Heroes of Might and Magic II / Silmarillion, shard three (and ¾).

Author's Note:

Once upon a time, in late 1998, I created a Heroes of Might and Magic II map based on Silmarillion, playable only as Morgoth/Sauron. Some ten years later, I created a 5-player fork where you can play as one of the Elven factions instead, and I keep playing it from time to time until this day. The geography is pretty true to the original, but of course, there are limitations like using portraits of stock HoMM2 characters for the notable heroes of the Silmarillion. The game mechanics are also unchanged, of course, so it is possible – for instance – for a defeated hero of one faction later to turn up in the recruitment pool of another, leading to hilarious (from a story perspective) situations when once beaten, Morgoth may be re-hired by a "good" faction, etc.

Some time in early 2021, after reading a truckload of Silmarillion fanfiction during the New Year break, I decided to create a bona fide crack fic (after the previous two attempts turned into more serious stories) based on this contradiction. It is labelled as a crossover although the characters are strictly from Tolkien-verse... but the setting is decidedly not.

Intended for the April Fool's day but since I always post stuff on the 23rd of each month, and on April 1st I'll be away from the desk, I went ahead and released the first part (2 chapters out of probably 4, though everything might balloon again as it often happens when I write) somewhat earlier.

Pictured are the four classic Silmarillion characters in their HoMM2 guises. CW from top left: Melian, Thingol, Morgoth, Finrod.

I. The Ainur don't get sloshed... do they?

"Lady, wake up! Come on, wake up!"

The gruff voice cut through something akin to a thick quilted blanket to reach Melian's ears. The Lady of Doriath was not, however, entirely sure that coming awake was such a good idea, for all of her physical body was sore and numb, apparently from being stretched in a very awkward pose for a long time. The back of something that resembled a crude wooden bench was painfully pressed into her back, and her neck was cramped as apparently she has been sleeping in a sitting position, with her head tilted back without any kind of proper support.

Physically, she felt awful. The hröa came with a bounty of pleasing things when "used properly". When not used properly, however...

Her mental condition was questionable as well, and she could not quite put her finger on what exactly was wrong. She remembered spending some pretty fun time with her husband in the evening, sampling the wine from the newest harvest, and… But how could she have become so inebriated after sharing no more than a few small jugs of the delightful drink with Elu Thingol? He was usually able to imbibe quite a bit more of the usual Elvish spirits - and remain passably lucid and coordinated – while she was a Maia, extremely resistant to the effects of alcohol. And where in Ilúvatar's name was her spouse, anyway? Why was she hearing unfamiliar, but undoubtedly real voices around her, as if she had found herself in a place completely different from the one she last remembered being in while awake? And why did she keep getting thoughts of Fëanor's sons, as if they had something to do with her predicament?

When she gathered her inner strength to open her eyes, she was immediately forced to close them back again. The lantern under the tavern's sooty ceiling was shining right into her bleary eyes...

Wait a minute, a tavern? What kind of tavern? There wasn't even one in Menegroth. And certainly none looking so seedy and unkempt.

She blinked a few times – with noticeable effort, too - in order to clear her vision; and ultimately succeeded. However, the face looking directly into hers belonged to... a Dwarf of all people.

This... made no sense whatsoever. None at all. She was starting to remember something quite different, a second layer of memories somehow extant in her mind... Doriath was really under attack by Fëanor's sons, with Amrod's troops surging in from the southeast and Maedhros leading the charge from the north, right out of Nan Dungortheb, of all places, somehow (Eru, even this word was an insult to her kind) breaching the Girdle. She and Thingol tried to muster the resistance, but the Ñoldor-led forces were simply too numerous and well organized. The defenders managed to push Amrod back for some time, but when Fëanor's eldest son attacked from the rear, leading a huge army of human infantry reinforced with titans and vampires, the realm was simply overwhelmed. The last thing she remembered from that part of her consciousness was the courtyard of Menegroth littered with the dead bodies of the defenders and Amrod's face under a wolfhide cowl looming closer...

But what in Eru's name would Maedhros have to do with vampires? Those were only rumored as Sauron's minions, there was no way the Fëanorings, even being as dangerous as they were, could hope to have those on side... And titans? What were those titans anyway? Where did Maedhros even find them? Somehow?

The dwarf clicked his fingers before her eye a few times, moving his hand fluidly as he did, as if checking if she was lucid enough to focus and follow him. Apparently satisfied, he addressed her again.

"So, are you up to some fighting, Lady?"

"Where am I? Who are you and what in Eru's name is going on? Where is Thingol?" she croaked.

The dwarf snorted.

"I'm one of your starting troops. We're in Nargothrond, because the Red faction, Finrod's people to be precise, might decide to hire you..."

"Hire ME?" she managed, completely incredulous. Even though the names of Finrod and his seat of power did ring a bell, it all looked like she has not really woken up from the stupid dream – which had every reason to be called a delirious nightmare now.

