Lord of the Rings

They might have departed on a later ship. All that is said for sure is that they remained in Imladris for a time after Elrond departed, and that Celeborn came and lived with them in Rivendell some time after Galadriel had gone.

(Crossposted from the Youtube thread in "New Media")

Have you ever wondered what the actual story of the Lord of the Rings: Gollum is? If it has anything worthwhile to offer at all? Well, here's a two hour long deep dive.

Its pretty rubbish. Weird pacing, odd deviations from Tolkien lore (even for an original story), and what potentially intriguing ideas the story might have are hampered by poor execution and fridge logic, & just a generally poor plot.

Edited by diddyknux on Jan 13th 2024 at 6:45:46 AM

As far as Elrond's thoughts on Aragorn wedding his daughter, it is right there in the Appendix. It is the key to understanding the Lot Rs and Tolkien insisted it was put in when he couldn't get every Appendix as part of a translation.

As far as Elf children, they are mentioned in the posthumous books.

Edited by ry4n on Jan 16th 2024 at 9:49:29 AM

Yeah, a big part of Elrond's character in the movie is that he knows how it will turn out if Arwen marries Aragorn and doesn't come to Valinor with the others, AND IS ENTIRELY RIGHT.

It strikes me that it's somewhat appropriate that the word "wight", through misunderstanding of Tolkien's text, came to acquire a new meaning:

If I'm not much mistaken, it was a word falling or fallen out of usage at the writing of The Lord of the Rings, and gained new currency under its new meaning.

Which is to say, it was a thing dead or dying, only to be raised again as a creature undead, bearing the same form that it had in life but a very different nature. :P

The term wight is interesting, because some cursory research seems to indicate it's had several meanings of the past few centuries.

In old (anglo-saxon) it seems to have been used as a gender-neutral term for an unspecified person, e.g. "that wight".

Then we fast forward to Chaucer, and he seems to use it for the personification of things, "To yow, my purse, and to noon other wight Complayn I, for ye be my lady dere." This is probably where it picks up the supernatural connotations, as there seem to be several medieval texts that refer to all sorts of supernatural creatures as "wights", including angels.

Though the barrow-wights might not be undead or dead at all. They were evil spirits sent by Sauron to haunt the barrows of Cardolan to ensure the kingdom would never rise again. They might have also been fallen Maiar. Meaning the barrow-wights may very well have been the LOTR verse equivalent of fallen angels.

Edited by M84 on Apr 17th 2024 at 11:11:34 PM

From what I gather—and admittedly, this is not I think from in-depth sources—the word seems to have been a catch-all for "being".

So "barrow-wight" might be updated into modern English as something like "barrow-being".

My feeling is that Tolkien wasn't using the word to indicate anything terribly supernatural. Indeed, he uses it again when Sam is rescuing Frodo in the Tower of Cirith Ungol: the Orcs see Sam's shadow preceding him on the stairs and fear that they're being raided by some "Elvish wight".

Rather, I feel that the supernatural connotations come from the association with a barrow: what being might "live" in a barrow but a dead—or undead—one?

I suppose that it depends on how one defines "undead". After all, folkloric vampires were much the same: corpses animated by evil spirits.

That is, the spirits themselves may have been Maiar, but a spirit animating a corpse is one form of the undead.

(I thought that they were sent by the Witch King, rather than Sauron himself.)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 18th 2024 at 5:03:31 PM

I guess is a sort of issue that years of d&d have show some quite wrong asumption in how tolkien wrote.

It's funny that D&D Halflings all take after Bilbo in being good at the thief / rogue class. Except most Hobbits in LOTR aren't particularly good at thieving. Or want to be thieves raiding dungeons. They're among the least adventurous people on Middle Earth.

And of course neither did Bilbo. Even Tolkien Hobbits though are supposedly naturally good at hiding which is part of it I suppose. (and rock throwing for some reason)

Being able to walk around with barely a sound was a sort of natural Hobbit ability that seemed to help Bilbo, yeah.

Edited by PointMaid on Apr 19th 2024 at 3:42:34 AM

Nowdays, the magic we often see in middle earth would be equivalent of racial stats instead of showing ball of light and others like gandalft against barlog.

As for hobbit yeah, hobbits are content to be in their little farm and outside element kinda force them to be heroes of sorts, which kinda goes against the ethos of d&d of heroic mercenaries

Gandalf in D&D terms would be a powerful Celestial like a Movanic Deva incarnating into the form of a mid-level Wizard. His fight with the Balrog was him briefly unleashing his true nature. Imagine a level 12 / 13 Wizard trying to solo a Balor and suddenly gaining a huge boost in power for that one fight.

Edited by M84 on Apr 19th 2024 at 7:00:30 PM

Gandalf appears in The One Ring RPG as a potential patron for the player characters, but he has no game stats. His abilities are pretty much "whatever the Loremaster thinks is reasonable."

Hobbits in The One Ring are also not focused on being rogues/thieves. Their abilities are centered around having a higher Heart attribute than other character types and extra resistance to corruption.