Silmarillion Stories - E12 - The Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor

[00:00:01] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life! So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for the Lorehounds.

[00:00:36] And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:42] And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our Dragonfire Hot, but probably positive, takes.

[00:01:00] The Lorehounds' House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a hardened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:11] House of the Lore still burn! Welcome to Silmarillion Stories, where the Lorehounds, your guides to Tolkien's world of Middle-earth. I'm David. I'm Jon, and this is our podcast for Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor, the twelfth portion of the Silmarillion.

[00:01:47] In this episode, we're going to be discussing the sun and the moon, the increasing defenses of the Valar, before answering some listener feedback questions.

[00:01:57] Definitely send us feedback. We save it all up between episodes. Send us an email at LOTR at the lorehounds.com or visit our website where we have a contact form. We've got a voicemail feature. We're trying to push it lately. You send us a voicemail. It's a lot of fun.

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[00:02:21] Stick around to the end of the podcast for programming notes for the rest of January. We're going to be covering a great new show on HBO Max called True Detective Night Country. We've got some Earthsea news and a bunch more.

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[00:03:14] It was fun to hear the theme song. I haven't heard that in a while. And to go along with that theme song, we have a special guest joining us for the top of the year, first of the Tolkien podcast for 2024, Marilyn R. Pukila. Happy New Year. Good to see you. Welcome back.

[00:03:35] Thank you. Thank you. Happy New Year to you both. Good holidays?

[00:03:38] Busy. Yeah. Well, the holidays were complicated by a huge wind and rainstorm, which meant that my partner, instead of being in his house and me in my house, we were both together in my house for like 10 days, which never happened before. So that was really exciting and different and lots of learning opportunities, which we welcomed.

[00:04:01] But we were incredibly fortunate. I only lost electricity for 21 hours and I have a generator that kicked in right away and kicked out when it wasn't needed. And I have fiber, so I never lost Wi-Fi. Very nice.

[00:04:20] My poor partner down there in the woods by China Lake, you know, spectrum was just gone. It worked out very well, I think for both of us. Very good. Very good.

[00:04:33] Well, I hope you both had a lovely life day. I know we did over here on the podcast. I'm sure we did. Chewy made it home. Chewy made it home, so we're all okay. Now if they can just get voice lessons.

[00:04:45] I'm not going to try to imitate the Wookiee cries of itchy and. Yeah, lumpy. It's true. It's not. It's not Chewy. That's that great. Some of my ears, it's itchy and lumpy. So they're the ones who need the voice training.

[00:04:59] If you just come here for the Tolkien content, you're very confused. We covered the Star Wars holiday special, which is a disaster of a movie, but a really fun podcast. It's not a movie. I keep telling you that.

[00:05:13] Fine. It's a disaster of a variety show. But anyway, it was amazingly bad and the podcast was so fun. We did it with Stephen Anthony from Properly Harrods. So check it out. Even if you don't watch Star Wars, I think there's a laugh to be had.

[00:05:25] Indeed. But here we're here today to talk about The Sun and the Moon. Indeed. Indeed. You know, this chapter doesn't stick out to me when I think of The Silmerillion.

[00:05:37] And then I read it and I'm like, this is a banger of a chapter. There's a lot going on here. There's a lot of really cool world building. There's a lot of insane lore that never comes back. That is only in this chapter.

[00:05:51] And some beautiful moments too. So I was delighted to revisit this. Again, it's not one of the big ones you think of. It's not Beren and Luthien. It's not the Fall of Gondolin. But it's a beautiful story and it's really important to the world.

[00:06:06] And as a first time reader of The Silmerillion, I had very similar vibes reading this chapter. I was like, oh, this is what everybody is grooving on when they talk about The Silmerillion.

[00:06:18] It's not just all the begats and the Melkor did this and there's evil lurking in the forest. This felt to me like the juice that I've been waiting for from The Silmerillion. Tolkien really at his best. The language is poetic. The characters are interesting.

[00:06:36] The stakes, this turning disaster into something new and rolling it over. It was very cool. It wasn't action packed in other ways, but it was just very like, oh yeah. There was literally a battle with the moon, David. What more do you want?

[00:06:59] But he just waves it away. He just says nothing. It's like half a sentence and it's done. It's classically mythological. Totally, totally, totally. It's very Greek. It felt very Greek. Yes.

[00:07:11] Yes, definitely Greek. And if you have already read the other parts of The Legendarium and you come to this, you can really resonate when you hear some names that are mentioned just in passing quickly. Sure.

[00:07:27] And say, wow, I am here at the birth of the Kalakirka. How cool is that? It's a super good chapter. Marilyn, I'm sure you've read this chapter even many more times than I have. What's your impression on this revisit?

[00:07:49] How very Greek it was, as you were saying, interestingly enough. But also just this reminder that so many people say, how come the Valar just sit around on their thrones and do nothing? And they absolutely don't. Right.

[00:08:04] They do all kinds of things. And sometimes what they do is they're sitting in thought, but that's not just wigging out. It's not just taking five.

[00:08:16] They are actively working on their proper job, which is the tending of the physical creation of the world. And suddenly they have these creatures to deal with who are created as they are created beings.

[00:08:35] But they're not made of stone and water and fire. They're beings with their own ideas and feelings and thoughts and intentions. And there's just some wonderful, wonderful lines in here that show the compassion of the Valar and the grief of the Valar. Yeah.

[00:08:59] And the thought that they do take for these beings who they have no idea about what they're like. They just have these hints. They were not given a parenting manual when they became the Valar of Arda.

[00:09:16] No, nor even informed of all of the specific plans. I mean, only Manwe has a vague sense of something. That's right. But otherwise they're in the dark about a lot of the rest of the musical score as it were. It perfectly put because that's exactly what it was.

[00:09:36] They're reading the sheet music for the first time as they're going along. Right. And in a lot of cases there isn't any sheet music. And oh, by the way, the strongest among them tore up the sheet music and has been creating havoc and chaos ever since.

[00:09:51] So nobody can predict or determine what's going to happen next.

[00:09:56] And I believe it was an earlier chapter where it was explicitly said, you know, the Valar might know the whole of creation, except for the children of Iluvatar when they're in the ether with Eru Iluvatar once they're one with him.

[00:10:09] But once they go into creation, they lose most of that knowledge. Right. They can only remember bits and pieces of it. And it's a mess. You know? Yeah. It's not the final beautiful thing that they were experiencing.

