions, Beren retrieves one of the Silmarillion, but his hand holding the jewel is bitten off by Carcharoth, greatest of all the wolves. Returning to Thingol, the great Elven king spurns him, claiming that Beren has failed his quest. And then, in an act of human defiance not matched until Dernhelm announced '[[NoManOfWomanBorn I am no man]]', Beren holds aloft the stump of his maimed hand, ''[[ExactWords the hand that still holds the Silmarillion within Carcharoth's stomach]]''. Thingol finally caves and gives Beren his blessing to wed his daughter.
17	** Beren and Luthien's adventure was basically [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Frodo's quest]] on Nightmare Difficulty. And much like Frodo, they did what numerous Elven Kings and armies could not: '''[[ImpossibleTask Retrieve one of the Silmarils]]'''.
18	* Lúthien infiltrating Morgoth's fortress, then [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu putting him and his entire army to sleep thanks to her magic]].
19	** Lúthien and Huan also overthrow Sauron's castle.
20	--->In that hour Lúthien came, and standing upon the bridge that led to Sauron's isle she sang a song that no walls of stone could hinder. ...Then Sauron yielded himself, and Lúthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there... Lúthien stood upon the bridge, and declared her power: and the spell was loosed that bound stone to stone, and the gates were thrown down, and the walls opened, and the pits laid bare.
21	* Huan the Hound of Valinor. He betrayed his villainous masters and rescued Lúthien, he slaughtered Sauron's werewolves and then defeated Sauron himself, saved Beren from Celegorm & Curufin, and in the hour of his passing, took down Carcharoth, the greatest wolf to ever live.
22	* Fingolfin challenges Morgoth to single combat and manages to seriously wound the dark lord before dying. (Pictured above.) Seven times he injured Morgoth, rising time and again after being smashed to the ground, and when Morgoth crushes him for the final time, Fingolfin permanently cripples the Dark Lord's leg. Not to mention the fact that when Fingolfin was riding to challenge Morgoth, he projected an aura of pure rage so terrible that Morgoth's entire host mistook him for Oromë of the Valar and fled.
23	--->''Thus Fingolfin came alone to Angband's gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came.''
24	** Thorondor, the chieftain of the Great Eagles of Manwë not only swoops down and steals the High King's body from Morgoth's own hands, but also '''rakes Morgoth across his face'''!
25	* [[DyingMomentofAwesome Finrod fighting and killing a werewolf with his bare hands.]]
26	* The Dwarves of Belegost proved their mettle during Unnumbered Tears by halting Glaurung and his dragon brood in their tracks where not even the mightiest of the Eldar or the Fathers of Men could, and they actually managed to wound the Father of Dragons with their terrible greataxes.
27	** When Glaurung crushed down the Dwarf Lord Azaghâl, he [[DyingMomentOfAwesome drove his dagger into the beast's belly even as he died]], sending it screaming back to Morgoth, basically saving every other elf or human warrior from a fiery death. Yes, he made a dragon scurry away ''with just a dagger''.
28	** And as a sign of how dangerous Dwarves are when avenging their kin, when the Dwarves gathered up Azaghâl's body and marched from the field for his funeral, their fury was so great that none of Melkor's army even bothered to get in their way.
29	* At the tail end of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, Morgoth sends his army after Turgon's host. Húrin objects. With a battle axe. He [[YouShallNotPass holds the army off]] for so long that the axe ended up ''melting'' before he was brought down and yelled "Day shall come again!" every time he killed.
30	* And then, in the presence of Morgoth and his entire court, all hope utterly crushed for any sort of victory, what does Húrin do? In the face of an offer of "mercy" from Morgoth, he not only refuses but ''mocks him''. Even in the face of a horrific curse upon all his family and descendants of misery and tragedy that Morgoth would ''make him watch''.
31	* Húrin meets his wife at the grave of their children. She asks him what took him so long and he sums up decades of being tortured by Morgoth with "It was a long road. I have come as I could."
