Hello, my name is Elfhild, also known as the Scribe of Minas Morgul. I have been writing Tolkien fanfiction since 2004. Here are links to my works.
The Circles of Power by Angmar and Elfhild
In an alternative universe set in the Third Age of Arda, the West was defeated at the Battle of Pelennor Fields and the war swept over Southern Gondor. To the dismay of all the Free People of Middle-earth, the Dark Lord Sauron regained the One Ring, His rising power threatening to plunge the world into a Second Darkness. In the midst of all this, two peasant girls, twin sisters Elfhild and Elffled, are captured by orcs in a preliminary raid against Rohan. Their world destroyed, their fate uncertain, they face the bleak prospects of slavery at the hands of their enemies. This is a chronicle of their journeys and all those whom they meet along the way, both friend and foe alike.
Read on AO3 (Now posting Book 8: A Mordorian Bestiary)
Read on The Circles Official Homepage (Now posting rough drafts of Book 9: Beneath the Nurnian Sky.)
Other Stories By Elfhild
Mostly one-shot stories about the Nazgûl and Sauron, as well as a few Silmarillion drabbles.
Read on AO3
The Library of Minas Morgul
“The Circles” is just one of the collections found at the library. Here you will find the Chamber of Nazgûl Lore, a HUGE collection of articles and discussion threads about the Nazgûl, as well as a MASSIVE listing of fanfiction stories and poetry about the Nine. You can also find a collection of essays about various Middle-earth related topics; information on fan-created Black Speech dialects; an archive for the 2004-2005 Second Darkness RPG; and a shrine to the memory of the much beloved Angmar.
And the evil things that he had perverted and walked abroad in the dark and slumbering woods were haunted by monsters and shapes of dread
I love the horror of the early days of the elves so much. The dark forests and unspeakable forms. The vanishings and paranoia. The way the shadows seep into their dawning languages and cultures and are never quite outrun.
I think of petroglyphs carved of dreadful shapes upon stones no one has laid eyes upon for thousands of years.
I think of whispered stories that are still remembered by those who never went to Valinor, of dark corners of the forests still avoided.
I think of jagged nightmares that are still felt by those who never saw these shapes themselves but who were themselves shaped by a fear of them.
There is a word in the early language of the elves; grauk meaning monster. This word originates from the root ruk meaning “terrible shapes and the fear they inspire”. Balrog derives from a related word as do several other words for demons and monsters.
Terrible shapes and the fear they inspire. This is something that is so primal, so long in the collective memory of the elves that it exists in the very first words they ever spoke and it echoes through their later languages like a scream.
The Constellations of northern Arda - an autumn sky above Thangorodrim
The constellations of Arda - a night sky made up of the constellations of Tolkien's Legendarium (and some added real ones (lyra, swan, dragon) that seemed to fit thematically) overlaid over an autumnal sky of our northern hemisphere. (somewhat expanded to get all of them in one view (e.g. do not @ me about orion or corona borealis ;) )
Also, for the Tolkien astronomy nerds(TM), Anarríma (which we don't have any information on besides the name) is probably meant to be an adaptation of pegasus. So the actual depiction is completely made up by me.
I ultimately landed on the idea of a giant spider (as the name translates to something like the edge/border of light/the sun) The spider not only fits well with the long limbs of the pegasus but Ungoliant's (and her descendants') stories do always play out in that edge of light and the sun, always desiring, craving and devouring it but also shying away from it. /rant over
My copy of The Atlas of Middle-earth is held together with tape for this very reason, and I also have a wooden ruler upon which I drew designations for the mileage scale so I can get precise measurements for distance.
A tale of two towns, Firienstead of Rohan, Tir Anwar of Gondor, located on either end of the Firien Wood.
I'm trying to make Anorien seem a bit more populated. I know that fewer people live in northern Gondor than southern Gondor, but I don't think that this region should feel completely desolate. There seems to be an implication that there is a settlement located near Min-Rimmon, and I think that there could be other settlements near the beacon towers. After all, the "Cirion and Eorl" chapter of Unfinished Tales talks about the beacon wardens returning home after their turns of duty at Halfirien. So the wardens and their families might dwell at Tir Anwar.
Though it is not canon, LOTRO has a fortified town, Bâr Nadhron, located between the beacon hills of Calenhad and Min-Rimmon. Another town, Ost Rimmon, is located at the base of Min-Rimmon. The primary industry of this town seems to be the quarry nearby.
While both Gondor and Rohan seem to have become more insular over time, I feel that there would still be a lot of trade going on between the two countries. However, Tolkien tended to avoid discussions of trade and economics for the most part. Perhaps showing the various ways that the realms of Middle-earth are connected with each other would have lessened some of the post-apocalyptic vibe he was going for in LOTR.
