Let's Read Tolkien 75: Mount Doom

Sam put his ragged orc-cloak under his master's head, and covered them both with the grey robe of Lórien; and as he did so his thoughts went out to that fair land, and to the Elves, and he hoped that the cloth woven by their hands might have some virtue to keep them hidden beyond all hope in this wilderness of fear.

Frodo and Sam are in the ashen waste of Mordor, and their next stop is the Mountain of Fire. As they recover from their forced march, Sam works out that their provisions will last to Mount Doom, but no further. They're on a one-way trip, but Sam decides that if that's the way it is, then that's what they'll do. Before his steely resolution to die in Mordor, Sam commits the most appalling example of wishful thinking in the entire damn book.

"I can't think somehow that Gandalf would have sent Mr. Frodo on this errand, if there hadn't a' been any hope of his ever coming back at all," he thinks to himself. Can we just take a moment to remember that the original cause of this whole mess, so to speak, was Gandalf's decision to send Bilbo on a ludicrous dragon-hunt that frankly had no actual chance whatsoever of succeeding, not least because it included a crossing of Mirkwood that would have ended in the entire travelling circus troupe starving to death in Wilderland. So I find it very difficult to share Sam's faith in Gandalf's notions of logistics.

As the two hobbits make their way toward the Mountain, the land around them is empty: Sauron has concentrated his forces against Aragorn's army, including all the Nazgûl, who might conceivably have detected the Ring-bearer. To lighten their load, Frodo and Sam dump all their orc-gear and most of their other equipment, including Sam's cooking gear. Frodo wears only his elven-cloak, belted with a piece of rope: a monastic, almost Christ-like outfit, continuing the ascetic theme of the previous chapter. They trudge toward the Mountain, and when Frodo becomes too exhausted to go on, Sam carries him on his back for a while.

Soon thereafter, they strike the road that leads from the Dark Tower to Sammath Naur, the Chambers of Fire inside Mount Doom. As they crawl up the mountain, Gollum attacks Frodo, who manages to fight him off. Sam stays behind to fend off Gollum, but can't bring himself to kill the creature. Gollum slinks off, and Sam follows Frodo into the Mountain.

So here they finally are: Frodo and Sam have arrived at the Crack of Doom. Frodo, however, decides he's not going to destroy the Ring: he claims it for himself and puts it on. Sauron perceives this and gets a bit of a fright, and the Nazgûl are sent racing for the Mountain on their flying beasts. However, Gollum knocks Sam down and attacks Frodo. They struggle, and Gollum bites Frodo's ring-finger clean off, Ring and all. As he celebrates recovering his Precious, Gollum dances too close to the edge of the Crack, and falls in. The Ring is destroyed; Sam drags Frodo out as the Dark Tower falls and the Mountain begins to erupt.

**

I feel like it's an incredibly appropriate coincidence that my post on this chapter falls on December! I'm also a little bit shocked that Frodo and Sam made it to the end of the main quest in the third chapter of the last book.

The theme of Frodo as a Christ-figure is very explicit here: he suffers as he bears the Ring, his cross, toward the final destination. Along the way, Sam carries him for a while, as Simon of Cyrene carried Christ's cross, but Frodo makes the last leg on his own. You can argue that Sam was Simon twice: first when he bore the Ring when Frodo was captured, then again when he bore Frodo.

When I talked about Tolkien and allegory earlier, I mentioned Eärendil as one of Tolkien's Christ-characters. Obviously Frodo is another, but as with Eärendil, Frodo is not Christ, but prefigures him. Like Christ, Frodo suffers on his way to Golgotha and there makes a sacrifice to save mankind, but there are key differences. Unlike Eärendil, Frodo does not bridge the gap between humanity and God, and most crucially, Frodo is not himself divine.

A long, long time ago, I wrote that the Christian heresy Tolkien was most concerned with was Pelagianism. Pelagianism, at least as understood by Tolkien, holds that the original sin did not irrevocably corrupt human nature, and therefore, people can resist sin. This theme comes to its conclusion when Frodo fails his mission. Letters, 191:

No, Frodo "failed". It is possible that once the ring was destroyed he had little recollection of the last scene. But one must face the fact: the power of Evil in the world is not finally resistible by incarnate creatures, however "good"; and the Writer of the Story is not one of us.

Like I said earlier, if this was Harry Potter and the Ring of Power, none of this would be a problem: the Ring could be used at no risk, and even if it was somehow found to be dangerous, it could, in Shippey's words, be set aside - as the Deathly Hallows were in the miserable transphobe lady's books. In Tolkien's theology, the Ring is a Machine with a capital m (when not actually sin itself), and will therefore not only corrupt anyone using it, but cannot actually be defeated by human or hobbit agency. The original sin means that everyone, including Frodo, has fallen into sin, and therefore cannot, through their own will, triumph over it. So even though Frodo is a Christ-like figure who goes through an extensive ascesis, climbs the Mountain of Doom and is prepared to sacrifice everything to defeat evil, in the end he can't do it. If he could, Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, the event which Frodo's entire journey prefigures, would be meaningless: we wouldn't need him for anything, because we could simply decide to not sin. Because this would put us theology majors out of a job, it is unacceptable. Frodo's quest has to fail. Gollum has to be there to inadvertently finish the job.

Does that mean Frodo's suffering was in vain? Not really, because like Éowyn at the Pelennor, it's Frodo's efforts that make the eucatastrophe possible: if Frodo hadn't hauled the Ring all the way to the Mountain, Gollum couldn't have fallen into the volcano with it.

So was it divine intervention that pushed Gollum over the edge? And if it was, couldn't God then have come up with other interventions, like the one on Amon Hen, to get Frodo there? Is it vitally important for the future that Bilbo, or for that matter Frodo or Sam, didn't kill Gollum - or would god have stopped them, or come up with a different intervention in the Sammath Naur? This is the pointless philosophical hole theology digs itself into when you want both an omnipotent and benevolent god, and a meaningful role for human free will. For Tolkien, Frodo's choices and sacrifices did matter, even if in the end, he couldn't prevail.