32	* Every time the Fathers of Men took up arms, it resulted in a Moment of Awesome. No, seriously. Just leaf through the pages & locate the deaths of all prominent human warriors. In almost all of these cases, they fell fighting in rear-guard actions, making face-meltingly awesome last stands, or conducting guerrilla campaigns deep behind enemy lines. Morgoth's main foe might have been the Ñoldor, but it was these puny, short-lived mortals who caused him the most trouble.
33	* The children of Bor deserve a mention. The rest of the Easterlings might have turned traitors, but these stalwarts stayed true to their allies, the folk of Maedhros. In fact, the sons of Bor made sure to take down the traitorous children of Ulfang with them during Unnumbered Tears, proving that there is nobility, courage & honor to be found even amongst Men not belonging to the lofty Houses of the Atanatari.
34	* The Battle of Unnumbered Tears was the greatest defeat of the Ñoldor. Every step of that battle was planned out entirely by Morgoth, but even then, the narrative acknowledges that the sheer ''power'' of the allied Elven, Human, and Dwarven forces almost won against evil. Had one or two things been different that day, the First Age may have ended very differently.
35	* Túrin killing Glaurung, the source of much of his suffering.
36	* One of the first things Haleth did on entering Beleriand was to Curb Stomp a band of orcs.
37	* Tuor arriving on the shore and seeing Belegaer, the Sundering Sea, as the first Man ever.
38	* Ulmo appearing to Tuor at the shore.
39	* Ecthelion's and Glorfindel's exploits during the fall of Gondolin. The former managed to bring down Gothmog himself, while the latter made it possible for some of the citizens to escape by slaying another unnamed Balrog. [[DyingMomentofAwesome Both of the elves perished in the process.]]
40	** Glorfindel proved himself so awesome that, rather than remaining dead, Manwe leveled him up and sent him back to Middle Earth to help fight Sauron.
41	* Eärendil, having sailed to the land of the Valar to beg their aid against Morgoth, returns to Middle-Earth in his flying ship at the head of an army of gods, angels, and giant eagles. His ship leads the air assault against Morgoth's flying dragons, and he personally slays the "greatest of all dragons", Ancalagon.
42	** The Valar answering his plea and ''finally'' coming to the aid of the world is one as well.
43	** For that matter, while it might be [[AssholeVictim a little vindictive]], seeing how [[{{Satan}} Morgoth]], [[BlatantLies Master of the Fates of Arda]] and mightiest being in all Middle-Earth, ends his existence [[DirtyCoward on his knees]] [[VillainsWantMercy and begging for mercy]] before he gets his long-overdue punishment, is pretty satisfying.
44	** Credit where it's due; Ancalagon and the winged dragons managed to turn the tide on the fresh Hosts of Valinor single-handed. For a moment, in spite of everything; hope was lost. And then [[BigDamnHeroes Eärendil showed up]].
45	** Before any of that, Eärendil's miraculous voyage to Valinor, using the power of the Silmaril itself to find the way and pass through the Enchanted Isles (the first sailor ''ever'' to do so), and Eönwë's EpicHail when he finally succeeds.
46	* Ar-Pharazôn's army was so powerful that Sauron's servants ran away from them in terror, and Sauron had to surrender to him. Of course, it was [[ISurrenderSuckers more complicated than that]], but still...
47	** Even after all the misery this ultimately led to, the Dúnedain still thought this was awesome. When Gondor controlled the city of Umbar, they built a monument to Pharazôn, marking the spot where Sauron submitted to him. He might have been a jerk, but in that one moment, he was ''their'' jerk and the savior of Middle-earth.
