The Ancillarion: Of the Silmarkenstone Conspiracy and the Incidental Fellowship

[Morthoron]

The Ancillarion: Of the Silmarkenstone Conspiracy and the Incidental Fellowship -- Their Trials, Tribulations, Loves Lost and Found, and Their Salvation of Middle-earth (as utterly unlikely as that may seem)

Prologue: How the West Was Won

In the waning years of the Third Age of Middle-earth, things were not good; in fact, they were quite ungood, unwell, and just plain bad. The Dark Lord Sauron, a rather unpleasant divinity with a penchant for cruelty and a lust for domination, had arisen once again (the term ‘comeback’ was originally ascribed to Sauron ‘coming back’ to Mordor on multiple occasions to attempt to conquer Arda, that is, the world as we know it). The old alliances among the Free People of the West, the Elves, Dwarves and Men, had been in decline for some time, and it was considered with trepidation among the wise that Sauron would eventually engulf the West in its patchwork of petty kings, lords and stewards bit by bit as a ravening wolf might gorge on pieces of meat ripped off a prone carcass.

But as the old saying goes, perhaps Sauron’s ‘eye was bigger than his stomach’, for while the Dark Lord slathered over the slabs of fat and juicy meat ripe for the taking, there were nasty bits of indigestible gristle, tough and sinewy opponents with resistance bred in their marrow. These did not sit well on Sauron’s dainty palate, and caused him much indigestion and sleepless nights (although, I am not quite sure Sauron did much sleeping anyway, as his eye was lidless). But to say that Sauron's eye was fixed in one direction (that is, westward) regarding his precious missing Ring is an error of the gravest magnitude, and is a mistake on the part of the chroniclers (mewling sycophants, one and all), who relied on the word of simple Hobbits, halfling folk with the merest inkling of the wide world and the struggles that occurred outside of their ken (in fact, mention of the lands east of the Misty Mountains during the War of the Ring barely merits a paltry page in the annals of Minas Tirith).

Now, much of the existing lore of that time did indeed concern the stalwart Hobbits, their intrepid Fellowship and the eventual destruction of the One Ring. Yes, we know they did have a hand in Sauron’s destruction, but seriously, were they really all that? I mean, think about it, these were a few half-pint neophytes blundering about like naïve innocents, trusting in the goodwill of their betters and relying on blind luck to see them through. Obviously, Frodo did indeed fail in his mission, but that fact was blithely glossed over in a wave of sentiment and relief when Sauron, through his own stupidity, bungled the War of the Ring, and all that wonderfully wrought evil was lost forever in a wistful wisp of smoke.

No! There is, of course, more to the story. It was not just the Hobbits who saved the day, as legend would have it. Admittedly, from the point of casting a yarn or embellishing a fable, there is no better moral for the story than the meek rattling the thrones of the powerful, and the greatest being laid low by the least (it is so egalitarian and nauseatingly democratic); however, there is another tradition, one not so bound by storytelling convention. In fact, the great and wise, embarrassed and unwilling to soil the sanctified memory of an epic of such grandeur, have nervously attempted to keep the tale hushed up, as one would their drunken idiot brother making an arse of himself at Sunday dinner. But the truth, like a beacon in the fog, cuts through the murk and mist, and leaves the blemishes – the goiters, blackheads and moles – as clear as the nose on one’s face (or, more precisely, the pimple protruding from one’s nose).

This is the story of those very blemishes who, regarded as unsightly and needing to be completely done away with (or at least hidden for appearance sake), burst forth in a blaze of glory, their passions erupting, their blistering rage burgeoning forth, and in the end, their seemingly monumental mission accomplished, they receded back into the shadows where they began, and their unlikely (but grammatically impressive) tale was lost to the ages. What they gained and what they lost was a mystery up to this point, and there are folks who wisely claim that some mysteries should never be solved; perhaps this is one of those.