[00:10:23] No, the strongest among them went rampaging through the orchestra and is now running around the auditorium just throwing his keats around and smashing the chandeliers.

[00:10:36] I picture him as Ron Burgundy in Anchorman playing the jazz flute solo and dancing on the tables and kicking all the glasses down. That's what Melkor is.

[00:10:46] And by the way, there are eight separate texts that Tolkien wrote throughout the course of his life, starting in 1917, that have material about this one chapter. Wow.

[00:11:01] Yes. So Tolkien was basically writing and rewriting this throughout his life. And then Christopher comes along and gives it one more rewrite. And yeah, if I remember right correctly as well, the publication history of The Silmarillion is credited to Christopher. Yes.

[00:11:21] And it didn't come out. What was the publication date? It was something like- 1977. Crazy later. And Guy Gabriel Kay also helped him. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. And really gets credit.

[00:11:31] So an amazing job of being able to pull all those sources together and have something, I mean for the whole book. Yes. To create a coherence and a narrative structure. It's very biblical in a way, isn't it? Unquestionably. Any kind of sacred text.

[00:11:48] Yeah, all this stuff came together and then there has to be some interpretive functionary. But it's not just a functionary, there's an artistry to it.

[00:11:58] And there's a crafting to it. It's like taking all of this material and having to forge it into something new that's recognizable, but yet has an internal strength and a narrative structure that we can actually relate to.

[00:12:15] Yeah, and Tolkien had a more or less finished text for The Silmarillion at one point. But once he realized that he was going to have to back write to make it cohere with The Lord of the Rings, which is what everybody knew, he suddenly found himself faced with a whole lot of challenges.

[00:12:35] And some of them he never did solve and Christopher didn't either. The whole, what is the story of Galadriel? Exactly. Can you bring it up? We don't know.

[00:12:47] I feel like she would have done really well in this chapter. This would have been the light spreading to the world. I think that would have been a cool way to incorporate Galadriel. But I think if Tolkien would have lived 10 more years, he would have incorporated Galadriel into a lot of his stories.

[00:13:00] He would have tried to, but at that stage in his life, it was really hard. It was hard work. He was tired. The thing that really grieves me the most is by the 1950s, he was convinced that he'd made a mistake and that the elves should have enough knowledge to know that the sun and the moon were created at the same time as the earth. And of course, it wasn't a flat earth. It was a round world. They would know that.

[00:13:26] And so these must be human versions of the stories. And that's where all the error crept in kind of thing. But the idea that he was going to change the beautiful mythology of the two trees and say, actually the sun and the moon existed when the earth was made. And so the light of the sun is actually the light of the sun and the moon.

[00:13:49] And this story about trees and whatever is just an interpolation by human. I mean, don't do it. No. Yeah. It's a little bit of a Catholic problem too, right?

[00:13:59] I don't know that it was, John. It was a scientific problem. He really was more and more interested in making the world that he created as coherent to the actual world as possible. And that began to stray into the areas of science and astrology and astronomy.

[00:14:19] I was going to say that, that the, I'm glad it's not our world. I'm glad that when the sun and the moon go down underneath the land, there's just some sort of weird Swiss cheese thing that happens and they get to the other side and they pop up on the other side.

[00:14:33] Because for me, we have plenty of story, uh, of that, that mimic a, um, and model the universe as we know it with, you know, uh, uh, sus planets going orbiting suns and the like.

[00:14:50] And to have a rich text in history and world, that is something utterly different and doesn't have explanation. I like that. And I really appreciate that. Uh, and I don't know how many other, maybe in fantasy we have a bit more than in science fiction, but I mean, you know, I, I haven't read the Pratchett stuff, but disc world certainly seems to be a, a departure from having a earth circling, you know, a planet.

[00:15:20] Circling the sun. But even then he's taking, uh, mythological ideas that are already in existence with the elephants and the discs and the turtles. Whereas Tolkien's world is wholly created from, from, you know, I don't know what all the influences that would have been him that would have helped him, uh, develop this world.

[00:15:45] But when you, when I think, when I think about how early he was writing this relative to the amount of fiction of literature that he would have been able to draw on or other stories that he could have drawn on.

[00:15:59] It's, I think it stands unique in some ways. And there's a, it gives me a greater appreciation for the world building that he did was that he was, he didn't fall into the easy pathway of just recreating our world, the, the, the mechanics of our world as we understood them at the time.

[00:16:18] And I think it's, it's a rich, it creates a richer and greater context for the work. Well, just think of the richness of this image of the two trees. I mean, what's John love to say, you know, follow the trees.

[00:16:33] And the idea that they're no longer this potent symbol of the source of sacred light. There, there's still like almost a second best in a way the sun and the moon are supposed to be the second best to the two trees.

[00:16:51] There was like before then that got destroyed, but this was supposed to be the primeval light.

[00:16:58] And, you know, that is woven all the way through the story of Valley North, the story of Newman or an Isildur saving one of the saplings of the white tree and Gondor and it's white.

[00:17:12] I mean, it just, it's such an important thread and to think that he was thinking of snapping it.

[00:17:20] Right. That would have been, it just, it, it's sort of a reflection of, of his own second guessing towards the end of his life, which is why I find it very grievous.

[00:17:32] I, one other thought just occurs to me too. I was trying to think of other mythological stories of how the, how creation was created and how the, the land that people walked on was created and how the people themselves were created.

[00:17:49] And we go to all of the rich cultures that we have in earth's history and everybody's got a pretty, you know, a well set and defined. This is how creation occurred. And this is how people occurred. Boom. It's locked in. That's it.

[00:18:06] Tolkien's world destroys, you know, part of, of the, the fundamental creation of the, of, of the, of the land is destroyed and they got to start all over again and then they got to start all over again. Yeah.

[00:18:23] And we don't, I don't know of any other mythologies that have that where something bad happens and then, Oh, we got to fix it. Oh, we got to fix it again. That's unique. That, that seems to be a unique construction.

[00:18:40] The closest I can come is of course, Ragnarok from the Norse mythology. But, and there is one reconstruction as you were saying, but I think it's only one. Right.

[00:18:55] It's sort of, this is how the world became as it was today. And I think there is something of a semblance there with Tolkien's process in Middle-earth because when, you know, the void was open and the sea and Numenor tipped in, that's when we went from a flat world to a round world.

[00:19:11] And this was his original conception of why humans talked so long about a flat world. It wasn't just simply, they looked around and that's what they saw, but there was, you know, once it really truly was flat and then it became round. Right. In reality, in their reality.

