The fifteenth Valar, but not the least powerful, was Melkor. He was a brother in spirit to the Vala named Manwë, the first thought, who later became Lord of the Valar. Perhaps resenting that he had not come first, Melkor became prideful, and, desiring power over his fellow Ainur, he sowed discord into the harmonies they wove to create the First and Second Children of Iluvatar, those who became Elves and Men. As the Children lay sleeping on the World created for them, Melkor waged war on his brothers and sisters causing such devastation that the World became separated into Aman in the West, the lands where the Valar resided, and Middle-earth. A vast ocean sprung up between the two lands, except for a land bridge to the far north formed by a wasteland of treacherous ice.
Fearing that Melkor was searching for the Children to enthral them to his will, Manwë sent out the great huntsman of the Valar, Oromë the Horseman, to find Iluvatar’s Children. Far did he roam, far to the East of Middle-earth where near to the large inland sea of Rhûn as the First Children began to wake from their sleep, he found them and loved them. But he had not been the first to find the Elves. In secret, Melkor had created a host of followers, some of which were the most unfortunate of the First Children, those found and abducted by Melkor, tortured and defiled into hateful creatures, and so did the orcs come into being.
For the sake of the Elves, the Valar fought a costly war in which they eventually overcame the hordes of Melkor, and he was locked in the Halls of Mandos, the Vala who held judgement over the spirit world.
Enchanted by Iluvatar’s First Children, and wishing to keep them close, the Valar bade the Elves to journey westwards through Middle-earth, away from the land of their Awakening to join them across the ocean on ships the Vala built for them to bring them to the land of Aman, the Undying Lands.
The first Elves formed into three kindreds: the Noldor, tall and dark-haired, who became great craftsmen; the Teleri, the great singers and the most numerous; and the smallest group, the golden-haired Vanyar, lovers of the light. The Noldor and Vanyar were the most eager to join the Valar in Aman and all made their way to the western coast of Middle-earth, but the Teleri hosts tarried and became separated, many of their kin having become entranced by the beauty of Middle-earth and thus the first sundering of the Elves occurred.
The King of the Teleri, Elwë, was one of those who did not reach the western shore. He had stumbled upon one of the Maiar, Melian, as she tended the forests of Middle-earth on behalf of the Valar. The power of the love that had sprung from them both as they first saw each other drew an enchantment around them. He became lost to his people and he missed the crossing to the lands of the Valar. After many decades embraced within her magic, they both came back to themselves, although Elwë was greatly changed, no longer as one of the Firstborn Elves. He remained on Middle-earth with his wife, Melian, becoming Thingol, King of Doriath, one of the greatest elf Kingdoms of Middle-earth, and father of Lúthien the fairest and most powerful elf-maiden ever born.
The land of the Valar, where they were received with great joy, enriched the minds and souls of those of the Elves who made the sea voyage. The Valar delighted in teaching the Elves all they could impart, and the Elves became skilled in that which they loved the most, whether music, craftsmanship, nature, hunting or the sea. The Valar built for themselves the magnificent city of Valinor, where only they resided, but the Elves created their own havens, each shaped according to their passions.
Finwë was the High-King of the Noldor, who devoted themselves to craftsmanship under the tutelage of Aulë, the great smith of the Valar. Ingwë became the High-King of the Vanyar, who delighted most in poetry and light. The Telari, who had become impatient waiting in vain for Elwë, took his brother Olwë as their King in the lands of the Valar. They came to the love the sea above all else, residing in the fair port city of Alqualondë, where they built the majestic Swanships under the tutelage of the Maia, Ossë. The Telari were closest Ulmo, Vala of water, of the seas and rivers, the third most powerful of his kind, the only Vala not to marry so all-encompassing was his love of the Children of Middle-earth to whom he was the most connected through its streams and rivers.
Elves were not subject to age and were immune to disease; death was as yet unknown to them. Only acts of violence or the deepest despair could take their souls from their bodies to find their way to the Halls of Waiting in the Halls of Mandos to wait upon his judgement. But death did come to the Undying Lands. The first to enter his Halls was Míriel, wife of Finwë, mother of Fëanor, mightiest of all the princes of the Noldor. Into her first born she poured all the gifts and strength her body should have imparted to those other children who would have followed him, and her son took them all. In so doing she herself became too diminished to bear living. Willingly, she left her body, and her spirit entered the Halls of Waiting, the first of the Elves to die in Aman. But she would not be the last.
