Ainulindalë
Ainulindalë, for the record, is a Quenya word that translates roughly
as "music of the holy ones".
Now, it all started off with Eru (which means "the One"), also called Ilúvatar
(which means "father of all"). He's more or less a sort of equivalent
to the popular Judeo-Christian God. He made the Ainur (which means something
like "holy ones") before he made anything else. So it was just him
and them sitting in a nice place that Eru made to live. And Eru told
the Ainur lots of stuff, and they learned, and it was all good. They
all learned different things from Eru.
Anyway, so Eru told them all to sing, and each of the Ainur sang about what
he or she had learned. And the music was ace. So Eru listened
and was happy. But then the music started to go all wrong, because one
of the Ainur, Melkor, was singing about stuff that wasn't nice. His
greed and impatience caused the music to suck. So Eru stood up and stopped
the music, and he raised his hand. Then the music started up again
and it was good.
But again Melkor crappified it, and again Eru had to stand up and fix things.
He started up a third theme, which was better than the first two. Still
though Melkor's discord rose again, and Eru had to stop the music again, and
he was pretty upset.
So Eru said something along the lines that though Melkor is the mightiest
among the Ainur, he's still no match for Eru Ilúvatar. That just made
Melkor ashamed and Angry. But Eru didn't pay much attention to him,
and went off into space to show the Ainur what their singing had made. Turns
out, the things they had sang about made up the World, and the looked down
on it from space and decided they liked it. They saw the Elves and Men,
which Eru had made with the third theme he started, and were amazed. So
Eru said, "Eä!" (roughly translated as "Let these things be!") and lo
the world existed.
Then some of the most powerful Ainur went down to the world and they became
known as the Valar, the powers of the world. They noticed that the world wasn't
exactly how it was in the vision Eru had showed them, but it was kind of
shapeless and boring. So they had to work at it to make it good. Most
work was done by the Valar Manwë, Aulë and Ulmo, but that jerk Melkor
was there too to dick around with stuff and ruin it. Melkor wanted
the world, called Arda, to be his own kingdom, but Manwë wouldn't allow
that. So Melkor went away to sulk for a while.
Then the Valar made bodies for themselves that looked sort of like the Children
of Ilúvatar (that is, Elves and Men). Some were girls and some
were boys. But still they could change their form sometimes if they
wanted. And they set to work making Arda beautiful for the Elves and
Men.
Melkor, of course, grew jealous and tried to ruin things. He caused
lots of fighting and warring and so forth between himself and the Valar.
Whatever they made, he destroyed. But still, slowly the world
was made and formed.
NEXT- Valaquenta
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