Narulanth, Lands of the Shining Dark @narulanth - Tumblr Blog

Welcome to Narulanth

This blog is a worldbuilding project of mine. I'm glad you could join for the ride!

The story begins here:

Inspired by the Refugium by Biblaridion; check it out on youtube! ~ ~ ~ The world was named Narulanth, for the darkness which enshrouded i

This post will update as need be. The banner image is a placeholders for now. The current banner image is copyright to mloren over on dA. Please contact me if you enjoy the stories and wish to draw a banner for the project! I will be making an original one otherwise, so this is a limited time offer.

#Narulanth

hacvek

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

olyia-stories

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

dragonpyre

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

serinos-kitt

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

dragonpyre

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

serinos-kitt

So what is a rain shadow?

lethalbutterfly

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

roach-works

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

beatrice-otter

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

whetstonefires

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

beatrice-otter

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

cannibalcharon

Western Washington vs Eastern Washington is a good example of a rain shadows effects for fellow writers.

Western Washington:

Eastern Washington:

For fantasy writers, Washington is a really cool state to study because we have nearly every biome from alpine forests, desert, alpine desert, rainforest, riparian forests, wetlands, coastal, and so on. We have two main mountain ranges, the Olympics and the Cascades. We sit on three tectonic plates which give us said mountains (and earthquakes). Our ecology is really neat here.

merrypaws

Allow me to go back to the discussion on Mordor.

Tolkien famously drew from many real world things when building his Middle-Earth, and Mordor actually has a very obvious real world inspiration. Look up a topographic map and you notice that there indeed IS a very square mountain range surrounding the valley of lower Danube on the border of Romania and Bulgaria.

I'm guessing that Tolkien noticed this on a map and thought "Oh, that's neat", without getting too much into why or how it had formed, because for all his obsessive worldbuilding, his attention was more on history and language than on realistic geography.

So, yeah, sometimes even the real world just is weird.

shitty-fanfic-prompts

The four penguins from Madagascar are, somehow, isekaied in the middle of the clone wars

anakinnoanakindontanakinstop

Palpatine is dead within the hour

enigma-absolute

Please for the love of God, read the notes on this post

enigma-absolute

(Via @infinitelypurple)

HELLO???

magicalmanhattanproject

the thing is that the quest for the silmaril was clearly intended to be celegorm and curufin's shot at redemption and it's not anyone's fault but their own that they continually beef it. the quest cannot succeed without the hound of celegorm and the knife of curufin. there are clearly celegorm and curufin shaped holes in the questing party to retrieve the sacred objects to which celegorm and curufin are oathbound. it is the fault of no one except celegorm and curufin that they aren't there for the main event. i wonder if that's why angrist snapped is because beren and luthien only needed the one but it would have held for all three if celegorm and curufin had been where they had every chance to be. shame they'll never know

kisses-in-the-void

I wonder at what stage of the story it should have happened then. If Celegorm and Curufin had joined the quest right after the parley with Beren and Finrod, then Finrod wouldn’t have had to die. Huan would’ve been with them from the very beginning, and of course Sauron would’ve turned into a wolf and immediately gotten his ass beaten without having the chance to capture anyone.

But without Luthien and her magic, they wouldn’t have been able to put Melkor and his court to sleep. They needed her one way or another, otherwise they all most likely would’ve ended up dead. So that means Celegorm and Curufin would’ve needed to realize after meeting Luthien that it was better to join the quest instead of sabotaging it.

Finrod still dies, but the rest of the events stay mostly the same, except the four of them plus Huan arrive directly at Angband without delays, kidnapping attempts, or trying to kill each other, and successfully retrieve all the Silmarils.

Also, there’s a pretty high chance Thingol might have agreed to return the third jewel afterward if they had asked him. Because in this version they didn’t kidnap his daughter, instead, they helped her to return to Doriath. And if Celegorm and Curufin are no longer stupid jerks, they probably would’ve approached him like normal people instead of going, "Give it to us or we’ll murder you and your entire family lmao".

orions-mistletoe-arrow

My favorite headcannon I have going for LOTR right now is that the elves that are still around by the time Frodo gets on the scene are the elvish equivalent of doomsday preppers.