But if you want to boil the whole Lord of the Rings down into one message, this is it: sin corrupts, and people can't defeat it on their own, without divine assistance.

**

Next time: a party.

Let's Read Tolkien 74: The Land of Shadow

Sam had just wits enough left to thrust the phial back into his breast.

Frodo and Sam flee down the road to Mordor, but orcs are approaching from all directions. In desperation, they drop off a bridge to avoid being caught, and end up in a thicket of thorny bushes. They're in a sort of gully running north along the mountains, and begin making their way along it. They have only very little water and some lembas left, and no idea where to find more. As they trudge northward, they are surprised to see daylight: it's the day of the Battle of Pelennor, and the clouds of Mordor have been driven back. They encounter an orc-patrol, a tracker and a soldier, but the orcs quarrel: the tracker shoots the soldier and escapes. Sam deduces from their talk that Gollum is still around.

Eventually the hobbits find a way east, onto the plains of Mordor. The land between them and Mount Doom is an ashen desert, but one that's crowded with armies of orcs and men. As they try to cross it, the hobbits are met by an orc-column, but because they're wearing orcish clothes, and apparently there's wide variety in orcish physiognomy, they're mistaken for orcs and whipped along with the column. The forced march takes them toward Mount Doom, and when the orcs stop and get into a fight with another unit, the hobbits escape.

**

I sincerely hope that anyone reading this can take a moment to appreciate the best thing to come out of all of the various Lord of the Rings film adaptations: the song the marching orcs sing in the Rankin-Bass animation. I think this has to be regarded as the first-ever recorded orcish spiritual.



This chapter is also where we get one of our very few glimpses into the broader realm of Mordor, including Lake Núrnen, which was beautifully realised in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. There's a lot we never got to find out about Mordor and Sauron, presumably because they were only really necessary to the story, rather than part of Tolkien's main creative ambitions.

I wondered earlier about the possible theological symbolisms of Frodo and Sam's journey, but here I think they become fairly obvious. I mean there's constant physical hardship, the shedding of physical burdens and wargear, and literal thorns. Frodo and Sam's journey through Mordor is an ascesis: a mortification of the flesh. The trip is tough on Sam, but much tougher on Frodo, because he is literally bearing Tolkien-capitalized Sin on his neck. This is Frodo at his most Christ-like, crawling to Golgotha to the mockery of orcs.

I quoted Tolkien earlier on the symbolism of lembas as the communion wafer, i.e. faith, and it becomes quite explicit here: after the provisions given by Faramir run out, the hobbits subsist on water they find in the wasteland, and faith. When they're caught by the orc-column, Frodo says they "trusted to luck, and it has failed us"; but he's wrong, because the forced march that culminates in a chaotic brawl actually gets them where they were going but couldn't find a way to. Like the quarreling orc-trackers, this is a case of evil fucking things up for evil, but it's hard to resist the interpretation that the hobbits "earn" this piece of luck (i.e. divine intervention) with their ascesis.

If you want to get all Kierkegaard on this, the hobbits dropping off the bridge at the beginning of the chapter is a leap of faith.

Taken together with the last chapters of Book Five, the theological message Tolkien wants to convey to us here is that he's given you a well-executed, exciting story of war, valor and sacrifice, and none of it really matters, because everything depends on a young gentlehobbit's spiritual via dolorosa through the desert of Mordor.

**

Next time: more theology, more leaps.

Let's Read Tolkien 69: The Pyre of Denethor

When the dark shadow at the Gate withdrew Gandalf still sat motionless.

Pippin tells Gandalf that Denethor has finally lost it, and Gandald decides he has to rescue Faramir since no-one else can. At the hallows, they find Beregond has broken in and is trying to stop Denethor's servants from finishing the titular funeral pyre. Gandalf and Denethor argue, and Gandalf grabs Faramir off the pyre. Denethor reveals that he has a palantír, in which he's seen the corsair ships coming up the Anduin - but completely misunderstood their significance. He sets himself on fire and dies on the pyre, and the building eventually collapses on top of him - although apparently someone goes in and digs out the palantír later.

**

The Steward of Gondor is dead; long live the Steward of Gondor. Like the other climactic chapters of Book Five, this is also a short one.

Earlier, Gandalf remarked that the blood of Númenor ran particularly pure in Denethor, whatever that's supposed to mean. I think it needs to be noted that for all of this racist obsession with bloodlines, clearly the pure blood of Númenor doesn't stop you from being a complete horse's ass and not only abandoning your post in wartime but damn near murdering your son as well. In this context, Gandalf gives a rare theological statement:

"Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death," answered Gandalf. "And only the heathen kings, under the domination of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death."

The word "heathen" is interesting here; it really does apparently come from the same root as heath, and the meaning is something like those who live out in the wastes. So it does kind of make sense to use it of the people who lived in what is now Gondor before the Númenorans came, but it does bring up the question of religion in general. What, exactly, distinguishes the people of Gondor from the heathens? We've encountered some forms of religious ritual, most prominently with Faramir's men in Ithilien. The Rohirrim and the hobbits have nothing like it, though. Would you call hobbits heathen? It's a funny word to use. Tolkien's problem seems to be that nobody in Middle-earth can be a Christian, since they don't have the gospel, but he doesn't want them to be pagans either, so they hover in this state between a Christianity with Eru standing in for God and a society that seems almost completely unreligious.

Denethor's obsession with death and the end of his house is, of course, the culmination of Tolkien's idea of the "Egyptian" character of Gondor, with Denethor wanting a royal funeral so he can travel to the afterlife with his son. It's almost bitterly ironic that Denethor declaims on the failure of the West, like so many racists of Tolkien's time and ours, when everything that happens in this chapter is really a failure of his character and leadership.

It's also kind of funny to me that Denethor accuses Gandalf of the same things Moorcock and others have: ordering everyone around and seeking to remake Middle-earth in his own image. It's no coincidence that he says many of the same things Saruman did.

