#the world has been relatively orc-free for the past millennia or so; annatar either let them die off or actively had them

[tanoraqui]

the ^START OF THE “actual” fic this time… In Which Númenor Relearns a Vital Historical Lesson: Do NOT Invite Furious, Grief-Driven Noldor Into Your House (after about 1k more of geopolitical buildup, shhh if you’re here for this then you’re here for this) (PART 2 OF 3 I GUESS)

Ok first jot down that when Celebrimbor and Annatar disappeared in SA 1221, literally 0 people were surprised when they came back married. The surprise was a) it only took 5 years, and b) the whole…Sauron thing

By this point, Ost-in-Edhil was the center of a burgeoning, technology-driven soft power empire of trade and culture. Celebrimbor was not, to be clear unaware of this. But they weren���t doing anything by force, they weren’t even doing anything underhanded with currency exchanges or cultural assimilation, they certainly weren’t harming the native landscape—changing and cultivating, yes, but in accordance with natural environments… [I believe firmly that the natural instinct of elves, in even the most industry-leaning of circumstances, would lead to a basically solarpunk world]. They shared what they made of not freely, then cheaply: lamps to light the night! Sophisticated, long-lasting systems of sewage, roads and agricultural aqueducts! Assorted more dramatically powerful works! Eregion was simply where it was at, and everyone wants to be where it’s at.

If ever they flexed their power, it was for rules like “we don’t trade with slave-holders.” This did, in fact, hold back the more forcefully growing Númenorean Empire, the other node of where it was at… (RIP to Lindon, which became, at best, the Washington DC to Ost-in-Edhil’s NYC/Silicon Valley hybrid.)

But the thing about issuing a general international announcement along the lines of, “We are recalling all Rings of Power, Palantir, and other ‘magical’ objects of Class 3 and above, because someone introduced a major flaw into the structural enchantments; for more information contact Annatar, who will explain everything unless he wants to sleep on the couch”…

- (“That would set us back at least a thousand years!” “We are doing this right or we are not doing it at all! Look what we’ve built with a star of Fëanor on the gate—do you think yourself not up to the challenge of the recovery?”)

…The thing about issuing that sort of announcement, and then clarifying when requested, is that it does a real hit to your soft power. The general results were these:

- the Elves, many of whom personally remembered the evils wrought by the Lieutenant of Angband and Lord of Werewolves, collectively lost their shit infighting for about a century. Mostly just with words, trade, and diplomacy, rather than swords, but no less violently for that. A general trend was everyone in Eregion shouting furiously, then turning around as one and snapping that this was clearly their problem and everyone else should back off. Nobody else took that well.

- - words really cannot express how angry Galadriel specifically is about all of this

- among Dwarves and a majority of continental Men, it was, “Okay, that’d bad, obviously, gonna be side-eyeing you for a while now…but it kinda seems like the Elves are re-fighting millennia-done wars again, and we’re more concerned that the Palantir network gets running again ASAP and the aqueducts in West Harad still get installed—oh, we can finally go cleanse Mordor, though? Good.”

- - (“It’s a valuable, essentially self-sustaining military reserve that isn’t harming or even inconveniencing anyone—” “Absolutely not, Annatar! What in the Darkness did you think I’d say to this? Let them die!”)

- the Númenoreans, in an exciting combination of (weaponized) Elvish historical knowledge but very Mannish inexperience and lack of personal lesson-learning, shifted quicker than anyone anticipated from “our friendly business rivals in Eregion :)” to “Elves are blind and corruptible at best, and there’s no evidence that they’re not all actively evil! Let’s start taking slaves to really fuel our growth.”

So...

Jump forward another thousand years or so. Ost-in-Edhil is still a center of trade, art and technology, but their trade agreements are more…complex…because they are trying to get goods and benefits to people who need them in the increasingly harshly ruled Númenorean Empire, without inciting war. It’s still the shinier city than any in Lindon, metaphorically and literally. They did make new Rings, which Annatar swore up and down and with every fiber of his being (as confirmed by Celebrimbor) were not corrupted/corruptible in the same way, nor in any way. But where before they forged Nine then Seven then Three, this time they started with the Dwarves, who were most trustworthy and willing to trust, and then Elves, always trustworthy and eventually, tentatively, willing to trust. But Men…Men were increasingly dubious, collectively, these days. In both directions. I don’t think they forged Nine again. (This did not, of course, engender more trust.)

For Númenor’s part, Elves were envied, and loathed and scorned all the more for that envy. Their time has passed, why are they still so hoarding of their gifts, etc etc. To what extent they recognize that there’s also a (reformed from evil) Maia living with the Elves, it weaves easily into the narrative.

