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Elmar was a woman of Númenor who fought in the conquering armies of Tári-Caumasarnë, the queen and chief general of Tar-Ancalimon. Her husband was Lindómo, a singer and healer who traveled throughout Middle-earth with the armies of Númenor, following his wife and tending to the wounded. Elmar and Lindómo had one child together, Lériel, who took after her father in face and voice. Tári-Caumasarnë was a fierce and victorious general, but even she suffered losses from time to time. One such defeat took place in the valley of Ishmalog, where the native Men ambushed the Númenóreans in a narrow canyon and were slaughtered in heaps. Though Tári-Caumasarnë ordered a retreat when she saw the battle had turned ill, many were were taken captive and much bounty was reaped by the victorious Men of the Hills of Agar. Lindómo and Lériel escaped with their general, and would indeed flee back to the Isle of Númenor from whence they came, but Elmar was taken as a war-prize by the warrior Buldar. He boasted that he brought back from the war as booty a wound, and a sword, and a woman: and thus he took Elmar for his wife, against her will, for she was beautiful and proud and after laying eyes upon her he desired no woman of his own folk. Now the name “Elmar” meant “star-home” in Quenya, the tongue of the elves which the high Men of Númenor spoke, but in Tengat, the tongue of the Men of Agar, it meant “beautiful one,” and so Buldar allowed her to keep the name of her birth. In time Elmar learned Tengat herself, though not before she bore Buldar a son, Nogram, and she said to her captor that though she was grateful he had not slain her as most of his folk did their prisoners, she would never again be glad whilst she was sundered from her husband and daughter. Buldar was unmoved by her declaration, warning her only that it would be vain for her to attempt escape, and reminding her of the violence her people had done unto his own in their bid to claim the lands of Agar. Yet Elmar held fast, reminding him that his people, the Gabar, had driven the Drûghu out of these lands long ago. She cursed the Gabar, Buldar and his house most of all, declaring that so long as she was kept against her will their fates would worsen, and that after her death one would arise from her line that would bring about the end of his people. Despite this doom, Buldar paid his wife’s words little mind, and from her he had six more children: two sons, Dormog and Albar, and three daughters, Albatt and Balru and Dular. The youngest was named Hazad, for he was the seventh of Buldar’s offspring, though the eighth of Elmar’s, and of her descendants Elmar loved him most of all. Though Lériel her eldest remained ever in her mind and heart, Hazad was kind to her and loved her dearly, and remembered the Quenya songs she sung to him as his far-sundered sister had. In his voice she could recall her first life, and so long as she lived Hazad sang to her, even as illness claimed her life when he was yet a young man. Hazad would remember his mother forever, even as he forgot the songs and words she had taught him, and through him the Doom of Elmar would be fulfilled in his own youngest son, though he knew not of her curse.

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Hazad Longbeard was a man of the Gabar of the town of Agar, and his two great prides were the number of his sons, of which he had seventeen, and his lengthy beard, which was five feet long and well-kept. He was the youngest son of the warrior Buldar, but his mother was Elmar of Númenor, and though he took more after his father the seed of those Fell Folk remained within him. He did not take a wife for many years, remembering the strange beauty of his mother and finding it not in the women of Agar, though there were not many for him too woo, as Elmar’s curse upon the Gabar had come true. Ill weather and pestilences laid them low, and most of all Buldar and his children were afflicted, and had become poor; but Hazad treasured the memory of his mother, and upon him such burdens were not so heavy as they were upon others of his kin. At last, at the age of thirty-seven, Hazad found a woman to his liking, little though she resembled the beauty he sought. This was Mundru, and she bore him four sons: Nalar, and Algram, and Sullmog, and Dorbuld; but she died in childbirth bringing this last into the world, and Hazad was grieved. Yet he loved his sons, and desired more children, and when Gabraz the friend of Mundru took pity upon him and cared for the infant Dorbuld, Hazad found his heart was won by a woman of his own people for a second time. When Dorbuld was still a child, Hazad took Gabraz as his second wife, and she bore him six more sons: Nobatt, and Agmund, and Notarg, and Hurmog, and