#kinstrife era gondor

[squirrelwrangler]

Vagabond Gondor

As a birthday gift, I decided to brush off a very old project and write out the opening paragraphs to something I cannot promise I'll ever fully write, but to which I had done so much groundwork that I didn't want it to go to waste. And as it's a LotR fic, making it a gift on my birthday seemed appropriate.

...

Ten years after the Restoration of the Rightful King, that is to say ten years after the Battle of the Crossings of Erui which ended the Kin-strife, a man with a broken sword arrived in Minas Arnor.

 The wandering swordsman crossed the River Anduin in a small boat just as dusk started to settle into the warm summer evening, paying the ferryman with the last of his worn coins. Across the fields, farms, and small towns of the Pelennor Fields the wanderer strode, aiming for the Great Gate of the seven-tiered city. He did not pause, even as the light disappeared from all but some of the windows of the houses and inns or glowed against the approaching twilight from the handheld lanterns of fellow travelers. Even at this late hour other people still crowded the four leagues of roads leading to and from the Great Gate. Most traveled in groups composed of companions, family, or coworkers. Boisterously they laughed and chatted amongst themselves as they returned to their homes or ducked into taverns to wash away the sweat of fieldwork with the soothing coolness of alcohol. Not all were Dúnedain, but few of the Northmen were dressed discernibly differently, and all spoke a blend of Westron and Sindarin. Tradesmen and traders sang cheerfully from the open doors of the taverns and alehouses. Ten years had restored the music of peace to the Pelennor Fields. Roads -and the harvest- were safe once more. Osgiliath had been rebuilt, but as was tradition, the king resided in Minas Arnor during the summer, during which the city and the lands skirting Mount Mindolluin blossomed and the population boomed. Business followed the royal court. Even those of Minas Ithil might have summer lodgings in their sister-city. Single travelers such as the wandering swordsman were rarer. Most who aimed to reach Minas Arnor had passed through its gates long before sunset. The locals of the Pelennor ignored the man with the broken sword, and the man ignored them. Of the few that noticed the scabbard hanging from the shabby-dressed wanderer’s belt, none knew its secret. 

Tradition brought over from Númenor held that after dusk large wagons were allowed to enter the city. Therefore long lines of ox-driven carts laden with produce and goods now dominated the well-paved roads into Minas Arnor, lit by lanterns held by the freight-haulers and the rare bored guard hired by prudent or suspicious merchants. Few people walked the roads on foot as dusk deepened into true night. The clouded sky hid the stars from view, but there was no hint of rain soon forthcoming. Still, the man wore a wide-brimmed hat that shaded his face. Silently he walked besides the freight wagons, head bowed and hands tucked into the wide sleeves of his patched tunic. The guards made note of the wanderer and noticed the sword, but as the man did nothing but walk silently, staring only at the ground, they dismissed him as harmless. He was short and slight, the type of figure that could easily lose a wrestling match to a hobbit, if the men of Gondor knew what a hobbit was.

Pelennor in the summer did not swelter as badly as Pelagir further south, but it was too warm for cloaks, and the drivers wished for a breeze to cool their faces and banish the pungent odor of the draft animals. Street cleaners would remove animal dung from the roads in the pre-dawn, also according to ancient Númenorean tradition. Still the heady stench was undeniable. 

The black expanse of the first wall of Minas Arnor stretched like the outermost void, its shadow cooling the summer night. Ominous it could be to outsiders, but to the men who called this city and its surrounding lands home, the First Wall with its gleaming black stone that reflected the many lanterns of its travelers signified safety and beauty. Towards the east the main road turned, following the curve of the wall to the only gateway through the unbreachable Minas Arnor. It was a relief to pass through the Great Gate and enter the city itself. 

Up the gently sloping streets the wanderer ambled, lacking the steadfast determination of before. His goal had been the city itself, but now he had neither destination in mind nor coin to pay for it.  Past midnight, only the main thoroughfares were not deserted, the music of taverns faded into silence. Streetlamps at the doors of many a great house or inn were kept lit with oil, as it would have been a shameful admission of poverty to do otherwise. Under the reign of Castamir, many houses had gone dark. But now all that the lamps illuminated were the cobblestones of the streets and the facades of the houses across, broken rarely by the shadow of a passing hunting cat. Soon the man was alone, his shadow the only other movement. An innkeeper's watchman on the Lampwright’s Street of the First Level almost called out to him, but changed their mind when they noticed the ragged appearance of his dark blue tunic and lack of travel pack. In the brightness of the city’s lit streets, the color of the man’s hair could be discerned, and it was the same red as the summer pelt of a fox. A memorable trait, nearly as identifiable as the intersecting pair of scars on the man’s lower left cheek - neither of which the wanderer wished to be recognized by. 