- (“Orcs, Celebrimbor—I’d expect this willful blindness from the Peredhel, but not from you! They’re going to attack, and I need at least three decades to breed and train even a small army—” “No!! If you cannot free them, let them rest, Annatar! We will handle our own problems!” Annatar, who could definitely free the myriad orc fëa from the fiery hell pocket dimension in which they’re trapped while not embodied, and who has definitely told his husband that said pocket dimension is neither fiery nor hellish but is completely unfindable and indestructible to all but Morgoth himself, because the last time he told Celebrimbor about a bunch of weapons he had lying around, Celebrimbor insisted on destroying 19 perfectly good Rings of Power: “…Fine.” Also Annatar: [silently initiates the breeding and training of orcs in the far east, where Celebrimbor doesn’t need to know about it until it matters])

Númenor, of course, attacks first, and very effectively.

I’d say the actual plot starts here but that’d be false. This story isn’t “plot”, it’s political overviews and snippets of dialogue.

Here is a basic geographical fact of Second Age Middle Earth: Númenor is a seafaring empire, and Eregion is inland. Between Eregion and the sea lies Lindon, whence Gil-galad rules as High King of the Noldor, with due respect from many other Elvish peoples as well, in Middle Earth.

Here is a fact about time and fate: the end of the Second Age of Arda is nigh, and the melody of Elvish Kingdoms in Middle Earth is coming to a sharp decrescendo.

In short: Númenor attacks Lindon first, and it does not fall easily; indeed, many of its people evacuate or retreat in safety. But Gil-galad does not; Gil-galad shoves Vilya (II) into Elrond’s hand, claps Círdan on the shoulder in farewell, and stays to hold the line to the last. An unnatural storm erupts across the Gulf of Lhún and sweeping upriver at his death, forcing the Númenoreans to hold their positions rather than chase the retreating Elves—this is later honorably credited to the wrath of the last great Elven-King, but it’s more accurate to say that, well, non-interference policies are great and all, but the fucking second Círdan himself was clear, Ossë started smashing ships, while Ulmo looked in the opposite direction. There’s non-interference policies and there’s ancient friendship, and there was only so much they could tolerate in letting the attack come from the sea.

.

“Annatar,” says Celebrimbor when Elrond arrives in Ost-in-Edhil with a tattered host of refugees and tears on his cheeks, “you started breeding orcs 20 years ago when I explicitly said not to, right?”

“I love you so much,” says Annatar. “Yes. But I had to start from nearly scratch and there’s barely a few regiments worth, and they’re half a year away at best, if I stop all breeding and abandon the young, because someone refused to be realistic about the immediacy of this problem—”

.

“Don’t be stupid, they’ll hang you as a traitor or some nonsense,” Celebrimbor tells Elrond a little later. “And Celebrian won’t leave without you—so go! We’ll be right behind you!”

.

(To be clear, they don’t intend to get captured. But Ar-Pharazon’s armies are competent and Ost-in-Edhil is built for welcome, not siege, and…)

.

1 Day after the Fall of Eregion:

[insert @undercat-overdog ’s inspiring 2 short scenes here—or maybe Day 1 and Day 20 or so, long enough to bring notable prisoners back to Númenor—Ar-Pharazon doesn’t necessarily strike me as a “lead from the front” guy]

.

22 Days after the Fall of Eregion:

I could have this entire empire tearing itself apart in civil war in twenty, thirty years tops. Annatar's mental touch was, as always, like metal just barely cool enough to touch and the eternal wheeling patterns of stars, confident and scornful and surprisingly gentle. Can you endure that long? Then we can easily go home and pick up all the pieces, and get back to work. Also, this entire island is a quiescent supervolcano.

(A few notes, at this juncture, on Celebrimbor of Eregion, first named Tyelperinquar and Curufinwë:

He is, by any reasonable standard, a good person. He is SUCH a good person. He chooses to be good, he tries to be good; he even tries to be nice, which comes even less naturally.

He was, however, raised to hold grudges and to have a god complex, the latter especially in direct proportion to his skill in craft. And he is very, very skilled in craft.

(A craft which, for the first 550-odd years of his life, was spent on swords and armor far more than on gems, first in Formenos and then in bitter Beleriand.)

And the Númenoreans just killed one of his very few remaining cousins, ravaging a city he'd helped build in the process; and then they'd come to his city and not just ravaged it but killed many more of his friends and people; and overall they were making this all not work, his gentler, kinder, trying-to-be-better version of the World Improvement Plan wasn’t working, and that did hurt. That was a bitter disappointment, enhanced by grief and fury and having come of age at the start of a 500-year siege…

And, fundamentally, to borrow a phrase from another great romance: he is just enough of a bastard to be worth liking marrying - to Sauron, Gorthaur Lord of Werewolves, whose standards are much farther along the Bastard scale that Crowley GoodOmens'.)

Volcano’s good, if we can evacuate innocents first. A civil war will catch them in the crossfire too much, including in the colonies… Celebrimbor replies, staring vaguely at a hair-thin crack in the stone wall of his prison cell. We need to destroy, as much as possible, only Ar-Pharazon and his party - the active proponents of war and empire. On all levels, so thoroughly that some of the government would collapse - that's fine. But the main goal of destruction needs to be the ability and will to empire itself. A foolhardy military campaign that even the survivors cannot politically recover from, perhaps?

