#imminent domain

[boudicca-of-iceni]

Bruce's Beach returned to family nearly a century after seizure

A prime beachfront space in Manhattan Beach is given back to its black owners after its 1924 seizure.

Some good news.

[afragmentcastadrift]

Landmark California bill could help Black families reclaim seized land : NPR

Landmark California bill could help Black families reclaim seized land

California has returned land to a Black family after it was seized decades ago. The story of Bruce's Beach highlights the loss of generation

[randomrants-obdm]

[greenekangaroo]

Congrats; you have now given me the mental image of Imminent Domain Maeglin making a hidden city in a mountain range in Aman.

It is not, Eol will be quick to say, a city.

Technically.

It's just a series of carved apartments between Eryn Elglyn and the Dwarven Halls! The dwarves aren't allowed outside of the forest, so they need to be comfortable somewhere, and it's not like they don't know how to build underground ci-apartments. No there are not ancillary tunnels. No there aren't suddenly a ton of elves from the House of the Mole missing. You should stop asking questions now.

[greenekangaroo]

In Imminent Domain - what happens if someone enters the forest with good/innocent intentions, but those intentions turn to harm while they're inside the boundaries of the wood?

So this one's actually really funny.

They get teleported out.

Like, you are a, for the sake of argument, Sindar who was killed in the sack of Doriath by the Feanorians. You decided you were sick of dealing with Thingol and Melian and their whole Weird Aman Court Thing and hitched a ride to Eryn Elglyn because you heard that crazy little bastard with the funny eyes had been made a King.

Wouldn't you know it, he has! And he has this whole big forest! There's all sorts of elves from Beleriand there, and elves who were born even earlier on the shores of Cuivenen, and- ugh- noldor? Why tho?

But you know the deal, you were told it when you came through customs. No one is allowed to murder anyone else, no violence. No intent of harm, regardless of how presumably innocent.

And you're good with that, you are!

Only you see the guy who killed you.

No shit, THE ELF who stabbed you in the throat in front of your sister and brother in law. You'd know him anywhere.

And he's just here. Living his life. Tending bees. Like it was normal. Like he wasn't a mass murdering fuckhead. Like he could just go about his day without a care after he made your sister scream like that, after he took your mother's bow off the wall and-!

Maybe you calm down. Maybe you think to yourself, if he's here, it's bad, because you know how the Noldor who return are herded into certain sections of the bigger cities. Maybe he's already been told off. Maybe someone's already tried to kill him and that's why he's here.

You are allowed your rage, is the thing. You are allowed your feelings of betrayal and hurt and anger because of what happened to you. There is no punishment for being outraged that the man who killed you lives in the same forest you do.

If you don't calm down, though. If you don't sit with your feelings, accept them, and either create coping mechanisms or move on? If your anger boils into action, and you think about the best way to get him alone, the most effective way to make sure he hurts every second he's headed back to the Halls again, where to find the materials you'll need and maybe pick out a co-conspirator or five?

That's when the forest gets you.

It is the moment when feeling turns to action that an elf with intent to harm is promptly popped out of the forest and into the field outside of it. I imagine it like Nightcrawler's teleport from X-men- complete with the 'BAMF' noise as air rushes in to fill the space the elf left.

And once outside the forest? You can't come back in until you've dealt with your anger issues. The woods will quite literally not let you. There will be an invisible barrier and it doesn't matter if you dig or try to fly, you cannot pass it until the intent to harm has gone.

The funny part comes in when someone is finally spurred to violent action in the middle of, like, taking a piss. Or holding a water bucket. Or in the middle of a work shift. I'm a big fan of slapstick comedy and 'person gets knocked out of frame entirely' is one of my favorite visual gags, so I tend to see these instances like that.

The SINGLE exception to this 'teleport to save a life' is Eol, and that is because he is the King, the anchor point of the forest and the reason for its existence. That doesn't give him carte-blanche to kill other elves, it simply means that when his anger is boiling to action- and it has, once or twice- the forest will draw him away from his Hall in a trance and basically cradle him somewhere safe until he's worked through it.

There's probably a growing contingent of mind-healing elves who create a base of operations in the forest specifically to help patients who keep popping out and then getting back in only to get popped out again.

[greenekangaroo]

Putting Orome with the Avari? The guy they explicit refused to follow is now their 'jailer'? This is a basically throwing fire at gasoline

Yeah, its not...great.