Gandalf seems to take it a little hard that he had to go rescue Faramir, and while he was busy, Théoden was killed. This raises two questions in my mind. First, why did he feel he had to rescue Faramir in the first place? Denethor had already abandoned his command, and Gandalf and Prince Imrahil were de facto in charge. If Denethor burned himself and Faramir, what difference would it have made to the battle? None that I can see.

Secondly, what would have happened if Gandalf had ridden out and confronted the Witch-king? Would he have destroyed him, or would the boss Nazgûl have lived to fight another day? You can certainly argue that Gandalf is "no man", but a more Tolkienian reading here would be that Sauron's corruption of Denethor accidentally leads to the destruction of the Witch-king. But even Gandalf isn't omniscient.

**

Next time: leechcraft.

Let's Play Here I Stand - by email

I don't know why it took me so long to find out that GMT Games has done an epic board game on the Reformation, but now that I know about it, we're definitely playing Here I Stand. A monstrously complicated card-driven game with a 40-page rulebook and separate setup guide, Here I Stand has mechanics for everything from theological debates and French chateaus to Ottoman piracy and circumnavigating the world, not to mention a table where you roll to find out how Henry of Eight's love life is going, complete with an individual cardboard counter for each wife. At the end of the day, whoever has the most victory points wins.

Our bodies are not ready; they will not be ready; nonetheless we are doing this.

**

After a succesful attempt at the Game of Thrones board game, we got most of the gang back together for a game of Here I Stand. We're uniquely qualified to play this. I'll be first in player order as the Ottomans; I've majored in Arabic and Islamic Studies in the past, and most importantly, I've read Mikael Hakim several times. Also, here's a picture of me at the Reformation Wall in Geneva.

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Vacation, day 3. The trip continues; until I get back online, enjoy this selfie I took with Oliver Cromwell at Geneva's absolutely ludicrous Reformation Wall.

A post shared by Michael Halila (@michaelhalila) on May 26, 2017 at 12:46am PDT

Perhaps even more impressively, we've arranged to have players with theology degrees represent both the Vatican and the Protestants, so I fully expect those theological debate mechanics to get a thorough working out. With three less theological but very competent board gamers representing France, England and the Hapsburgs, we are ready to Here I Stand.


**

Our first attempt took eight grinding hours, during which we managed to play a grand total of three (3) turns.

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A post shared by Michael Halila (@michaelhalila) on Feb 22, 2020 at 1:49pm PST

For posterity, let it be recorded that the first card played in the first action phase was Shipbuilding, as the event. This actually turned out quite well for me, since Barbary Pirates came out fairly early, and the Hapsburgs invaded Algiers and I had to go through quite some trouble to drive their fleet back! Meanwhile, the other bastards played both Revolt in Egypt and War in Persia, so my armies disappeared off to fight these foreign wars very quickly; while I did knock out Hungary-Bohemia, I spent most of the game firmly on the back foot as I had very few cards or troops.

Meanwhile, the Reformation got off to a slowish start and the Diet of Worms ended in stalemate. Things looked bad for France when England declared war and invaded, with Hapsburg troops massing on the Spanish border, but the English army was outflanked and defeated, and the Hapsburgs not only made peace with the French but actually allied with them. The French built some chateaus and drove into Italy, which left them with the most victory points when we hit our time constraint during the third turn.

**

Based on our initial attempt, I only really have three criticisms of Here I Stand. One is that the board can get very cluttered at times; to the extent that it can genuinely get confusing trying to figure out what is where, especially looking down the length of the board. The other is that the rules really can be absolutely bewildering at times, especially when trying to look something up in mid-game - which, quite frankly, is something that's going to be happening a lot. It's been said that none of the individual rules in Here I Stand are particularly complicated, and I sort of accept that. But the problem is the sheer volume of rules, which makes it really difficult to get a handle on all of them. So to put it mildly, a generous amount of time needs to be allocated to poring over the rulebook in-game.

This really exacerbates the third and biggest problem: it can be a long time between player turns. When the Protestant player slaps down A Mighty Fortress and starts making his six reformation attempts in Germany, requiring us to dig out the rulebook and figure out exactly how many dice he's rolling and who wins ties where, and you're a player with no direct stake in any of this - how do you not tune out? It can also be mildly frustrating when players are getting very different amounts of cards; I spent something like half of turn three just hanging around, watching the Hapsburgs demolish my position in Hungary, since I started with three cards and he had seven or eight.

The sheer complexity of the rules can make it very difficult to get invested in the game, and the amount of downtime between turns can make it very difficult to stay invested. Despite this, I found Here I Stand to be an absolutely fascinating experience; I can easily understand how someone else might find it to be anything but.

**

Having said this, I feel that Here I Stand is an absolutely extraordinary game, and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to play it. Our original plan was to dedicate a summer weekend to playing it properly, but then, of course, the coronavirus happened. We've quarantined ourselves and cancelled all our gaming activities for the spring; in practical terms, you could say we're stuck here in our apartment and there's not a lot we can do about it.

So instead of a weekend of Here I Stand, we're going to be responsible citizens and play out this reformation the old-fashioned way: by email. With the help of my partner, I will be maintaining the physical board in our living room, and everyone will be e-mailing in their moves. Here it is, by the way:

Both the rulebook and scenario book are available for download on the GMT Games website. We'll be playing the long campaign, obviously. I'll be doing regular updates on this blag and my social medias as well; because there will be a full written record of every move, I can post a play-by-play account here. I'm going to shoot for one post per turn, but we'll see how it goes.

Finally, I thought I'd say a couple of words about each faction and their starting position in the game, so that if anyone wants to follow along they'll have some idea where everyone's starting from. Every faction also has a home card (the Papacy has two), which is never discarded and always returns to that player's hand.


The Ottomans

Fresh from the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottomans are ruled by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and start the game at war with the minor power Hungary-Bohemia. Historically, this was when the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna but eventually had to withdraw. The Ottomans are the only power that can build corsairs and gain victory points through piracy.