"Well... yeah. Look, lady, I understand that you're upset about your faction being wiped out, but it's just the nature of the war. You were defeated by the Blue – Fëanor's sons, that is – and so you were returned to the recruitment pool. Then, the Nargothronders found you when you returned to being available, and decided they might hire you to lead one of their armies..." the shortie continued.

For some reason, Melian got the impression that he had problems focusing on her eyes as he talked, and his gaze kept drifting lower. Everything he spoke made not an ounce of sense still, but she resolved to keep listening, for that was the best she could do. Having collected enough of her wits, she tried accessing her Maiar power to understand the situation better, or – if possible – break out of this stupid dream that, frankly, had long outstayed its welcome, making her fear that she's gone insane (although no one had ever heard of Ainur becoming crazy; what Melkor had done, while daft and dangerous beyond measure, was clearly NOT motivated by any kind of lunacy). However, to her infinite chagrin, she felt like none of her well-tried and familiar abilities were even there – instead, she remembered the instructions necessary to cast a lightning bolt, a standard healing spell, a boat summoning, a way to animate undead... Wait a minute, why on Arda would anyone need to "summon" a boat and what would she have to do with raising undead? She became completely certain that the world had gone mad while she was looking away... or, to be precise, sleeping drunk after spending a quality evening with her husband.

Now, she only had to find a way to wake up. She swore she would never even smell that wine, no matter how the vinedressers might extol its qualities. If it was enough to give one of her kind – the Maiar, for Eru's sake! – a delirium like that, probably worse than one caused by orcish hanshin, she would have none of it ever again, until Dagor Dagorath.

In order to win some time to get a better hang of the situation, she looked around. The tavern was small and rough around the edges, with no one around except the barkeep, a trio of dwarves – including her interlocutor – herself and... a bunch of small flying creatures that looked like diminutive elves with butterfly wings. There were a dozen of those, and they kept completely to themselves, chatting merrily in a language she did not understand – she, a Maia of Yavanna, and knowledge of all living things used to be her forte! But she realized that she simply had to get used to everything around her being different from the usual, at best a warped reflection of her world, and there was no end to this in sight. Until she would find one, that is.

Gingerly, she rose to her feet, and was immediately made aware of another change – this time to herself, and it made her drop a long string of expletives in Valarin – the tirade even included some words she must have formed on the spot from the Sindarin equivalents, for she never knew that the language of Ainur contained invectives like these, to start with.

Both her outfit and her own body changed... in a rather unwelcome and unsettling way. Melian found that she was dressed in a loose blue cloak fastened around her neck with a ruby broach, and beneath that, the garment's folds parted in a telltale way, revealing her cleavage to the world in a most explicit manner. And what a cleavage... she could swear that her physical form, while always considered beautiful by those around her – starting with Elu centuries ago, as she remembered him being instantly enchanted by her – has blossomed into a completely unexpected direction, with her breasts becoming that much larger, and exposed indecently more than halfway in a fashion she never would have the nerve, nor the inclination, to try. She tried to wrap the cloak around her, but it did not manage to cover her well enough, as if it had been designed to reveal, not to conceal (and at the same time, the cowl was uncomfortably spacious, ever slipping to cover her eyes and blind her). Now she realized why the dwarf warrior was stealing glances somewhere below her face: he was plainly enraptured by the sight of her new... physique that probably looked like something of an adolescent Adan's lurid dream. That was... plainly scandalous, any way one might slice it.

The dwarf clearly did not understand the literal meaning of the words she uttered, but he appeared to grasp the sentiment. His face became respectful, as he was clearly impressed by such an elaborate expression of disgust... and then she caught him sneaking a peek at her breasts again.

"Eru, if this is a kind of punishment for some kind of transgression, I'd much rather go back to the Void instead of suffering this nonsense", she thought in desperation, even though the (former) Lady of Doriath knew it was never Ilúvatar's habit to police his children thus.

However, at this moment Melian's miserable thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a new face on the scene.

Notes:

1. I took a small break from the actual HoMM2 game process as the heroes are hired within the castle itself in that game (the Tavern is used for this purpose in HoMM3). However the Tavern exists as a town structure in HoMM2 – except in the Necromancer faction castle (as the manual aptly puts it, the undead don't get thirsty).

2. A random quantity of Sprites and (more often than not) Dwarves is a starting troop contingent for any Sorceress hero that is preplaced without specifying exact army composition, or hired (when starting out or after being defeated).

3. Every map in Heroes of Might and Magic II has at most 6 players/factions which are color-coded. In the Silmarillion map of my creation, player 1 (blue) is the sons of Fëanor; player 2 (green) is Doriath; player 3 (red) is Finrod / Galadriel; player 4 (yellow) is the House of Fingolfin; player 5 (orange) is the Falmari; player 6 (purple) is Morgoth, Sauron et al.