[00:19:27] Right, exactly. Materially. Yeah. Of like different people who do different things, unless it's really important to the story. So anytime that he's like, and these were three Elvish words for the sun, I'm like, no, no, we're not doing that.

[00:20:14] So I've tried to simplify it here. Let's just start off with the two trees have been killed by Morgoth and Ungoliant and the Valar grieve both the trees and the actions of Feanor.

[00:20:24] I love this quote. They mourn not more for the death of the trees than for the marring of Feanor. And you know what? I've just decided to read a lot more. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:21:17] Only Manwë will ever know how great Feanor could have been. It's like a disappointed parent. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, thus far we really have only seen Manwë as judge.

[00:21:34] And we've heard a lot about the wrath of the Valar for what the Noldor have done and, you know, the resulting consequences of that, which I think is fair to say really rest from their actions. It's not as though Manwë said, right, this is going to happen to you because of what you did.

[00:21:57] I mean, it's more I said, and I'm not imposing it on you. It's just coming from your own actions. And, you know, that incredibly painful fact of free will. Yeah.

[00:22:14] And they were hurt. The Valar were hurt that it would have been believed by the elves that they were being held captive there. That they were using them in some fashion, that they were holding them back so that humans could come and usurp them. I mean, all of the lies that Milgor told, you know, the Valar in some respects were bewildered and upset.

[00:22:37] And, you know, how can what how can you think this? This isn't who we are.

[00:22:42] Right. You know, Feanor is such an interesting character in the Silmarillion and I think perhaps symbolizes the elves as a whole, right? And symbolizes the world as a whole, symbolizes even the potential of Milgor, right? Because the only one who can really see the potential of Milgor is perhaps Manwë.

[00:23:03] Maybe even perhaps only Eru Iluvatar because Manwë is limited by his own being. But it's all of these people make these choices, all these beings make these choices that prevent them from achieving beauty, achieving their full potential. And it's very sad. It's very sad.

[00:23:24] And I think that's a reflection of how Tolkien saw this earth, this world and the human beings in it. It reminds me of how he spoke about Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. Nice.

[00:23:37] He says, you know, Gollum did not have, you know, the ring would have fallen, right? Spibimmi. We need to, you know, that's what needed to happen. But the difference is Gollum had the choice whether to save his own soul or not. His actions, his intent in that moment were what affected his own soul.

[00:24:00] Yeah.

[00:24:01] And unfortunately, he made the wrong choice. He tried to take the ring for himself. And so his soul was not saved in whatever, however that works in Tolkien's world. But you know what I mean? But I think that, you know, Gollum still did a good thing. But he used his free will to darken his heart, I would say, to harden his heart. If we're going to go biblical with it.

[00:24:28] Sure, sure. And I mean, to some degree with Gollum, you do have to bring in the effect of the ring upon him. Sure. Not entirely him, but the murder of Diagol definitely was his choice. Yeah, it started that way.

[00:24:43] The call of the ring was very potent because it was so beautiful in his eyes. What I find fascinating is it wasn't until the sixth version or rewrite of these stories that Feanor even appears. Really? In this, yeah. Wow. Wow. He seems so central.

[00:25:07] Looking at from this end, yeah. Yeah. Only because he is central. He started it all. So many readers and people who talk about this really point to him and blame him and say, if only he had done this or hadn't done that or whatever.

[00:25:27] But if it hadn't been Feanor, I think it would have been somebody else because Melkor. Right.

[00:25:36] Right. And sometimes I think, again, this is one of Tolkien's themes that those who are in their heart and soul creators are the most vulnerable to overstepping, to aggrandizement, to possessiveness, to all of these things, which are definitely poor choices. Yeah. In Tolkien's eyes.

[00:25:59] Yeah, I like that. We do, of course, get our favorite acronym from the Prancing Pony podcast. I'll attribute it to them. Spivimi. Uh-huh.

[00:26:09] Shall prove but by an instrument. And if you've forgotten what this means, because I guess we haven't talked about it in a while, this is a quote from Eru Aluvatar back in the day in the very first chapter of The Silmarillion.

[00:26:19] He says, all that you do shall prove but by an instrument, meaning anything you do that's evil will eventually work to the greater good.

[00:26:28] And we get that pretty explicitly here. It's a pretty explicit statement. Thus, even as Eru spoke to us, shall beauty not before conceived be brought into Ea and evil yet be good to have been, but Mando said, and yet remain evil.

[00:26:46] And I think that kind of goes back to what we're talking about with Gollum and Feanor, which is, yes, this in the main plot of the world, in the main history of the world may turn to good. But Feanor's heart has been hardened. Feanor has been turned toward evil.

[00:27:07] And as a consequence, many, many, many, many people will suffer and die. Right. And I think that's the part that Mando is focusing upon. And you have to ask, are these incredible songs and tales worth the price? Right.

[00:27:29] And I think Tolkien was thinking of all of the friends that he lost in the First World War. And was their sacrifice worth it? Because 20 years later, they were plunged into another world war. Right.

[00:27:43] After being promised that the first one would be the war to end all wars. The Great War. The Great War. It was even called that and it just feels very romanticizing violence.

[00:27:53] Well, and I think that was one of the very fine lines that he trod, particularly in Lord of the Rings, where you hear about the charge of the Rohirrim and they were singing as they slew.

[00:28:05] Now, of course, because it's mostly orcs, that's supposed to be not quite as bad. But how do you look at that and say that Tolkien didn't glorify violence? It's kind of tough. Yeah.

[00:28:18] But he was drawing from these different cultures that he had studied all of his life and dearly loved. And I think trying to foreground valor, courage, bravery more than the joys of killing or whatever you want to call that.

[00:28:39] And trying to show that there could be some other possible positive outcome from that. And we get the beautiful lament at the end of that chapter from one of the Rohirrim describing the Battle of the Fellenor Field and how this person fell and that person fell.

[00:29:01] And the last line is, Red fell the dew in Rhaemas Achor. It's beautifully, beautifully put. And it's a terrible slaughter. So how do you live with that dichotomy? And that's where this, you got to have a certain amount of faith and trust.

[00:29:22] And you've got to have a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. I mean, we thrive on cognitive dissonance as a species. Do we? And we don't like to admit it. Interesting. Let's protect the environment, but also I got to drive to work. Right? Sure.

[00:29:37] There's all these cognitive dissonances that we have to live with. Oh, look at the average social media feed of when you're scrolling through fitness influencers and FOMO. Oh, you should travel here. And then current daily news headlines from around the world.

