Silmarillion Headcanons - Tumblr Posts
An Angband headcanon
Angband is designed to be horrific, an abomination of architecture and iron that just looks plain wrong to any incarnate except orcs. It’s a twisting labyrinth of Escher-esque horrors -a contorting mess that would make anyone violently sick if they tried to map it out if they were anything less than a maiar.
Everything in Angband is horrific. Everything except him.
Mairon is beautiful. A single spot of beauty and order in the Iron Hells.
And that draws the elves to him. And they can’t help it. Really they can’t. But he makes something in their hindbrains scream safety in the midst of all the chaos. All they have to do to stay near him is follow his rules. And of course, if the rules get broken, punishment follows.
Its kinder for him to punish them than abandon them to the endless twisting corridors to be picked off by orcs and... other things.
He lets them stay near him, lets them have important roles in his experiments, lets them be useful to him down in the mines.
And they love him for it.
They are not elves anymore... They have the eyes of corpses. But they are nor Orcs. Because Orcs do not take our children when we lock our food up. And although they look like the fair Eldar, they always sing off-key
was in a conversation was @outofangband and we started discussing the concept of Not Elves- too elvish to be orcs, but to different to be elves. Mostly escaped thralls from Angband who came back different, or failed to adapt to life outside the fortress. They are always hungry. And they are always searching for food.
Bred in captivity
It is soon discovered that it takes effort to breed elves in Angband.
Orcs breed like rats, and Maiar and Balrogs can’t properly die, and thus don’t really need to be replaced.
But elves come with problems.
No matter how many threats Mairon makes, no matter the methods he uses, he cannot get results. And he tries mostly everything. Melkor wants more elf-slaves, wants the freedom to kill them without decreasing their already dwindling stock.
So, Mairon tries something new.
There are rooms in the upper levels of Angband. Rooms populated by elves taken in early childhood so they do not know the world outside. They are weavers and spinners- nothing like the toiling labour of other captives. They are treated well; kept away from the worst parts of the fortress, and especially from other elves. They are kept happy.
And if the price of this is giving up their children to their masters, well. Its not like they know any better.