daymeetsnight

[daymeetsnight]

Strangers were common in this land, going south had been a decision made entirely on not wanting to freeze her butt off during Winter. Strangers anywhere South of Mannish land seemed to be less ‘kill first, speak later’ when it came to encountering orcs.

It was refreshing that not everyone wanted to mount her head on a spike, or worse. At least in this instance she had little to worry about given the state of this stranger and the fact she had Fluffy alert and aware.

“Oh that’s not training, that’s love. No amount of training will make an abused warg alert a cruel orc to a potential attack. They’re clever things, they remember who was nice and who wasn’t.” She piled the fire up and sat back on her bedroll.

Hearing the Black Speech made her flinch and look to the cave entrance before she realised it was the stranger who’d spoke. It caught her off guard to hear any sort of Black Speech that wasn’t harsh or cruel “Did you- Huh, shit really is different here. Us northerners don’t have a word for 'thank you’, closest we seem to have is 'I won’t fuck your corpse.’. Sit, sit, I’ll get you something to eat.”

Dusk found himself frowning. “Love should be inherent in good training, should it not? The prized messenger hounds from the southern kingdoms wouldn’t be worth their weight in gold if they were beaten on the job and unable to run from limping, nor would the trust between them and their handlers be so unshakable. Those same peoples have a belief that all creatures deserve some semblance of respect, even the ones you hunt to eat.”

He finally felt brave enough to sit by the fire, but he dug in his damp bag for a veil first. How some people could stare right at the coals for hours without a burning headache was beyond him.

“Erm...” He took a minute between words, fumbling with the veil’s ties. “I did know our black tongue is different from yours. My mother told me it made its way to us from those serving under the Eye, but eventually became something of a trade dialect for us. When that happens you might end up needing words for things like thanks, good will, and general greetings, and if they don’t already exist your options are to invent some or borrow from a neighboring language. I... think ours is a mix of Sindarin and Haradrin? That’s a little farther north than my expertise so you’d have to ask a scholar to be sure.”

Groggy and tired the little orc rubbed her eyes, something had set Fluffy off enouvh in the middle of the night to have him barking and snarling "Oh leave the rats be! They're hardly a mouthful for you and taste foul." She grumbled and looked about dor whatever set him off.

The warg had cornered an intruder that had wandered into the cave where they made camp, with a deep sigh she reached for her bow "Alright, any particular reason your in our camp, or should I just assume the worst and let him gnaw on you?"

#wanderingarcherviola #-frantically updates notes-

[daymeetsnight]

It took him a moment to get his bearings, maybe two more before he was brave enough to peel himself off the cave wall. Dusk’s eyes were as keen as hers in the dark, though, and he only needed a glance to take everything in. This was definitely the smallest- friendliest? Tidiest?- orc camp he’d ever come across. Then again, he hadn’t actually seen that many up close.

“You’ve trained him well,” he said, nodding at the warg. “Fluffy, eh? That’s... huh, kind of endearing.” He flinched as the fire sparked to life, shielding his face, but the warmth was delightful despite the sudden headache it gave him. He was shivering a bit, now that the girl had reminded him.

Strange. Dusk had heard of the occasional orcish pilgrim trading with caravans deep south before vanishing back into the hills, but the stories had always placed them as old, well armed, and jaded, and, well, these lands were a lot closer to Mordor. But this here was a little girl and her warg who had just welcomed a stranger into their camp. Agh he had so many questions but not enough tact on his tongue!

“I- I’m Dusk,” he said. And then, in black tongue, he added, “thank you for the fire.” His accent was flattened, clear but with some of the harsh edges rounded off.

Groggy and tired the little orc rubbed her eyes, something had set Fluffy off enouvh in the middle of the night to have him barking and snarling "Oh leave the rats be! They're hardly a mouthful for you and taste foul." She grumbled and looked about dor whatever set him off.

The warg had cornered an intruder that had wandered into the cave where they made camp, with a deep sigh she reached for her bow "Alright, any particular reason your in our camp, or should I just assume the worst and let him gnaw on you?"

#wanderingarcherviola #oh you know just existing through the apocalypse nbd #i miss my editable reblobs

[daymeetsnight]

Dusk was having a Night.

First his camp had flooded without warning- he’d even picked higher ground to avoid that!- and half his maps, his dinner, and his last bits of soap had been washed away. He was probably missing a blanket too, but it was a bit late to check.

