#Greybeard the goblin

[heckyeahponyscans]

G1 My Little Pony comic, "The Very Special Spectacles"

[ironfoot-mothafocka]

And a time for planting (that which was uprooted)

Trigger warnings for mentions of death and descriptions of grief and depression.

An ending comes to Ixil and Grór’s story (or the start of a new one). My headcanon, inspired by the fantastic @mrkida-art

4/4

2.6k words

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 3.5

—

Ixil,

The pen stalls, then falls.

Grór sighs, screwing up her face in concentration, against a headache that cleaves her skull.

I did not receive a reply to my last letter. I hope all is well in the East? Let me know.

Ulri died—

She can’t go on, and she places the pen down harshly. It clatters against the metal ink well. She picks it up.

The stone-setting will be soon.

She cannot bring herself to write any more details. That would be enough — if he even bothered to respond this time. She passes the parchment into the hands of a servant without sealing it and folds back down over her writing table. Somewhere behind her, a child cries.

Far away, another dwarf sits in a writing chamber. The winter in Ugzharak has been particularly harsh this year, and blizzards rip across the tundra outside of the Stiffbeard hold.

The rebuilding — seven years hence the remnants of the dragon was found — grinds on stalwartly. Ice had spread into much of the interior, cracking and weathering millenia of stone halls and supporting structures; for dragons are not well known to close the door behind them once they entered a dwarf’s lodging. Other foul creatures followed. Tribes of Men, followers of the Zigûr and goblin-friends, had sneaked in and set up camp unnoticed. Hall upon hall, home upon home were ransacked, the metalwork stripped and plundered. Filth, decay and rot littered once habitable dwellings, mouldering on top of a thick covering of ash and dust.

Ixil’s first task, once he had arrived in Ugzharak, had been to lead a party of warriors inside the lower levels and secure them of hibernating beasts. Some were killed quietly by a well timed crossbow bolt; others were wide-awake in ambush, and a fully grown adult whitebear could kill three dwarves in one swipe of its torso-sized paw.

It was tiring, gruesome work as they relentlessly scoured the forgotten streets of their ancient home. Dwarves who were now grown and under Ixil’s command had not even been born in Ugzharak, knowing only Thikil-gundu, and a few greybeards had to lead the way down mazes of corridors and backalleys, as Ixil’s own memory had grown hazy with the passing of years. His heart had ached as he encountered unfamiliar stone, tracing it questioningly with soot-blackened fingers, but his stonesense received only pain and anger in return. You abandoned us, said the stone. You left us to die.

The bodies of the dead dwarves were the worst to come across, and it has taken a full sun-cycle for Ixil’s beard to recover from the amount of times he has shorn it. Now, he is more used to having stubble on his cheeks than a proud braid falling from his chin. Some parts of Ugzharak he still cannot enter, for fear of the memories it stirs up inside him. Bodies upon bodies. Some cowering, some small — of children. He can’t go into those parts, even after they were cleansed by khandrel and the sacred dances of death had been danced by the zhanim. They couldn’t cleanse his own mind of what he had endured.

Life is constant in the North-East of Middle-Earth, though the dwarves of Erebor think it grinds to a halt, furling up like a green leaf in the snow. The dwarven nomads return to the Old Ways; some who moved to the greener pastures around Ghomal in the wake of the dragon now drive their shaggy auroch and mumak upland, and join with those families who stayed on the plains out of sheer grit. Stiffbeards sink into industry: ghaspar and coal mining, iron-working, shipping vast quantities of goods across to the cities of Men in the far-reaches of the frozen plains for whale-fat oil. And for Ixil, it seems that he has been barely able to catch his breath. With the election of a new Queen, divined by the omen-speakers of all the Clans, he has risen through the ranks like a fish being hauled up from the deeps. Most of the time, he feels like a fish — hooked and speared, pulled this way and that, gasping for air.  

