New Challenge: Epic 80s
This month's challenge features hundreds of fresh prompts from the bodacious decade of the 1980s.

After wandering through the forests of Oromë, Maitimo and Makalaurë discover a quiet clearing, stopping to rest. With lyre in hand, the private audience begins— for this song, Makalaurë will only allow his brother to hear.

Concerned by his responses to the paraphernalia of healing, Fingon steals Maedhros from his room for an impromptu garden excursion. Maedhros battles with dark thoughts.

The Halls of Nienna are infinite, for so is grief. Within it lie the waters of the Ekkaia, the sea that surrounds the world, fed by Nienna's tears and the tears of her children. Finarfin is not like his brothers, not wise or brave or clever, but when he cried the Valar did not shut him out.

Finrod ponders on the mortality of Men and how few he has met, and Bëor is there to pull him back to reality.

A young Celegorm and Curufin befriend an old Spruce tree.

Celebrimbor reunites with his family in the Halls of Mandos, hoping to reconcile with them.

The story diverges from canon at the beginning of the Second Age (SA 600). In this alternate timeline, Sauron does not adopt the guise of Annatar to deceive the Elves of Eregion. Instead, he pursues a different path of dominion - one that threatens the very foundations of Arda itself.

Tuor arrives in Gondolin and admires the gardens.

Celebrimbor tests a new idea, sets Narvi a challenge, and makes a confession.

Narvi shows Celebrimbor the Crown of Durin in the Mirrormere and tells him the story of how it came there.

Melian chooses a home for the first birds in Middle-earth.

As prince Curufinwë Fëanáro makes an historical speech from the high court of the King upon Túna, those at the back of the crowd strain to hear.
A silly little scene inspired by Monty Python's "Blessed are the Cheesemakers" scene from The Life of Brian, written for SWG's Everyman Challenge April 2026, using the prompt:
"A great multitude gathered swiftly, therefore, to hear what he would say; and the hill and all the stairs and streets that climbed upon it were lit with the light of many torches that each one bore in hand." ("Of the Flight of the Noldor")

An exchange is made during the Great Journey

A thrall lately escaped from Angband is turned away from Ladros and finds an unexpected welcome elsewhere.

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.

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 of their long friendship, and one moment between Frodo and Sam.

The Hall of the Glass-cutters in Ost-in-Edhil had four panes of stained glass set in its front. (Drabble.)

A compilation of Tolkien-related drabbles.

Reembodied in Aman, Celebrimbor decides to return to Middle earth to help heal the darkness and hurt wrought by the ring.

Turgon yearns for happier days, days before he knew cold. But he knows in his heart that some things are forever lost, and wonders if he, too, is merely a remnant of the departed, a spent husk to be cleared if spring should ever bloom again.

There on the shores of the Lonely Isle we abode under the stars, and yet within sight of the radiance of the Blessed Realm.

Níniel's hands remember, when her mind does not.

"It is a fictional world, but so many readers, deep down, cannot help but entertain the possibility that in some universe, these stories may in fact be true..."
At a Tolkien conference in the Seventh Age, Findekáno listens to the inspiring words of a curious Quenya scholar among the Atani, and makes a new friend.