[00:29:58] That's a lot of cognitive dissonance happening on a micro scale every day for vast numbers of us who use social media.

[00:30:08] So speaking of the Rohirrim, just a quick plug. The movie is scheduled Lord of the Rings, The War of the Rohirrim animated movie is set for release on December 13th of this year.

[00:30:22] So that will be an interesting, there you go. See, there's some cognitive dissonance, right? Like, oh yeah, we get to see the Rohirrim. We get to see a war! Yeah, we get to see slaughter in animation. Right. But we'll definitely be covering that movie when it comes. Absolutely.

[00:30:37] Do you know that they actually got the actress from the Peter Jackson movies who played Eowyn to narrate it? Oh, really? Yes. She's great. I love her. Yeah. Which is excellent. I'm ashamed that I'm blanking on her name, but it will come to me in action.

[00:30:52] We're very sorry, Eowyn. We're very sorry. Please don't send your troops at us. David, you've been quiet in general and I want to get your take on this whole thing.

[00:31:03] Does Fey'anor feel like a fleshed out character to you? Because I feel like Marilyn and I are gushing about this development.

[00:31:10] And for me, I'll say it took a long time for me to see a lot of these characters as full beings because they're talked about so much in passing. So what did this part, how did it ring to you?

[00:31:26] I don't know that I got so hung into individual characters like Fey'anor in this. I think I'm still in the wash of my first reading. And so just having that orientation and that, okay, this person is getting mentioned here.

[00:31:46] Then there's that name on which I'm probably never ever going to see again because I've never heard of them. So there's just lots of details. So for me, I don't think it's registering at that level yet.

[00:31:55] I'm still just sort of in the shock and awe of reading the Silmarillion for the first time. Marilyn, do you want to do your defense of the Valar right now? Because I can make a case against Manwe again.

[00:32:09] Well, I kind of started it right at the very beginning there when you asked me what this chapter meant to me.

[00:32:17] So I don't know that I have that much more to add, but I think part of it is we can think that we know the mind of Manwe or whatever name you have for divinity

[00:32:32] and judge their actions or seeming inactions on the basis of your own personal experience and forget that that is a limited experience. And so here we actually have the story told from the perspective of the Valar, which is not our perspective.

[00:32:54] And it's not the El's perspective, but it's real and it's valid. And it does affirm that yes, the Valar are compassionate. The Valar care very much for the children of Uhtar.

[00:33:11] That's the whole point, why they limited themselves, bound themselves to this world and are stuck there until this world ends, even as the Elves are. So they may have a lot more compassion than the Elves think.

[00:33:27] But it's again, it's the awesome in the literal sense of the word gift of free will that's happening here. And talk about cognitive dissonance, the tendency to say I can do whatever I want, but oh, don't let that happen. No, that's wrong. That's bad. The actions of consequence.

[00:33:53] Good for me, not for thee, all that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And even not good for me. Just because I want to do something doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it.

[00:34:02] Yeah, I don't really need to finish that bag of chips, but I'm going to do it anyway. Right, right. Because I can. Because I can. Yeah. It's my right as a Feanorian.

[00:34:12] Well, and I'm thinking now of the third of the three Doctor Who episodes that came out last month with the Giggler, the Giggle. And they really kind of danced on that theme a lot. They did. I'm right and everybody else is wrong.

[00:34:33] I mean, pushed to, in some respects, a ridiculous extreme. But on the other hand, how very far off are we from it, really? So here's Manoé, who has a fairly good notion of everything that's going on, but not everything because he's not Eowru.

[00:34:50] He's got a good connection with Eowru. But even Manoé has to have free will. Even Manoé can't be the puppet, as it were, because then he doesn't have it anymore.

[00:35:03] And that's got to be the hardest thing of all, whether you're Eowru or Manoé or a human parent or an elder's parent, for that matter. So the fact that, yes, they're doing lots of things.

[00:35:18] And in the first version of this, the Book of Lost Tales, they were doing a lot of really comic things, falling all over themselves. And Owlay was dropping the fruit and Tulkus was tripping over it. Yeah, it's so much more Greek, right?

[00:35:32] It's a lot of slapstick almost, in a way. So it really grew a lot over the course of the eight different versions that he brought in. And we see... Well, we haven't come to that point yet, so I'll save that for the next section.

[00:35:49] I did have one technical question, clarification question. Right in the first sentence of this chapter, the Ring of Doom is mentioned. It's told that after the flight of Melkor, the Valar sat long unmoved upon their thrones in the Ring of Doom. And I was like, Rings, Doom?

[00:36:11] What's the reference here? I think it's been mentioned before in the chapters. But again, there's a lot of terms you just got to... Correct me if I'm wrong, Marilyn, but this is Manwe's domain in here, the Ring of Doom. It's very much...

[00:36:29] Sorry, not Manwe. I'm sorry, Mandos, I meant to say. Interesting. Interesting. I consider Mandos to be the pronouncer of sentences, but Manwe is the judge. Right? So I think it's more Manwe's than Mandos'.

[00:36:45] I mean, Mandos seems to have a pretty good grasp on the future because he's the one who, after the Valar in their non-wisdom, but nonetheless their compassion, said, well, we better bring the elves over here where they'll be safe from the machinations of Melkor.

[00:37:02] And Mandos is the one who says, so it is doomed because of that break of free will. How do you say no to a demiurge when they say, hey, you should really come over here? Some of the elves do actually.

[00:37:19] So physically the Ring of Doom is Mandos'. This is this sort of fateful thing. Is the Ring of Doom where they sit council? Is that another name for where they sit council?

[00:37:30] Well, doom is not exactly the word that we think of. Doom is just the pronouncement of what will happen. Right. It's not you are doomed to such and such, but- No, the doom of man. This is the doom that I will pronounce.

[00:37:44] The halls of Mandos is what I'm thinking of. I was like, why am I? I'm conflating two things. So thank you for the correction, Marilyn. Yeah, I think you are. But I relate it to the Icelandic thing. It's literally called thing.

[00:38:00] It is a meeting of all of the peoples come together once a year or however often it was to this place called Thingvellir, which means the place where the thing is held.

[00:38:11] It's an assembly where people come and they talk about whatever is challenging to them and they consult their law and they reach the decisions. And it's on a incredible location where the two tectonic plates of Europe and North America meet. So geologically, it's just astonishing. Perfect. Yeah.

[00:38:31] And I think that's what this is. All right. Marilyn has corrected me, so don't at me. Don't at me either. I mean, my correction isn't necessarily be all and end all. Good question though, David, because I learned something there.