I forget where I read it, but I'm pretty sure that at some point there were millions of elves on Middle-earth, and by the end of the third age, it's down to a few thousand, aka a very small portion. These are the elves that got told way back in the first age, "Hey, just so you guys know, you're totally welcome to come back and live in heaven now without any worries" and responded, "No thanks, we're good!" and then proceeded to not only hold to that but survived the next 7.000 years of bullshit including but not limited to:

Multiple continents sinking into the sea

orcs

dragons

balrogs

multiple wars with Sauron, a literal divine being

The rise and fall of several human empires

more orcs

wargs

a bunch of their territory being overtaken and burned to the ground

And all of their loved ones either dying or sailing, even though we know that grief can and will kill an elf

Like, you can't tell me that third age elves start showing up in the undying lands, where everyone has spent the last few thousand years basking in the magical equivilant of free therapy and probably have as many defence measures as a suburban coldesac, and aren't viewed as the most feral, twitchy, paranoid mother fuckers; held together by suspicion, stubornness, and at least 25 contingencies for every situation they've collectively encountered during their time in Middle-earth.

My favorite examples of feral, hyper-vigilant behavior include:

Elrond: Security clearance; sure, Turgon may have threatened to kill anyone who tried to leave his hidden city, but he also took an entire army out of and back to the city at once, and then also didn't realize that his own nephew snitched on where the city was. His security protocols sucked. Meanwhile, Elrond had hundreds of strangers coming in and out of Rivendell for over 3,000 years, at one point completely surrounded by enemies and full of nothing but a bunch of refugees, and Sauron still never found it. You can't tell me that he didn't have at least 25 security checkpoints on the way into his city(sorry, house-that means it's private property, right?), even if you didn't know they were there.

Galadriel: Paranoia; This woman was magically keeping track of everyone she knew and even did it often enought that she knew what to look for of those she couldn't directly track (gandalf) and looking into their minds and testing them. All while having Sauron constantly clawing at the walls of her mind, at least for a few years

Thranduil: Spite; it was basically only his sheer audacity holding his nuclear bunker- cough cough- sorry, I meant vast underground halls together, while his next-door neighbor was some cursed ruins, a dragon-infested dwarf kingdom, and evil, man-eating, car-sized spiders on his front lawn.

Haldir: he blindfolded the fellowship when they tried to enter his city (super secret hideout), need I say more?

Multiple examples of groups of elves jumping out of trees fully armed and ambushing anyone who wanders into their territory. And while the characters seem surprised to be ambushed, they don't seem surprised that elves ambush people in general, leading me to believe this is normal behavior.

In summary, while the elves in the LOTR and the Hobbit seem all chill and fun, I like to imagine them as the crazy raccoons of the elvish family trees that wandered in 5 hours late.

blurds

this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks

luxshine

The “Thunk” will always kill me.

thexgrayxlady

Look. I like Murtagh taking on the very necessary and load bearing role of Person Who Tells Eragon, "No."

everythingloveandanimated

And not just the “No.” We’re talking multiple “No’s”

“No, Eragon, that not how this complex political problem would play out.”

No, Eragon, there are good people that do NOT forgive easily.”

“No, I agree, this person is trying to manipulate us, I’m glad (relieved) that you saw that.”

“No! Eragon this is a horrible idea that is going to end VERY badly physically for me and reputationally for you!”

“No! The way the elves treated you back then is NOT excusable! I grew up THE EXACT SAME WAY!!!”

“NO! This is NOT diplomacy! This is STONEWALLING!!!” (from the elves)

(Grabs Eragon by scruff of his shirt) “No. Absolutely not. Not in my watch.”

“Eragon, the ONLY reason I’m not casting sleep and knockout spells on you is because I KNOW that your wards would stop them.”

“LISTEN YOU IDEALISTIC DREAMER…!!!!”

“No! (hoists Eragon fireman style on his shoulders) You are going to bed/to eat/on vacation. Yes you’re the head of the New Order, but you’re getting pale and thin again. You need some TLC.”

(Eragon objects)

“I will hogtie you to Thorn’s saddle and fly you to Elain if you keep fighting me.”