Technically, in the Imminent Domain universe, there is no rule saying any elf has to reside in any specific place in Aman. They are all free to move about as they wish. It's the elves themselves- not the Valar- who have created these invisible barriers and cultural expectations about where they'll live.

The Noldor are in two camps, those who stuck around and those who went with Feanor and Fingolfin. If you went with either of the brothers, then where you live depends very much on what you did while you were in Arda and just how forgiving anyone you left behind might be feeling when you get a body back. Some elves who joined the exodus are living fine and boring lives. Some are..not.

Likewise there is no official decree regarding the Avari and Orome's woods. The woods are simply similar ENOUGH to the area around Cuivenen and the land they lived on before the sun and the moon that it's sort of assumed they'll remain there.

'but then why did Eol get his job and his woods?'

Literally, and I cannot say this enough, because Namo wanted him the hell off his property and God Dad Eru swooped in with a solution because if Eol somehow made it through the Door of Night into the void he might meet Feanor and no one wanted that. And when Eol got there Eryn Elglyn wasn't even a forest! It was a copse, a grove at best, maybe an acre and a half.

It was the knowledge of Eol's presence that brought other Avari and malcontented Sindar, and as they arrived- per the agreement- the forest grew.

[greenekangaroo]

Are...the Valar okay with Eol?

It depends very much on what you mean by 'okay', Anon. Assuming this refers specifically Eryn Elglyn/Imminent Domain Eol, it's a complicated answer but I'll give it a shot.

For any laymen who may have wandered in this evening, that particular AU can be summed up as 'in order to get Eol the hell off his property, Namo bequeaths him a job looking after other Avari who are not content with life in Aman, directly leading to the growth of an Avari-majority forest kingdom on the continent which Makes Some People Nervous Actually.'

Now, to understand how we got to Eol as King Elglyn of Eryn Elglyn we have to start with Tolkien's Very Catholic approach to the whole Perfect Beings thing and also his christly-influenced bad math.

The short version is, presuming that the tales of the waking of the elves are accurate, there is no way a viable population could be built out of the original three tribes. There aren't enough people.

There's all sorts of ways to deal with this in fanworks, and what I default to is 'elves had weird numbers before they figured out language and counting framework'. Or, the three original tribes were a lot bigger than stated in the histories because elf numbers didn't make sense.

What that means is that there are a lot. A lot. Of Avari elves who didn't cross to Aman, died in Beleriand and consequentially (and against their will) were reborn in the Halls of Waiting in Aman.

And once they were all re-embodied they weren't allowed to return to Arda. Like, that's it. You come back and you stay put unless you can get special permission like Glorfindel did.

So imagine.

You chose to remain in your home when a bunch of other elves left. You weren't interested in the travel or this magical land where there's another one of these weird etheral god-beings who make you uncomfortable and claim you're the chosen children but haven't, you notice, done anything about the lurking evil that takes the unwary in the night. Funny, that.

Then you die- maybe you're unlucky and tortured to death in one of Morgoth's pits, maybe you became an orc and were killed by another elf, maybe you fell off a cliff, whatever.

When you wake up, you're in the care of Namo, and you're told that this is where you are now and no takebacks. Basically, you were spiritually kidnapped and once you've got a shiny new meatsuit, you're never allowed to go home again. This is your home now.

I'd be fucking pissed, wouldn't you?

I've seen some works that have Orome tend to a vast wilderness where the Avari reside, and I've used that concept here. Orome does have a wilds in Imminent Domain where other Avari live, like Eol's mother Nalta and his stepsiblings.

So why would Eol then be given a forest and the duty of looking after disgruntled Avari? If Orome's got it handled, why the need?

Two things. One, Orome did not in fact have it handled. The elves who didn't want to come to Aman don't trust him- especially not NOW, since he's the warden of the woods they've been put in.

Two, Eol was not particularly interested in forming a new body and since he wasn't allowed to enter the Void Per The Great Voice That Dictates Their Every Waking Moment, Namo had to do SOMETHING with him.

You can write the Valar as these distant, untouchable beings embodying morally neutral concepts and natures, and you can write them as messy powerhouses who can't admit to their fuckups because then they'd have to own up to the fact that Eru's Perfect Song included them being fuckups. I tend to go with the latter because I cannot stand the rigid culturally christian makeup of 'paternalistic god beings patting elves on the head and sending them to bed without supper'.