[00:38:44] Well, yeah. And as a first time reader and thinking of other first time readers, yeah, it's helpful to like- he's throwing out all the time names and places and little things and it's which ones are significant and which ones can you let go?

[00:38:59] And it just, because Lord of the Rings has so much to do with the ring and doom and Mount Doom and the doom of man, you're like, wait, wait a minute. What's going on here? But it's really important to remember that when Tolkien uses the word doom- Correct.

[00:39:14] He almost inevitably means just simply fate. Right, exactly. Which can be positive and negative. Right. And we're just really hooked on this idea of, oh, I'm doomed. Right. The word has turned its course. Yes.

[00:39:28] I mean, it had turned its course by then, but he was just stubborn about it. Anyway. He was drawing on his sources. Yeah, yeah. So let's move on since we've only gotten to the first bullet point and we're at about 40 minutes.

[00:39:40] Let's do one more bullet point and then we'll head to a break. But for now, the Valar try to bring life back to the trees and the tears of Nienna cause the trees to each sprout one more time.

[00:39:53] Telperion bears a silver flower and Lorilyn bears a golden fruit. Yavanna, Aule, and Manwe work together to forge the flower and fruit into vessels that would become the moon and sun. Varda sets them in the sky to light the world.

[00:40:10] And I see that Marilyn's already responded to this, but I still want to point out this is the first time that they lit Middle Earth for the elves. Before that, it was just Amun that was lit. They were just like, you guys will be fine with the stars.

[00:40:25] That'll be fine. Yes, this is true. You're absolutely right. The trees only shown in the Blessed Realm. The case against Manwe strengthens. Ah, but Varda softens it because she was the one who made the bright stars specifically for the coming of the elves.

[00:40:45] Once they realized that Melkor was messing with Middle Earth and that the elves were due to arrive shortly or wake up shortly. She made the bright stars specifically. There are already stars in the sky, but she manufactured these really bright stars.

[00:41:01] Although Tolkien would hate the word manufacture, wouldn't he? But she made the metal karma. Excuse me. She made metal Macar, who we know today as a Ryan. And she made the bellicose, which is called the sickle in the UK and the Big Dipper in the United States.

[00:41:17] So it's not like they were in a closet. And then the elves learned what people contraction was. When the sun went up, they were like, the hell is this? But the moon came first. So they had time to have their eyes. True, true.

[00:41:34] But that's also why they are called the Eldar. It doesn't mean they're the older. It means they are the people of the stars. L being the word for star. So it's very tied up in the character and the culture and the ethos of elves.

[00:41:50] When you think of elves, you think of them wandering by starlight. You don't think again dancing on the lawn and in the sunlight. Right. Right. Because they are liminal people. They occupy the space between utter dark and strong light. So the starlight is what's appropriate to them. Right.

[00:42:09] I'm glad that you're here on this episode, Marilyn, because I was going to have to name drop you anyway with Nienna coming here to see. Oh, totally. Totally. I love I do love that the Valor like, yeah, I see you're crying. Can you do it right over here?

[00:42:23] Somebody just takes her by the hand is very gently. But it was Yvonna and Nienna. I thought that was that was like instantly like, oh, good thing Marilyn's with us today when I read that. Yeah.

[00:42:34] Well, it was also Yvonne and Nienna who brought the trees to life in the first place. Right. Right. I love the the sort of a team action that they've got going on here. You know, everybody's got their part. Everybody, you know who's their specialty comes together. It really.

[00:42:58] Yeah. The whole thing just works really well. And it's goes to what I was enjoying about this chapter was to see these, I guess, almost like orchestral movements. Right. OK, here come the woodwinds and then here come the horns and then up come the drums.

[00:43:20] All the different parts are coming together to achieve something and fix something that they didn't expect that they had to fix to correct a situation that they, you know, taking a really terrible situation, a complete utter heartbreak for losing the trees and then having, you know, fan or, you know, in the Silmaril and all that to like be able to then come up with something pretty cool.

[00:43:49] With the sun and the moon as these, you know, mechanical operations. Yeah, I don't know. I was really I was really taken with the whole concept of it. And then the whole way that he has them all come together to do the different bits of it. Yeah.

[00:44:06] I mean, that's an example of, I think, Eru's vision and intention. Right.

[00:44:12] And I think that's what is all of these different voices and different interests working together, because when they don't, such as when Aule created the dwarves, tension arises and, you know, conflict down the line and so forth. Creating an isolation is for Tolkien a dangerous thing.

[00:44:30] And I think he would have argued that he himself did not create an isolation because he was constantly sharing these stories with his friends, with the Inklings, with former teachers. So there was that sense of community going on to. Interesting. And then subsequently, of course, Christopher. Right.

[00:44:50] He shared so much with Christopher before his death and knew that he alone could not bring this final volume to completion for a number of reasons. So if the trees are never.

[00:45:06] Smoked, smitten anyway, destroyed by by Melkor, do the Valar ever take it upon themselves to light Middle Earth beyond stars? It's an interesting question. Because the men, they need they need vitamin D. I mean, the elves are one thing, but they don't sell sunny D in Middle Earth.

[00:45:29] So they're going to be looking like he did under Saruman if he's not having a son. So what jokes aside, this is a real question. Like, this is why I say, you know, I know you're going to push back and say, you know, the Valar are doing things.

[00:45:43] But like, I do think that they get a little bit complacent when things are good. And sometimes struggling with Melkor is what makes them, you know, find themselves forced into action.

[00:45:55] Yeah. And they get I'm not sure that I would use that word complacent, but they do become inactive, not necessarily when things are good.

[00:46:04] But when they are afraid that their own actions might bring about greater harm, which the last time they decided, OK, we got to jug Melkor.

[00:46:15] You know, the continent was reshaped and they put a protection around the elves who had woken up by then and for whom they were doing this action against Melkor.

[00:46:25] So that they would not be terrified by watching, you know, seas rise up and mountains be knocked down and so forth. They're they're working with so much lack of information.

[00:46:42] They really there's so much they don't know, which has got to be tough when you're supposed to be a demiurge. Right. And they do what they can not to dissimilar from humans. They don't know what humans are going to be like.

[00:46:58] They don't know that they necessarily need vitamin D. You know, they don't know how they will differ from the elves. And having made what they view as a terrible mistake with the elves, they say, look, we don't know. We don't know. So it's hands off humans.