Incidentally, Pippin would have ridden by both Firienstead and Tir Anwar when he traveled with Gandalf to Minas Tirith. However, he conveniently slept and/or dissociated through the entire journey, so he had little memory of the landmarks he saw along the way.
The largest town that Goldwyn had ever visited was Firienstead in the Eastfold. Located just beyond the western eaves of the Firien Wood, Firienstead was the last major settlement in Rohan which lay upon the Great West Road, or the first, depending upon which direction one was traveling. The town was known for its bustling market and seasonal fairs where one could find a variety of goods from both near and far. Horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry could be bought from local farmers and livestock traders. Fruits and vegetables were available depending upon what was in season, and grain could be purchased year-round. Hunters from the White Mountains would bring hides and pelts to sell or trade, and foresters from mountain logging camps brought ox-drawn wains stacked high with timber. A variety of artisan goods could be purchased at the market, and Fasthelm often sold his wooden crafts and smaller furniture pieces there.
The second largest town that Goldwyn had visited was Tir Anwar, which was the westernmost settlement in Anórien. Like its sister town in Rohan, Tir Anwar was located upon the Great West Road in the shadow of the Firien Wood, albeit nigh to the eastern eaves of the forest instead of the west. Fasthelm sometimes attended the market there as well, though it was not as large as the one in Firienstead. There was more variety, though, especially during the warmer months, as merchants from the southern fiefdoms traveled to the far reaches of the realm to sell their wares. In addition to livestock, produce, and artisan crafts, the market at Tir Anwar frequently offered fine wines, herbs and spices, dried fruits and preserves, textiles and dyes, and other goods which had been imported from southern Gondor. Sometimes Gondorian merchants journeyed to Firienstead and beyond, bringing the treasures of their land to the Rohirrim.
Working on creating economies for two towns, one in Rohan and one in Gondor, just so I can talk about how much bigger this city in Nurn is when compared to the two towns in the north.
Because it's easier to worldbuild apparently than start writing the scene that immediately follows these comparisons.
I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture.
All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line?
The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy?
Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess.
I want the fat left it.
I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence.
Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."
Marta Rereads LOTR: "In the House of Tom Bombadil"
I re-read the “In the House of Tom Bombadil” chapter (LOTR 1.7) a few days ago, and I’ve been trying to think about how to discuss it since. I can certainly see why adaptations never include it, it seems nearly unadaptable in a visual format, and I’ll be really interested in how the Colbert movie tackles it. But it’s strangely profound and important to the story in a way I never really appreciated.
For those who’ve never read the book, it’s part of a six-chapter sequence largely missing from the Jackson movies and every other adaptation I’ve seen covering the journey from Bag End to Bree. The hobbits have escaped out of the Shire and, in an attempt to keep the Black Riders from tracking them, into the Old Forest, a feared and half-haunted wilderness on the borders of the Shire. They’ve gotten lost, escaped (or been saved, by Tom B.) from an ancient, hate-filled tree that tried to devour them, and Tom set them back on the right path: not out of the woods, but toward his house. This chapter, as you’d expect from the title, is about their time in Old Tom’s house.
It all reminds me of the Beorn chapter from “The Hobbit” - a strange sui generis kind of character, lots of honey and vegetables, a chance to rest up. What’s odd is they don’t actually need the shelter and the reprovisioning. They’ve survived a minor adventure and are surely shaken up, but they’ve been in the woods less than a day, they still have all their luggage, and Tom Bombadil doesn’t really tell them – or promise to tell them – anything that will help them on their journey. Tolkien clearly wants to tell us about this eldritch being, and remembering Bombadil is based on a doll JRRT’s children had as children and he’s sending these chapters to Christopher while he’s serving in the RAF during World War II, story-external-wise, it’s a really sweet detail.
Story-internal, it makes no damned sense. Compels me, to borrow the line, but even so.
Plot-wise, it just serves no obvious purpose, not that would have justified Frodo going with him or even looking back. And precisely because of that it feels like a mistake to go there. It’s almost like they’ve fallen under his spell, or thrall. He’s unaccountable, unknown, unexplained, and preternaturally powerful. And they follow him. It’s enough to make you question Frodo’s and Merry’s sense of judgment. As we should; they’re completely unprepared for what they’re up against, and they just have no way to judge dangerous-strange from safe-strange.