But it had been ten years since the Battle of the Crossings of Erui. Ten years since King Eldacar slew Castamir. Ten years since the Blood-haired Berserker, killer of thousands of men, feared warrior of Rhovanion, disappeared. A legendary figure like that belonged in grisly tales and gruesome sorrowful songs, not ambling without purpose down a deserted Third Level street in Minas Arnor looking for a safe doorway in which to rest until the sun rose. The wandering swordsman was too unassuming to be a figure of infamy.

Which is why when a spirited young Dúnedan noblewoman accosted him of being a mad murderous berserker breaking the king’s law and the city’s peace, brandishing a wooden quarterstaff, the wanderer yelped.

“I’ve found you, Outlaw! Blood-haired Berserker, Slayer of Men, face justice for the two months of terror that you have inflicted on our city! Your murders will not go unpunished!”

The maiden punctuated her accusation with a perfect swing of her quarterstaff -which the wanderer dodged- followed by followup swing exactly as prescribed in the arms master's training manuals -which he also dodged- and a jab towards the torso - which the wanderer stumbled backwards from, unscathed but shouting in alarm. “Oro! Wait, Mistress, you have the wrong person!” His words were Sindarin, accented and soft, and he used the polite address for you in the Noldorin fashion. Northmen rarely learned Sindarin, and none had that old-fashioned accent.

“Mountain?” The young woman questioned, confused at his outburst, then shook her head in frustration. Switching from Westron, she repeated her accusation, but the outrage had lessened to uncertainty, for the man had collided with the ground against a grocer’s stall, knocking empty baskets to the cobblestones.

“Noble Lady, I cannot be the one you search for,” the red-haired man said, straightening a fallen basket. Crumbled on the ground, the young woman could see his beardless face and thin frame. His scrawny underfed body reminded her of one of her students, and though she had not confirmed it when she first attacked, he was shorter than her. As a rule, the Northmen of Rhovanion were tall and muscular. She was not, even though she was a full blooded Dúnadan as her coloring suggested. The deferential address and vocabulary sounded comical coming from a shabby-dressed Middle Man. It belonged to a stage play about the First Age, and only Classical Adûnaic would have been more ill-fitting for the occasion. “A masterless vagabond I am, newly arrived to the city this night. How could I have accomplished a murder?”

“You are an unliveried Northman carrying a full-sword, though,” the noblewoman countered. “By King’s Decree, no one may carry a longsword within the walls of the city unless they be a royal soldier or a nobleman’s oath-sworn, their blade peace-tied to the scabbard and in livery to the house of their allegiance.”

The wanderer had noticed that the wagon guards carried only long knives and cudgels. Peacetime could only partially explain the anomaly. Eldacar’s law, enacted after the war’s conclusion, attempted to curtail the worst of the violence endemic during the Kinstrife and to suppress armed uprisings from the few traitorous lords, but the ban on the most dangerous tools of war - the longswords and great war axes- was truly aimed at the tension that remained between Northmen and Dúnedain. A murderer stalking the streets of Minas Anor while the King was in residence was an affront; a mad Northman was a political powder-keg.

Holding the scabbard by the far end, the swordsman pointed the hilt at the young woman, offering it to her. “Humble I beg you see that this sword could have killed no man,” he said, switching now into the Common Tongue, but here his Westron was just as heavily accented and even more deferential, using the politest possible terms.

The young woman pulled out the broken sword, shocked to see that the blade extended only a few finger-widths before terminating. By hilt and size it was closer to a longsword than the more common arming swords, and though it would have been double-edged with a deep fuller, the style of sword left the blade itself unsharpened near the hilt. An uncovered hand could grip a blade there to wield a sword for certain tricks, be it to wield two handed when the hilt was not long enough or to shorten the reach to confuse a foe. Swordsmanship training covered these in detail, to which the young woman was deeply familiar. There were moves to defend oneself with a broken blade, invented by her grandfather, that the young woman knew as well, and the pommel could be an effective bludgeoning tool if wielded against an eye or judiciously striking the head. But close inspection showed that the blade had been snapped off before the shoulder sharpened into the blade proper. Aside from the maker’s mark, no other nicks or cuts marred the steel to signify use, though some of the hilt wrapping was worn. The pommel was plain. 