You have the best ideas, Annatar breathes silently, and I know just the target. Though I think...50 years, for this.

And the volcano, Celebrimbor thinks furiously, remembering Gil-galad’s crown in Ar-Pharazon’s hands.

Oh, Tyelpe, murmurs the master of the Forge of Oroduin, the chief architect of Dagor Bragollach, you know I love a good volcano.

.

41 Days after the Fall of Eregion:

It is important, when arranging the downfall of an empire, to take all variables into account, both those one wishes to remove and those one wouldn’t mind preserving. Fortunately, the Faithful House of Aphanuzîr is still powerful enough, popular enough, that its lord and his son and grandsons are still invited to court, even though Aphanuzîr’s childhood friendship with the king now more closely resembles barely hidden mutual contempt. Perhaps because their friendship now more closely resembles barely hidden mutual contempt, and At-Pharazon likes nothing so much as a good gloat.

Within a month Annatar is at these same parties, wearing just enough gold to be interesting but not nearly enough to be fashionable or respectable—he is still a prisoner and prize of war. But he makes sure to look beautiful for the king anyway, and to watch Aphanuzîr for the best way in as well. The sooner they can start moving non-military people off the island, the better, and for that they need Council votes.

.

8 Months after the Fall of Eregion:

“The reason your Elvish slaves keep dying is that you aren’t keeping them sufficiently engaged with their work,” Annatar explains, mostly truthfully. “Elves are fragile, you know—oh, physically, they can often endure, or at least heal from, things that most Men cannot. But mentally, emotionally? If they despair, or sometimes even if they feel bored enough, they die.”

Under the eye of two guards, the Captain of the King’s Guard, and the Master-Shipwright of Rómenna, he cups Daerith’s jaw in his hand, and feels her pulse beat too fast. He chose Daerith for this exercise, out of the dozen-odd Mírdain captives, for two reasons: first, that she once rode on Ard-galen with Fingon the Valiant, and she can not in this moment be certain how much he is acting. It makes her own wide-eyed tremor and obvious desire to spit in his face much more realistic.

Second is that she is a superb analyst of systems failure.

He points her face towards the half-built warship before them and says sweetly, “You will be working on installing the armaments today. If you alert the Master Shipwright to anything that seems flawed in the engineering, or to anything that might be improved, you will be granted an hour of starlight tonight. If you miss anything, or deliberately fail to mention something, you will be whipped. Am I understood?”

“Yes,” she says stiffly.

“Starlight?” The Captain of the Guard is skeptical, as Annatar drops Daerith’s chin and sends her toward the ship with a shove.

“It’s like meat and drink to them,” Annatar says. Again, mostly honest—though his personal record for keeping an elf alive in darkness is longer than the lifespan of even the most stubborn Númenoreans.

(It is engaging for him, too, to flex skills he hasn’t used in many millennia. Though it isn’t…as satisfying as it used to be, he thinks, to see the fear and hate in a prisoner’s eyes, to feel it burn through their spirit. He’d rather stay and watch Daerith smirk internally as she figures out how to take the ship apart.

But duty calls…)

“I believe His Majesty ordered that I myself examine the harbor chain?” he says, and gestures deferentially at the captain. “Please, sir, lead the way.”

okay so this is actually @aragornsrockcollection​‘s fault for suggesting that Sauron/Mairon/whatever is the Maiar of math, because I like math, I really unironically like math. Now I have to like Sauron a little, or at least mourn Mairon and Annatar a little more, and daydream about What Could Have Been. So here’s how my “the Gwaith-y-Mirdain sink Númenor, Leverage-style” AU would happen 2k of silvergifting AU building up to, but not actually including the Gwaith-y-Mirdain sinking Númenor, Leverage-style:

Backround:

The turning point was, Annatar went to Mount Doom to forge his One Ring and he found that it was…lonely. Control, yes, he needed control, and power, yes, he needed power, because without these he couldn’t create the ordered world he dreamed of. But it was just…it’d been pleasant, working with the Mirdain these last 400 years. It’d been a memory of the glorious company in creation that he had once upon a time in Aulë’s forges, before he found greater purpose. It’d been disordered, yes, but now and then the hammers struck in time and the ideas shouted across trestle tables clicked together, and a butterfly flapped its wings and the world changed… 

And at the center of it was Celebrimbor, who was, well…

His One could wait, he decided, turning away. At least until they’d made Three for the Elves - and why was he risking upsetting a power base he already had? This was Fëanor’s grandson and a city of Noldorin crafters. A dwarf had convinced Celebrimbor to include stylized Silmarils in the city’s ornate front gate! He - Gorthaur, Mairon, Sauron, Annatar - had spent so long building trust and power in Eregion…it’d be easy to point it in a more useful direction. (And maybe, at the center of the pattern he was building, instead of One there could be Two rings, in perfect synchronous orbit?)

Keep reading