[00:47:14] Yeah. And they'll just have to do the best they can. I think I would question their decision in not going after Melkor sooner. Mm hmm. You know, I mean, that's what Tolkis was all about.

[00:47:27] And I think maybe they didn't appreciate that even Tolkis's simple story and simple song had a purpose. Right. Let me at him, bro. That's that's all I wanted. But really, I mean, it's it's true.

[00:47:41] I think that certainly a lot of suffering would have been prevented if the Valar had man weighed up and gotten Melkor earlier. And we would not have all the songs that we have. We might not have the Golden House of Finarvin and Tom Bombadil's got to sing something.

[00:48:02] So, yeah. So it's it you know, the second guessing is is one of our favorite games as humans, I think. And probably doesn't serve us a whole lot.

[00:48:15] Right. I said one more plot point, but this is so intertwined that I'm just going to add this one in, which is notably the Valar also set two of what appear to be Maiar to steer the sun and moon, a gardener for the sun and a hunter for the moon.

[00:48:31] I loved that, John. That was that was such a good catch. It's it's cool stuff. And I love there was a detail that, you know, nobody could even look into the eyes of Aryan. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

[00:48:44] It was just a spirit of fire, a spirit of fire not deceived by Melkor. And I think we've had this conversation before. I think, David, you asked me this in the Second Age days.

[00:48:53] Like if all of Melkor's servants are spirits of fire, were there any spirits of fire who weren't Melkor's servants? Here we go. Yeah. This is explicitly the sun is a spirit of fire who defied Melkor.

[00:49:06] Right. Aryan, the maiden was mightier than he and she was chosen because she had not feared the hearts of Lorlein and was unhurt by them. Being from the beginning a spirit of fire who Melkor had not deceived nor drawn into his service.

[00:49:25] Yeah, I was really taken by this description and by this character. I was like, wait, wait, just come back. We get never going to see her again. Never, ever again. She's up there in the sun. Come on. Right. Right. Well, yeah, you'll see her all the time.

[00:49:41] Every day when it's not cloudy. I'm just going to say just sit for a moment and contemplate the fact that one mayor could defeat Melkor now. And how much that says about how much Melkor has already fallen. We're going to get to that in the next section.

[00:49:57] So I want to save that for a minute. Right. Right. You had something, Marilyn, about the sound of waterfalls. Oh, before that, really quick. I just wanted to jump over back, Marilyn, in contemplating these characters, too. When we talked about the very Greekness of this as well.

[00:50:15] But it also made me think of the ending of Loki and I won't have season two of Loki on Marvel. That there's only certain things that gods can do in terms of time, eternity, the repetition of a particular task.

[00:50:29] You know, a human being would go crazy being in charge of one thing forever.

[00:50:35] And so then to be able to take these powerful beings that transcend our mortal conception to then be set into place to not mechanically turn the wheels, but to live to be a living element that is alive.

[00:50:58] That is present and intentional in their task every day for the rest of millennia, for the rest of the millennia. You know, forever is really exceptional. And it touched that nerve. And a lot of times we talk on our podcast about, you know, we sort of mix.

[00:51:14] We're looking across all these different shows and stuff. Yes. I love doing that. And I instantly thought of Loki at the end of season two and what happens for him and the choice that he makes.

[00:51:24] And if you haven't seen it, definitely go watch season two because it's great. Absolutely. And yeah, that is really, really cool connection. And there is another character who was only alluded to who is not a Maiar or Vala who does exactly the same thing at the end.

[00:51:44] At the end of? Of the Silmarillion. Okay. All right. All right. Wait, now I got to read the whole book. And it's responsible for the redemption. Okay. Yeah. So again, not unlike Loki at the end of season two. I never made that connection before. Me too. Me too.

[00:52:03] Can't wait till you get there, David. You may start reading ahead, you know? Exactly. I mean, there are spoilers about it in this chapter. Yes, there are. Tolkien loves him a little dip in here and there, like the Silmarils and they're lost.

[00:52:16] I mean, I skipped over it, but there's literally a line in a passage that I was just reading where he's like, yeah, Fëanor is going to die soon. Mando's like, well, he's going to see me soon. Yes. There's tons of spoilers in the text.

[00:52:31] He's just telling you what's going to happen. It's more about the journey, right? You've mentioned on several occasions that when you keep rereading the Silmarillion, you keep picking up on these different takes and angles. And oh my gosh, this was here.

[00:52:49] And oh my God, I can't believe that I completely missed that on this reading, but now I caught it on that reading. Yeah. So it's wonderful to know that the text is rich like that. Yeah. Definitely.

[00:53:03] And since you instanced me anyway, I would like to say that this is where Nienna's true purpose, which is the purpose of grief is clearly spelled out. Because the text says, then Manwe bade Yavanna and Nienna to put forth all their powers of growth and healing. Yeah.

[00:53:23] That is the purpose of grieving. Interesting. Is to heal and to grow. And we don't see it that way. Right. Because it hurts and we don't like it unless we can let ourselves get into it.

[00:53:35] And then you understand that grieving is the only way to live with this blessing and curse of free will. Right. Because stuff happens and we have to be able to cope with that somehow. Yeah. And that is Nienna's gift. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

[00:53:56] Okay, John, I don't know if you want to take us out on a break or not because I'm kind of- I was about to say, I think that that is a good note to take a quick breather on.

[00:54:05] Let's all get a drink of water and come back after that one. And we're back. And now that you've had a chance to cry it out a little bit, we are ready to talk about the bad guys who are getting involved now.

[00:54:40] Morgoth gets angry and attacks the moon, which is just a wild thing to say. But he attacks the moon. Doesn't even go near the sun because he's scared of it. Morgoth gets weaker and more bound to the earth the more his malice spreads to his servants,

[00:54:56] which is a fascinating thing that I didn't even pick up on the first time I read The Silmarillion or the second time. Like, I don't remember ever reading this. So here we go.

[00:55:08] He gets weaker the more he spreads, which makes a lot of sense as we get further into this, how different foes are able to sort of challenge him more. Right. And this is where we get the concept of Mordekoss' ring, that Arda eventually becomes Morgoth's ring,

[00:55:24] i.e. it is infused with Morgoth's evil, in addition to being a good and beautiful creation. Not unlike the ring itself. Yeah, this reminds me of one of the nine themes of Tolkien that I created and developed for my students

[00:55:46] to use as sort of touchstones as we're reading through Legendarium, that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Right. And unwillingly aids, quote unquote, the good. Yeah. It's a variation on Spivimi, basically.