The Ottoman home card is Janissaries. Named after the slave soldier corps that came to dominate the Ottoman military, the card can be played for five command points, or used to generate troops or affect a combat.

The Hapsburgs

The mightiest power in Europe, Emperor Charles V rules modern-day Spain, the Netherlands, southern Italy, Austria and Germany. They're still embroiled in the Italian Wars with France, which started in the previous century, and so start the game at war with France. As ruler of Germany, the Emperor also gets involved in the religious struggle, and with a conquistador already underway, they also have a headstart to the New World. There's no areas of the game where the Hapsburgs aren't involved.

The Hapsburg home card is Holy Roman Emperor. The card represents Charles V charging around his widely dispersed empire, and can be used to move him about and conduct operations, making sure the Emperor is always in the thick of it.

England

English policy on the eve of the Reformation is concerned with exactly one thing: producing a lawful heir for Henry VIII. There's a pregnancy table for his wives and everything. Also, as the game goes on, the English Reformation starts, and everything generally gets more complicated. The English are secure on their island, but have to reach out in order to win.

The English home card is Six Wives of Henry VIII, which can be used to declare war on England's traditional enemies (i.e. everyone) or pursue Henry's quest for a male heir.

France

The French start the game under the rule of Francis I, a great patron of the French Renaissance. The French are trying to conquer Italy, but can also gain victory points by building chateaus and, of course, colonizing the New World.

The French home card is Patron of the Arts, which is good for either 5 command points or building a chateau.

The Papacy

The Medici pope Leo X is going to have his papacy blighted by that dude from Germany. The Vatican holds very little territory and is at war with the French over North Italy, and needs to divide their attention between preserving their holdings and fighting the German heresy. They can gain victory points by building St. Peter's Basilica, which is what exacerbated the heresy in the first place, and have the theologically delightful action Burn Books for 2 CP.

Uniquely, the Papacy has two home cards: Papal Bull and Leipzig Debate.

These let the Pope excommunicate Christian rulers and call theological debates to try to quash the rising Protestant heresy.

The Protestants

Speaking of heresy, here's the last of the six factions in impulse order. Until the Schmalkaldic League event happens, the Protestants play very differently from the other factions: with no military or controlled territory, they focus on converting spaces on the map to Protestantism.

The Protestant home card is Here I Stand, which lets them insert Martin Luther into debates or find cards in the discard pile so they can get their various conversion events into play.

The battle between the Protestants and the Catholics is tracked on the Religious Struggle Card:

**

So, the game has been set up, the e-mail thread has been started: for the next who knows how many months, we are Here I Stand. You can read what happened on the first turn here!

CKII: The House of Solomon

And Sulaiman was Dawood's heir, and he said: O men! we have been taught the language of birds, and we have been given all things; most surely this is manifest grace.

- the Qurʼān, 27:16

Like I said in my previous Crusader Kings II post, there have been so many changes to the game since I last played that I need to figure it all out again. When I finished my teaching last fall, it felt like a good time to do just that. One of my lecture courses was on the Cold War, and I talked about the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. He reckoned himself part of a dynasty reaching all the way back to the Biblical King Solomon. How am I supposed to not think about Crusader Kings? I tried playing as a tribal ruler in Africa before, and it didn't go great. Maybe I should try being a successor of King Solomon?

I set the start date to 769, found the Solomonid King of Abyssinia, and got started. The goal in this game is going to be very simple: survive. In reality, the Solomonids made it to 1975, when Emperor Haile Selassie was murdered by communists. In Crusader Kings, this isn't very easy to do; the defensive advantages of the Ethiopian Highlands aren't that great in the game, and the Prophet's alleged command to his followers to leave the Abyssinians in peace is nowhere to be found. Allegedly, the Prophet sent his daughter Ruqayyah and her husband ʿUthmān, the future Rāšidūn caliph, to safety in Abyssinia when the Quraysh were still opposed to Islam, and in gratitude commanded his followers to respect the Abyssinians' Christian faith. In Crusader Kings at least, the Abbasid caliphate is already firmly established and not particularly well-disposed toward Abyssinia, and I'm not sure if there's a lot I can do to stop being swallowed up by them. I'm just going to have to hope they have better things to do - and that the Catholics invent crusades soon.

In the game, the Solomonids are miaphysites, which may well have been the case if they actually ruled as far back as then. I'm planning a series of lectures on the Crusades, and I think much of, if not all of the first one is going to have to be dedicated to Christology, because it's very difficult to understand the Middle East before the Crusades without understanding the Christological debates that split Christianity into so many different sects long before the east-west divide.

To make a long and complicated story very short, the issue is the physis (φύσις) or nature of Jesus. Early theologians believed that Jesus was both divine and human, but how did that work in practice? By the time the Gospel of John came to be written, Christianity was already being expressed in the language of Greek philosophy: in the beginning, there was the logos (λόγος). While this made Christianity a lot easier to sell in the Hellenic world, it also gave rise to several intractable theological problems. By associating Jesus's divinity with the Platonic ideal of the logos, it creates an issue with Jesus's actions and experiences because the logos resides in the perfect and unchanging realm of ideas. If he is the logos, then he must be perfect, and implicit in the Platonic definition of perfect is that a perfect thing cannot change. If Jesus cannot experience change, can he be said to have actually suffered on the cross? And if he didn't suffer, did he really redeem mankind?

The official opinion of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and indeed Anglican and most Protestant churches is duophysitism, as defined as the Council of Chalcedon in 451: Christ is fully human and fully divine, having two natures (hence duophysitism) which cannot be separated from each other. An opposing view was championed by Cyril of Alexandria, a complete villain and vicious antisemite, whose thugs murdered the philosopher Hypatia: Cyril maintained that Christ had only one nature, which united the divine and human. This position came to be called miaphysitism, and became the creed of the Oriental Orthodox churches, including the Coptic church of Egypt and the church of Ethiopia. Hence Crusader Kings II models miaphysitism as a branch of Christianity with a Coptic pope resident in Alexandria but mostly practiced in Abyssinia.