Her son Fëanor grew to be exceptional indeed, in both mind and body. There was no greater craftsman in the history of the Elves. Only his grandson Celebrimbor ever rivalled him in skill through the many thousands of years that followed him. Fëanor captured the very light which illuminated the whole of Arda, that of the Two Trees of Valinor and he fashioned this light into three magnificent jewels: the Silmarils, the most prized of his many unique and magical creations. The Great Jewels were his most precious possessions, which he came to guard so obsessively that he locked them away from all others, except from his beloved father, Finwë, and his own seven sons, each devoted to their father: flame-haired Maedhros the Tall; dark-haired and gentle Maglor the Mighty Singer; Celegorm the Fair, the blond-haired huntsman; Caranthir the Dark, in both looks and nature; Curufin the Crafty, who most resembled his father in skill and temperament; and the youngest, the red-haired twins, Amrod and Amras.
As with so many objects of rare beauty, the Silmarils inspired great love in many and yet equal envy in others. Or perhaps the tragedy of what befell the Undying Lands and Middle-earth was not due to the Silmarils themselves, objects of such purity and grace, but the inherent pull towards the music of Melkor that afflicts all living beings since their creation.
For it was Melkor who tricked the Valar into believing he had turned aside from the path of evil and they allowed him to return to Valinor from the Halls of Mandos, and in so doing brought evil back to the land of Aman.
As soon as he saw them, Melkor coveted the Silmarils before all else and he began to sow mistrust and dissent amongst the princes of the Noldor. Death being so unknown and not understood, Finwë in his sudden loneliness had remarried soon after Míriel’s departure to the Halls of Mandos and had taken Indis, niece of Ingwë, King of the Vanyar, as his wife. His love for her was different, yet no less strong and she bore him two more sons, Fingolfin and Finarfin, and two daughters. Devoted though he was to his father, Fëanor could not overcome so easily his mother’s loss and had no love for his stepmother or her children. This second marriage caused great mistrust between Finwë’s heir and his half-siblings, a mistrust Melkor exploited; a mistrust which in turn lead to the second death in the lands of the Valar.
With his children and grandchildren called by the Valar to Valinor to resolve a family dispute, which had been stirred by the insinuations of Melkor, Finwë decided to remain behind in the fortress to which Fëanor had been exiled for his violence towards his eldest half-brother, desiring to share the exile of his eldest son over the claims of his second family. And thus Finwë, King of the Noldor, stood alone when Melkor came to steal the Silmarils from Fëanor and was cruelly slain by him. Melkor took the Silmarils for his own and fled Aman, returning across the ice flows in the extreme north, the one dangerous land bridge between Aman and his former stronghold of Angband in the northern reaches of Beleriand, the northwestern part of Middle-earth.
On hearing the news that his beloved father had been murdered and the Silmarils taken, Fëanor’s wrath and thirst for vengeance was terrifying in its fury. Unjustly blaming the Valar for causing his absence while his father was slaughtered, believing in his arrogance he could have defended his father against Melkor, he turned in bitterness against the Valar in his grief. He swore an Oath on the name of Iluvatar that he would suffer none, whatever their kind, Vala, Maia, Elf or Man, for whatever reason, to withhold any Silmaril from him, on pain of death. Without hesitation each of his seven sons swore the Oath of Fëanor binding each to the curse Fëanor lay on Melkor, renaming him Morgoth, ‘Dark Enemy’, a name by which he was known for ever more.
The Oath of Fëanor brought centuries of misery and destruction to all the races of Middle-earth. Yet the doom of that oath, so rashly taken, would lay most heavily on Fëanor and his sons, for in their quest to regain the Silmarils from Morgoth, they inflicted great evil upon their own people, all to Morgoth’s gain. This first evil followed swiftly, but this time death was dealt by the Elves upon their own.
And so began the First Kin-slaying. In their quest to follow Morgoth across the sea to Middle-earth and reclaim the Silmarils, Fëanor and his sons took the Swanships by force from their cousins, the Teleri, and they burned Alqualondë. One son he lost, his youngest, Amrod, in this unjust massacre, the first of the fell deeds his heirs inflicted on their own kind. Fëanor pursued Morgoth to the very gates of Angband, only to be smote down in his turn by Gothmog, Lord of the Balrogs. Gothmog, one of his most fearsome lieutenants, a Maia before his corruption by Melkor in the ages before his first defeat. He was one of two lieutenants, equal in power and status. The other was very different, also a Maia but far more cunning in his nature, and his name was Sauron.