Then there was the spiderweb. He’d run into it face-first while fleeing the river and, well, it had been occupied. It wasn’t as big as he’d heard they could get in Mirkwood, not nearly as big as he’d seen them grow down south, but it was still face-sized and... in his face. That wasn’t good for anyone’s health.

So here he was having rushed into the first decent looking cave he could spot, still half-soaked and covered in webbing and whatever else had stuck to him along the way, now pressed against the wall by a very angry looking warg.

At this point he was just glad it wasn’t a bear.

“This was a complete coincidental accident and I would like to leave immediately and with all my limbs still attached,” he blurted. “I don’t- I wouldn’t taste good, the spices I carry are painful to most canines.”

Groggy and tired the little orc rubbed her eyes, something had set Fluffy off enouvh in the middle of the night to have him barking and snarling "Oh leave the rats be! They're hardly a mouthful for you and taste foul." She grumbled and looked about dor whatever set him off.

The warg had cornered an intruder that had wandered into the cave where they made camp, with a deep sigh she reached for her bow "Alright, any particular reason your in our camp, or should I just assume the worst and let him gnaw on you?"

#wanderingarcherviola #henlo hope you don't mind me popping in #trying to get back into the writing groove

[daymeetsnight]

sashaofravenlock​:

A growl rumbled in her throat at the thought of reaching out for help, while not necessarily directed at the stranger, it sure was directed at the situation. She was nearly helpless without this stranger, and she hated everything about that fact. Being injured was worse enough, especially when the injury was intentionally caused by strangers who coveted her abilities, but now for someone to come along, swearing allegiance without even thinking it through, she’d almost rather suffer alone.

“Wild beasts are not as dangerous as you think they are,“ she snarled. “Their minds are much easier to sway than those of man. Men are the beasts you need to be wary of and deal with first.”

Now he was hesitant, that was good, she wanted him hesitant around her in general, though she would settle for it when he was potentially going to cause more harm. With a groan, the fae finally popped the crystallized honey into her mouth, crunching it quickly and swallowing before taking the willow bark from the other. It only dawned on her now that she never asked his name.

“Do what you must,“ she stated, gradually laying back and biting on willow bark. “Do you have a name for me to curse while you do this?“

“Oh sure,” Dusk said loftily as he began mixing up a poultice for her burns, “if you know how to speak their languages. The rest of us have to make do with sticks and shouts, which would thus make Men the lesser of two evils. You can blackmail a thief, but I have yet to hear of one blackmailed bear.”

He paused and wiped his hands, setting aside his salves to gently prod around the girl’s injured ankle. It was too swollen and too soon to tell clearly if there were any fractures, but for sure her leg wasn’t going to support any weight any time soon. He scooped on a lump of salve, covering ankle and burns alike, and began to bind with dock leaves and the rest of his bandages. When he neared the end, he stopped winding to fetch a set of straight sticks, using them to brace Sasha’s leg straight. He was out of linen at this point, so he was forced to add in his own dust scarf to keep the sticks from wobbling.

“Need to refresh these at the next town,” he murmured. “Ah- you may call me Ramoth, after my father’s people. My work is finished here, but do not put weight on that leg for another moon, and you’ll want to elevate it as often as possible. Above your heart, I mean- just sitting down will do it no good if the blood still pools.” Dusk finally stepped back and glanced around for another branch, this one long enough to use as a crutch. He almost reached for his knife to peel away the twigs and rough bark, but of course Sasha had forced him to toss it aside.

He’d need a new one of those, too. He doubted he would find it again in the underbrush.

He snapped the twigs away by hand and offered the makeshift crutch to Sasha. “Do I have a name from you as well, or shall I resort to giving you one?” Feral woman seemed a good fit, but he had a hunch she’d appreciate that even less than his aid...

#sashaofravenlock #REPLIES TWO LITERAL YEARS LATER #listen i never got the notification ok don't judge me

[daymeetsnight]

Giveaway Portrait - Dusk for @forgemaiar

#about ramoth #first time back on the blog in months and yes the first thing i do is reblob art of my boi #i love him ok

[daymeetsnight]

arradil​:

“…oh dear; that sounds very lonely to me,” Arradil admits. “But then, I don’t think I’ve ever been lost on purpose before! I’m sure it’s very different if you’re trying to be.”

“It can be if you travel all on your own,” says Dusk with a loose shrug. “I suppose I am a nomad by nature, so I am used to traveling both alone and in groups. I will admit I prefer a good caravan, but I don’t like the drama that comes with groups larger than that.”