A more extreme formulation of the same idea is monophysitism, a doctrine that maintains Christ had only one nature, in which the divine and human were not united, but the divine nature of Christ effectively replaced some parts of the human nature. Apollinarism, named after Apollinaris of Laodicea, maintained that Jesus had a human nature, but his soul had been effectively replaced by his divinity. I've always thought of it as saying that Jesus was, in a sense, a man possessed by god. The even more extreme doctrine of Eutychianism maintains that Jesus's human nature was dissolved into his divinity, and therefore Jesus really only had a divine nature. Monophysitism is condemned as a heresy, and is modelled as a heresy of miaphysitism in Crusader Kings II.

In the first century or so of my campaign, monophysitism is key. It's apparently a popular heresy along the upper Nile, and we used this to our advantage early on: an independent province or duchy would experience a monophysite revolt, convert, and we'd declare holy war and conquer the heretics. After some heresy-driven consolidation, we ended up at a rough strategic balance at the uppermost reaches of the Nile on the game map: the miaphysite realms of Abyssinia, Makuria and Alodia, all miaphysite and all approximately as strong. We and the Makurians were under pressure from the Muslims to the north and east, the Alodians from the pagans to the west.

The first dramatic change to this balance was when Alodia converted to monophysitism, which led to several serious wars over the exact nature of the divine person of Christ. The second was when the Abbasids swallowed up almost half of Makuria and all of Alodia.

The Abbasid expansion made life a little bit more complicated for us. Luckily, the caliph's attention was elsewhere, but we still had to fight off several holy wars from minor Abbasid rulers. We defeated an invasion from Yemen, but the sultan of Egypt then invaded with a far superior force. Our only chance was to defeat his two armies separately, and we were rewarded with a tremendous stroke of luck.

Soon thereafter, King Rema Armah was succeeded by his son, but we don't talk about him.

King Rema Armah's grandson Kifle Solomonid died at the young age of 34; the stress of defending the kingdom and trying to keep Makuria standing got to him. He was succeeded by his son, King Benaim (859-921), and that's when things really started to get interesting.

In 879, the Abbasids exploded.

Muslim dynasties in Crusader Kings II can suffer from decadence. If their decadence gets high enough, they can get Howardianly invaded by a more virile nomad tribe, which usurps the dynasty and shatters their realm. In our case, the Abbasids were overthrown by the Muhallabids, and all of a sudden the map looks very different!

In the year 900, appropriately enough while we were still in the middle of a holy war, the Catholics invented crusading. Apparently the Umayyads of al-Andalus expanded far enough into France to trigger the crusades, which works for us.

Now that crusades are a thing, in 903 King Benaim founded the Miaphysite holy order, the Order of Saint Anthony. Apparently there was never any such chivalric order in Ethiopia, but many westerners thought it existed and it was in fact created by the Ethiopian monarchy in exile in the 1980s, so hey, why not. In the game, they provide a tremendously useful force of heavy cavalry that's available for free when defending against a holy war. This is an excellent investment for us, and I for one am delighted that the Umayyads were so interested in France.

Eventually, the Abbasids recovered the caliphate, but not their territories in Persia and beyond. King Benaim was able to take advantage of the chaos to conquer the Horn of Africa and even grab Socotra, where we founded a vassal merchant republic of our own.

With that additional income in the royal pockets, it was time to start construction on my first ever great work: the Great Library of Aksum. One of the (frankly ahistorical) downsides of starting in Abyssinia is the abysmally low technology level, and I feel like we need to do everything we can to change that. A Great University would be even better, but we don't have the tech for it, and anyway the Great Library was always my favorite wonder in Civilization.

**

As the story has it, the historical empire of Aksum was destroyed by Queen Judith of the Jewish kingdom of Semien. My Abyssinian kingdom was spared a Judith, but that's not to say they didn't try. Semien had tried to stab us in the back several times, launching a holy war when we were distracted somewhere else, but we'd managed to hold them off. After King Benaim's death, they made another attempt.

Instead of a Judith, they had a King Pirkoi, who was pretty much a military genius. When my idiot vassals decided to start a rebellion for more council power, Pirkoi launched a holy war and managed to conquer Aksum. The morons and their council cost us the heart of the kingdom. I had the ringleader executed, and damn near quit the whole game there and then.

Things looked great for King Pirkoi. He'd conquered Aksum, humiliated the dynasty of Solomon, and was now the proud owner of the Great Library of Aksum. Empires have been started with less, by lesser men. It would be a real shame if something happened to him.

A key part of the success of our plot was the enthusiastic participation of his wife. Pirkoi was succeeded by his son, who was still a child when we retook Aksum in a holy war. The second holy war saw an invasion of Semien itself, the capture of the young king, and the extinguishing of his kingdom.

While all this was going on, we also made an unusual addition to the royal treasury.

Ever since the Hermetic Order was founded, I've tried to get my kings to be members. The Learning boosts really help with developing technology, and I've also started a collection of magnum opuses. The stat bonuses they offer are simply too good to pass up.

Meanwhile, we've also worked to develop tolerance so we can advance the status of women in Abyssinia. While I like that you can work to change the gender laws in Crusader Kings II, I'm also disappointed that the default "traditional" model everywhere is maximum misogyny, when we don't actually know that was necessarily the case at all. Still, at least the game makes the most basic argument for gender equality: full status of women doubles the amount of available commanders.

In 974 we got a whole new kind of challenge: the plague. The royal family survived in seclusion, with food threatening to run out when the pandemic moved on, but the destruction was almost complete.

By the millenium, the Muhallabids had returned to the throne again, and their empire stretched from Spain to Afghanistan. In 1008, they won a jihad against Byzantium for the kingdom of Anatolia.

This is how things stood in 1024. Eastern Europe was dominated by the pagan realms of Serbia and Novgorod; Catholic Sweden had risen to a surprising stature with lands all the way down to the Adriatic; and a Nenets noble had founded the Holy Roman Empire in Italy. Dominating the Middle East and Africa is the Muhallabid empire.