“It’s not Narsil,” the man joked. “The edges are all dull, Noble Lady. Humbled I beg you return this useless sword to me. No violation of King Eldacar’s law do I commit by carrying it.”

“You could not kill anyone with this,” the young woman admitted. “So why carry it-“ she began to ask, before a watchman’s shout interrupted. “They found him!” she cried, tossing the hilt and dashing back to the intersection. Behind her, unseen, the swordsman caught the broken sword with a deft swing of the scabbard. Hat forgotten and expression darkened to seriousness for the first time since he crossed the River Anduin, the red-haired wanderer ran after the young woman.

[tathrin]

Hi! How does a pirate au with gigolas sound?

From this prompt-meme.

Oh definitely not like something that's been slowly simmering in the back of my mind ever since I first saw this thing months ago.

We're going with a sort of East India Trading Company/Golden Age of Piracy era-mythos for our vibes, and a world that has less magic and epic battles to its history than Middle-earth for our setting, but one that still has our various fantasy species running around.

Númenor is sort of like an England/America hybrid, in that it's a newer land than the main continent, very expansionist/colonialist in attitude, and simultaneously an old power, because it has a bunch of colonies on the old continent now, and a belligerent attitude towards everyone else. They are the largest sea-power and like to claim even more dominion than they actually have.

Meanwhile to the south-west of them we have the islands of the Teleri (Eressëa) which are widely described as "the last free elven isles," and mainly stay that that by being A: not enough trouble to conquer and B: too much trouble to conquer. They keep to themselves (and their waters shrink a little more each year as Númenor keeps pressing in) so no one feels inspired to deal with them, and there's a lot of risk to trying to because water gets weird around those islands. Lots of shipwrecks, lots of strange creature in the waves. (The Teleri get some sort of mingled siren/kraken vibes here.) The eastern elves tell stories of a farther island beyond theirs, where no mortals have ever gone; where the seas themselves are sundered so as to protect their inhabitants from all encroachment...but more people these days know those are just fairy tales. There is no Western Shore; there are no Undying Lands. That's all just old sailors' stories and superstitions.

Anyway, Middle-earth itself: very old-school Europe vibes going on here, with lots of little kingdoms always sniping at one another for advantage, and whose power-balance has been kind of skewed by the Númenorian Colonies of Gondor and Arnor—really not colonies anymore at this point, because Númenor looked back east generations ago and decided to return to their ancestral homeland and claim it again farther back than any living mortal can remember. That doesn't stop Númenor from treating them like colonies still, which Denethor, the current ruling steward, isn't thrilled by. His people are more torn on the issue, with half of them liking the regalness of being Númenorian and the other half resentful at not being able to rule themselves. They even had a king once, for a few generations, but that collapsed during the civil wars called the Kinstrife, which were rumored to have been instigated by Númenor itself, although no one was ever able to prove that. There are rumors that an heir escaped the slaughter (Anastasia vibes!) but no one has been able to find proof of that. It may be no more than a pretty story. At any rate, no king has been seen in Gondor for generations.

Beyond the colonies of Gondor and Arnor, Númenor has other strong allies on the continent as well: Erebor, for one. The dwarves of the Lonely Mountains were driven from their home by the last of the dragons long ago, and the deal that their king made to acquire Númenorian assistance for taking it back from Smaug left the dwarves more indebted to the Númenorians than they intended. If only they could have found the Arkenstone, and been able to buy Númenor off with that the way they had planned...but if the Arkenstone was ever among Smaug's horde, it must have vanished at some point before the siege. (Some dwarves insist that it was there, had to have been there; and the only way it could be gone was if Númenor betrayed their word and burgled it when the dwarves' backs were turned—but that is a claim they cannot prove, alas, and so they must live with their debts to the White Island.) Erebor's might is more of craft than warfare, but those crafts have been put to good work on behalf of Númenor's military, and their armies are now the best-outfitted in the world, thanks to Ereborian smith-craft and manufacturing. They are allies far too valuable for Númenor to ever give up, no matter how richly they repay that debt.