#arradil #surprise surprise some people like not having any game plan whatsoever #totally doesn't come back to bite them later when they wander where they shouldn't nope nope

[daymeetsnight]

“Oh because losing leaves room for finding. Losing crowds can find you some peace and quiet, see?”

“I think it might be time to go be lost in the woods again.”

#arradil #hello city elf!

[daymeetsnight]

Ottoman set of damascened calligrapher’s tools, 19th century

#👀👀👀 #about ramoth

[daymeetsnight]

askrossiel​:

She gave an agreeable whuff, though of course she thought to herself that if she had been wise, she would not be in this situation to begin with.

‘A bard plays many parts in her lifetime.  What new roles do you wish to give me?’

It took him a minute to register what letters she’d spelled out through his veil, but when Rossiel was done he gave a nod to show he’d understood.

“A seeing-eye dog, for now. I’ve not seen one in person, but I am willing to bet my coin no one around here has either. I read about a prince once- I’m not certain if it was truth or a folktale, I never did get around to looking into that- but this prince was blind from birth,” he explained. It was hard to keep traces of excitement from his voice, not when there was a good puzzle on his hands.

“The prince had a dog specially trained to guide him around his palace. The dog had a handle on its collar so he could hold on, sort of like your messenger harness. I’m all but blind during the day anyhow, so you could guide me around. I wouldn’t have to look at the light and you could pick out the things you need without question! And I’m certain there would be less risk of shorting a blind man his change when there’s a wolf at his side,” he added with a little chuckle.

“i know you don’t need my help. but i’m offering it anyway.” -dusk says hi

Rossiel shook her head, choosing her words carefully before nosing at her letter-chart.  ‘I shan’t turn down help when offered.  That’s how people get hurt.  Even people who are temporarily wolves.’

#askrossiel

[daymeetsnight]

“Hm.”

Dusk reached over to give her ears a fond ruffle before he tied on his veil. “You may be wiser than most in that regard,” he said. “I’ve thought of a few things for when we need to visit the market, if you’re willing to play other games than Messenger Hound, that is. I ask first because I know too many of these sorts of jobs can feel a bit... degrading after a while, but my mother often said it was easier to accept help if you could also give it.”

“i know you don’t need my help. but i’m offering it anyway.” -dusk says hi

Rossiel shook her head, choosing her words carefully before nosing at her letter-chart.  ‘I shan’t turn down help when offered.  That’s how people get hurt.  Even people who are temporarily wolves.’

#askrossiel #next up on Dusk Tries To Help

[daymeetsnight]

this seems to be the most common map of the full continent- including Haradwaith and Rhun, but I have.......a couple issues with the geography.

Look, I know big vast deserts are cool and all but they don’t just happen out of the blue, even in irl Africa where the Sahara desert is. In most cases deserts are formed in rain shadows on the leeward sides of mountain ranges, where altitude changes force clouds to dump all their water so there’s nothing left by the time they get to the other side. In the Sahara’s case it’s 1. right along the equator, and 2. it’s actually a giant swatch of grasslands that has a dry/rainy season length of about 20,000 years due to how the earth orbits the sun. Seeing as how Arda was kind of two-dimensional for the longest time, it’s probably a different story for Harad.

The fandom wiki lists Harad’s ground as mostly sandstone and limestone which- not only is it way different from the kinds of ground found in the Sahara which it’s supposed to parallel- but sandstone and limestone mean we have a pretty big geographic issue on our hands.

Sandstone is a rock made from eroded bits of other rocks, but limestone is made of dead compressed seastuff. Smash a chunk apart and you’re likely to find bits of seashell and fossils. Both of them can be found forming in riverbeds or, and this is the one I’ve been building up to, inland seas. For the majority of Harad to be sandstone and limestone, it had to have been underwater for at least an age.

So that begs the question; if there was so much water in Harad, where did it all go? I have two different answers and each of them ends up with a very different map than I have here.

First up we have land buckling. Basically Harad would have been seafloor until something catastrophic such as major volcanic or tectonic activity, or say the Ainur sinking an entire piece of continent, which might just make enough ripples to raise part of the seafloor to the surface. We’d get Harad with plenty of limestone, but it would also have huge chunks of basalt, and wherever the continental plate cracked you’d have lines of volcanoes which would fill the whole area with jagged flaming mountains all lined up in scars. You might have a big uneven plateau in the middle of the desert and strangely flat slopes leading into the coast. You’d also have those weird diagonal chunks floating around as islands where the plate tried to rise up but broke apart in the process. Harad certainly wouldn’t be in the nice flat shape the fanon map has it in, and certainly not all in one piece. 

