#varda-verse

[lightdancer1]

Fun part about that, though

For the Varda-verse is that Ilmare/Sinmara exists in a world where 'Eru Iluvatar' is the Arkhanazun, and thus with the Downfall of Numenor directly gets the literal capital G God himself to intervene in his creation because she draws his notice. That moment is going to be one of the most fun to write in my version of the Alkallabeth, as it showcases that in the end no matter how mighty the Valar and the Maiar are, the true Creators are unstoppable and remote cosmic entities whose presence turns the story into an Outside Genre Experience.

[lightdancer1]

The War of Eregion

Part of what I call my Varda-verse, which switches the idea of Tolkien's concept of an innately evil entity among the Valar to the exact inversion of Melkor the Morgoth. Instead of the Dark Lord on the Dark Throne it's the Star-Kindler who goes evil instead.

Starlight turned to evil takes in not merely radiation but literally burns into and hollows out souls. Varda and her monsters take the same path of withering that Melkor's do but that means that they become far more dangerous as they're walking nuclear reactors burning themselves alive from within and as Ainur can never fully or truly die.

The War of Eregion fills in the whole equivalent of the War of the Elves and Sauron, the emergence of the Rings of Power, and sets in motion my tale of the Third Age which is based on the Volsung Saga and ultimately is its own Lord of the Rings equivalent.

As Varda is Morgoth, so is Ilmare her handmaiden, aka Sinmara of Muspeldor, Sauron. She wields a blazing sword that serves as a hand-held nuclear weapon and is slowly sliding down a slippery slope into omnicidal 'nuke the world to ashes' tier destructiveness for destruction's sake.

[lightdancer1]

The flip side of that 'evil hollows out spirits' factor:

If the spirits in question are either walking nuclear reactors or the power that sets them in motion, hollowing them out is when they're at their very most dangerous. They're walking nuclear disaster zones the entire time but at peak strength they can and do weaponize it and properly control it it as horrifyingly powerful and deadly fallen angels.

When the decay factor sets in you have feral roving walking Chernobyls spewing soul-annihilating radiation and burning the world in fire. They're pale ghosts of themselves but that means you're looking at *living leaking nuclear reactors that leave entire landscapes as sterilized radiation-saturated hellscapes that produce all the unlovely effects of radiation poisoning*.

In short late!stage decayed Varda and Ilmare/Sinmara are both feral monsters and pitiable in their own way but if not for Nessa the personification of FTL late-sage Varda just has to exist to turn all of Arda into a nuclear hellscape. Varda goes from a smug and arrogant devil-figure with delusions of rhetorical grandeur to a feral snarling creature in simian postures given a rough treatment by Este to allow her to go into the Doors with something like sapience.

Ilmare/Sinmara goes from a very Sauron-like God-Empress mentality to straight up Surtr 'BURN IT ALL' mentalities and has a suitably Ragnarokian conflict.

Sinmara of Muspeldor is less an equivalent of Sauron, though, and straight up the whole time is a Norse mythology reference to Surtr and Muspelheim down to Mordor's equivalent going from "Black Land" to "Land of the World-Destroyers." The reason people go along with someone who calls herself "World-Destroyer" is "Obey me or you die by the hands of my handheld nuclear weapon" is a very, very convincing argument. Plus Cosmic Horror starlight makes people feral and prone to obey the Maiar of the Star-Kindler who can and do wield the harmonics to provide an order reliant on a powerful commanding presence but aside from them they're warlike monsters that go a-marauding and only survive into the later Ages because they die like rabbits and they breed like rabbits.