The Valar attempted to repair the destruction wrought by Melkor, but were unable to restore the world to what it had been before. Where Illuin had once stood, now the great inland sea known as the Sea of Helcar had formed. In falling, the Lamps spilled fire on the lands beneath, perpetually marring their shape. In the mountains Melkor secretly created a great stronghold named Utumno, where he built up his forces, plotted his revenge, and finally launched an attack on Middle-earth in which he broke down the Two Lamps’ pillars, thus casting the world back into darkness. So it was there that Melkor eventually returned from the Void, shrouded by the darkness of the northern mountains, as well as by the light of Illuin, which stood between the mountains and the home of the Valar on the island of Almaren. In the shadowy remote north of the world, even the bright light of Illuin only shone dimly. 14,854 solar years) before first rising of the Sun and the Moon William Thomy: Melkor destroying the Lamps of the Valar Years of the Lamps Destruction of the Two Lampsġ,550 Valian years (= ca. The weaponry used in most of these battles (with the exception of those involving only the Ainur) is discussed on a separate page: The Weaponry of Middle-earth.Īs a general matter, the same spoiler warning applies as with regard to the People and Peoples of Arda and Middle-earth: This page mentions crucial plot points and events from Tolkien’s major works, so if you have not yet read these - at the very least, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings (including its Annexes) and The Silmarillion –, you’re proceeding at your own peril.įinally, it should also be mentioned that this page is only intended to be concerned with external struggles: thus, two of Middle-earth’s most sustained and ravaging internal struggles - those of Gollum (at least initially) and, notably, Frodo with and against the powers of the One Ring - are only mentioned to the extent that they find an external expression most significantly of course at the very climax of the War of the Ring, in the moments before the Ring’s destruction in the fires of Mount Doom. This is an exercise in nailing down the essentials of their course and outcome, in chronological order (even if that involves a change of location): these conflicts did not occur in isolation, but they must be seen as against the history of Arda and Middle-earth as a whole and hardly any of them was of merely localized importance. So, in tracing the history of Middle-earth, these conflicts can hardly be overlooked or ignored. However, as in the history of any realm and society, the wars fought in and for it were an integral formative part of the development of Arda and Middle-earth: indeed, from the First-Age return of the Ñoldor to Middle-earth to the reestablishment of a unified realm of Arnor and Gondor after the War of the Ring, in many cases the foundation of new cities and realms, or the restoration of their former greatness, was the direct consequence of a war, battle, or similarly destructive event: talk about “Phoenix from the ashes”. And of course the legendarium’s universe far exceeds the various wars fought over the course of its internal history. Battlefields are blood-soaked places of unspeakable horror, replete with corpses, body parts, the roar, thunder and clash of arms, the cries and whimpers of the wounded and dying, shouts of rage, often the fumes of smoke and fire, and always the all-pervading stench of death.
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