Ixil looks up at Zurkuh, who has a crumpled letter in one hand. “My Lord…” He is a Lord now — Scoutmaster for the Queen. Titles don’t suit him well, and neither, he feels, do this many responsibilities. He looks down at the map that he is outlining. A pack of snow-orcs were sighted in the middle of one of these foul blizzards, driving a large herd of whitebears along one of their traderoutes. He is beginning to suspect, as the omen-speakers have been telling him, that these weather patterns aren’t natural formations of Middle-Earth, but some abominations of the enemy. Ixil rubs his face and blinks hard. “What is it, Zurkuh?” His assistant approaches cautiously and then drops the letter in his hand. He only has to say a few words to snap the dwarf from his thoughts. “It is from the Iron Hills, my Lord.”

—

Ixil’s eyes scan the words in front of him, horror slowly welling inside him. He slams it down on the table, and then, with shaking hands, rips the drawer from underneath him open. “Where is it? Where is it?” he mutters frantically, and then turns to Zurkuh who is standing by silently. “Did I write?” “My—” “Did I write?” he forces himself up from his chair and crosses to the slender dwarf, taking his shoulders in his hands. He forces his breath to come slower, but the panic doesn’t abate and his speech makes little sense to him. “Do you remember? This year — this Durin’s Day? If I wrote? Tell me, Zurkuh, tell me that I did. Tell me I did not forget. I write, I always write—   Zurkuh shakes his head sadly. “The last time you wrote to the Iron Hills was five years ago.” Ixil blinks. “No— no it cannot—” He returns to the desk and throws piles of parchment onto the floor around him, and they scatter like leaves at his feet. His hands pause somewhere near the bottom of the drawer and he picks up a precious piece of paper as though it is edged in gold leaf. Near the top of it, in Grór’s spidery handwriting, is the date he received it, and his finger traces the runes around and around.

Five years before. Five years. He had forgotten to write for five whole years.

Slumped in his chair once again, he feels numb. Zurkuh moves behind him and picks up the fallen letter that had fluttered from his desk, placing it on top of the map once more. “Friends grow apart,” he says softly.

—

No words were spoken at their parting. Formalities only. Avoiding glances, and then catching one another’s eye only to look away again. There was so much to do that it was easy for them to ignore one another — until they couldn’t.

Ixil looked down at Grór’s hands over his. His blood thundered loud in his ears — what was it… embarrassment, sadness, guilt? — and his throat constricted, trying to force something out, but there wasn’t any more time to speak to her.

“Write,” she said.

“I will visit — I will come back,” he said, his chin rising in defiance. But even then, he knew that was a lie. Grór grimaced. The ugly truth lay naked before them. No — this was it. The end, and the beginning of something new — this time, without the other.

—

“It is good to have you to watch with, as well. I might mistake everything for a dragon, but know that I’ll be ready to fight it, if one comes. You Longbeards took me in. I vow to defend your home until I lose my legs or my breath doing so.”

—

“I took an oath,” the Stiffbeard says to himself. Disgusted, he looks down at the last letter, the one Grór sent five years ago. He remembers now, saying that he would put pen to paper, and then that he would go himself on occasion of her marriage, and how he would choose a wedding gift that would eclipse all others: a crown fashioned out of pearls and white gold, with the three-headed mumak on it, the same one that she wore in iron at her breast.

If she still wore it.

And then… he struggles to remember, memories of even last week fogging up like steam in front of his eyes. And then— that had been the year that the hold had almost starved, with trading from the south blockaded by war.

So he hadn’t written, after all.

“It doesn’t matter,” his own voice replies.

An oath of seventy years past doesn’t matter? What would his mother say to him if she could see him now? If she had survived the journey back?

Don’t start something and not finish it.

Zurkuh has procured him a fresh sheet of paper from somewhere and a pen. The other one has rolled away underneath the desk, and the ink bottle tipped over. He presses them both into the Scoutmaster’s hands and sets them on the paper. “Even so, it is best you write back. I can arrange a funeral gift to be sent. You have enough to do, Lord.”