A long war followed in the First Age in which the Elves joined with the Second Children of Iluvatar, who had awoken as the main host of the Noldor returned to Middle-earth. Many great deeds and yet also many grievous deeds were committed in the quest to retrieve the Silmarils, led by the six remaining sons of the fallen Fëanor, but they failed to defeat Morgoth, and none came close to retrieving the Silmarils.
None until the daughter of Melian and Thingol, Lúthien, the fairest of her kind, fell in love with Beren, one of the greatest warriors of the race of Men. Thingol had unwisely demanded from Beren a Silmaril as his bride-price to give his unwilling permission for their union. Such was their love that impossible as it seemed, together they wrested a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth, not in battle, but in stealth. Before reaching Morgoth, Lúthien had fought and defeated Sauron, humiliating him, earning her and all her heirs his enduring hatred.
With the Silmaril attained, Lúthien and Beren were married, the first of the three great unions between Elf and Mankind, and soon she bore a son, Dior, an ancestor of the Half-Elven of the following Ages. But the curse of the Silmaril had passed from Morgoth to Thingol and it soon claimed him. At his request, the dwarves of Nogrod set Fëanor’s jewel in the Nauglamír, the Necklace of the Dwarves, the second most prized treasure of Doriath, which the dwarves had made for Finrod, son of Finarfin, son of Finwë. Such was the immense beauty of the jewel set in such a necklace, the dwarves claimed it as their own and persuaded their kin through lies to attack the great Kingdom of Doriath, slaying Thingol through trickery. In turn, the Dwarves who stole away the Silmaril were hunted down and slain by Beren who retrieved the Silmaril and kept it hidden with Lúthien.
But Beren was mortal and Lúthien could never be parted from him. When his time came, she followed him in death. Thus the Silmaril passed to Dior their son, who with his wife, Nimloth, ruled the great Kingdom of Doriath after his grandfather Thingol. When the sons of Fëanor discovered that Dior possessed the Silmaril, they demanded its return, a demand Dior unwisely refused, and so the Second Kin-slaying befell the Elves.
The sons of Fëanor attacked the Kingdom of Doriath driven by their father’s Oath. Dior and his beloved wife, Nimloth, both fell at the hands of the brothers, but their deaths came at a high price. Three of the six brothers perished alongside them: Celegorm, Curufin and Caranthir. In revenge, servants of Celegorm kidnapped the infant twin sons of Dior and Nimloth and left them to die in the forest, a final act of cruelty which weighed most heavily on Maedhros who desperately went in search of them, but they were never found.
The atrocity was not to bring the three remaining sons of Fëanor victory or respite from the bonds of their Oath. Hidden by those most loyal to the family, Elwing, only daughter of Dior and his Queen and still only a child herself, escaped carrying the Silmaril away with her. The survivors of the sacking sought the protection of the mighty elf-lord Círdan of the Isle of Balar, and they fled to his second refuge on the coast of Beleriand, the Havens of Sirion, where the mightiest of the continent’s rivers flowed into the sea.
It was a bitter time for the Noldor and the Elves of Beleriand. The great Kingdom of Doriath was not the only Elven Kingdom to fall, if not to their own kin, but by the betrayal of one. Gondolin, the hidden kingdom of King Turgon, son of Fingolfin, Fëanor’s half-brother, was soon to be overrun by Morgoth’s forces, betrayed by the son of the dark elf, Eöl, who had kidnapped Turgon’s sister and made her his wife.
Among the survivors from Gondolin were Tuor, one of the greatest heroes of the Race of Men, who like Beren wed an Elven princess, Idril, daughter of King Turgon, the second great union of the races of Men and Elves. Their son, Ëarendil, was only a child when he had fled the catastrophe with his parents. Meeting at the Havens of Sirion, Elwing and Ëarendil, both Half-Elven, both of royal ancestry, fell in love in their joint exile and soon married. Twin sons, Elrond and Elros were born to them, and they found peace together, but the Silmaril remained with Elwing and it once more drew destruction and death to it.
The two eldest sons of Fëanor, Maedhros and Maglor and the youngest, Amras, driven by their Oath to capture the Silmaril fell without warning upon the Havens of Sirion with a large force. This Third Kin-Slaying was perhaps the cruellest of them all. Of those who had sought refuge from the sackings of the great elf Kingdoms of Gondolin and Doriath few survived the bloodlust of the three sons of Fëanor. Amras was slain and such was the carnage, the Havens themselves were destroyed, yet all in vain.
