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"Wait, it this a murder mystery masquerade?" she interrupted. She glanced around the room, shifting from foot to foot. "Because considering the setting and the, er," she coughed, "authorial resources, shall we say, that we have at our disposal, utter realism isn't quite out of the question, if you know what I mean."

Well, that was... completely ludicrous. On the plus side, Spider!Shelob is pretty scary. She has a nice angular shape which looks much more intrinsically menacing than the standard bulbous one.

On the minus side... everything else.

... I have to preemptively correct myself here. I was all ready to say that Ungoliant absolutely couldn't change hershape, but then I went to the source text in the Silm. Here's the introduction of the Unlight herself:

The Eldar knew not whence she came; but some have said that in ages long before she descended from the darkness that lies about Arda, when Melkor first looked down in envy upon the Kingdom of Manwë, and that in the beginning she was one of those that he corrupted to his service. But she had disowned her Master, desiring to be mistress of her own lust, taking all things to herself to feed her emptiness; and she fled to the south, escaping the assaults of the Valar and the hunters of Oromë, for their vigilance had ever been to the north, and the south was long unheeded. Thence she had crept towards the light of the Blessed Realm; for she hungered for light and hated it.

In a ravine she lived, and took shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished.

So. Ungoliant isn't a Maia - she's said (by Tolkien, here, so we have to take it as canon) to have come down before Melkor - which means before any of the Valar. That places her in a special category with Tom 'before the Dark Lord came from outside' Bombadil, so very select company.

But... yes, it seems that Ungoliant could explicitly and canonically change shape. Can that be inherited? The mearas seem to have gotten some traits from their potential forefather Nahar, steed of Orome; Huan is clearly more than just a big dog, despite being born as a puppy; and Luthien the Nightingale had enough power to bind Melkor himself in sleep, which must(?) have come from her mother, who once lived in the gardens of Irmo Lorien. So tentatively, yes, it's possible for 'divine' traits to be passed down to children, and that could include shapeshifting.

I really don't like saying that. >(

Fortunately, I get to agree with Nesh on the other part: there is absolutely no way Ungoliant or her spawn were gifted with Sight of any kind. Ungoliant got whipped by Balrogs for lack of it; Shelob got stabbed by a midget. Forward planning was never their thing. And, yes, it goes directly against their whole theme: even Manwe's Sight couldn't see through the Unlight of Ungoliant, and that sort of thing always goes both ways (witness Frodo's troubles with being spotted by Sauron in the Mirror of Galadriel, or with Amon Hen - and the bi-directionality of the palantiri).

Nesh is right that Ungoliant and Shelob are Tolkien's embodiments of Hunger. They may help others, but only for direct personal gain. Since Shelob clearly doesn't have her mother's light-eating abilities (Ungoliant lusted for the Silmarils, while Shelob runs from the trapped essence of the distant light of one of them), that means food. Of course, Talion and Celebrimbor don't look especially edible...

There's a couple of other things in the trailer that make me even more :O (in a bad way). It seems that Minas Ithil is a Gondorian fortress at this point - you know, the one that's been the Tower of Sorcery for thousands of years? Yeah, that one. Timeline hypercompression is in full swing. But let's ignore that! We have something else to attend to:




This is either Celebrimbor (from his appearance) or Sauron (from the fact that he shows up over the line 'The Great Deceiver will pay for his betrayal'). Of course, Shelob claims the two of them 'are one', so depending on how literal she's being, that might not even be a sensible question.

Either way, whoever it was hung out with Shelob... and is certainly implied to be offering her that three-stoned Ring. Which... could be anything. It's not one of the Movieverse Three or Seven, and obviously isn't the One or Brim's Other One, but after that...

My best guess is that it's either one of the Nine, or a lesser ring. Whether it's being offered to Shelob as a bribe in the present or the past, I don't know.

Oh, and speaking of Rings... guess what Shelob got hold of:



That's Brim's Ring on her finger. We get a few good looks at it throughout the trailer, and I remember that it's inscribed in English using a Tengwar font (not English in Tengwar, you understand, but English keymappings with Tengwar letters)... I wonder if I can get more of the inscription off.

I thought I couldn't. 'r-e-j', it read, and I slumped. Then a couple of letters letter I had a capital I, so clearly it was just gibberish now. Nevertheless, I persevered to the end of the word, flicked the font from Tengwar to English, and saw:

'rejoice.'

... okay then! Let's do this.

Here's what I've been able to read. Unlike the first trailer, we get a good look at both the inner and outer inscription, so:



Which you can type into your preferred Tengwar font and read as:

Outer: You [...] light undiminished, All shall fear me and rejoice.