(Eragon relents)

everythingloveandanimated

Addendum:

Murtagh catches Eragon just starting a panic attack. He’s a bit taken aback, but doesn’t show it. Murtagh takes a second to remember how Tornac calmed him down when he was spiraling.

He’s partially successful with Eragon. It results in a hug which Eragon melts into, sobbing.

“I did this, it’s all my fault!”

“No. No, you can’t be expected to act on information you don’t have. Anyone who expects you to do otherwise is an unreasonable fool. We’ll figure this out, together. You’re not alone anymore, Brother.”

Eragon continues crying but the tension in both of their bodies melts and shifts into something else. Protectiveness in Murtagh, vulnerability in Eragon.

fuckyeahchinesefashion

Every time OP dances, her parrot flies along with her. OP says she never trained it on purpose and her parrot just loves doing this naturally. Sometimes it’ll just hop right onto her face. (cr 月下郭城)

naamahdarling

Help I love him so much

narulanth

Eragon idea: riders with dragons doing a silly little dance XD

#eragon #dragons #firnen #arya

ariesrin

I love characters who would die for each other but will not, under any circumstances, communicate a single honest feeling.

jinxedbabbles

Random Eragon thought but imagine a character that’s part of a friendgroup that all become dragon riders… except that friend… and they just… keep trying even as the reading becomes more mean spirited until they finally let go… if they can’t ride become a dragon rider they’ll just be the next best thing, recording dragons histories, riding with eggs across the world to find new riders, bringing the riders news of people who need help, becoming trusted by the dragon riders even as they remain unchanging and the character slowly grows older and aged, hair turning silver and body aching even as they keep doing good, until finally they’re entrusted with another egg… and this one they do the same as they did with the rest - travelling from town to town, helping with their problems while seeing if any are to bond with the egg - but not do, and they just keep travelling, and soon start just talking to the egg, telling it all the stories they’ve seen and heard, the diffferent tongues, songs, customs, telling silly stories until finally… a bad winter comes - they get sick as they seek shelter in a cave, fire keeping the cold out as best as they can as they do their best to keep their horse and the egg warm even as their cough worsens and blood speckles their kerchief, even as their chest aches, until finally one morning they just can’t get up and realize that they won’t be able to return - they know their horse is smart and sends them off with a message to retrieve the Dragon Riders to save the egg… as they hold it tight and slowly everything darkens and as they finally let go of the mortal coil they wonder what’s that cracking sound…

Now imagine you’re an egg, a dragon egg, and you are waiting for your rider, you don’t know how you’ll know if they’re the one but your mother and fellow eggs seems to just Know. But you don’t seem to find the One - they all seem just not right and so you wait as hand after hand passes, until your Mother entrusts you to the Kind One, a traveler who’s soft and worn and takes your to meet more Hands - you dread the touch of more Hands but what you don’t expect is the stories… the adventure… the world you can’t see but can hear and feel in the Kind One’s stories… and so you decide to wait, to listen, to absorb all these encounters and stories and you feel an eagerness to see the World but what about your One? Your Rider? Your other half? You come to eagerly anticipate each Hand - hoping that this one will be the one but each time you sign in disappointment, and the Kind One is there to take you back - every time, without fail, without judgement, as seasons warm and cool… until it gets cold once more and there’s a warmth nearby as the Kind One tells you another tell, you’re certain you’ve heard it many times before but you like when your Kind One tells you these stories - and then it strikes you - the Kind One IS the One - your One! You hadn’t realized that they’ve always been there but now you found them!! And so you get excited as you awaken, as the world sharpens, as slowly your egg shakes and cracks, and finally burst free into the world … only to find that your Other Half… your Rider that you’ve finally found… is not responsive… they feel cold… you nose at them, till you find their paw-no their hand, as you nose it you feel that sharp burst of Completion as a mark appears upon their palm - you happily chirp at the presence that you feel in your mind… before it seems to slip away - you don’t know what’s wrong as everything that felt complete and right just… quietens then goes still… you paw at your Kind One, nosing along their silver hair, wondering why it feels so quiet - and you realize the tempo that always kept you company, the tempo of their Heart is gone…