48	* Facing defeat at the hands of Ar-Pharazôn, Sauron concocts a risky BatmanGambit. After surrendering and letting himself be taken back to Númenor, through charisma and his silver tongue, he eventually became one of Ar-Pharazôn's closest advisers, which let him turn the Númenóreans from being God's chosen to worshipers of Melkor, offering human sacrifices in the name of the first Dark Lord. It all ended with Sauron convincing the now old King into using Númenor's huge army to literally take the heavens by assault, and in return, cataclysmic divine punishment was inflicted upon Númenor, of which only those few faithful survived. Of course, the victory came to Sauron at a hefty price (he lost his body when Númenor sank, and he was unable to take a fair form ever again), but it still worked in the end.
49	* Ar-Pharazôn and the Great Armament sailing against Valinor. Even though you know it's going to end poorly and that the Númenoreans have already fallen so far, it's hard not to feel a sense of pride (the Númenoreans still being Human and all) at this line:
50	--->'''...in that hour the trumpets of Númenor outrang the thunder.'''
51	** The Númenoreans were in many ways, the perfect combination of Elves and Men. At the peak, in terms of power (physical, military, mental) they were likely in the same ballpark as the fresh-off-the-boat Ñoldor who invaded Middle Earth nearly 600 years prior. When the Great Armament set sail to Valinor, even at their lowest point, they were still so strong and intimidating that the possibility of them attacking Tol Eressëa frightened the Elves living there to the point of fleeing the city.
52	* As awesome as the Númenoreans' confidence was though, not even that can stand against [[{{God}} Eru Freakin’ Ilúvatar]]. For a majority of the Silmarillion, Eru has been hands-off with His creation, but here [[BewareTheNiceOnes He is so enraged]] at the arrogance and cruelty before Him, [[DivineIntervention He takes direct action]]. In what is essentially a mix of the sinking of Atlantis and the Great Flood, Eru ''blows up'' Númenor and sinks its remains into the sea, [[GodIsGood whilst still holding compassion]] towards the few goodly Númenoreans whom he guides to safety. Eru did not forget Sauron’s treacherous hand in all this either, [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty smiting the foul Maia so badly he was never able to take a fair form again!]] Additionally, Sauron did not see it coming ''at all''; Eru's intervention happens just as Sauron thinks his victory is complete and Middle-Earth will become his playground.
53	* Fingon's rescue of Maedhros. He went alone into Morgoth's land, and climbed an impossibly tall mountain made of toxic slag, to save someone who may very well have been dead, or locked somewhere in the depths of Angband, and who, for all he knew, had left him and his people to die on the Grinding Ice or crawl back to the Valar. Also, when he gets past all the defences and guards without anyone seeing him, he starts singing to spite the orcs.
54	* Fingon's fall for Gothmog, Captain of the Balrogs. After being denied the opportunity to brutalize High King Fingolfin's corpse, the Balrogs finally catch a Noldor lord off-guard and they ''fuck him up.'' Fingon's head was cut off by Gothmog's mighty axe and the stump where his head used to be erupted in fire like a volcano, then his body was stomped into dust on the ground. To the king's credit however, he went down swinging with Gothmog. His death was only ensured when a second Balrog caught him in their whip.
55	* The Leap of Beren. [[{{Jerkass}} Celegorm and Curufin]], several thousand years his elders and very skilled riders, try to trample him under their horses while Curufin grabs Lúthien (apparently so his brother could rape her!) Beren dodges the trampling horses and leaps onto Curufin's galloping horse from behind, with such force that he knocks it over. Then he wrestles the jerkface into a headlock and starts throttling him -- and keep in mind elves are usually stronger than humans. The only reason Curufin survived at all was that Beren somehow got Lúthien off the horse unharmed, and she asked him to show more mercy than Curufin would. So Beren loots all his stuff, then picks Curufin up bodily and throws him away. The jackass totally had it coming a dozen times.
56	* From the ''Fall of Gondolin'': Near the end of the battle, Rog, one of the twelve lords of Gondolin, and head of the House of the Hammers of Wrath, led a counterattack against the forces of Morgoth. In a DyingMomentOfAwesome on par with Húrin's "day shall come again," they ripped the whips from the hands of the ''Balrogs'' and killed the demons with their own weapons.

Context Awesome / TheSilmarillion