Was he even a Lord anymore? There was nothing lordly, nothing noble about a dwarf abandoning his kin. But still, he could write back. He could do this one thing.

He wrote one rune, and then another. The first two rune-letters of the date. His hand stilled.

“Bring me my cloak,” he said. When Zurkuh didn’t move, he stood up himself and brushed past him to his bedroom, fearful that if he stopped for a moment to reconsider his actions, the sensible part of his heart would take over. “Where are you—” “And pack a sled for me,” he said, turning to face his assistant, “for a journey to the Iron Hills. I am going there myself.”

—

The fog of depression settles deeper into Grór’s bones. With each passing day, she feels it gnawing its way in like ants on a log, hollowing her out from the inside.

Yesterday, Frór and Thrór arrived, but there had been no welcoming party to greet them. It was all that she could do to stand when they entered her chambers. Frór went straight to Nain’s room and emerged with him in his arms. “I’ll bathe the wee one,” he said quietly, as he went to fill a kettle of hot water. Nain blearily blinked up at his uncle before falling asleep again, his small fingers wrapped in his straw-coloured hair. Thrór had simply sat in silence. Then, when it was evident that Grór would not speak, he had returned with a cup of something hot and set more coal to the fire, prodding it until the room grew warmer. “You need to eat,” he said, bending down to peer into Grór’s face. She hardly saw him.

—

The morning dawns. It could be morning or it could be evening for all the Lord of the Iron Hills cares. It is the same to her, and sleep comes in fitful bouts when she passes out in her room from exhaustion. At least this morning she manages to sit on her throne and her breakfast doesn’t make her nauseous. She eats half of the porridge before it grows thick and cold, and eventually someone takes it away.

The door to the kitchen swings shut behind the dwarf at the same time that another one opens across the Great Hall. The raises her eyes to the messenger that strides quickly towards her. Something about his confused expression makes her sit up a little straighter. “Yes?” she asks, before he has time to reach her. He bows, and then, as if at a loss for words, gestures behind him. “My Lord Grór, there is a visitor…” There have only been visitors this past week, the week before the stone-setting. She icily reminds the messenger such. He stammers an apology. “The dwarf is from the East — from Ugzharak, Lord. He’s pulled his sled right outside and says he knows you, but we had no word of his coming at the watchtower, so—”

The doors smash open with enough force to shake the floor. A dwarf in tattered, weather-stained clothes and boots marches in, barely restrained by two guards. “Grór!” he shouts, before the guards seize him by the wrists. He’s too deft for them and escapes their clutches with the dexterity of a weasel. Before they have time to draw axes, he’s running towards her, his eyes wild and his face flushed from the cold. Grór sees a flash of it before he throws himself onto one knee before her, a brown, scarred hand reaching forwards for the tip of her boot. “I came back.”

The guards drag him up and away, pulling at his cloak which rips from his shoulders. And finally, Grór finds her voice. “Stop—” she rasps.

They stand, facing one another in silence. A letter falls to the floor — the one she had written just a few weeks ago. “I told you — Grór, I said I would visit,” he says, his eyes pleading with her.

It has been seven years.

She wants to hit him, to push him away, to scream at the guards to take him from the Hall at once. But, she soon realises, she doesn’t have the energy. The anger that she might have held seeped from her weeks ago, along with her joy. All she can do is stare. And then Ixil is close to her, and his hands are over hers. His fingers have more callouses now, and they feel harder and stronger, while hers are tattooed in dark ink and stripped of all her customary rings and ornamentation. Between her breasts, she feels something, as though another heartbeat had stirred next to her own. Something she hadn’t thought of for years, but had worn, unnoticed, next to her skin. A small, iron trinket. “Idu’bar,” he whispers, so quietly that it feels as if her own soul is muttering the deep name which few in her life have ever known. “I have come back.”

