#sinmara of muspeldor

[lightdancer1]

The War of Eregion

Part of what I call my Varda-verse, which switches the idea of Tolkien's concept of an innately evil entity among the Valar to the exact inversion of Melkor the Morgoth. Instead of the Dark Lord on the Dark Throne it's the Star-Kindler who goes evil instead.

Starlight turned to evil takes in not merely radiation but literally burns into and hollows out souls. Varda and her monsters take the same path of withering that Melkor's do but that means that they become far more dangerous as they're walking nuclear reactors burning themselves alive from within and as Ainur can never fully or truly die.

The War of Eregion fills in the whole equivalent of the War of the Elves and Sauron, the emergence of the Rings of Power, and sets in motion my tale of the Third Age which is based on the Volsung Saga and ultimately is its own Lord of the Rings equivalent.

As Varda is Morgoth, so is Ilmare her handmaiden, aka Sinmara of Muspeldor, Sauron. She wields a blazing sword that serves as a hand-held nuclear weapon and is slowly sliding down a slippery slope into omnicidal 'nuke the world to ashes' tier destructiveness for destruction's sake.

#varda-verse #sinmara of muspeldor #the war of eregion

[lightdancer1]

Ilmare in the Varda verse, which takes a far heavier dose of Norse/Germanic paganism into it than Arda itself does in Tolkien’s works is a straight up reference to Muspelheim and its people. She wields the sword Nightfall that is a handheld nuke. She builds Muspeldor, which is literally Muspelheim by name in Ardan conventions.

Sauron is a master of sorcery and shapeshifting. Ilmare is a brute force blunt instrument who can and does batter down her enemies in the earlier ages and then in the Third Age sinks into a nihilistic destroying frenzy. There’s a reason her equivalent of the War of the Ring is called the War of Ruin. She basically deals an equivalent of the worst case World War III scenario.

For people who’ve read the Avatar stories the main gaps between Sinmara of Muspeldor and Jiren besides that one is human and the other isn’t is that Sinmara begins bitter and disillusioned and then sets out to level the world. Jiren is a serial killer with delusions of grandeur.

#evil varda au #Sinmara of Muspeldor #Jiren #atla aus #a far green country

[lightdancer1]

An excerpt from an upcoming chapter of the War of Eregion:

The air droned around her as Sinmara strode to Celebrimbor and then with a deliberate effort it was not the molten-shaped monster of her own thought but Ilmare, who was meant to be one of the rulers of all the Maiar. So beautiful and splendid was the loveliness of her true form beyond that of Aurelian, Mother of Lies that Celebrimbor fell to his knees weeping in awe.

The Doomsayer spoke to you your fate. No aid shall the Valar lend you in your quest and against a Power of this world you shall not prevail.

Her words were harsh and guttural, the tongue in later generations called Enochian and in its true name, Valarin. And yet he understood them by some fell enchantment.

The Star-Kindler was cast beyond the Doors of Night. Now I am the Power of this world, the Princess of the Power of the Air. I shall set my throne above the stars of the Star-Kindler, I shall rule from the mount of the Assembly of the Khazad.

Her armored hand glowing with that beautiful light began to clasp around his throat.

I am the Princess of the Power of this world, the bright and morning star. I would love nothing less than to use Nightfall and obliterate the last traces of this realm but that's the problem with you Quendi. Too clever, too lost in your own mystery. These Rings of Power you've made, even the three that escaped.....

Her smile was beautiful and yet it was the most terrifying thing he'd ever seen.

I want them, and I will have them. So you will die as your kind lived, soulless, weeping, and ashamed. Gil-Galad fell in Hithlum. Even those stories about the End of the Time of the Gods, should they be true about Arwen Arien.....

Her hands were now around his throat, the gauntlets oddly cool for a being that shone with the heat of starlight.

I don't need the fires of Nightfall to kill the little bitch. In the end it is still a sword sharp enough and strong enough to shatter stone. Die now, last son of the line of Feanor, and know your kind have ever only been servants of the outer light and the madness from the stars.

#the war of eregion #sinmara of muspeldor

[lightdancer1]

Also working on this one, which is the Tolkien AU I’ve mentioned. In this AU Varda becomes an eldritch nightmare oozing soul-eating radiation and able to tap into the power of the Music of the Ainur. Her handmaiden becomes Sinmara of Muspeldor, and both builds a vast realm of Men and Eldar (which in this universe is the equivalent of Orcs) and becomes ensnared in the Peredhil Saga and ultimately meets her own demise thereby.