It's also worth noting that in canon, emotions in Aman are said to be 'muted', like the entire world is just paused psychologically. That's a good enough canon explanation for why we don't hear about any of the Feanorian or Fingolfinion contingent getting new bodies and immediately having their asses beat by the people they colonized and murdered.

('but Roo what canonical evidence of colonization-' the motherfucker was a white British man who wrote two armies crossing an ocean/ice bridge dicks out with no idea what they were running into to a land full of people that he repeatedly referred to as 'dark' in the snidest way. There is simply no way that the Sons of Feanor and Fingolfin/his children didn't actively destroy smaller native Avari groups and seize their land and resources.)

Clearly, we aren't using muted emotions in Imminent Domain. Instead the Valar have mostly removed themselves from daily interactions with elves, and there is a blanket understanding that no one is to be murdering anyone else, thanks, we had one man die and it messed everything up forever.

So: Eryn Elglyn came to be because Eol and Namo came to an agreement that got him out of the Halls of Waiting.

The Valar in Imminent Domain know they fumbled the ball with the Avari. As more and more of them arrived in Aman fresh from deaths in Arda- deaths that were in no small part because of the departure of Feanor and Fingolfin, which in turn was a direct result of them being too lenient with Melkor, allowing the murder of Finwe- it became clear that something had to be done.

Orome's woods were the first attempt.

Eol's Eryn Elglyn is the second.

It's inaccurate to say that Namo dictated the existence of the copse that would eventually become the forest. Manwe had a hand in that, because Eru had a vague ethereal godly hand in that. To the Song of all Songs, Eol's existence is a tomayto tomaato sort of thing- he needs to be around to fix the sword for the Battle to end all Battles, why shouldn't he also run a forest full of Avari? Everyone wins!

And when your God Dad goes 'aaahhh give him a couple acres and I'll tie some magic on it' you don't say no.

I would say, then, that the Valar by and large are wary of Eol, in a similar way they were wary of Feanor. Eol is not the same kind of orator and definitely doesn't have the same thirst for vengeance- given half the chance he'd never deal with Turgon again- but he does command respect amongst his people, doubly so with his rebirth and establishment of Eryn Elglyn. In Beleriand, Eol had been the voice of the Avari in the Sindar courts; that he carried that responsibility over to a fresh new life is admirable to a lot of elves.

Do they figure Eol's going to lead a massive Avari rebellion? No.

Do they think he might seriously consider it if the other elven kingdoms of Aman try to fuck with people moving into his forest? Yes.

Have they by and large decided that if this happens they're just gonna sink the continent and start over because it worked with Numenor?

Yeah, pretty much.

(Oli/Mahal/Aule is, predictably, the vala who likes Eol best, but then he likes any elf who finds worth in dwarves, so Caranthir and Celebrimbor are also on that list.)

[greenekangaroo]

In Imminent Domain, what happens when the tunnel reaches the Halls of Mahel?

When the wall of a little traveled hallway in one of the lower levels of the Halls of Mahal has a pickaxe come quite unexpectedly through it, there is no one there to remark upon how very strange it is. After all, all the children of Mahal- his Khazad, his speakers- are here, contained in the endless depths of the Heart of the Mountain. No dwarf needs to tunnel in to the Halls of their Maker. It never occurred to any of them that anyone would try.

The first elf who emerges is short, for one of his kind. Beneath his well worn and dusty safety gear his hair is a storm gray, cut short beneath and braided long on top. He has all the look of an owl, with eyes too large, golden irises floating on black schlera like a candle in a void.

The second elf is far taller and, one could argue, more well formed- or at least more within line of expectations when one says 'elf', with long black hair severely plaited and eyes a blue so pale they're almost white. Like his smaller companion he is also covered in dust.

"Well I'll be fucked," the smaller elf says. "It worked."

"You doubted your son's calculations?"

"Have you met me, Berryface?"

The taller elf- who, upon being called such a name, does indeed flush a bright red, like a ripened berry on a bush-snorts. "There should be someone here," he murmurs. "A, a patrol or a guard or-"

The two elves both disappear simultaneously, air rushing in to fill the spots they had abruptly left.

-

The forge of Oli is so beautiful that it brings Eol-or, more properly, King Elglyn, of Eryn Elglyn, sworn sanctuary of the Elves who were born beneath the Stars- to tears. It is the spark and the glory, the roar of all fires and the clang of all hammers, white marble and gold and basalt and obsidian, beginnings wrapped in endings pulled through a drawplate to the sound of the song that echoes in the bones of any being who ever touched a fuller hammer.