What I realized (or remembered) reading this was how thoroughly this wasn’t a there-and-back-again adventure. Bilbo’s quest was basically a struggle against externalities. Setting aside Thorin’s dragon-sickness and the Ring itself (which Tolkien hadn’t really worked out what it was when he wrote that book), it’s more or less a struggle against physical beings who might have more power or knowledge but were at least of the same kind as Bilbo and the dwarves. Merry’s and Pippin’s adventures and the rest of the Fellowship’s will be along that same line. But Frodo and Sam, Frodo particularly, are up against something more on the line of the psychological and the spiritual. It’s certainly not a struggle against externalities; it’s to hold on to himself and endure through trauma that can strike beyond the physical world.
Here I’m reminded it’s the wound he takes on Weathertop that finally drives him from the Shire, and that the danger was never he’d lose use of his shoulder or the wound would get infected: It was that he’d been pierced by a morgul blade and would lose his freedom and self to the Nazgul. That’s not a physical wound, and it starts him on a very different kind of adventure than fighting off orcs, wargs, and dragons around Esgaroth.
Beyond the sing-song nature of it all, which will probably hit you as either magical or nonsensical depending on what you bring to the story (I’ve felt both on different readings) and some charming details about Tom Bombadil’s and Goldberry’s love and complementarity, the chapter really centers around two incidents. First, the hobbits make their way to the house, they clean up and have dinner and are finally sent off to bed.
At last Tom and Goldberry rose and cleared the table swiftly. The guests were commanded to sit quiet, and were set in chairs, each with a footstool to his tired feet. There was a fire in the wide hearth before them, and it was burning with a sweet smell, as if it were built of apple-wood. When everything was set in order, all the lights in the room were put out, except one lamp and a pair of candles at each end of the chimney-shelf. Then Goldberry came and stood before them, holding a candle; and she wished them each a good night and deep sleep.
‘Have peace now,’ she said, ‘until the morning! Heed no nightly noises! For nothing passes door and window here save moonlight and starlight and the wind off the hill-top. Good night!’ She passed out of the room with a glimmer and a rustle. The sound of her footsteps was like a stream falling gently away downhill over cool stones in the quiet of night.
Frodo, Merry and Pippin all struggle with truly frightening dreams (of Sam, he “slept through the night in deep content, if logs are contented”), but are reminded by strange voices in the midst of their dreams that they are safe here. They can relax. “Heed no nightly noises.” With Merry and Pippin especially, their nightmares seem almost directly driven by what they went through with Old Man Willow. And having this time to be safe, to be safe beyond the home they know, seems important. They’re up against a marathon, not a sprint, and they’re going to need to find those moments along the road.
The next day the whole house is surrounded by rain. “‘This is Goldberry’s washing day,’ [Tom Bombadil] said, ‘and her autumn-cleaning. Too wet for hobbit-folk – let them rest while they are able! It’s a good day for long tales, for questions and for answers, so Tom will start the talking.” But it’s not a linear storytelling, not the great reveal of Necessary Information (TM) like we got from Gandalf back in “Shadows of the Past,” or what’s to come at the Council of Elrond. Instead:
He then told them many remarkable stories, sometimes half as if speaking to himself, sometimes looking at them suddenly with a bright blue eye under his deep brows. Often his voice would turn to song, and he would get out of his chair and dance about. He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about the evil things and good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles.
As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home. Moving constantly in and out of his talk was Old Man Willow, and Frodo learned now enough to content him, indeed more than enough, for it was not comfortable lore. Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, and filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. The countless years had filled them with pride and rooted wisdom, and with malice. But none were more dangerous than the Great Willow: his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs.
Suddenly Tom’s talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream, over bubbling waterfalls, over pebbles and worn rocks, and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies, wandering at last up on to the Downs. They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight.
The hobbits shuddered. Even in the Shire the rumour of the Barrow-wights of the Barrow-downs beyond the Forest had been heard. But it was not a tale that any hobbit liked to listen to, even by a comfortable fireside far away. These four now suddenly remembered what the joy of this house had driven from their minds: the house of Tom Bombadil nestled under the very shoulder of those dreaded hills. They lost the thread of his tale and shifted uneasily, looking aside at one another.
When they caught his words again they found that he had now wandered into strange regions beyond their memory and beyond their waking thought, into times when the world was wider, and the seas flowed straight to the western Shore; and still on and back Tom went singing out into ancient starlight, when only the Elf-sires were awake. Then suddenly he stopped, and they saw that he nodded as if he was falling asleep. The hobbits sat still before him, enchanted; and it seemed as if, under the spell of his words, the wind had gone, and the clouds had dried up, and the day had been withdrawn, and darkness had come from East and West, and all the sky was filled with the light of white stars.
So they learn about Old Man Willow, and about the barrow-wights they still have to get past to make it to Bree; but the real effect isn’t that they’re suddenly equipped with useful facts. Rather, the story seems to weave an ephemeral, ethereal space. As a Silm fan I’m reminded of Cuivienen, or perhaps of Iluin and Ormal, or even to the First Song and that Eä! that set the whole thing off. He’s pulling them out of time, or as close as they can possibly get.