Epilogue

“We’ve had our troubles,” she says.

Ixil nods and licks the foam from his top lip. Grór sinks back in her chair, and for the first time in countless weeks, feels full. Ixil, on the other hand, is still eating chicken leg after chicken leg, until Grór supposes that he’s eaten a whole flock.

“The East is a… troubled place of late,” he replies delicately. He looks at her enquiringly. “I would still like you to see it.”

“Perhaps I will,” she says.

Before now, she would have thought that impossible. But today she has discovered many things. That in the eye of grief’s storm she can smile, and smoke a pipe in peace, and eat a full meal. That a dwarf she thought long gone could spring up out of nowhere like new grass and pull a sled halfway across Middle-Earth to be with her. Why could she not venture out and see new sights, and explore new things again?

There was a place and a time for everything. For death and for life renewed.  

End.

Kh. Idu’bar (id-u’bar): Grór’s deep name of my own invention (grower); apparently Grór could be derived from the Old Norse gróa, meaning ‘to grow’. It also means ‘to heal’.

[stcrmwxrning-groupsaa]

If you know of anything that I might have missed or if I put something in the wrong place, please let me know.

[ want to see the images in hi-res? — United States of Auradon  |  Auradon Prep ]

For an upscale version, click here.

The 19 Regions of Auradon are the 19 kingdoms that were united to be ruled. Still, each region has their own rulers. There are 12 regions beneath the Great Wall, and 7 beyond.

1. Westerly Region

Locksley: Robin Hood’s home town

Mallorytown

East Hude

West Hude

Sherwood Forest

Notre Dame

Ariel and Eric’s Castle

Seaside

Ariel’s Grotto

Melody’s Castle

Sea of Ariel

Triton’s Bay

Desolation Point

Westerly City

Chateau d'Or

2. Cinderellasburg

Cenerentola: A city

Rocky Point Court: A castle

Cinderellasburg City: The Capitol

Charming Castle: Home to Cinderella, Chad and King Charming

Sea of Goodness

Bondat Island

Faraway Cove

Rhodopus Pt.

3. East Riding

King George Town

Benevelence

Grimmsville

Gothel’s Hideaway

Lake Regis: located near King George Town

Bayou de Orleans

Golden Citadel

4. South Riding

Auroria: The kingdom of King Phillip and Queen Aurora.

Tangleton

Aurora Priory: a monastery

Kingdom of Corona: The kingdom of Flynn Rider and Rapunzel.

Redempton: a town

Leopoldville: a town

Goodly Pt.

Bridge of Benevolence

History Island: connected to South Riding by the Bridge of Benevolence

Arcadia Academy: a school

The Honeymoon Cottage: The forty-room Royal Palace where Audrey, Aurora, Phillip and possibly Queen Leah live

5. Camelot Heights

Mim’s Gulch

Camelot

Pendragon Castle

Myrddin’s Pass

Myrddin’s Ring

6. Towering Heights

Hook’s Bay

7. Auradon Central

Auradon City: biggest city in all of Auradon

Fortuna

Belle’s Harbor

Museum of Cultural History

Museum of Antiques

Belle and Beast’s Castle

Auradon Bay

Morgan’s Turf

Auradon Prep

8. Northern Wei (also known as North Riding)

Imperial Palace

Imperial Academy: a school

Scandanavian Mountains

Greystar Castle

9. Charmington

Eden

Shallows Keep: connected to Charmington by a bridge

Strait of Ursula

10. Summerlands

Enchanted Wood

Mines

Snow White’s Castle

11. Olympus

Grumpy Fen

12. Aredenelle

Weselton 

Southern Isles

Prince Han’s Castle

And these are the regions north of the Great Wall:

13. Neverland

Skull Rock

Hangman’s Tree

Mermaid Lagoon

Cannibal Cave

Indian Camp

Crocodile Creek

Darling’s Coast

Tiger’s Head

L'Isle de Magic

14. Lone Keep

Jordan River

Agrabah

Bald Mountain

15. Winter’s Keep

The Forbidden Mountain

Felicity

16. Schwartzvald

Snowfall Lake

Ivarshoe Palace

Happenstance

Akasha

Serendipity

Titania’s Grove

Museum of the North

17. Aphelothia

Blanche Neige

L'Isle de Bonne Chance

Rosa Rage

Happsouss

18. The Border Lands and Faraway

Greybeard Lake

Daleko: the only city

Sjevernom Gradu: the castle located just outside of Daleko

Chambre Love

Obsidian Tower

Wildlife Park

19. Isle of the Lost

Dragon Hall

Goblin Wharf

Bargain Castle

Jafar’s Junk Shop

Castle Across the Way

Hell Hall

Hades Cave

Slop Shop

Hook’s Inlet

Queen of Hearts’ Salon

Ursula’s Fish and Chips

Frollo’s Creperie

The Facilier’s Shop

Troll Town

Witch School

Isle of the Doomed

Serpent Prep

Lady Tremain’s Curl Up and Dye

Gaston’s Duels Without Rules

Cauldron Repair

Shere Khan’s Pawns

Shan Yu’s Dim Sums

Monstro’s Basking Buffett

Metropolitan Labyrinth

House of Horrors

Wild Jungle

The Lost Passage

Maleficent’s Mountain

Dragon’s Nest

City of Dark

Realm of Gloom

Witchwood

Haunted Desert

Cobra Cave

Dunes of Sorrow

Secret Village

Tree of Venom

Poison Lake

Dark Forest

Not on the Map:

Wonderland ( through the rabbit hole )

[techmomma]

Jarl: leader of one of the nine Holds of Skyrim. Governs their Hold, swears loyalty to the High King of Skyrim, who swears loyalty to the Empire (or did, depending on your route for Skyrim). Think of them like a mayor or a king of an area about the size of the Shire.

Hold: one of the nine administrative districts of Skyrim. Each has a capital, typically surrounded by small farms.

Housecarl: personal servant, bodyguard, secretary, they do something of everything

Draugr: undead who roam the absolutely countless nordic tombs around Skyrim. Very evil, as they worshipped the dragons back when they enslaved humanity. So like, undead evil cultists. Said tombs sometimes have gates to keep them in, rather than trespassers out

Aedra/Daedra: gods(?). Not necessarily good and evil, respectively. Sort of more Seelie and Unseelie. Aedra are the Eight/Nine Divines that are a-okay to worship, Daedra tend to be less inclined to be friendly with mortals and tend to see them as playthings. Daedra have caused many many problems in Tamriel's history. If someone is worshipping Daedra they are probably up to no good about 90-95% of the time.

Tamriel: continent that houses Skyrim and other provinces. The location of all the Elder Scrolls games

Skyrim: most northern province of Tamriel. Homeland of the Nords

Thu'ums/Shouts: magical powers that are magical because they're said in the dragon language which is magical. There's a whole cult devoted to learning Words of Power (Shouts) which take decades to master.

Dragons: probably lesser gods, hence the magical aspect

Greybeards: the cult studying the Shouts. Monks who live up on the highest mountain and think they're cooler better than everyone else and above petty mundane matters.

Imperials: race of humans and also members of the Empire, which currently rules Tamriel. Recently had a war with the Elves and came out of a peace treaty with them on the short end of the stick. Many people not happy.

Stormcloaks: the most unhappy. Want elves and all non-nords out of Skyrim because immigrants cause all their problems I guess. Definitely not fascists.

Talos/Tiber Septim: a dude who did so many cool things he became a god. Maybe. The elves hate him because man fuck humans, humans can't ascend to godhood we're better than humans wtf?? Nords love him. Part of that peace treaty with the elves involved outlawing his worship. Hence why a lot of people in Skyrim got really mad.