[00:56:03] But his temper tantrums and his infusing more and more servants with little bits of his own energy, he's just dissipating himself so much. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I've talked about, usually in the context of The Wheel of Time,

[00:56:22] how I actually think that other series have done the whole evil sows the seeds of its own destruction better because other series consider that good also does the same thing often. Because I don't know if it's evil that necessarily does this or if it's human nature

[00:56:38] that just causes you to struggle with trusting each other. And, you know, often evil will have an advantage because they have fewer rules, right? And you have to hold yourself to a standard that your opponent will never try to.

[00:56:58] Which is kind of why Manwë does what he does, isn't it? And doesn't do. Yeah. Yeah. Morgoth's attack on the moon scares the Valar into hiding their land away. They raise the mountains of the Pelori, leaving one path for the Eldar to return through,

[00:57:17] and they set the enchanted isles between Amun and Middle-earth. The isles would cause travelers to sleep until the change of the world. Which, again, all these words, this word salad, the change of the world, what's that? Well, in this case, it's what happens after Númenor. Sure, yeah.

[00:57:40] Yeah, I thought this was the craziest part of the chapter. Just these sheer glass-walled mountains rising up out of nowhere. It was pretty crazy. Yeah. And these enchanted isles, which I think is a super fascinating concept too.

[00:57:57] Okay, it's still on the same plane of existence, but you're not going to get there. It's just impossible. You're going to fall asleep before you even get there. And I too like that the Valar are like, all right, the Teleri, there's some on each side of the border.

[00:58:14] Let's not completely cut it off. Let's have a visa program. I did, it did, reading this did have me call back to Rings of Power and to that scene where Galadriel's on the boat going back. And I thought that scene was beautiful.

[00:58:36] It was beautifully filmed and beautifully staged. And so even though this isn't that necessarily, that's what my mind went to thinking about trying to approach going back to this holy sacred place. And it's a thing to go there. It's not a, oh, hey, look, there's a shore.

[00:59:00] Let's land the boat. There's a lot more going on there. You need a special pass, right? You need an explicit permission to go there. 100%. Well, that's what the Rings of Power does with it. In point of fact. Yeah. They could go. No, I don't mean from the elves.

[00:59:16] I mean, you need some blessing of the Valar to make it through the Enchanted Isles and all that. Right. Yes. If you want to call it a ticket, then it's a ticket from the Valar, not from. Metaphorical ticket. Yeah. Right.

[00:59:28] What's interesting to me is in the earliest version of this in the book of Lost Tales, they were divided. The Valar were divided as to whether or not this whole enchanted island thing was a good idea.

[00:59:39] And Ulmo, who is of course the god of waters, doesn't even participate. He says, nope, not going to do it. Neither do Manwe or Varda.

[00:59:49] And Ulmo actually chastises the Valar who want to do it by saying, you know, are you feeling so vengeful that you're going to, you know, just completely cut us off forever? From the children of Illuatar who we came here to serve in the first place.

[01:00:10] So that piece of it was very long in the evolution of the seven different versions and manuscripts that he wrote, you know, throughout that period of, well not quite 60 years, but yeah.

[01:00:26] It was also really weird when Manwe said we're going to build a set of islands and we're going to get Feyinor to pay for it. That was a very strange moment. It felt very tonally off. We're going to get the Noldor to pay for it.

[01:00:41] Well, the Noldor pay, but not in that particular type of coin and you know, not for the enchanted isles. Right. Right. But does make you wonder, I mean, who do they think are going to be trapped in this?

[01:00:55] And of course we find out later that, you know, yes, it is some of the Noldor who do try to come back. Spoilers. The doom has been pronounced. Yep. Well, it's all in the prophecy of Mandos. Yes. The Valar will shut off this land from you.

[01:01:13] So that we already have read. And we do get a tease. We do. There's one person who's going to cross the enchanted isles. The mightiest mariner of song. What a title. I'd like to be called the mightiest mariner of song. Well, you know, it has its cost. Yes.

[01:01:36] I would not choose his fate if I were him. It's quite an exhausting job. But we'll get to that much later. Probably at the end of this year. Yeah. Probably.

[01:01:49] I found it interesting that they said that all the elven race needed to breathe the air from the land of their birth at times. And it was nice that they decided not to cut the Teleri off. Yeah.

[01:02:02] The ones on the shore and the ones that were living in Thuna. Yeah. That was really interesting about the air is this connection that they need to their homeland, right? They are indeed tied to Middle-earth. Right.

[01:02:17] And literally in the sense that they do not die until Middle-earth itself ends. And so even the immortal elves cannot live forever in the air of Valinor. And it's not that you can go to Valinor and receive everlasting life. That's not why it's called the Undying Lands.

[01:02:41] It's the Undying Lands because those who properly live there do not die. Yeah. People get the chicken and egg reversed on that one. They do. They do. And the elves are not genuinely immortal. They are serial longevity, if you want to call it that. Right.

[01:02:59] But they do have an ending. Right. And even if you go into the nature of Middle-earth, I've had some crazy stuff written about the elves. You bet. Were people angry about that when that came out? Some were fascinated. Some were confused. Some were bemused.

[01:03:14] Some said, I'm not a mathematician. Let me skip to the more interesting parts about dancing bears on Numenor. They were like, so at this year they're half spirit and at this year they're not. Yeah. It was a little confusing. It was a little confusing.

[01:03:27] But we don't have to worry about that because it's on the Silmarillion so we can ignore it. And also the fact that the Mightiest of Madnor's Song was able to get through the Enchanted Isles

[01:03:40] and the shadows and the bewilderment, dark rocks and mist, warrior hosts and sentinels and towers and mega mountains shows the strength of the fate or doom that was laid upon him. Because you're listening to this litany of protections.

[01:03:57] And in the end, they didn't work for this one person who was intended to get through them all. Right. So, I mean, I don't think anybody else ever got past the Enchanted Isles to the best of my knowledge. Except well, except one.

[01:04:16] But that's that's way in the future. So we don't need to talk about that now. Right. Well, that's the chapter, everyone. Good work. Are there any other thoughts before we move on to listen or feedback?

[01:04:29] No, I like I said at the top, I think this was a fun chapter and it was I felt it's a good chapter. It's a good way to start off the year rather than a begats and begots style chapter going, oh, like what's the for me personally?

[01:04:45] It was like, oh, the rediscovering the joy of what's in this text. A good way to kick off. Yeah. And I'm still wondering why the sound of waterfalls came along with the first sunrise.