Alzuk, and Razpar. But their marriage was not a happy one, for Gabraz was strong of will and often defied the orders of her husband, and in his anger he sought the company of other women. Twice he was unfaithful to her in a manner that became known, the first when he took the maiden Agelm to his bed. She feared the wrath of Gabraz, and after the birth of her son she fled to the neighboring town of Udul, leaving Hazad with his bastard child, whom he named Mogar. Now Mogar was of age with Alzuk the son of Gabraz, and despite the resentment his mother had for Mogar, Alzuk befriended his half-brother and the two were close in kinship all their days. Again Hazad was faithless to Gabraz, this time with the beautiful woman Balag. She was more willing to listen to him, and stayed by his side even throughout her pregnancy, and when her son Tenru was born Hazad took her as his third wife, though Gabraz yet lived. Balag and Gabraz were unfriends, and though Tenru and Gabraz’s son Razpar were of the same age, the two boys hated one another. Indeed, Razpar resented Tenru all the more when his mother died of a pestilence that Balag survived. Razpar was yet a child upon his mother’s death, but Balag neglected his care in favor of her own sons, Tenru and five others: Nallag, and Pardul, and Rutarg, and Lagru, and last of all Tal-Elmar. In Hazad’s seventeenth son, the pride of his old age, the strain of Númenor was clear to be seen, for he took after Elmar most of all his brothers. Hazad loved him dearly for the memory of his mother, and named him Tal-Elmar, for even at birth it was clear he was made in the image of Elmar. As Tal-Elmar grew to a strong young man, he was much unlike his brothers and stood out among the Gabar as strange and fey; he was flint-eyed and far-minded, but he loved his father and respected his elders, and none could find fault with him though he unsettled all the town of Agar, and the town-master Mogru most of all. When Tal-Elmar was a man grown, and his father aged and ailing, he and Hazad saw upon the distant sea three ships approaching, though he knew not what they were at first. Then a fourth appeared, with black sails, and this stirred foreboding in Tal-Elmar’s heart, such as that they hastened to warn Mogru of the strange happenings. But Mogru hated Tal-Elmar and feared him, and sent him as messenger to the strange newcomers who were more likely enemies than not, and though Tal-Elmar despaired of his father’s ill treatment in the hands of Mogru and his cronies, he was bound to obey. Thus Tal-Elmar went to the seashore, where he encountered strange Men the likes of whom he had never before seen. They were tall, and fair, and flint-eyed like himself, and in him they saw a long-sundered kinsman, indeed mistaking him for one of the Eldar at first glance. Though their tongue was strange, suddenly the memory of dreams long-hidden arose in Tal-Elmar’s mind, and he spoke to them in Quenya, the tongue of his grandmother that he had not before known. These men were, of course, Númenóreans, now under the command of Prince Telemmaitë, whose mother Caumasarnë had led the army of which Elmar had been a part. This time they came to Agar by sea rather than by land, and declared that these lands would be under the control of their distant King as they searched for precious mithril and settled lands in the name of his father Tar-Ancalimon the Conquerer. Tal-Elmar saw now that the days of the Gabar, his father’s people, were over, and he mourned the loss of their freedom, begging the Númenóreans to have mercy upon his kindred in exchange for taking him as a hostage. This the captains promised, if the Gabar would not resist, and Tal-Elmar knew in his heart that his captivity would be in vain. Tal-Elmar would never see his beloved father again, for when the Númenóreans marched upon the town of Agar they were not met with friendship, and Hazad was slain amid the fighting. But Tal-Elmar uHazad never knew the truth of his father’s fate: he was taken aboard the black-sailed ship he had espied and carried across the waves to Númenor, never to be seen by his father’s folk again, and the rumors that the Sea-men stole and ate the fair youth of the Gabar only grew until they were at last driven from their lands and forgot Tal-Elmar entirely. Yet in Númenor Tal-Elmar was welcomed as a long-lost kinsman. He learned Quenya quickly, and in his dreams he was visited by elves who whispered to him of his grandmother’s fate. He sought out Elmar’s family, and though Lindómo her first husband had since passed on, her daughter Lériel was yet young and healthy as those of the Númenórean race were blessed to be, and she became a great friend to her half-brother’s son, deeply grateful that Ilúvatar had brought them together and she might learn of her mother’s fate.