You found your other half too late.

junebug-draws

“Farewell!” he said to Gandalf. “I go to find the Sun.” Then swift as a runner over firm sand he shot away, and quickly overtaking the toiling men, with a wave of his hand he passed them, and sped into the distance, and vanished round the rocky turn.

in other news, i’ve started reading the lord of the rings

klarionthewizard

Eragon au where Brom lives and Murtaugh still ends up having to come to the Varden too. Brom is Panicking bc he knows how the Varden will react to Murtaugh’s father but this is Selena’s son too

so when the twins are like “who the fuck are you and why should we let you in”, Brom just blurts out “this is Murtagh Bromson” bc Eragon has to get his impulsiveness from someone. Everyone is staring at him. Murtaugh bc why is father’s murderer covering for him. Eragon and Sephira just learned the truth like two hours ago. Everyone else is like “you look nothing alike”

then he also claims Eragon as Bromson. Mostly bc I want to do a role reversal where Murtagh is the one to have the parenthood crisis when he and Eragon realize they have the same mom and learn Brom is actually Eragon’s dad

also the idea of Ajihad being like “Brom we both know that’s Morzan’s son” and Brom is bullshitting like “do we though”

sentimental-bookshelf

Just imagine Brom and Oromis making fun of idiot Eragon thinking that coral means rocks grow and just general uneducated foolishness.

narulanth

The funny thing is that rocks DO grow. Crystal growth, metamorphism, sedimentary congealing, etc.

sentimental-bookshelf

True, but not in the way he was suggesting!

narulanth

Oh, of course not. Still, you've got me thinking: wouldn't it be possible to grow your own crystal using the ancient language? It's discussed in multiple places how the gemstones used to store magical energy vary in efficacy. Perhaps a magic-grown stone could be fine-tuned...

jdebbiel

The girl with the dragon boy

Prints available from June 2-10

outofangband

There is so much darkness in Gwindor’s story and one aspect I think so much about the cloying horror of the Mines of Angband where him and countless others are imprisoned. He is the only surviving member of his company but he is far from the only one trapped beneath the monstrous fortress.

So much of Angband is underground, a twisting maze of passages, tunnels and small chambers, many of them built by the slaves themselves under the direction of the cruel overseers. Some there go centuries without ever seeing the sky. Some are born and die beneath the earth.

The duel claustrophobia of pressing walls and low ceilings and of every word, every movement forced or scrutinised. A monotony of stone and metal and flesh.

Most elves live in open spaces, preferring some kind of proximity to trees, flora, stone, and wind. I’ve mentioned before I think they can become disoriented in an environment like Angband, cut off from the things they use to orient themselves.

And for those who did live underground, like Gwindor hailing from Nargothrond and others from there and Menengroth there is another kind of horror; the twisting, suffocating knowledge that something safe and familiar is trapping them.

klarionthewizard

Eragon au where Brom lives and Murtaugh still ends up having to come to the Varden too. Brom is Panicking bc he knows how the Varden will react to Murtaugh’s father but this is Selena’s son too

also the idea of Ajihad being like “Brom we both know that’s Morzan’s son” and Brom is bullshitting like “do we though”

sentimental-bookshelf

Just imagine Brom and Oromis making fun of idiot Eragon thinking that coral means rocks grow and just general uneducated foolishness.

narulanth

The funny thing is that rocks DO grow. Crystal growth, metamorphism, sedimentary congealing, etc.

klarionthewizard

Eragon au where Brom lives and Murtaugh still ends up having to come to the Varden too. Brom is Panicking bc he knows how the Varden will react to Murtaugh’s father but this is Selena’s son too

also the idea of Ajihad being like “Brom we both know that’s Morzan’s son” and Brom is bullshitting like “do we though”

dia-viller

Shruikan is definitely one of the most tragic characters in the world of Eragon. He had been a slave, forced to share a mind with a mad king, and had to see all his kin die while knowing he was the last dragon. He couldn't fly freely; he was so big but was forced to sit in the throne room. He witnessed Thorn finally break free, only to realize that the only way to be free himself was to be killed

And in the end, he died in the most horrible way for a dragon

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