Elfthreads!

[DanielH]

I expect -i is also productive for native speakers, given Silmarilli, but I don’t know the languages very well and only have the one example of that.

[DanielH]

I do not know enough about the Silmarillion (Jalapeno, any ETA on continuing the reading thread?) to answer this, so: could anybody compare the history as found in there will be light (starting here) with the traditional one? So far I’ve seen the wars of the pre-Valar elves, the extra-harsh punishments in Valinor, the existence of such crimes as “assault” and “theft” in Valinor, the forcible corrections, Melkor taking a hundred Years instead of fifty before knocking over the Trees, the Valar having refused to reembody Míriel instead of her refusing reembodiment, and the details of what happened around the time Melkor left. Anything major I missed?

[jalapeno_dude]

ETA is Real Soon Now.

Here are three different timelines of Arda (you want the third column in that last one). All seem to agree that it was 95 Years between Melkor being freed and the Darkening of Valar--do you have a different source for fifty?

I only noticed one timeline change on a quick re-skim of the thread: Midnight says here that the first war between the Valar and Melkor lasted two centuries. This is significantly longer than canon (where it's 77 years). (Midnight also says "about half" of the elves set out to Valinor, when in canon it was a little more than that, but it's vague enough that I don't really think this is a difference.)

[DanielH]

I thought some of the other threads said fifty Years. Maybe I misread it, or it was Kib’s thread that had fifty, or something.

[Alicorn]

Kib's was fifty, he freaked Melkor out and accelerated things.

[jalapeno_dude]

"Yes. Lúthien's son - it's kind of a long story, and there's no one still alive from back then to tell it..."

Except Galadriel! (Well, and a few others, e.g. Cirdan and Glorfindel, but I really want to hear from this Artanis in particular...)

[DanielH]

I am pretty sure humans are supposed to have an afterlife in these worlds. Is it not reachable by demon conjuration, is it some complicated thing like “they will all live again Later”, or are you ignoring that part whenever daeva interact with flat Arda?

[Alicorn]

It is Inherently Mysterious and Effectively Bullshit.

[lintamande]

Yeah, whatever Tolkien means by 'humans have an Unknowable Inherently Mysterious Afterlife' it's not one in which they produce recorded works and they don't remember it if returning from the dead.

[Ezra]

I assume that would spoil the inherent mystery.