Eol can't prevent the tears, so he doesn't bother trying. Instead he looks up, up, up at the being he cannot quite see and yet sees entirely and says, "Technically, he didn't leave the forest."

-Technicalities are flimsy armor in the battle you have chosen,- Oli rumbles.

"I've seen worse odds," Eol replies.

Caranthir the Dark barks out a bitter laugh. "So have I."

-Why have you come?-

The question is curious and gentle and stern and desperate all at once.

"Now that's a funny question," Eol says. "You made them. You tell us why."

-I cannot fathom the minds of the first people in the way my wife can.-

"What a lazy way to say you don't know," Caranthir snaps. "What a condemnation. Why wouldn't we come? Or do you think your treasures not worth seeking?"

-Since the first of my Seven died I have kept them here, content and busy. They fight and they forge, they mine and they sculpt, and none have come. None have tried.-

"Well it's not like you make it easy, putting the whole bloody thing in the most treacherous shale shelf ever sung into being!" Eol snaps. "A good granite would have done the job just fine, but no, someone decided dagger stairs would be a nice addition to the Halls of the Forefathers."

-This is a place of peace and rest. It is not meant to be seen from any above the ground.-

"How very fortunate that we didn't come from above the ground," Caranthir says. "We came from a tunnel."

-There are rules.-

"bugger your rules, I owe Telchar money," Eol says. "Two commissions I left unfinished when Turgon threw me off that cliff. Two! And he's never going to let me hear the end of it!"

-You must go.-

"We won't," Caranthir says. Eol nods. "He's right."

-I can make you go.-

"We'll just come back," Eol says. "Worse than tar on your ass."

Caranthir snorts, but nods regally, every inch his father's son in this moment (and oh how that hurts Oli who is Mahal who is Aule who is all that creates and all that is beautiful and all that is ugly shaped by the bodies of Arda) and says, "We will. Another tunnel. Another scheme."

-It was the will of Eru--

"Let me tell you something," Eol says pleasantly, "about the Will of Eru. It can get fucked. And if the Song of all Songs doesn't much like that, it should have made sure my verse ended in being strangled by my mothercord as a babe. "

There is a Moment and Eol wonders, sincerely, if his luck has finally run out, and he has mouthed off to the wrong primordial force and he will finally see the other side of the Door of Night.

Then Oli begins to laugh.

The sound, like the Vala, is beautiful and ugly and frightening and sublime. It rings in their ears, but both prince and king endure it.

-This is the second fox you've set amongst the hens, Maeglin,- Aule says, and Eol replies, "Really? Because I'd say the third. I'm counting Finwe. I told him how to get to the damn shore."

"Can we go now, or are you going to smite us?" Caranthir asks.

-

When Telchar who had once been of Nogrod feels the summons of his Maker, he sets aside his plans and notes and makes his way to the forge. He's surprised to find he isn't alone- another dwarf, a stern faced woman he doesn't recognize, comes abreast of him.

She doesn't speak and so neither does he. They enter the forge together.

Their Maker is not alone.

Telchar stops dead.

"Fuck me with a rusty pickaxe," he says, then remembering he is in the presence of his God says, "Ah, I mean. What?"

The elf who turns to look at him does the damnable thing with his neck, nearly 180 degrees, and grins.

"Hello, old friend," he greets in rusty khuzdul. "Sorry it took so long."

"We had to dig an awfully big hole," says the tall dark haired elf. The other dwarf is staring at him, her carmine eyes wide. He looks tenderly down at her, and kneels.

"You took your time in coming," she whispers.

"There were promises I had to keep," Caranthir says solemnly. "Oaths I had sworn."

"It's gone," she says, voice tight. "The mad fire's out of your eyes."

"Oh? And what do you think of them now?"

"Pointy eared arsehole they're still the most beautiful things I've ever seen- Caranthir-!"

She throws her arms around him and he holds her tight, head buried in her shoulder.

"Um," Telchar says and Eol the fucking Moriquendi, who got thrown off a mountain before he had the common decency to finish the work he'd been paid for, claps him on the shoulder. "Don't worry about them, Telchar. I've got your refund."

"My- my-?!"

Eol gestures to his belt pouch. "For the gauntlets to go with that knife of yours. It's a- very long story. Tell it over an ale?"

Telchar looks hopelessly up at Mahal, who only smiles back.

"...yeah, Eol. That sounds good."