As for the elven-lands, perhaps the most notable is the smallest: Rivendell. Founded by the brother of the First King of Númenor, Rivendell occupies a unique place in Númenorian headspace: it is deeply respected, but also looked down on a little. Elrond was clearly the lesser brother, choosing a life of lore and healing over the leadership that should have been in his blood; and yet, he is known for that wisdom, and his healing arts have saved many lives. He sails to Númenor occasionally to share his knowledge with their healers (although less often with each century) and to walk the lands where his brother once lived and died, and he is well-loved there...but they prefer the legend of Elrond to the reality, and their leaders more and more often welcome him with strained smiles than they do with open ones. Elrond will not participate in any endeavour which would lead to war, and the suffering that comes from such conflict; that does not mean that he approves of Númenors politics in these days of domination, and while he is always polite and respectful, he does not hesitate to offer its rulers his true opinions and advice.

They don't really care for that. But he is Elros's brother, so they force smiles and grateful platitudes, and then try and bundle him back onto his ship and off to his lovely but insignificant little valley as quickly as possible, and try to think about him and his dour warnings as little as they can when he's not around.

Mirkwood is the largest elven-kingdom, and the only one these days that truly counts as a kingdom. The lords of Númenor aren't keen on such a large nation existing without paying even lip-service allegiance to them, but on the other hand...does anyone really want alliance with Mirkwood? It's a terrible place, dark and dour and full of monsters. The elves there aren't like other elves; they're less wise, less refined...more dangerous. Feral, almost. There are rumors that—well, really it would be easier to compile the stories that aren't told about Mirkwood than to start listing all the ones that are. Death lives in those black trees. Even the water is dangerous to drink, more likely to cast you into a hundred years of dreams than to refresh your thirst. There are spiders in there the size of horses, deer with all their bones on the outside of their skin, squirrels that are venomous and moths that suck your blood. It is said that if you hear laughter in those trees, you might as well slit your own throat before the merry sound dies because you'll never escape the terrible, laughing things that hunt there. The stories even say that there are ghosts in those woods, wandering the south lands by the ruined citadel that towers over those gnarled black trees.

No one sane would live in Mirkwood. No one sane would even set foot in Mirkwood. No one sane should want anything to do with Mirkwood—and Númenor does not. Even the Daleman, known for being provincial weirdos, know better than to actually go into those black trees, even if they're deranged enough to trade goods with the elves that lurk there. Well, let them; and on their own heads be it when the wicked elvenking leads his people out for a feast of man-flesh!

(Some of the stories are true, but even the other elf-lords no longer know how many. Mirkwood has done far too good a job of spreading those terrible tales for anyone—maybe even them, sometimes—to remember which are false, and which are real. Even other elves steer-clear of those black trees, these days.)

The last elven-realm, Lothlórien, is something of an outlier among all the lands of Middle-earth: it is a small realm, which neither offers nor seeks trade or commerce with others, and yet which wields an outsize power in the affairs of greater nations. Lórien is a land of lore and mysteries, and it is said that the elf-witch who rules those golden trees can read a man's secrets merely by glancing at his eyes. Númenor wishes no war with the eerie elves of Lothlórien. Lady Galadriel is consequently invited to every grand affair of state, and never ever wanted there. Sometimes she attends (likely just to remind Númenor that she is real, and should not be trifled with) but mostly she stays in her trees, whispered about yet unseen.

As for the other lands of Middle-earth, many of them are tired of being to some degree under Númenor's heel, but not to the point of daring to risk open war against them. They all remember what happened to Eregion when Ost-in-Edhil's smith-lords though to oppose Númenorian domination.

Now, the world has settled into a sort of tense peace, where nation-states fight through commerce rather than the battlefield, and use their armies more for posturing and prestige than actual warfare.

Into this world, enter the pirates.

Númenor's domination of the sea has not gone unopposed. Círdan long defied them, until they sent their entire navy against him, landing soldiers to crush the Havens and take him and his lords prisoner back to Númenor for trial and punishment—but though the Havens fell, Círdan was not found there. Some say that he and all those closest to him were slaughtered, and Númenor covered it up; others say that he managed to slips their nets and sail West, and find the promised shores beyond the islands of the Teleri; still others say he is on those oceans still, hurrying Númenors ships as a rebel captain of a small pirate fleet. Whenever a ship fails to return to harbor, there are whispers that it fell to Círdan's rebels...but more likely it was claimed by waves and weather.