Facing this massive Abbasid/Muhallabid blob, there's not a lot I can do except strengthen my realm, hope they stay busy elsewhere and bide my time. In other words, try to survive. We've almost made it to the starting date of the vanilla game, after all, with a strong kingdom, a flourishing dynasty and several great works to our name.

**

Finally, some thoughts.

In the past, I've tried to get my realm to primogeniture succession as fast as possible, but over this campaign I've actually become very fond of feudal elective succession. Of course, you need the right circumstances for it, but if you can manage to have at least most of the significant electors be from your dynasty, the risk of game over is very low, and I think the benefits far outweigh the costs. You can pick the person best suited to be king, instead of being saddled with potentially useless children, and since the electors will rarely pick minors, inconvenient regencies are very rare. When you can avoid the risk of the title passing to another dynasty, I feel like feudal elective is a really good system. Best of all, it has no technology requirements, so you can move straight from gavelkind to feudal elective.

It does come with some surprises, though. For instance, one duke who was elected king turned out to have founded a mercenary company, which is not something I'd have done in our current situation. I couldn't figure out how much money I was making out of it, and I wanted my troops back, and had a hell of a time catching the company between jobs so I could disband it. Seeing as how that seemed to make next to no difference to my economy, it didn't seem like a great deal. Although I did get the achievement!

Also, in these post-Monks and Mystics days, you're guaranteed at least one surprise Satanist per dynasty, and maybe more with feudal elective. Still, I think it's worth the occasional werewolf.

**

Next time: a new millenium.

Let's Read Tolkien 57: The Window on the West

It seemed to Sam that he had only dozed for a few minutes when he awoke to find that it was late afternoon and Faramir had come back.

Faramir returns from leading the ambush to interrogate Frodo. Since Frodo has to explain himself somehow, he already admitted to being the halfling spoken of in the prophetic words that Boromir brought to Rivendell, but he tries to not reveal what Isildur's Bane is, or what his specific errand is. He learns from Faramir that Boromir is dead, because Faramir saw his body floating down the river in a grey elf-boat. Frodo can explain the provenance of the boat and Boromir's elven-cloak, and recalls Boromir's horn, which was found shattered in the river.

Faramir takes the hobbits to his company's hideout, and chats with Frodo on the way there, making many shrewd guesses. From Gandalf's inquiries in Minas Tirith, he had already concluded that Isildur had taken from Sauron "some heirloom of power and peril", which he would refuse as a weapon of the Dark Lord.

They arrive at the rangers' hideout, a cave behind a waterfall. There they eat, and as the hobbits chat with Faramir, Sam blurts out that Frodo is carrying "the Enemy's Ring". Like Galadriel before him, Faramir passes the test and doesn't succumb to the temptation. Frodo admits that he's trying to get to Mordor, to destroy the Ring. He almost collapses on the spot from sheer exhaustion, and the hobbits are taken to bed.

**

There's a hint in Faramir's conversation with Frodo of Tolkien's earlier idea of a rivalry between Aragorn and Boromir:

"If he were satisfied of Aragorn's claim, as you say, he would greatly reverence him. But the pinch had not yet come. They had not yet reached Minas Tirith or become rivals in her wars.

Faramir and Boromir are, of course, a study in deliberate contrasts. Where Boromir dreamed of war, victories and mastery, Faramir dreams of peace. This is why he can reject the temptation of the Ring, while Boromir was destroyed by it. In a more interesting contrast, while Boromir defended his people's vitality against Elrond's racism, Faramir is a fervent believer in the Decline. "We are a failing people, a springless autumn." He even expounds a racial classification of humans, from the High Men of the West, through Middle Men, Men of the Twilight, to the Wild Men of the Darkness, and bemoans how the Men of Gondor (of course it's always Capitalized Men) are becoming Middle Men.

This declinism is a key theme of Tolkien's, and I already discussed it when I talked about the Council of Elrond. Faramir is its most vocal proponent in the book, but he also highlights some of its complications.

The declinism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was basically rooted in anti-modernism and racism. While Tolkien was definitely an anti-modernist, he doesn't phrase his declinism in that context. Faramir has no Howardian complaints of city life softening the Gondorians in contrast to the vital and masculine barbarians at the gates; to the contrary, he bemoans how bellicose his people have become. Also, in Middle-earth all advanced technology is old, like the palantír, not a new threat to an established order.

In racism, Tolkien is closer to the fascist ideas of decline; Elrond directly attributes the Untergang of Gondor to racial mixing, and Faramir also talks about how the men of Gondor (of course it's always men) have become more like "lower" men. But again, this is never something that should be fought. Faramir is, by his attitude to the Ring in particular, one of the most virtuous characters in the Lord of the Rings - and (spoilers) he goes on to marry a lady of Rohan. In doing so, he joins all the other Tolkien protagonists or figures of virtue who are either themselves of conspicuously mixed descent (Bilbo, Frodo), marry into completely different "bloodlines" (Beren and Lúthien), or both (Aragorn). Nor is it ever suggested that the "blood of Númenor" should be deliberately kept pure. The "blood of Númenor" isn't even a purely hereditary thing; Faramir, we're told, has it, but clearly his father and brother don't, at least not in equal measure.

It's also worth noting that if Tolkien really was the full-on fascist some people claim he is, surely the dwarves, who Tolkien himself insisted were an allegory of the Jews, would play some sinister part in the corruption of Gondor. Yet neither dwarven plots nor dwarven gold undermine Minas Tirith.

While Faramir's description of the decline of Gondor harks back to these ideas, there's something more important at work here - certainly something more crucial to Tolkien's theology.

"Yet even so it was Gondor that brought about its own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed.

Death was ever present, because the Númenorans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king of the line of Anárion had no heir.

For Tolkien, the fundamental sin of Gondor wasn't racial mixing or modernity, but the desire to cheat death: to devise, because of the Fall, Machines with which to escape Mortality. Like he said, these are the crucial points of the whole work, and Gondor embodies them. This is why Tolkien said they were "best pictured in Egyptian terms" (Letters, 211). So the decline of Gondor is a product of sin.

