An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo ve fanyar máryat Elentari ortanë.

There actually is a reference in the Book of Lost Tales to Varda using her "wings of speed" to carry the stars up to the highest heaven. I'm assuming, for the sake of this comic, that Melkor's demonic black bat-wings look all sinister and impressive, but can no longer carry him as high as Varda's angel-wings. :)

The '500 years' figure is from the Annals of Aman in HoME - technically it took her 50 Valian years to make the stars, which depending on which conversion factor Tolkien was working from that day means 500 of 'our' years, 479 years or 7200 years. I went with the round number.

Part 34: Star-kindler

Cheesy 1975 David Essex song reference for the win. :)  Also, the picture of the craft table in this comic is from Skyrim.

Part 33: Gonna make you a star

Apologies for not posting yesterday, but LJ wouldn't let me.

A couple of characters introduced here who'll become famous later. You can tell they're Maiar, not Valar, by their smaller wings. Also, the two big vats are called Kulullin and Silindrin, which is perhaps the most obscure piece of Tolkien canon I've posted yet. :)

Part 32: Why the stars are mostly silvery-coloured

That's Vairë in the swimsuit, if you didn't recognise her. Plus Tulkas and Nessa are there mostly because they're already in summery costumes.

Part 31: Lighting a candle

On to Chapter Three of the Silmarillion!

Incidentally, according to 'The Book of Lost Tales' Manwë and Varda do have an actual palace on top of Taniquetil, with blue and white marble walls and a watchtower. They don't just stand on the mountain peak all day long. :)

Part 30: Cursing the darkness

Another chapter almost finished! And also, so how do you write the sound that the Eagles make in the film version of :Lord of the Rings? "Peeeuw?.

Anyway, vocabulary for the Latin-challenged:
deus ex machina - god from the machine
machina ex deo - machine from the god
aquila - eagle

Part 29: Aquila ex machina

I briefly considered researching numerology and Kabbalism to try and find 'the number of God', but in the end decided that his phone number would simply be 000 0001. Manwë's number is presumably either 000 0002 or 000 0004 depending on whether each branch of the Trinity have their own separate phones.

Part 28: Hoom!

For best effect, you need to imagine Yavanna's expression in that last image to be enthusiastically bloodthirsty. :)

Also, just to clarify: while God came down to Valinor to visit Aulë in the last section and so they were able to converse, as a rule only Manwë among the Valar is able to contact him directly. (He knows God's private number, so to speak.) That's why Yavanna is asking Manwë to speak to him in this chapter.

Part 27: Red in tooth and ...leaf?

I''m running out of pre-prepared cartoons; need to do some more soon. Uh oh. Anyway, we're still on Chapter 2 of the Silm, and Yavanna is not happy!

Part 26: Environmentalism

A couple of times in the dim and distant past, (2007 and 2009, to be exact) I created image collages of two of my favourite poems, in honour of National Poetry Month. Even though I'm pretty sure the 'nation' in question isn't my own nation.

Since I'm currently working on the Chibi History of Middle Earth, and was reminded that it's National Poetry Month once again, I thought I'd do another image collage, but this time of my favourite Tolkien poem - 'Beren's Farewell' from the Silmarillion. Which also, coincidentally, features my favourite Tolkien character:



(Which does lead me to wonder who would win in a fight; Willow Rosenberg or Lúthien Thingol's daughter...)

Anyway, here it is. Behind a cut (apart from the intro) since it's huge.


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