Inner: I renounce the Blessed Realm. To redeem the Land of Shadow.

Things to note:

-Yes, that's a misquote/inversion of Galadriel there on the outside.
-This is a seriously messed-up message, with Celebrimbor basically refusing to go to Heaven in order to... mind-control some orcs or something.
-I filled in parts of the latter half of the inner message from the previous trailer (this version shows 'to red... adow', so I'm preeetty confident). Which means...
-They've reversed the Ring from last time! You can't see the image any more (PHOTOBUCKET! [Shakes fist]), but you can watch the original trailer yourself and see portions of that 'inner' text on the outside of the One More Ring. That's... I don't even know why you'd do that.

The tagline at the end of the trailer is 'Nothing will be forgotten'. Between Shelob, Minas Ithil, and now getting their own Ring inside out... I tend to doubt that. ;)

hS

PS: Is it bad that I kiiiiiind of want to write the story of Bombadil and Ungoliant fighting it out on Arda before the Valar arrive? She's the Dark Before the Stars, he's the Song of the Earth... it could work!

The sequence was what I was worried about the most. Some guy on Reddit already commented on other matters. Such as getting into the mind of the characters, overdescribing the world, and others. I intend to let the complaints come in first before rewriting.

I have only read the first chapter but I have a couple of things to point out. This is purely my opinion and others may say it's not a problem.

First of all, I can't get a grasp of where Kagami got his weapons. You mentioned he was close, but did he run back to where he stored his weapons? Or were they hidden behind the wall he was hiding behind? You left out some details regarding movement and location that makes some portions a bit confusing.

Second,the fight scenes are a bit choppy and reads like a pokemon battle. During the fight, you basically listed what was happening instead of giving a description, it also gave the impression of each persob taking turns performing an action. Unless that is what you are trying to go for, perhaps consider making it more fluid. A fight is a seamless sequence of actions and reactions. Maybe try and combine two actions into the same sentence, actions in a fight are rarely separate. Also some actions can be inferred. For example when Kagami used his spear to hit the bandit, instead of saying "He stabs the bandit with his lance, which is stopped by the bandit’s round shield. The bandit is pushed back, but he calmly swings his mace to Kagami’s face." Perhaps do something like "Kagami thrust at the bandit, the tip glancing off the bandit's raised shield. As the bandit stumbled, he planted his foot and retaliated, swinging his mace up towards Kagami's face. Kagami deflected the blow off his shield and was forced back by the momentum of the blow." The bandit raising his shield to block was implied by the lance hitting a shield. Doing this also combines the strike and block in the same instant instead of two separate moments. The same criticism also applies to the rest of the exposition, although it is less of a problem there. I also fall prey to this mistake, so you aren't alone in having to improve this.

Finally, this is a small problem and it probably won't bother most people. But during the scene where Kagami gets shot, the reaction timeframe is a bit off. Kagami saw the bandit pull back the bowstring, but he barely dodged the arrow. It seems like the arrow teleported or something. Unless it is actually a teleporting arrow, it might be better to change it to seeing the bandit let loose an arrow instead of drawing the bow. That gives a good timeframe to "barely dodge" because any self respecting warrior would start moving as soon as he or she notices a nocked arrow and thus it wouldn't be "barely dodged".

So all in all, the story seems like a list of actions, events, and descriptions, instead of a fluid sequence. There are some location and movement details missing, and perhaps consider the timing of some of the action-reaction pairings then change the writing accordingly.

He tapped his cane on the ground. "Happy birthday, and hello." He took a glance at the table, hoping to find another card. Magic was always fun. Not seeing any, he turned to Sapphire. "The Ghast over there and I are planning a bit of exploring. Care to join us?"

Well, that's a quick palate-cleanser of a mission. Storm got her wish.

But speaking of Steormægð,


SPOILERS INCOMING
SPOILERS INCOMING


how come she could not change back? Wouldn't the embryo become human if she resumed human form? And (unless you plan to reveal this later) what will become of the baby once it's born?

There are two spots where I am unsure if it's a typo or deliberate, namely, these:

1) as the world fade around them momentarily
(IMO, I really think that it should be "faded" here to clarify what's going on)

2) The present subjunctive make another fleeting appearance,

"Are you sure you're all right?" The Musician asked, taking the note. She glanced at the code, and then back at Time.

"How mysterious," she said. "I don't suppose you happen to know what this is about?"

Scanning the crowd, she picked out the Garnet Ghast. Perfect! Taking the Cryptographer by the arm, she dragged him over with at least some semblance of grace.

