Founded in 2005, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild exists for discussions of and creative fanworks based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and related texts. We are a positive-focused and open-minded space that welcomes fans from all over the world and with all levels of experience with Tolkien's works. Whether you are picking up Tolkien's books for the first time or have been a fan for decades, we welcome you to join us!
Sign-Up to Hand Out Scavenger Hunt Prompts Our May challenge will be a Matryoshka built around a scavenger hunt. If you'd like to hand out prompts (and receive comments on your work for doing so!), you can sign up to do so.
New Challenge: Everyman Create a fanwork about an ordinary character in the legendarium using a quote about an unnamed character as inspiration.
Cultus Dispatches: Fanworks, AI, and Resistance by Dawn and Grundy The fan studies column Cultus Dispatches returns with a history of how Tolkien fanworks fandom has reacted and resisted generative AI by drawing strong boundaries in a way that is not typical for the fandom.
A Teleri fishing boat captain turns to farming on abandoned Noldor lands after her ship is stolen. A Noldor farmer returns with Finarfin to find that his land belongs to the Teleri now.
The thing about forgiveness, he thought, was that it was so much easier when the object of it was far away—or dead. It was so much easier to let it all go when those responsible were far away and unable to do any more harm.
Inspired by collecting the prompts for the Everyman challenge, this essay considers how ordinary people are subsumed and silenced in The Silmarillion, which begins a three-book arc that ends with the rise of the humble and ordinary.
In his old age, Isildur's former esquire Ruinamacil, known to later histories only as Ohtar, writes his own account of his escape from the ambush at Gladden Fields and journey to Imladris, and the history of his friend whom Isildur ordered to flee with him.
These were simply flashes, a hint of a wider, greater world. A tantalizing glimpse of more, always at the edge of awareness, never within reach. Míriel would grasp it, if something as intangible as the concept of color could overflow in bounteous wonder over her hands.
But…
Current Challenge
Everyman
Create a fanwork about an ordinary character in the legendarium using a quote about an unnamed character as inspiration. Read more ...
By definition, fanworks fandom does not draw a lot of boundaries, but community archives and events have taken a strong stance against AI-generated fanworks due to ethical considerations and member input.
In a book as full of death as the Quenta Silmarillion, grief and mourning are surprisingly absent. The characters who receive grief and mourning—and those who don't—appear to do so due to narrative bias. Grief and mourning (or a lack of them) serve to draw attention toward and away from objectionable actions committed by characters.
This presentation for Mereth Aderthad 2025 discusses the parallels between the concept of abnegation in the scientific work surrounding the atomic bomb and in The Silmarillion. The relinquishment of self-interest in favor of the interests of others, abnegation was identified by Tolkien as a powerful act of spirit and reason. The legendarium has many examples of the complexities of abnegation, which parallel similar discussions held by physicists during and after World War II.
Bilbo, the strange old hobbit with the wandering feet, senses something special in young Frodo the first time he sees the lad; as they become close, they find in each other a cameraderie not well understood by other hobbits. Five poignant moments between Bilbo and Frodo Baggins over the course…
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.
I really enjoyed this! I skimmed it while bestowing participation stamps and caught myself actually reading. (One of the perils of being the mod who bestows the participation stamps and part of why it always takes so long! :D)
I really like the contrast between the two moments of Feanorian revolt--the leaving of Aman and the antics of C&C in Nargothrond--and the contrast of Telperinquar's reponses to each. I'm very interested to see where you go with this!
Thanks! Haha, I can imagine being distracted with so many new stories around ^^
Celebrimbor is one of the few characters present by the majority of the events in the First Age, so he was quick to come to mind when I read the quote. As for the rest of the story - you will just have to wait and see! By which I mean that I myself only have the vaguest of ideas where I'll take it xD
Telpërinquar took a breath. “I denounce my father, my uncles, my grandfather. I denounce their quest, their Oath and I denounce their heirlooms. . ."
He is explicity denouncing the Silmarils here--apparently would not take one if it were offered him. Wise move! I always sympathize creatly with Celebrimbor. He did everything he could to do makes things right and not get caught up in the curse, but he was cursed anyway. This little story is moving on so many different levels. Well done ficlet and very painful to read.
Thank you! I'm not so sure about the not-taking-them-if-they-are-offered-to-him thing... He states he denounces them as heirlooms, which means he won't take them as a Fëanorian. As a smith to admire the work of a fellow craftsman, however, I'm not so certain he would refuse.
Celebrimbor was cursed anyway, and fighting against it, while making him something of a hero and providing him with a short time of peace, proved even more harmful to him in the end.
Wow, this was a rather powerful chapter! Denouncing his family and their quest must have been immensely difficult, but at the same time such a wise decision. I like your Celebrimbor very much, and it's rather sobering to think of the end he'll take. >_>
Thank you! You are absolutely right, though in my opinion (and hopefully also in this fic) while thinking about it for some time, actually denouncing them is more of a temper/pride-induced moment of spontaneity. I like to imagine that, after he has returned to his rooms, the first thing he does is bonk his head against the wall, muttering, "Why did you have to do that? So stupid, so stupid..." and so on. Of course, this is funny and I am incapable of writing non-drama or non-tragedy, so it probably won't ever be written.