The whole point of Old Man Willow is not just to give the hobbits an early adversary to struggle against and be saved from. It’s to show that not everything ancient is good or safe. They’re not all like Gildor or the Elves Sam so desperately wanted to meet from Bilbo’s story. Sometimes being old gives things time to fester inside you (“his heart was rotten, but his strength was green”). Bombadil seems to escape that only because he is the Oldest. In a very real sense, he just is. He’s the closest Middle-earth - certainly in the time of Lord of the Rings - comes to something like the Christian God, with the simplicity and control and undefinable-ness of that concept. But his real power, and the real thing that keeps him both from claiming the Ring and from being the obvious cheat-code to not need to do the Quest is, while he’s utterly in control of his domain with no ambitions to claim anything beyond it, that domain is small and getting smaller.
I’m most struck, though, by the way Tolkien tells us Tom’s stories by not telling them. We don’t know what he actually says, just how it affects the hobbits. And that creates an awareness of a sort of telling that can’t be boiled down into words, I guess? It’s transcendent. Which means the world – the world Frodo’s stepping into – is transcendent, too, or at least not something you can break down into facts and statements the same way you can with those other history-tellings with Gandalf and the Council of Elrond. It’s deeper and more basic than that; basic in the sense of primitive, fundamental, not break-down-able into constituent parts.
I’m not blind to how much of this is bound up in water, from Frodo’s dream to Goldberry coccooning them in this moment of peace. Again, knowing the Silm, I’m reminded how water is the element that bears the echo of that first Song most clearly.
It’s still a somewhat weird chapter in its way, and I still find myself anxious to get on with the story. But letting it wash over me this week, as it must have washed over the hobbits, it’s much less silly and self-indulgent than I remembered. There’s definitely something Going On, and if it doesn’t quite fit into the kind of story I always expect, maybe that’s more a sign of the mental blinders we all carry with us.
Next up, we’re on the road to the barrow-downs. Time to get spooky!
in 2026 i am wishing for all of us the energy of bilbo baggins, who was headhunted for an extremely well paid role he had no qualifications or experience for, blagged the interview, and within his first week found a magic ring that does the job for him
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 20/35
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character
Characters: Original Characters, Rohirrim Characters (Tolkien), Haradrim Characters (Tolkien), Easterling(s), Slaves of Nurn (Tolkien), Nazgûl, Witch-King of Angmar (Tolkien), Sauron (Tolkien), Original Animal Character(s)
Additional Tags: alternative universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Middle Earth Setting, Alternative Universe - Dark, Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Drama, Travelogue, Mordor (Tolkien), nurn, Worldbuilding, Original Character-centric, Talking Animals, Cats, Rats, Horses, Ferrets, Minor Character Death, Slavery, Blood and Violence, fell beasts, Ensemble Cast, POV Multiple
Series: Part 8 of The Circles of Power
Summary:
A collection of tales set in Mordor, many of which feature various creatures that dwell within that dreadful land.
Forced to flee Mordor so they can be together, a pair of young lovers take sanctuary in the Mountains of Shadow, where they find a mysterious valley inhabited by giant cats and fell beasts.
The commander of the Fortress of the Setting Sun is an eccentric man with a streak of cruelty, a twisted sense of humor, and a deep and abiding love for ferrets.
Imprisoned in the Houses of Lamentation, the Witch-king of Angmar befriends a lowly rat named Murg, inspiring him to lead a revolution against the cats of Barad-dûr.
Descended from the Mearas, the black horses of Mordor are famous for many things - intelligence, loyalty, an intuitive knowledge of what their riders expect of them, and speed which surpasses that of most other horses in Middle-earth. They can also speak, although there are few who understand what they say.
CHAPTER 20: Armed with a plan which might bring ruin to the cats of Barad-dûr, Murg seeks an audience with the Rat King.
In Shadow of Mordor they shove sexy Morgoth figurine into my face when the only actual Tolkien knowdlege I've had before the game is watching movies as a kid. Couldn't stop myself anyways
I recently received a comment from a reader who complained that the story kept veering away from the main characters. "The Circles" features an ensemble cast and each book is told from multiple perspectives, so there are actually multiple main characters who take turns in the spotlight.
This reader also complained about deviations from the main plot. While a long and often interrupted journey from from Rohan to Nurn is one of the main themes of the first eight books, there isn't exactly a main plot as such. Each book has one or more plotlines, which are often episodic as opposed to rigidly following a three act structure.
I don't know why people read stories that are not to their liking and then complain about it, when there are over 17,200,000 fan works on AO3 from which they could choose.
