#Orome has likewise dwindled down to nothing but an ainu of hawks and hounds and courtly hunts

[shrikeseams]

'So @corsairspade's post about Celegorm and Orome and luck sent me down a tangent, because--

Okay. Part of the silmarillion that rubs me wrong is that the Valar never seem to experience any actual consequences for their failures and missteps. Their choice to trust Morgoth has disastrous consequences--everywhere outside of Aman*. Their mismanagement of Noldorin politics leads to the kinslaying at Alqualonde and the Doom of the Noldor (and arguably the knock-on dooming of beleriand) while the valar sit tight at home. Sauron gets loose and spends millenia wrecking shit, but that shit is all conveniently far away from Aman. The only time he gets close to Aman, it ends in a genocide--of people that the Valar wouldn't let into Aman in the first place. They stay high and dry and unchanging through the literal re-shaping of Arda.

So. Consequences! I want them. So what if the apparent waning of the Valar's strength across the Ages is actually a direct consequence of their isolationism?

After all, why are the valar in arda? They're there to build it, and then maintain it. They're there to embody their domains. My conception of them (and I know this isn't universal but this is my personal working baseline) is that each ainu's domain of power is their calling. Their reason for existance. It's the lens they perceive the world through, and they derive their strength of existence in the world by perpetually embodying and enacting that calling. Ulmo is defined by the restless motion of the waves. Varda is defined by the light of the heavens and the shining of the stars. Orome is defined by the hunt.

But then they restrict themselves to Aman. They functionally took themselves out of Arda well before the third age. They made a deliberate and conscious choice to restrict the scope of their activity/influence. What if that choice also restricted the scope of their power?

I keep coming back to Orome because. Look. His case of obedience to authority vs obedience to one's own nature/calling feels so egregious. If any valar should have spent the first age in beleriand, it should have been Orome and Tulkas. Orome's calling is The Hunting of Evil. Tulkas only showed up in Arda to fight Melkor! The act of sitting out the fight reduces both of them from forces of active good to... what? Courtly vestigial remnants of their own true natures? You don't stay the best at what you do by avoiding doing it. Maybe the valar don't retain their primordial powers if they don't exercise them. Maybe limiting the scope of their direct influence (to the place it was arguably least needed ) likewise limited the scope of their strengths.

Which leads to a situation where the valar cannot, in fact, defend Aman against Numenor, because they thought that isolation was enough. So they sat out two ages of the world, and when the world came to find them at home they realized too late that their choices would have consequences for themselves, not just others.

*If you try to argue that the loss of the Trees is equivalent to the destruction of a fucking landmass and the actual enslavement of unspecified numbers of people, save your energy. Just take my disappointed look as a given and go find some other post to comment on.

#Tolkien #Can't stop chewing at the betrayal of orome #And the idea of celegorm being reimbodied only to find that while he himself has lost/betrayed his Calling #Orome has likewise dwindled down to nothing but an ainu of hawks and hounds and courtly hunts #Like they split the True Calling between them. Orome got the goodness (but no practicality) and celegorm got the violence (void of morality #...does this make the istari a last-ditch bid to reclaim their own strength? Hm. #San shoots the breeze