[01:04:56] So listeners, if any of you are of a meteorological mind, please write in and tell us what you think. That sounds good. That sounds good. Because I have no answers for that. Yeah.

[01:05:06] I will warn you, the next chapter does get a little begotting at the beginning, but there's good. OK. To all right. Of men. That's what we're going to read next month. I have laid out the schedule. We're going to stick to one a month.

[01:05:19] We're going to we're going to pre record some things this year so that we keep it going and we're going to close out the year. We're going to just do a chapter at a time and we're going to spend two episodes on Baron and Luthien.

[01:05:30] So we will end the year on of tour of tour and tour and bar with Marilyn Arpukula, who's already said that she wants to be a guest on it. And I'll put that full list in the show notes so I don't have to read it all out here.

[01:05:42] But we're going to do one chapter a month except Baron and Luthien. All right. Listener feedback. If you'd like to chat with us about all this mumbo jumbo that we're talking about, you can send an email to L O T R at the lorehounds dot com.

[01:05:58] You can go to the contact form on our website, the lorehounds dot com, or you can head in the discord server and just, you know, ping us say, hey, question for you. Well, we'll put it in the feedback section. So we've just got one.

[01:06:09] It's from the discord server. Long time listener. He who writes in. And says getting caught up on the Silmarillion story pods. There's a couple geographic markers on the CJRT map from L O T R that link it to the CJRT map from the Silmarillion.

[01:06:28] Does anyone know what that means? CJRT. Christopher John Rule Tolkien. Okay, good job. Thank you. For some good perspective, someone overlaid the maps a while ago. It's very useful.

[01:06:42] I think someone has commented that there's a scale issue due to the earth being flat of the time of Balerian before the seas were bent or something. I can't speak to that, but it's kind of plausible due to how large Balerian appears.

[01:06:56] Yeah, so we'll get to that later. The folding of Earth and whatever else happens meteorologically and geologically to this planet. But I've been enjoying looking at this map in this overlay. That's very cool. I don't know if you two have seen it. It's in the outline. It's beautiful.

[01:07:14] And I've seen it somewhere else. I think maybe Ehoop might have put it in the Discord at some point or somebody did. Because I have seen it before and exactly that rendering. I mean, I know Balerian was a huge chunk.

[01:07:26] That was not like a little thing that Balerian fell off. It's huge. It is. It definitely is. Looking at the scale of this thing is like, oh my goodness. How many authors just wipe out a good third of their continent?

[01:07:42] Yeah, but also Rune is cut off and we don't know how far Rune goes. Because it's just unexplored in Lord of the Rings. So I think that's reasonable. I think it's a little big, but I don't think it's crazy big compared to Middle-Earth here.

[01:07:55] So anyone else have thoughts on Ehoop? All right. Well, thanks Ehoop for writing in and I hope you will next month. Hope everyone starts writing in more because we're getting into it again.

[01:08:09] I always say we're getting into the meat of it, but we're in the meat of it. We're in the center of the sandwich right now. So join in on the conversation. David, you want to give us some quick show notes? Sure.

[01:08:22] Not sure when we're going to be dropping this podcast relative to when we have recorded it. But we're going to be starting off LoreHound's coverage of True Detectives Night Country, which is going to be a season four for the show.

[01:08:37] It's an anthology show and I think you can be able to watch this episode or this season as a standalone. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, that's what you're doing. If I'm confused, then you'll have somebody there with you at least.

[01:08:49] But it sounds like the initial reviews have been great. It's a six episode run starring Jodie Foster as a police detective in Alaska. And it seems to have some tinges of maybe a little bit of cosmic horror involved in some way.

[01:09:10] For fans of the show, there's definitely, I think, going to be some connectivity to season one of the series. But they're standalone, they're independent, so you don't have to have watched those. But we'll be doing those episode to episode coverage.

[01:09:25] And I should add, we have screeners for those, so we're going to be doing the coverage pretty much right away after the episode. So that'll be a lot of fun. And then in terms of Anthony and Steve, they're taking a little break on Properly Howard.

[01:09:39] Anthony's a bit busy these days with some of his professional responsibilities. But the moment we get a date for Severance season two, the four of us are going to be covering it week to week. And Anthony and Steve have already done a season one rewatch.

[01:09:58] And all of those podcasts are already out. And if you just go to the show notes, you can find a link to that feed. We set up a whole separate channel just for that.

[01:10:10] So go subscribe to that and then check it out once season two starts to come back. We also have got Shireside Chats. I can never... Shireside Chats. That is out. You did it twice in a row. Well done. I did. And we've got plans for Earthsea.

[01:10:29] We're going to be moving on. For those who've been reading along with us on that, we've finished Deanu. And we're going to start off the next episode in February. We're going to read a short story called Dragonfly, which gets a little weird with the publishing order.

[01:10:45] But it's almost a short story bridge. And then we're going to go into The Other Wind, which is really the continuation of the story. And then we're going to finish it all off with Tales of Earthsea, which are a collection of short stories.

[01:11:03] So look for a February release for Earthsea. Well, David, I think that's about it. Let's just do our quick thank yous to our Patreon Loremasters, our top-tier subscribers who are keeping us going every month.

[01:11:41] Also, just let us know if you want to be called something different because you're a new Loremaster. And thank you for joining. And last but not least, who has always requested being last, Adrian. We love to have that running joke. And thank you to all our Patrons.

[01:12:06] Of course, we're doing live watches this month. We're doing Rogue One. We're doing Rogue One, yep, yep, yep. And there's going to be a poll for the Second Breakfast Old Man movie. We've got Second Breakfast coming, of course, and other Shireside chats at the beginning of February.

[01:12:21] So plenty of stuff coming. I think Alicia's got stuff in the hopper too, but we're waiting for her to get settled back in from her holiday break. So by the time this comes out, maybe that will all be in motion. All right, everyone.

[01:12:37] See you all soon on the next Silmarillion story. The Lore Hounds Podcast is produced and published by The Lore Hounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad-free access to all Lore Hounds podcasts at patreon.com slash thelorehounds.

[01:12:56] Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening. Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side, green or black. John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn.

[01:13:21] I am black for life. So we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to pick sides and fight and stuff. Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod, but we seem to agree on one thing.

[01:13:34] We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore. It was made for the Lore Hounds. And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[01:13:46] And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lore Hounds podcast feed each week for our dragonfire hot, but probably positive, takes.

[01:14:04] The Lore Hounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin.

[01:14:13] Dragon seeds may experience burning.