It’s a much more distinctly pagan take on the cosmology, down to having the arch-villain of the Second and Third Ages be Sinmara of Muspelheim down to explicitly calling her equivalent of Mordor Muspeldor in her variant of Black Speech. Which means “Land of the World Destroyers”.

The main things that differ is that it’s Light Is Not Good rather than Dark is Not Evil, and that radiation and the atom bomb pervade the symbolism of evil rather than the shadowy deception and trickery of Sauron. Varda and Ilmare are much more forthright, but they also can and do literally nuke entire regions in star-flame so they don’t *need* plagues and the like.....and when *that* hits its incarnation point of decaying into weakness, it becomes a perpetual motion leaking hydrogen bomb at a very high yield.

#varda elentari #ilmarë #cosmic horror varda AU #beware the light of the infinite stars

[lightdancer1]

The flip side of that 'evil hollows out spirits' factor:

If the spirits in question are either walking nuclear reactors or the power that sets them in motion, hollowing them out is when they're at their very most dangerous. They're walking nuclear disaster zones the entire time but at peak strength they can and do weaponize it and properly control it it as horrifyingly powerful and deadly fallen angels.

When the decay factor sets in you have feral roving walking Chernobyls spewing soul-annihilating radiation and burning the world in fire. They're pale ghosts of themselves but that means you're looking at *living leaking nuclear reactors that leave entire landscapes as sterilized radiation-saturated hellscapes that produce all the unlovely effects of radiation poisoning*.

In short late!stage decayed Varda and Ilmare/Sinmara are both feral monsters and pitiable in their own way but if not for Nessa the personification of FTL late-sage Varda just has to exist to turn all of Arda into a nuclear hellscape. Varda goes from a smug and arrogant devil-figure with delusions of rhetorical grandeur to a feral snarling creature in simian postures given a rough treatment by Este to allow her to go into the Doors with something like sapience.

Ilmare/Sinmara goes from a very Sauron-like God-Empress mentality to straight up Surtr 'BURN IT ALL' mentalities and has a suitably Ragnarokian conflict.

Sinmara of Muspeldor is less an equivalent of Sauron, though, and straight up the whole time is a Norse mythology reference to Surtr and Muspelheim down to Mordor's equivalent going from "Black Land" to "Land of the World-Destroyers." The reason people go along with someone who calls herself "World-Destroyer" is "Obey me or you die by the hands of my handheld nuclear weapon" is a very, very convincing argument. Plus Cosmic Horror starlight makes people feral and prone to obey the Maiar of the Star-Kindler who can and do wield the harmonics to provide an order reliant on a powerful commanding presence but aside from them they're warlike monsters that go a-marauding and only survive into the later Ages because they die like rabbits and they breed like rabbits.

#varda-verse #light can be just as horrifying as a source of evil as darkness

[lightdancer1]

The Evil Varda verse I’m doing:

Runs on similar themes to that of the canonical Tolkien-verse. Evil is self-destructive and spends itself in hate and malice until it’s a mindless destructive force laying waste for the sake of it. With Morgoth that reduces him from a living mountain clad in ice and crowned with fire to the hateful and pitiable thing thrust beyond the doors.

For Varda Elentari it changes the Star-Kindler to a living nuclear reactor hollowed out by her own flames....which as corrupted soul-eating radiation means she’s decidedly weaker but she’s much more lethal because the power she constrains at her height is simple mindless plasma and spacetime gravitation effects.

Ilmare’s evil form is essentially Surtr of Muspelheim, the World-Destroyer with the sword of fire that burns worlds.

Canonical Ilmare is to Varda what Mairon is to Melkor, the one who takes the designs and makes them straightforward concepts in practical forms. In short stars are big balls of plasma, Ilmare is the one who is the embodiment of the strong nuclear force in living form.

In my headcanon of the War of Wrath she was among the few of the truly powerful Maiar to go to war with Eonwe and much of the devastation of Beleriand is the casual byproducts of the full power of the hallowed light of Varda Elentari’s stars unleashed.

In the Second Chances verse, the canonical Ilmare will be making an appearance to showcase that as terrifying as Sinmara of Muspeldor is, Varda Elentari’s handmaiden is ten times so.