Again, whether Tolkien is succesful in conveying this is another question. And even if his notion of decline is fundamentally a Christian one, it's still at best uncomfortably close to the fascist one. Here in Finland, our fascist movements always drew the majority of their followers from devout, "awakened" Christians, which is hardly a coincidence. The Nazis' antipathies toward Christianity have been massively and deliberately exaggerated. So while Tolkien wasn't a fascist, there are times when his Christianity comes very close to fascism, and his notions of blood and decline are the closest.

**

Next time: fishing.

Let's Read Tolkien 53: The Taming of Sméagol

"Well, master, we're in a fix and no mistake," said Sam Gamgee.

Leaving Rohan, Gondor and the war behind for the moment, we start Book Four with Sam and Frodo making their way through the hills of the Emyn Muil: a broken, barren landscape that drops toward the Dead Marshes. Beyond them lies Mordor and Mount Doom.

The hobbits find the going tough, scrambling up and down gullies and hillsides. A sheer cliffside nearly defeats them, but they use the elven-rope Sam was given in Lórien to descend. Obviously this means they have to tie it securely at the top of the cliff, and as Sam bemoans the loss of the rope, he gives it a tug, and it comes tumbling down.

As Frodo and Sam rest a little distance ahead of the cliff-face, they see Gollum climbing down it like a monstrous spider. With their elven-cloaks on, the hobbits ambush and capture him. They contemplate killing him, but Frodo recalls his conversation with Gandalf on this exact topic. Instead Frodo makes Gollum swear by the Ring that he will serve the hobbits. Gollum promises to guide them through the marshes to Mordor, and they set off.

**

This is, in a sense, a two-part chapter. The star of the first part is the landscape, in as excellent a piece of geographical prose as Tolkien ever turned out, harking back to the hobbits' travails in the Old Forest. I thought Frodo's refusal to see that the Lórien-rope is basically magic was odd and slightly out of place, but maybe that's just me.

The star of the second part is unquestionably Gollum. I still think that Bilbo's initial encounter with him is some of Tolkien's best writing, and certainly Gollum is one of his most memorable characters.

Seeing Gollum as an addict has become the default interpretation of the character, but I have to say I'm quite uncomfortable with it. For starters, there's no particular indication that this was something Tolkien intended, but more crucially, Gollum as an addict doesn't really fit into Tolkien's scheme at all. In a novel about sin, corruption and the Machine that attempts to defy god by cheating death, to say that Gollum is "an addict" is like saying that the Iliad is about being horny. Sure, it is, but isn't this a bit trite?

We learned about Gollum's past and the fact that he used to be more or less a hobbit way back in Chapter 2 of the first book. This underlying similarity is highlighted in this chapter:

For a moment it appeared to Sam that his master had grown and Gollum had shrunk: a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a little whining dog. Yet the two were in some way akin and not alien: they could reach one another's minds.

What connects them isn't just their shared background and their experience of the Ring: it's corruption. Fundamentally, that's also what Gollum represents here: the ongoing corruption of the Ring. I don't think it's accurate to say that Gollum is "addicted" to the Ring; rather, he's been corrupted by it. For mortals, the ultimate boon of the Ring is immortality: Bilbo's longevity, but even more so Gollum's. According to Appendix B of my edition, Sméagol acquired the Ring in the year 2463 of the Third Age. Frodo and Sam capture him in March 3019. He's over five hundred years old.

"A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. -- Yes, sooner or later - later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last - sooner or later the dark power will devour him."

This is how Gandalf descibed the effect of the Ring in Chapter 2, and it's crucial to understanding what the Ring is in Tolkien's theology. The Ring circumvents Mortality, one of Tolkien's three capitalized theological points. It is, therefore, a Machine: a thing created to defy God. Such a thing exists because of the Fall, and is dangerous because of the Fall. Even Gandalf is subject to the Fall and therefore corruption; mere mortals like Sméagol and Frodo all the more so. Gollum is living proof of the Ring's power, and of its corruption: he's lived for half a millenium, but at what cost?

The description of Frodo quoted above harks back to Frodo's conversation with Galadriel in the Mirror of Galadriel.

"I would ask one thing before we go," said Frodo, "a thing which I often meant to ask Gandalf in Rivendell. I am permitted to wear the One Ring: why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them?"
"You have not tried," she said. "Only thrice have you set the Ring upon your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to become far stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others.

What is Frodo doing with Gollum in this chapter, if not training his will to the domination of others? It's not clear if he understands it himself, but he's definitely being corrupted by the Ring. After the Mirror of Galadriel, this is the second significant stop on the way to the Fall of Frodo.

**

Next time: swampwalk.

Let's Read Tolkien 52: The Palantír

The sun was sinking behind the long western arm of the mountains when Gandalf and his companions, and the king with his Riders, set out again from Isengard.

The king's party stops for the night in a hollow, and as they bed down, Pippin is obsessed with the orb Gríma threw down from Orthanc. Merry tries to dissuade him, but when everyone else is asleep, Pippin steals the orb from Gandalf and looks into it. Soon enough he screams loudly enough to wake the entire camp.

Under interrogation by Gandalf, Pippin tells that he looked into the stone, and soon enough found himself talking to Sauron himself. Luckily, Sauron seems to have thought that the stone was still in Orthanc, and Saruman was torturing a hobbit he had captured, so he didn't start asking questions.

Afterward, Gandalf discusses the stone with Aragorn and Théoden. They agree that it must be the palantír of Orthanc, brought from Númenor by Elendil. Aragorn, as Elendil's heir, takes charge of it. Just as they've finished their conversation, a Ring-wraith flies over them, riding a winged beast. Gandalf immediately sets off for Minas Tirith, taking Pippin with him to get him away from the Orthanc-stone. As they ride, Gandalf explains what the palantíri were - seeing-stones made by the Noldor in ancient times - and speculates on how the palantír of Orthanc must have been Saruman's downfall; he had kept it secret from the other Wise, and evidently been corrupted through it by Sauron. The chapter ends with Pippin falling asleep as Shadowfax gallops toward Gondor.