"Yeah, hey, hi again—" He saw the Crimson Woman. "And hello, also, at you, hi there! Um. Okay. So, Musician! Um, you remember—okay, hang on. You, you dropped this, earlier. Okay? This is yours, that you dropped. By accident. And then I found it . . . by very accident, also . . . and kept it, but for you, because it was an accident, my taking, of the thing that is yours, that you dropped, wholly accidental. But now it's back, to you, yours again, where it should be, and always should have been, because you shouldn't have dropped it, that thing, that happened. So, here!" He held the slip of paper out to the Musician, watching the Crimson Woman out of the corner of his eye holes.

That being said, this was something I really liked reading. (I'd say "YES YES YES!" but that'd be over the top). A TARDIS's POV is a really fun thing to think about, and I like the whole "multi time stream perspective" thing. It's fun. I'd've maybe liked to see more of that way of looking at the world, but conveying it in text is hard, so I can't blame you. (Also, did I mention that I have A Thing for strange, non-human points of view?)

Also, Elanor is cute.

- Tomash

"Oh my gosh, this . . . the Musician was the person I was talking to when I . . . when I took the . . ." He mask-palmed. "This wasn't even for me! Thank you for the help, guys, but I need to get this back to the Musician. She's probably got her own puzzle she's trying to solve, and I got in the way . . ."

((Sheepishness is true out of character, also.))

"Very," they said, looking over their shoulder at the White Wolf. They put their phone away, wrote a quick translation on the scrap of paper with a pen they'd pulled out of a pocket, and showed it to the other two. "What do you make of this?"

Perhaps someone else can be more coherent. |D I approve of this on general principle, though!

/Why I rarely review things just before bed... even when I read them then.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

I know that I've spoken with some of you on the Discord Chat. Because Discord is a privacy nightmare due to content monetization and data collection, I'll probably be minimizing my presence on the Discord Server. I'm going to post this in case anyone needs something beta read, since this is primarily my way of communicating.

I make extensive use of Ricochet Messenger (https://ricochet.im) to chat with people one-on-one in real time. My Ricochet ID is as follows:

ricochet:2kkwiqmck2opvh36
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"That being said, I'm afraid I don't know many of the people here. Could you introduce me to someone?".

This one's got the Aviator and Zeb in it, but the narrator is someone they've interacted with quite a bit but has never really been given the spotlight herself. So, uh, please be gentle with the reviews, because I'm very nervous about this one. So, without further ado:

The Aviator's TARDIS listens to her pilot and thinks about hugs.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Hello, PPC.

I'd like to join the website and see what you guys have to offer. I don't want to say how I arrived here, but I'm very interested in the community and writing in general. I've been a long time writer and first started learning my trade on fanfiction, and it went from there.

If anyone wants to know what TripleDES means, my screen name is chosen after a now-obsolete symmetric cipher. Triple Data Encryption Standard was hastily implemented as an interim measure to bridge the gap between the older Data Encryption Standard and Advanced Encryption Standard. Despite its obsolescence, it continues to come back, and come back to this very day.

I log in through Tor, so I apologize if there's any ruffling of feathers from Tor use on this server, it's for my own protection and anonymity. To prevent impersonation, I will be signing all of my messages cryptographically with a Brainpool P-512 signing key which has been selfsigned with my master certification key.

Any data that has not been signed with a key that has been certified by a public key with the key fingerprint matching the one below exactly (in all cryptography, there is no close, there is only exact, or counterfeit) should be considered counterfeit. At this moment, I use SHA-512 as a digest for signing, please take this into account.

F509 6084 6B00 56D7 3D17 96AC 1AFD B5CF 1ED9 B926

My public keys with their attached signing, authentication, and encryption subkeys can be obtained from the PGP Public Key Server at:
https://pgp.key-server.io/0x1AFDB5CF1ED9B926
or through Tor, via a hidden service at:
http://gnjtzu5c2lv4zasv.onion/0x1AFDB5CF1ED9B926

You will need a copy of GnuPG 2.1 or GPG4Win 3.0 in order to verify my signatures, which can be obtained from:
For Windows:
https://files.gpg4win.org/Beta/
For Macintosh, Linux, BSD, et al:
https://gnupg.org/download/index.html

You can leave me confidential messages that only I can read by encrypting them with the attached public key and leaving them for me, and I will recover them when I check the board. Please note that I may delete and rotate encryption subkeys at regular intervals (usually when the encryption subkeys expire) to achieve a very crude form of forward secrecy, so be sure to synchronize your keyring with the keyserver!
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"Interesting conversation?" The White Wolf settled into the group easily, leaning slightly on the cane. "We cracked the code once at least."