Valar Guild

January 15, 2022 Sunday Meeting

Before-meeting

Landroval branch:
Arien
Bregalad
Dis
Eonwe
Fangorn
Nar
Thranduil
Varda

Crickhollow branch:
Arien
Eonwe
Fangorn
Varda

Shadowfax branch:
Varda

Treebeard branch:
Varda

Tolkien:

To their surprise they came upon dark pools fed by threads of water trickling down from some source higher up the valley.
Upon its outer marges under the westward mountains Mordor was a dying land, but it was not yet dead.
And here things still grew, harsh, twisted, bitter, struggling for life.
In the glens of the Morgai on the other side of the valley low scrubby trees lurked and clung, course grey grass-tussocks fought with the stones, and withered mosses crawled on them; and everywhere great writhing, tangled brambles sprawled.
Some had long stabbing thorns, some hooked barbs that rent like knives.
The sullen shriveled leaves of a past year hung on them, grating and rattling in the sad airs, but their maggot-ridden buds were only just opening. Flies, dun or grey, or black, marked like orcs with a red eye-shaped blotch, burned and stung; and above the briar-thickets clouds of hungry midges danced and reeled..

Soon afterwards Ungoliant fled from the north and came into the realm of King Thingol,
and a terror of darkness was about her;
but by the power of Melian she was stayed, and entered not into Neldoreth, but abode long time under the shadows of the precipices in which Dorthonion fell southward.
And they became known as Ered Gorgoroth, the Mountains of Terror, and none dared go thither, or pass nigh them; there life and light were strangled, and there all waters were poisoned.

It is told that after the flight of Melkor the Valar sat long unmoved upon their thrones in the Ring of Doom;
but they were not idle, as Feanor declared in the folly of his heart.
For the Valar may work many things with thought rather than with hands, and without voices in silence they may hold council with one another.
Thus they held vigil in the night of Valinor, and their thought passed back beyond Ea and forth to the End;
yet neither power nor wisdom assuaged their grief, and the knowing of evil in the hour of its being.
And they mourned not more for the Trees than for the marring of Feanor:
of the works of Melkor one of the most evil.
For Feanor was made the mightiest in all parts of body and mind, in valour, in endurance, in beauty, in understanding, in skill, in strength and in subtlety alike, of all the Children of Iluvatar, and a bright flame was in him.