About the
Glittering
Caves of Aglarond
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Enlarging Images
Contributing
History of the Glittering Caves art gallery
History of the Glittering Caves in the Lord
of
the Rings
Enlarging
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Contributing:
If you
would like to contribute an original work or works to the
Glittering
Caves, contact Varda . (Erase the words NOSPAM.) AI art is not
accepted.
Please be specific as I do many
other pages as well. Works must have to do with Tolkien and will
be
linked into the Valar Guild Tolkien Encyclopedia, viewed
world-wide.
This is a working art gallery, not just a collection.
Please
send files as jpg. I prefer them on separate emails, but together
can
be handled at need. If
they must be compressed, please use WinZip as I have that program.
I do
not have .rar.
No
money can be exchanged, as that would require licenses from the
Tolkien
Estates and those companies to whom they have already licensed
many
rights, usually exclusively. We may no longer take maps, due to
lawyer
warnings by these folk, since a book of Tolkien maps is coming out
and
they believe online maps would hurt sales. What we think is
irrelevant
to their belief, of course.
Any
contribution to the Valar Guild Tolkien Encyclopedia makes you
eligible
to join the Valar Guild as a Tolkien-only member. We list these
members
on their own page, separate from full members who do both this and
game
honorably online together. The list contains contact
information and country, along with your guild name. You may also
participate in the Forum, using your guild name under Displayed
name,
and come to our weekly online meetings including business and
Tolkien
chat. See the News page for each Sunday for current information on
reaching meetings, along with summaries and transcripts of
previous
meetings.
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History
of
the
Art Gallery:
The
Glittering Caves began December 12, 1998, created by
Amillo-(Valar) aka
Elatan-(Valar), as a collection of original and linked art chosen
by
members of the Valar Guild. He placed it on GeoCities.
GeoCities merged with Yahoo and lost Amillo's access to the page,
despite repeated emails and tech support. The page remained up in
exactly the state he was forced to leave it.
Amillo
found other hobbies, such as making his own bows for archery and
playing World of WarCraft. Around this time, his guild name
changed to
Elatan-(Valar). He passed the pages on to Varda-(Valar), current
webmaster and fellow World of WarCraft player. (We still play
together,
although our different time zones cause problems.)
Varda
lacked sufficient web space but kept searching. The server space
offered by Alatar-(Valar), who has his own computer business and
talks
on radio, filled to the brink, and we were being careful with what
remained. I was already using my GeoCities space for the Folklore
&
Mythology site. I dropped the Plants site when another server
changed
to pay. Meanwhile, new original art from members scattered around
various places in the Valar Guild web sites.
Farmer
Maggot-(V) offered server space on a spare personal hard drive to
handle the various image problems. Unfortunately, the server went
down
just as the sites started being built. After it was up again, he
went
on a seven week camping vacation with his family, and we ran into
difficulties.
With
great good fortune, while Farmer was still on his long vacation
and
during the Valar Guild's July 17, 2005 AIM meeting, a new
Tolkien-only
member of the Valar Guld, AuSteinM, creator of DoorMan Bot for
AIM,
offered a part of his own server space for the guild's image
collection
problem. This included screenshots from games for the gaming
pages, as well as for this art gallery.
Eowyn-(V) intends to create a new graphic for the title.
Elatan-(Valar)
allows the use of his wonderful shields for links, and his images
for
the cave. Many members contributed their original work to this
page,
allowing us to show it even after they've moved on to other
pursuits.
Member
names with -ex are those honorable folk who can no longer be
active in
the guild. The ones still in the guild have often been in it for
many
years and are good friends with each other. Those with V or
Valar
ending their names have played online games with other members.
Those
with (TV) endings now work on Tolkien web pages exclusively;
some used
to be gamers before time constrictions or other problems stopped
them.
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History of J.R.R. Tolkien's Glittering
Caves
of Aglarond:
During
the
Battle of Helm's Deep, battle swept Gimli
apart from his friends and he went with some of the Riders into
the
caves below the fortress.
-"Helm's Deep:, The
Two
Towers.
Gimli
told
his friend, Legolas, of his unexpected
find. He spoke for many long paragraphs, his longest
speech of
all the books, in his excitement, trying to convince a
woods-loving elf
of the magnificence of the vast and beautiful caverns, "one of
the
marvels of the Northern World", used by the Rohirrim only for
refuge
and storage. "The torches pass on into another chamber and
another
dream." He tells of his great wish to bring other Dwarves with
him to
tend the caves, cautiously opening and lighting new caverns
without
harming any of the beauty of the ones already discovered, not
destroying by mining it, the same as one would not "cut down
groves of
blossoming trees for firewood."
Legolas
makes
a pact with Gimli that after the War,
they will go together to visit the great marvel the other wishes
to see
again, these caves and Fangorn Forest. Gandalf calls the place
"the
Glittering Caves of Aglarond".
-"The Road to Isengard", The
Two Towers.
"Then
Legolas
repaid his promise to Gimli and went
with him to the Glittering Caves; and when they returned he was
silent,
and would say only that Gimli alone could find the words to
speak of
them. 'And never before has a Dwarf claimed victory over an Elf
in a
contest of words."
-"Many Partings", Return
of
the King
"After
the
fall of Sauron, Gimli brought south a
part of the Dwarf-folk of Erebor, and he became Lord of the
Glittering
Caves."
-"Appendix A", Return
of
the
King
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