**

Unfortunately for the good name of Took, Peregrin son of Paladin seems to be the Fellowship's designated moron: from dropping rocks down wells to sneaking a look at the wizard's special magic rock.

Doing so, I think, makes him the only member of the Fellowship to have actually had a conversation with Sauron. Unless Olórin talked to him before the Fall or something. Still something you can put on your resumé, I guess. The effortless way he lifts the stone from Gandalf again makes you think there's definitely something to this notion of hobbits as burglars.

But there's something about Pippin's telecom experience that I don't entirely understand. When the palantír is thrown from Orthanc, it's described in some detail, and Gandalf says of it first: "It is not a thing, I guess, that Saruman would have chosen to cast away." And second:

Strange are the turns of fortune! Often does hatred hurt itself! I guess that, even if we had entered in, we could have found few treasures in Orthanc more precious than the thing which Wormtongue threw down at us.

So obviously Gandalf has some notion that the orb Wormtongue threw at them is a very special rock indeed. But then at the beginning of this chapter, Gandalf ruminates to Merry:

There was some link between Isengard and Mordor, which I have not yet fathomed. How they exchanged news I am not sure; but they did so.

Later, after Pippin has had his way with the stone, Gandalf says: "But my mind was bent on Saruman, and I did not at once guess the nature of the stone." Aragorn then remarks that now they understand how Saruman communicated with Sauron.

I don't know, maybe I'm reading this poorly, but if Gandalf didn't know what the palantír was, then why did he go on about how it was the best thing they could possibly have got out of Orthanc? Was he that convinced that the best thing Saruman has stashed in his wizard's tower was a cool rock that's hard to break? Maybe it's just me, but the transition from last chapter's "ha ha, Wormtongue threw a super cool treasure at us" to this chapter's "I wonder what this rock is" is a bit jarring. Unless the Lord of the Rings is a role-playing game, and the players forgot everything between sessions again.

In another startling leap from Tolkien's pages into the real world, Palantir is also the name of a surveillance corporation founded by the fascist and vampire wannabe Peter Thiel. In Tolkien's theology, the palantír seems to straddle the line between technology, which is acceptable, and Machine, which isn't; its rightful owner can use it, but it threatens corruption. The kind of surveillance networks that information technology is beginning to make possible, and the naked misanthropy of so many "techbro" entrepreneurs, would have horrified Tolkien, and definitely been, for him, an example of vanity and sin: the Machine writ large.

**

So, that was Book Three: from three guys burying their dead comrade to armies, battles and war. I mentioned that I think Tolkien is better with pacing than he gets credit for; he's also quite good at raising the scope of the story. We've now gone from some hobbits rambling around the countryside to all-out war and wizards, and even a personal appearance from the Enemy himself. Finally, we witness what is I think Aragorn's first act in his capacity as the heir of Elendil and Isildur, and Gandalf rides toward Gondor and the war.

Next time: some entirely different hobbits.

Let's Read Tolkien 50: Flotsam and Jetsam

Gandalf and the King's company rode away, turning eastward to make the circuit of the ruined walls of Isengard.

As the Riders of Rohan leave, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas stay behind at the gate-house, where Merry and Pippin serve them a meal from Saruman's captured supplies, and they catch up. There's even pipeweed, and Pippin wins Gimli's eternal gratitude by giving him his spare pipe - because of course a hobbit has a spare pipe.

The hobbits and the Three Hunters exchange stories of their pursuit, and Merry and Pippin tell about their time with the Ents, and narrate the Ents' attack on Isengard for our benefit. The hobbits had watched as Saruman commits a rookie War of the Ring error in emptying out Isengard even though there are Companions in Fangorn, and while the Huorns - like feral Ents - went after the orc army, the Ents smashed their way into Isengard and drove Saruman to hide in the tower of Orthanc. Once Isengard has been wrecked, Gríma Wormtongue shows up, and Treebeard sends him on to Saruman's tower. The hobbits are then left at the gate-house to await the King.

Finally, Aragorn, bothered by the barrels of pipeweed from the Shire, makes a prophecy: "Wormtongues may be found in other houses than King Théoden's."

**

Geez, 50. Back in November 2013, when I was a second-year theology student, I wrote about a very proper gentlehobbit having his house crashed by a party of dwarves.

As it happens, this chapter is also a meal featuring dwarves and hobbits, and not really that much else. One of the problems of reading a book you know by heart is that it's difficult to judge how effective some of the literary gambits are; much of the effect of Tolkien's changes of perspective is lost when everyone knows the story. Still, the reunion of the hobbits and the Three Hunters in the ruins of Isengard is memorable, and the pacing of the story works: this is a little interval between the climactic battle of Helm's Deep and the following chapters, which begin to set up the next major section of the plot.

In my mind at least, there are two reasons why Tolkien chose to tell the story of the Ents' assault on Isengard through the hobbits: it fits with the lowered tension of the story, and preserves a little more of the mystery of the Ents. Hearing everything at second hand leaves them at a bit of a distance, and I think it works.

Finally, Tolkien's theology of luck also rears its head here, in a remark by Gimli. I mentioned the concept way back when Bilbo met Gollum, and discussed one sense of it in Chapter III: luck as providence, Eru/God intervening in the world. Here we have a glimpse of his other idea of luck: one where luck is something you make or at least grasp for yourself. A northern theory of luck, if you will.

"The cutting of the bands on your wrists, that was smart work!" said Gimli. "Luck served you there; but you seized your chance with both hands, one might say."

This idea is a complement to the notion of luck as divine intervention: whether God stoops down to arrange matters for you or not, what's important is that you grasp the opportunity. This is a similar idea to Richard Simpkin's concept of luck management, and even has shades of the New Age-y idea of affirmations peddled by cartoonist Scott Adams in the Dilbert Future - one of the first strong signs that he was going round the bend. In this context, it's another tension between the Christian and pagan elements of Tolkien's creation.

Next time: a parley.