When the brothers had attacked, Ëarendil, named the Mariner for his skill in seamanship, was sailing on the high seas on his new ship Vingilótë, built under the tutelage of Círdan. In desperation to escape the brothers and to deny them the Silmaril, Elwing took the Silmaril and cast herself into the sea, beseeching Lord Ulmo to take her body to her husband. Ulmo heard her plea, changing her into a great white bird so she could fly to her husband, the Silmaril bound to her breast. Guided by Ulmo, she found him and collapsed exhausted into his arms, changing from bird to Elf in his embrace.
But their twin sons had been left behind, taken by one who loved them as much as she loved their mother, escaping the slaughter hidden in a cave outside the river mouth. Maglor came upon them as the bloodlust left him, and the horror of what he had done began to dawn on him. Remembering the fate of their twin uncles at the hands of his brother’s servants, he protected them, bringing them up as his own sons and he grew to love them as such and they him in return.
Vingilótë, the ship designed by Círdan, was the first of its kind which could withstand the journey between Aman and Middle-earth since the Valar laid down the Ban of the Noldor and hid Aman from the world in an impenetrable shadow. Together, with the certainty of their own lives being forfeit, Ëarendil and Elwing took the Silmaril to the Valar, to plead for their aid in freeing Middle-earth from the evil of Morgoth. On hearing Ëarendil’s words Manwë was moved to compassion. In recognition that they had come to plead not for their own lives, he gave to them and their heirs the gift to choose to which race they would belong. Although he felt most akin to mankind, out of his love for his wife, Ëarendil asked his wife to choose for them both as he could not be separated from her. Elwing chose to be of Elven kind in respect for her grandmother Lúthien and both were granted an immortal life.
And so began the War of Wrath which the Valar and Elves of Aman waged with the Elves and Men of Middle-earth against Morgoth, presaging the ending of the First Age, when Morgoth unleashed a new weapon, his immense winged dragons, the firedrakes. Over forty years they fought, and the devastation wrought on Beleriand by his firedrakes was too great for the land to sustain, causing most of Beleriand to sink under the waves. Eventually the Valar were victorious and Morgoth was cast out beyond the Halls of Mandos, through the Door of Night and into the Void. The Valar asked Ëarendil to guard the Door, sailing his ship through the night sky with the Silmaril bound to his forehead and he has been seen ever since every night by those in Middle-earth as the brightest star traversing through the heavens.
Though they both survived the War of Wrath, the fates of Maedhros and Maglor were not to be so blessed. When Morgoth was captured, the two remaining Silmaril were cut from his crown by the foremost of the Maia, Eönwë, the mighty herald of Manwë. Though sick at heart from the torment of the Oath, Maedhros felt impelled to retrieve the Silmarils and went to persuade his reluctant brother that their Oath must be fulfilled. Initially Maglor refused. His love for his foster sons was too great, but Maedhros returned when his brother was alone and this time, he forced his argument, reminding him of their grandfather’s murder, their father’s curse upon them if they did not fulfil their oath, and Maglor weakened. As the Valar host made camp on the shores of the sea awaiting the ships to take them back to Aman, the brothers stole into the camp and took the Silmarils, only to be caught and brought before Eönwë. Sensing their inner turmoil and hoping they would come to their senses and repent their foul deeds, Eönwë let the brothers go allowing them to take the Silmarils with them.
The brothers left separately to fates lost in the mists of the ages since. It was said that when they claimed the jewels, the Silmarils would not suffer their touch, so evil were the brothers’ deeds done in their name. His hand burning at the Silmaril’s touch and experiencing for the first time the intensity of his shame, Maedhros was said to have cast himself into a fiery chasm, begging Aulë to take his soul and save the Silmaril from the fire. Maglor, the greatest poet and minstrel of the all the Elves, the gentlest in temperament of the brothers, sought out Ulmo. His heart broken, his very soul broken, he threw the Silmaril into the sea, knowing he had no right to something so pure. It is said that even now he wanders along the seashores of Middle-earth lamenting the evil of the Quest for the Silmarils and his part therein, wishing to join his father and brothers in the Halls of Waiting, yet unable to do so, his songs and his soul fading from memory.