I’ve already briefly mentioned my second theory but let’s go in depth now. Inland seas. They’re fun. Usually they’re formed in an ice age where preexisting mountain ranges and compressed ice walls trap a lot of water between them in a giant bowl, and when the ice age ends the walls melt or break, the water floods out, and you’re left with some fun shoreline markers and really deep canyons. Now again, Arda was a flat planet until Sauron did a bad in Numenor, so cosmic orbital stuff like ice ages aren’t likely to apply yet. But there was continental damage in the sinking of Beleriand that could have broken say a ring of mountains holding in all that water.

It also means Harad should look a lot like the Bonneville shoreline.* And Goblin Valley. And the Grand Canyon. It should have arches, and hoodoos, and flash flood lanes all over. It should have entire plateaus of limestone cut deep with serious canyons. It should have zones of flat with giant boulders of mismatching stone. It should have visible waterlines in the mountains- and by the way, there should be a lot of mountains, particularly along either coastline.

Either way it’s not going to be one big flat grassland.

*okay I may be a little biased here because that’s the field I know the most about. I live next to the canyons. I’ve even been to the exact place where the ice dam broke and there’s just this giant square gap in the hills. It’s cool as hell and I like geeking out about it. And uh. also I have all the references I need just outside my door, including but not limited to: fauna, flora, landscape details, landscape colors, and a million bajillion examples from the indigenous tribes on how to survive from the land.

#about harad #long post #listen the shape can stay but the plains have got to go #i am gonna have to make my own map after all

[daymeetsnight]

doing some Research on harad again and ohhhhhhhhh boy I may need to just make a comprehensive map just so I can see what’s what and where and why

#ooc #why are all the maps sad shriveled up jpegs #i keep hoping there's more stuff out there and i won't have to build from scratch but #ohwell.png #also need to figure out where the equator is because the continent reaches into the southern hemisphere which means there are TROPICS

[daymeetsnight]

on maps

Dusk collects them. When he was little he used to study and trace them for practice, so his and his mother’s tent ended up filled with them. Renu thought this was fan-frickin-tastic- especially as Dusk’s hand improved- because it meant the caravan could draft and redraft as many game plans as needed until they found a good route- without ruining their One Good Map. (But even scribes run out of paper eventually, so some of Dusk’s practice drawings were on the backsides of old ledgers.)

Now that he’s traveling on his own with no pack animal to help lug things around, Dusk does his best to memorize any chart he comes across, rather than carry a copy of everything. This has of course gotten him lost more than a few times, but it’s also forced him to get better at keeping track of distances and times. He tends to count steps when he walks, sometimes going so far as doubling back to landmarks and recounting just to be safe.

He used to pick up a pebble every mile and count them at the end of the day, but after mending his pockets five times in a single month he decided that was a stupid method, so now he measures shadows and curses the curvature of the earth for making things weird.

#about ramoth #cartography requires so much math guys #so much

[daymeetsnight]

Dusk shrank against the wall behind him, fully aware he’d just walked into a place he really shouldn’t have. But what else was he to do? He’d gotten a little turned around, found the dark sky outside unnerving even though his eyes adjusted like a duck to water, and this fortress was the closest landmark. And now he found himself accidentally sneaking up on a being so clearly powerful and bright- but not with physical light as far as his sensitive eyes could tell- and the pieces were starting to fall together in a way he definitely did not like—

How had it taken him this long to realize he was in Mordor of all places?

“Uh.” He was in a panic, mind scrambling twelve different directions at once. “Oh silly me! This isn’t the tavern. I’ll uh. I’ll just be...” He started edging towards the door.

"Oh shit." -daymeetsnight

The dark lord paused at the sound, the words were clear even through the churning thrum of the fortresses inner workings. He had felt no visitors, Sauron turned to seek out the owner of such strangely familiar dilects.

@daymeetsnight

#thisshadowprevails #tumblr why are you like this #one does not simply walk into mordor #uNLESS YER FRIGGIN DUSK APPARENTLY

[daymeetsnight]

“I think it might be time to go be lost in the woods again.”

#open starter #when in doubt go for walkies: peak dusk logic

[daymeetsnight]

#stiLL APPLIES APPARENTLy #tumblr is so borken and poor dusk can see eeeeeeeeeeeeeverything

[daymeetsnight]

Send me ‘What If’ scenarios for my muse to answer.