Telling scenes and very good characterization of Celebrimbor.
This last one--what a twist or rather twists--the fervent wish that they might be gone, his failure to understand that in fact they are, that that is what he is hearing, and the complete sea change of feelings when he realizes...
Nooo, Tyelpo, don't trust him! *flails* This is a very well-written encounter though. Your Annatar is so smooth and clever and if I didn't know him, I'd probably like him too. No wonder he worms his way into the Gwaith so easily. "The Vala I serve is in need of your legacy" indeed. *shudders* Looking forward to - and dreading - the next chapter in equal measure.
Well, since I promised myself not to go off into AU-territory with this story, I'm afraid he is trusting Annatar. And you know: the best lies are based on truth; Sauron/Annatar honestly likes Celebrimbor, or at least enjoys the work in the forges. Add that to the fact that he's a real smoothtalker, and Celebrimbor doesn't stand a chance.
Haha, that means I'm doing at least something right xD
At this point in time Celebrimbur trusts Annatar completely and without reserve, so it makes sense to me that he would include his best friend in a project of this magnitude, that to top it off is a sign of collaboration and peace between two very different peoples.
And let's not forget that whatever he claims, he is a descendent of Fëanor, and pride/arrogance is in his genes ;) He doesn't even consider the possibility that he might be wrong in his judgment, even when literally everyone else says he is. I dare say it makes him even more convinced of his own right.
Oh this was absolutely heart breaking. Poor Tyelpe. And that he has to bear his loss and his rage in secret! To have to look at a face that was reveling in the death of those closest to him--despite their differences they were still his FAMILY. even renouncing all he did couldn't eradicate them from his heart or his memories. And he knew them before--when they were his young, fun uncles, when Curufin used to carry him on his shoulders, answered his limitless questions, shared the satisfaction of making a thing of beauty. Very few in Beleriand ever knew that side of the Sons of Fëanor.
one of the most tragic realisations for me is that, by the end, Maglor is the only one left who truly remembers his brothers and father as they were.
yes Galadriel is still around and has her own memories, as does Gandalf from his Olorin days but Maglor knew them as infants, babies, toddlers. He knew his father in the time before--before the rift with his uncles, before the politics, before the Silmarils. He remembered the man who used to snuggle him as a little boy, who told him fantastic stories at bedtime, who taught him to read, to ride, took him on trips through the beauty of Valinor.
your Celebrimbor is having a moment like that right now in this--the dichotomy of his loved ones, that good people can do bad things but that they are still not inherently evil. Poor Tyelpe.
You are so right! It was exactly that sense of masked rage and hopelessness I wanted to convey, knowing that absolutely no one will mourn them as he does. The world changes around him, and Celebrimbor is struggling to keep up with it. There are precious few who at this point see the Fëanorians as something else than a collective "Kinslayer"-persona, without anything else that distuingishes them as different people.
And Maglor's fate is already tragic enough as it was, did you have to make it even worse? XD
One of the things that I believe is that no character is purely evil or purely good, but that eveyone is a shade in between. Of course there are those more close to the 'good' and those more nearer the 'bad'-part of the spectrum, but no one is without flaws or without any redeeming quality.
And yet he still put the a Star of Fëanor on the doors of Moria, a detail that always gets me when I read LOTR.
In my mind I think Maedhros and Maglor stayed away from him at this time because they believed Tyelpe had escaped--the Oath, the Doom, all of it and they were adamant about not dragging him back into it or tainting his name by association, even a moment of conversation with him being too risky.
Hmm, that is a very good reason they didn't come close. I imagined it was Celebrimbor himself who did not want to meet them, and Maedhros and Maglor respected his wish, even though they did want to speak to him, but I like your explanation even better!
Aaargh!! Now I'm going to think about it differently!
It has always seemed to me a symbol that Celebrimbor had made peace with his past, that he had chosen to remember the good and that he celebrated the creativity and skill that he had inherited.
But ugh! Thinking it's Annatar's suggestion is disturbing me!
Haha, Annatar turned out to be my muse in disguise and I couldn't resist have him make the suggestion.
Don't worry, I think in canon Celebrimbor did finally overcome the demons of his past and decided to celebrate what was worth celebrating in his family. And this si only fanfiction; I wouldn't dare go agaisnt Tolkien! (Actually, yes, but nevermind that now xD)
Curufin is absolutely no Melkor, true, but that doesn't change the fact that Annatar's/Sauron's emotional attachments to him are like those to a father. Or that's how Celebrimbor sees it here, in any case. You have to forgive him; due to Annatar's betrayal, the fall of Eregion and he being a prisoner, he's not in the right mind here ;)
I don't think uncle Nelyo would exactly agree with that comparison, nor would any of his other uncles. And I'm glad you liked (?) the ending; it was not meant to be a cliffhanger as it was just the most natural place to cut the chapter in two (even though the parts are not exactly equal in length...)
Thanks! I;m still somewhat in a daze that I both finished and posted it, and am not desperately wishing I could take it back under my stone with me ;P
From the beginning it was the plan to have them reunite in the end, it's just that Annatar happened and sort of took over. (He has now firmly established himself as my muse and refuses to leave. Secretly I appreciate it very much but don't go telling him that ;)
Comments on A Different Kind Of Peace
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.