Thalmor: elvish agents making sure the Empire is holding up their agreement to ban Talos worshiping. They think they're better than everyone else and hate non-elves.

Dwemer/Dwarves: like, Norse dwarves, not LotR dwarves. They're a type of elf, but they had that cool art deco dwarven aesthetic. All of them disappeared millenia ago all of a sudden like they had their own Rapture. Way more technologically advanced than like everybody so now their stuff is the Ancient Atlantean Technology of Skyrim. No one knows where the Dwemer went. Their robots are assholes.

Falmer: blind angry murder goblins who used to be elves and then the Dwemer fed them a fungus that made them blind and feral and the Dwemer definately did not harvest the falmer souls to power their machines nope.

[ammg-old]

All societies evolve and change, and they do so constantly.  So it was with the Norse way of life.  It gradually evolved into something different, but could trace its roots back to the old ways – and perhaps therefore to the creation of the world by Odin and his brothers.  The legacy of Norse mythology can be found throughout our own culture, often in quite surprising places.  The most obvious, perhaps, is fantasy fiction influenced at last in part by the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Tolkien's greatest contribution to modern fantasy was creating the archetypical – some might say they have become stereotypical – 'fantasy races'.  His version of Dwarfs as the hardy underground-living creatures of magical treasures seems somehow familiar.  In fact, Tolkien used the lists of Dwarf names from Norse mythology for his own creation, and he gave us one other legacy – the pluralization of Dwarf as Dwarves.  The correct word is 'Dwarfs', and Tolkien himself was rather embarrassed about the error, since he was a student of languages.  However, it stuck and is now as prevalent as the correct 'Dwarfs'.

Tolkien's Elves have also become archetypical.  His work included different groups of Elves – some magical and almost godlike, others more primitive. Subsequent fantasy books, films and games have made Elves rather mundane, but the author can recall reading The Lord of the Rings at age ten or so and getting a distinct impression of Elves as magical and rather scary, at least in the early chapters where the main characters have no familiarity with them.

Tolkien used many of what are now the standard fantasy tropes, such as trolls that are turned to stone by sunlight.  The gold-guarding dragon, Smaug, of The Hobbit, is an obvious parallel to Fáfnir, although Smaug was never anything but a dragon.  He guards a hoard within which is a gemstone that can make its owner go mad with grief – the ring Andvaranaut in gem form.

Tolkien also set out what would become the standard 'fantasy baddies' in the form of orcs and goblins.  Orcs are revealed be originally Elves who were twisted by the dark lord to make them both abhorrent to look upon and evil in nature – perhaps a parallel to the Light and Dark Elves of Norse mythology.  Tolkien also included ogres and various forms of spirit in his work, as well as a plethora of magical swords, rings, armour and other items.

Tolkien's greatest creation is undoubtedly Gandalf, who bears a distinct physical resemblance to Odin.  Indeed, 'Greybeard' is a pseudonym used by both Gandalf and Odin.  Like Odin, Gandalf wanders the world dispensing rather cryptic wisdom, and in the books at least, he is a mysterious and not always reassuring figure.  The movies...mostly present Gandalf as a rather kindly, benevolent and friendly figure, a sort of fond uncle who shepherds some of the characters through dangerous events.  The books, however, show a much more Odin-like side to Gandalf's character.

The Gandalf of the books is not welcome in some places as a result of previous meddling, and is treated with suspicion in others – not surprisingly, as he is a powerful and mysterious wanderer with his own agenda.  While the Gandalf of the movies is powerful, the Gandalf of the books is dangerous and also unpredictable.  He journeys, sometimes unwisely, into hazardous places seeking wisdom.  In this he is exactly what Tolkien envisioned him to be – an 'Odinic wanderer'.

 - Norse Myths: Viking Legends of Heroes and Gods

[heckyeahponyscans]

G1 My Little Pony comic #21 - The Very Special Spectacles