A collaboration between @ladybrooke and @tarrevizsla!
Rilyanassë started her research on ways to heal Morgoth's poisons.
After the Battles of Beleriand and the Kinslayings, her research had become far more than that.
More info under the cut!
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warning: Major Character Death
Relationship: Curufin/Curufin's Wife
Characters: Curufin's Wife, Curufin, Sons of Fëanor, Celebrimbor
Word Count: 5,081
My art for @tolkienrsb 2023, done in collaboration with @ladybrooke's excellent fic, "Death That Twists Us".
Read it.
It's absolutely wonderful and I am so glad to have been able to work with LadyBrooke on this! Rilyanassë is a character near and dear to my heart, and LadyBrooke handled writing her so well, the fic is gorgeous, I love her so much...
Okay, I'll bite; who are Riyanassë, Culúriendil, Lahtarë, Elmíreth, and Tôdaphêr? (Btw, I don't mind info dumps at all!)
yes yes YES anon thank you. you are getting so much of an infodump that im gonna put in a cut
(cilintamiel) rilyanassë (þindarinized as rillereg (that's a soft g)): noldo, born in aman around the same time as caranthir would have been. my oc celebrimbor's mom. she and curufin were terribly, horribly in love, and stayed that way: absolutely devoted to each other, in a very sweet and possibly even healthy way. a noted chemist in both valinor and beleriand; she developed both the concept of antiseptics and chemical weapons. generally has a very mixed legacy, but hey, so does her husband. very intense scientist and good friend of the scientific method. spent time in beleriand further from her husband in order to study the strange poisons in the air from angband; helped healers develop methods to deal with the exposure to these poisons, but also learned how to synthesize her own and used them in the second kinslaying. died in the third kinslaying. (celebrimbor was there and met her eyes and he was her son and he looked at her like she was no better than an orc of morgoth and maybe she wasn't and he was so scared and—
by the time she realizes the blade through her spine is there, her fëa has already joined her husband's.)
culúriendil: vanya, born in aman, older than all the silm characters also born in aman. she picked her name out herself (she's trans.). devotee of laurelin, so she was devastated after its destruction; she would have chased morgoth to beleriand herself, but the news of the kinslaying stopped her from wanting anything to do with the exiled noldor. instead, she and her brother lilóteo (who's far younger than her; he was born after the destruction of the trees and the raising of the sun and moon) went to beleriand to fight in the war of wrath. (as soon as eärendil asked, as soon as arafinwë said he was raising an army, culúriendil was leaping at the call. lilóteo, originally, was just there to keep her out of trouble.) culúriendil distinguished herself with an intense, single-minded fighting style that eventually caught the eye of the maia arien; lilóteo fell in love with elros tar-minyatur when he met him, and has been entirely normal about him ever since.
(culúriendil basically got thingoled after the war; she is now recovering from that trauma and helping her wife garden while she's busy with anar. lilóteo deserted the host of the vanyar to fight alongside elros; he eventually took a sword for him, dying in his arms with a confession of love still on his lips. ask him, and he'll say he'll never regret it.)
lahtarë: avar/noldo, born in early beleriand. her mother (also anairë's sister; she has a family connection to the nolofinwëans) was a noldorin smith who crossed the helcaraxë, her father was an avarin hunter and baker who fell in love with her when they met. lahtarë took after her mother with her skills lying in jewelsmithing and delicate metalwork; she has taken the commission for every crown of the high king of the noldor in middle-earth from nolofinwë to gil-galad. she gets very annoyed when the noldor get all gooey and sentimental about valinor/the two trees, as she thinks it's a sign they don't appreciate beleriand for its own merit. as you might imagine, she is not a huge fan of turgon. she also befriended celebrimbor (in my head, he was still the equivalent of a preteen when he arrived in m-e) when they were the only two young elves interested in jewel-work in the entirety of beleriand; she eventually joined him in ost-in-edhil at the opening of the second age.
(celebrín) elmíreth and tôdaphêr (sirhílien): they are a set do NOT separate them!! elmíreth is a silvan elf (mostly; it's complicated, but she has both þindarin and noldorin heritage) born around the middle of the third age, while tôdaphêr is a dúnadan born closer to its end. they are in love. elmíreth is fascinated by stories of the treasures of the second and first ages (celebrín, silver-crowned, ended up being a fitting name, as she wears a circlet of silver that was wrought in elder days. that circlet was actually made by lahtarë; isn't it cool how everything's connected?), and so is trying to hunt down ancient relics from elven history. to earn a profit, she works as a stage magician. tôdaphêr is a ranger; she's descended from a noble line of númenor, from which she gets the name sirhílien (river's heir), but she prefers her simple adûnaic name and to not be recognized as anyone of particular note. both of them end up fighting in the war of the ring; after its end, they live in a small cottage in the woods and raise their children. i love them i love them i love them
bonus: picrews of rilyanassë, culúriendil, and lilóteo, because I was messing around on picrew today.
