#rochwen is part mafia au!fem!mags

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Hi! Now I would love to know more about Rochwen, if you would be so obliged? I’m really curious as to this soulless Fëanorian.

of all of my ocs who could have provoked this question, it had to be her

okay so circa 2015-ish i used to use online dressup makers for fandom stuff a lot on account of how i really, really can’t draw. little while back i found myself doing it again to create rough character designs for the fëanorian child ocs i presently have names for, all two of them

here’s rochwen. i also made a halren to keep an eye on her

... dude. anyway the thing you need to understand about the gap is that it’s very much a joint operation. the lords of the gap are mags and his wife, a sinda from the hithlum area, and the semi-nomadic bands of horse warriors who report to them are as much drawn from her people as they are from his. the culture that grows up there is recognisably noldorin, sure, but it’s also uniquely sindarin. you can see it on rochwen’s face; it’s full of metal because noldor, but she also has some sindarin honour tattoos - the hithlum sindar aren’t as into them as say, the laiquendi, but it is still something they do, and something they brought to the gap

rochwen herself is born in the 260s 1a, which puts her at the younger end of the middle of the pack of fëanorian cousins. she exists because the sindar of the gap tend to deal with misplaced infants more communally than the noldor, which leaves mags without any kidnap babies to love and cherish and raise into loyal little killing machines. he’s naturally somewhat bummed by this, but his wife finds kidnapdoption kinda skeevy for some reason? so no go

then, not long after the defeat of glaurung and the beginning of the long peace, she’s like, ‘you know, if you’re so desperate for a child we could always get one the traditional way.’ mags is absolutely down for this. ecce rochwen

rochwen... like i said, it’s an epessë. the people of the gap get called the horse people for pretty much the same reasons as the rohirrim several millenia later, and their lords are the horse lords, the rochir and the rochiril. their daughter naturally starts getting called the horse maiden pretty much as soon as it gets out that she exists, and soon enough it’s all anybody calls her. it’s appropriate too, she really likes horses

she also likes people, in a not terribly dissimilar way to how she likes horses. she would have made an excellent courtier in the tirion of old, she’s pleasant and witty and good at talking to people and completely amoral in the way she deals with them. she’s manipulative, she’s ruthless, she never forgets anything, and she’s charming enough that a lot of people like her despite themselves. she is the chief vector of gossip among her cousins, and did a lot to inflame a certain incident known to history only as orcgate, seemingly only to get several people in trouble for the sheer sake of it. it never really progressed beyond toying with the people around her during her lifetime, but given the chance...

i also see rochwen as kind of a spoiled princess type, except with yurts and horses and a whole lot of blood. she is a massive daddy’s girl, extremely good at wheedling her parents to give her what she wants, and is generally adored by those around her, especially when she was little. she used to flitter around camp watching everybody when she was younger, which is why her dad calls her hummingbird. once she’s grown up, she’s more deliberate in her movements, but still likes to skip around whistling a jaunty tune

she spends her childhood following her parents as they patrol the gap and her young adulthood as a semi-independent freerider. sometimes she’ll hook up with a warband, sometimes she’ll wander between them, helping with horses and building a network of friends who will one day form the core of her personal guard. like all of the house, she is absolutely terrifying in battle, laughing merrily as she slices open orcs with her cavalry spear or tramples them beneath her horses’ hooves. she visits her cousins in the off-season, riding down south or into the mountains to hang out and collect gossip. she’s pushing for permission to visit west beleriand, but her stupid overprotective parents won’t let her go until she’s proven herself capable of leading a command

when fire erupts from the mountains of tyranny, she thinks her moment’s finally come. while her parents are leading the mass evacuation, rochwen and some of her crew ride out for glory. they are brave and nobleish and overconfident and young. they all die

(if she’d lived past the bragollach, would rochwen have made a stand against the kinslayings? certainly some of her cousins did, some sooner, some later. but many of them joined in, fully supporting their fathers. celebrimbor notwithstanding, the third generation of the house of fëanor was born into a world at war and raised to be soldiers. killing is natural to them in a way it never could be for those born in valinor, and the difficult-at-the-best-of-times relationship between east and west beleriand means that to most of them the elves of doriath are as foreign as the followers of morgoth. it’s possible that rochwen’s sindarin connections would have activated her rarely-used conscience and led to her defending her mother’s people. it’s equally possible she would have followed her father into the void)

but all that’s kind of immaterial. rochwen was born in middle-earth and died during the bragollach, and thus took part in precisely zero kinslayings. since she also never actively *~sided with the enemy against her true people~* or whatever the teleri’s beef with amras’ oldest son is, she’s one of the first members of the house of fëanor to be cleared for safe release from the halls. initially she stays with her mother’s people, because the fëanorian cause led to complete disaster and even she’s affected by that. still, as she gets used to being alive again, she grows curious

on a starlit valinorean night, rochwen (who’s probably using her mother-name by this point, hell if i know what it is) rides into tirion. it takes her a little while to get her bearings, but soon enough she finds a small scupltor’s studio a little off the main streets. the architecture is very aggressively years-of-the-trees, almost untouched by the passage of time. rochwen walks up, and knocks on the door

she’s the first of nerdanel’s descendants to abruptly show up on her doorstep and make themself at home (possibly, haven’t decided yet.) she is far from the last