Probably.

The stories spread anyway, and those who sought to defy Númenor's will listened, and so they began too to seek the sea. Small, single pirate ships are no material threat to Númenor: their navy is too large for the sacking or disappearance of a few ships here and there to make any difference to them. But the stories of pirates being able to defy their might and slip away free of consequence...well, that might have more lasting repercussions. Certainly Númenor's leaders must think so, for they have devoted quite an undo amount of effort to hunting down and destroying these pests otherwise. Unless, of course, one believes the rumors that Gondor's lost heir is out there somewhere amongst the pirates, capable at any moment of returning and staking his claim to the throne—a claim which, thanks to the faltering and intermingling of generations since, gives him actually the most direct claim not only to the throne of Gondor but to Númenor itself, now that the line of the founding kings has broken so many times...provided such an heir even exists of course, which he does not.

Clearly.

And now, it's finally time to turn to our cast of characters: the good ship Fellowship was originally a merchant vessel, sailing the waves on behalf of the wealthy Took family. Hobbits do not go to sea very often themselves, but they appreciate life's comforts enough to finance ocean-going vessels, and are quite happy to pay the necessary tariffs to Númenor to have their protection on the waves, and there are always Men in Bree who are happy to sail on Hobbit ships (the rations they provide are always much nicer than you get on any other vessel!). Old Bilbo was one of the rare Hobbits who actually followed his sense of adventure all the way out to the waves, and was captain of the Fellowship in deed as well as name, and when his nephew was old enough he brought young Frodo along with him.

(Every gossip in the Shire said they would both come to a bad end, drowning just like Frodo's parents did; but even the sneering Sackville-Bagginses never expected pirates!)

For many years, the Fellowship went about its trade-routes quite respectably, causing no trouble and earning no malice. But then...well, the trouble started with that fellow called Strider. He was one of many sailors who signed-on from Bree one day, and should have been no more special than any of them. But there was something about him that always seemed a little disreputable, a little dangerous—and so it soon proved.

No one back on shore is quite sure how it happened. The nearest anyone has been able to piece the story together is that there was some sort of shipwreck, or a raft that escaped a shipwreck, and there was something on it—some chest or treasure. Whatever it was, it proved to be too much temptation for the sailors of the Fellowship. Instead of making a quick salvage of the wreckage and continuing on their way, they abandoned their course and their cargo's intended destination, and went from being respectable merchants to pirates.

Old Bilbo (who had retired some years ago) was scandalized, of course; positively scandalized. But of course, Bilbo had always been something of a scandal himself, and there were far too many suspicious eyes on him after everything went south. He sold Bag End, packed up his things, and disappeared from the Shire three weeks after the first wanted-for-piracy posters of his nephew went up. Rumor has it he went to Rivendell, but no one from Hobbitton has ever gone after him to check; Hobbits don't generally care for travel, and Rivendell is such a long was away. Must more pleasant to stay home by the fire, and gossip.

And gossip folk do, and not only in the Shire. Stories of the Fellowship quickly came to spread far beyond Hobbit-lands, and they got bigger as they went. Soon it was being said that Strider was not just a brigand, but a romantic scoundrel too, who had managed to steal the heart of Elrond's daughter before running away to sea before her brothers could revenge themselves upon him. He had a magic ring, which he had used to enthrall Frodo, and declare himself captain of the boat. He had a magic sword, which could break itself into pieces as short as a dagger and then reforge itself as long as a boathook at need. He had elf-blood, and was decades older than he looked. He had served in Gondor's army, and in Rohan's, and had learned healing from Elrond himself. He was one of the Rangers, the secretive wanderers that spread rumors against Númenor and hunted for treasure and forgotten beasts in the wilds.

The more outlandish stories even claimed that he was that lost heir, and his real name was Aragorn or Arathorn or something of that sort. Nonsense, of course—but nonsense that Númenor wasn't happy to hear being whispered up and down the Misty Mountains.

