On a recent trip to the First Age of Middle-Earth, I discovered that I’d made a significant packing error. Instead of my long-range Periannath Detector/Heart Exploder, I’d accidentally brought along the similar-looking long-range Quendi Dream Inducer. This put the kibosh on my plans to exterminate the hobbit race before anyone ever even heard of them, but it also gave me an idea. You see, the date was about a year before Beren would arrive in Doriath and fall in love with Luthien, giving me the chance to fuck with Middle-Earth’s history in a new way.
Abandoning the Vales of Anduin for halls of Menegroth, I located Thingol and Melian’s bedchamber and turned the QDI onto the king, and set it on automatic. (No, I did not also get any holopics of Melian naked, you perverts.) In this fashion I gave the King a recurring, graphic, dream. Two, actually. In the first, Thingol saw what owning a Silmaril would lead to: his own bloody death at the hands of the Dwarves and the eventual sacking of his kingdom; in the second, he saw Beren’s exploits against Morgoth’s forces in the wild. Consequently when Beren finally arrived, Thingol not only was repelled by the very idea of owning a Silmaril but was already highly impressed with the son of Barahir. When Beren asked for Luthien’s hand in marriage, Thingol couldn’t say yes fast enough, and the Quest of the Silmaril never happened.
How do you expect the War of the Jewel’s to play out from this point?
I am NOT Morgoth. Not least because I would never have gone out to fight Fingolfin in single combat. For Eru’s sake, what’s the point of having missiles if you do stupid shit like that?
Didn’t say you were. Sauron doesn’t particularly defer to you around here.
I should add that the bees should be fire breathing bees. Burn down that enchanted forest in no time.
Please note that Morgoth was shamed by all his minions watching him to go out and face Fingolfin.
Or Morgoth could invent GM foods and sue their asses off when they grow his crops. Tolkien did have a healthy respect for the intellectual property rights of authors.
Not a good idea. The Eldar and the Edain were up against a Vala; there was no way they were going to win. Thingol might have held out for another century or so, but in the end, Morgoth would crush them. It was just a matter of time.
The fact of the matter is, if it weren’t for the Silmaril, Earendil wouldn’t have gotten into Valinor and come back with the only army that could defeat Melkor. That’s the only thing that counted.
Wouldn’t happen. Thingol is too much of a [del]stuck-up snob[/del]Elf to agree so readily. He’d still insist that Beren prove himself in some nigh-impossible way; he’d just choose a different Herculean task for him. The dreams might give him confidence that Beren could accomplish it, but he’d still insist on actual performance, not just portents.
And contrary to Alessan, I think that Middle-Earth would still have stood a chance in this scenario. There was one Child of Illuvatar who could destroy Melkor (and is prophesied will, eventually, in our timeline). Start off with a more congenial relationship between Thingol and Beren, and he might have been more welcoming to Turin, and possibly averted his dark path.
Thingol never had a problem with Turin that wasn’t in the original emo-kid’s head, did he? It was just the one courtier who was a dick to him and his death was an accident. Everything that happened afterward was Turin’s own doing (influenced, granted, by Morgoth’s curse against Hurin’s line). If Turin had just gone back to Menegroth and explained what had happened, none of the ensuing tragedy of errors would have occurred.