Their displeasure grew when word began to spread of Strider's companions: Frodo somehow recruited three of his friends to the ship (Hobbits at sea! What were the youth coming to?) but he had arranged for one of their more land-locked fellows to act as a blackmarket middle-man, passing coin and supplies and information back and forth between Bree and the boat. Fredagar Bolger was soon caught and arrested, but someone broke him out of prison before his trial could begin, and he disappeared as thoroughly as Bilbo had. (Rumors said that the Brandybuck and Took families had helped in that jail-break, for two of their own were among Frodo's crew, but no one could ever prove that; indeed, no one who had been on duty at the jail that night reported seeing anything. Fredagar had been there when they went to sleep; the next morning, he had been gone, and no one ever saw him in Hobbiton again.)

Even more outlandish than the idea of four Hobbits at sea, the stories insisted that they had a dwarf on the ship as well. Everyone knew that dwarves hated boats, and feared the ocean; everyone knew that a dwarf would sooner shave his beard than go to sea. Nonetheless, the stories persisted: the Fellowship had a dwarf. Rumor claimed that he was a disgruntled son of Erebor, who had joined Strider's band of pirates out of disgust for the debt that Númenor held over the Lonely Mountain; others insisted that his father had been friends with Bilbo (in addition to his other oddities, Bilbo had been known to have friends among the dwarves, somehow!) and that it was Frodo who had somehow coaxed a dwarf away from land and out to sea. Whatever the motivations that had brought that dwarf to the Fellowship, there was soon no denying that he was there: only dwarven craftmanship could have kept that ship afloat through all of Númenor's efforts to sink it, and sailing faster than any of their own vessels could follow.

In addition to the dwarf, there was an elf among the crew as well. A less absurd notion on the surface, but strange when one dug-down to the details, for this was no Teleri; nor was he even one of the elves of the Havens, or from Rivendell. No, this was a Wood-elf of Mirkwood, one of those half-feral creatures of death and shadow and knives in the dark. His eyes were keener than any looking-glass that Númenor could fashion, and he could see as clearly in the starlight as men could under bright sun. With those elven eyes in their crow's nest, there was no chance that the Fellowship could ever be sneaked-up upon again; and those who survived attacks by Strider's pirates told stories of his terrible bright laughter echoing across the waves like the ringing of doom-bells in their dreams.

(There was surely, surely no truth to the rumor that the elf and the dwarf were any more than grudging crew-mates; elves and dwarves were notoriously distrustful of one another's people, and since Eregion's fall there had been no sign of reconciliation or camaraderie between any of their kind again. The sailors who reported that the two had been heard cheerfully competing like friends during the battles taking Númenorian ships were mistaken; the ones who claimed that they had witnessed victory-kisses were suffering from sunstroke; and the shaken survivors who whispered that the elf had lost his mind and slaughtered an entire crew himself when one of their number managed to wound the dwarf were surely just suffering from shock. No single elf, not even a Mirkwood elf, could slay an entire contingent of Númenorian soldiers like that; and no elf would ever be spurred to do such a thing for a mere dwarf. These stories were just one of Strider's many attempts to undermine Númenorian rule, by attempting to foster an alliance between Erebor and Mirkwood based on ridiculous false rumors about the joining of two of their people. Such things simply did not happen.)

The worst of the Fellowship's many assaults upon Númenorian sea-supremacy was when they took a ship that had been carrying Rohan's princess out to make a state-marriage on the White Island. The rest of the Rohirrim they let go, including the king's nephew, whom one might have expected them to hold for ransom; instead they took only the girl, and no ransom demand ever came back for her. Indeed, rumors soon began to whisper that she had been somehow seduced to Strider's crew as well, and could be seen with a cutlass in one hand and her fair hair streaming in the salt-air, a fell smile on her face, whenever the Fellowship boarded their prey, her own unfettered laughter ringing out alongside the elf's deadly merriment.

That was a crime too far. Númenor needed to stop Strider's pirates, and stop them now. Gondor dispatched two of her own to go to sea and hunt him and the Fellowship down: Boromir and Faramir, sons of the Steward and noble warriors of stout heart and stalwart arms. Everyone assumed that that would be the end of the Fellowship, for no pirate had yet escaped bold Boromir, and Faramir's cunning wits would surely be enough to outsmart some ragged Ranger. For months they pursued the pirate vessel, chasing the Fellowship through storm and fog and sun-kissed waves; then, far off the coast of the Teleri islands, a hurricane rolled in, and both ships were lost from sight behind the grey rainclouds.

Imagine Denethor's fury, and Númenor's wrath, when the next stories that came back from the sea told of how bold Boromir and cunning Faramir had joined the terrible crew...