LOTR: Children of Refusal

[Ramone Rivers]

Haven't caught up yet, but your chapter 5 is in the wrong place on the thread marks it is between chapter 10 and 11 just letting you know.

 

[MaximusDM]

Good stuff, watched

 

[Tertius711]

This is a really amazing and interesting story. Look forward to everything that comes next!

 

[Kiyan Tribe]

Image: Young Ilvëa of the Minyar, older version

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Did you forget to upload the images?

 

[Ebanu8]

I'm hoping that these Avari will eventually help build a bigger, stronger Dorwinion than before, with the help of some Dwarves.

 

[Valkorion510]

@Afkter02 this is an extremely well written story. However, you should put in tags with LOTR, Lord of the Rings, and self insert. Also, put in (LOTR SI) Or (Lord of the Rings SI) in the title: the difference it will make is incalculable. Right now, people click off non SI fics and the title needs to show that unambiguously or folks won't read. A fic like this deserves more traction. It deserves more likes and watchers.

 

[Tertius711]

@Afkter02 this is an extremely well written story. However, you should put in tags with LOTR, Lord of the Rings, and self insert. Also, put in (LOTR SI) Or (Lord of the Rings SI) in the title: the difference it will make is incalculable. Right now, people click off non SI fics and the title needs to show that unambiguously or folks won't read. A fic like this deserves more traction. It deserves more likes and watchers.

Click to shrink...

100%.

 

[Afkter02]

The Great March — Ways of the March (16)

[Year 1139. Fourth Year of the March. Late Summer. The Rhûn Steppes]

[Selas POV]​

After the battle at the stream, the tradition began by accident, like most things that actually work.

We'd stopped longer than usual — three days instead of one — because half the wagons needed repairs and Eol's forge was running around the clock. The warriors had nothing to do except drill, and they'd been drilling for four years straight.

They were getting twitchy. Bored in the way that turns dangerous.

"Let them fight," Vertalas said at evening council. "Supervised. Two people in a marked circle. Clear rules."

"They're going to hurt each other." Thoron's voice carried the weariness of someone who'd seen too many stupid injuries.

"They'll hurt each other worse if we don't give them somewhere to put it." Vertalas didn't back down. "I've broken up three real fights this week. They need an outlet before someone ends up dead over whose turn it was to haul water."

I'd seen it too. The tension had been building for months, the endless march wearing on everyone differently. Some went quiet, retreating into themselves. Others went the opposite direction, looking for any excuse to swing at something.

"A circle," I said slowly, working through it. "Stones marking the boundary. No weapons. You win by submission or knockout."

Vertalas nodded. "Exactly."

"No." Maethor's voice cut clean through the tent. "We will not make sport of hurting our own."

A few of the elders shifted, murmurs of agreement moving along the table.

"We are Quendi," Maethor continued. "Not beasts. This march has taken enough from us without turning violence into habit."

"And if someone won't submit?" another elder asked from the same side of the table. "If they won't stay down?"

Vertalas met their gaze without flinching. "Then it ends when it's settled. Better bruises in the open than a blade between ribs in the dark."

The murmurs returned. Uneasy, disapproving. A line had formed, and everyone could feel it.

I let the silence stretch. Long enough for the argument to exhaust itself.

"This isn't a whim," I said, my voice steady. "And it isn't just entertainment. It's a necessity." I looked to the Elders, searching their eyes for understanding. "People need a way to blow off steam. Either we give them that opportunity, or they'll create one themselves. And if they do, the consequences won't be good."

Maethor's jaw tightened. "You seriously approve of this?"

"I believe in the idea that solves the problem we already have." I held his gaze. "Better a fire we build inside a ring of stones than one that gets loose and burns everything around us."

I turned to Vertalas. "You set the rules and you make sure they're followed. The moment control slips, it ends."

Maethor opened his mouth again.

"Enough." I cut him off. "As Chief, I decide."

Vertalas inclined his head. "I'll handle it."

—•——•——•——•——•——•—

[Next day. The Circle]

[Maethor POV]​

They called it the Circle.

Twenty feet of packed earth marked by stones, the crowd pressed tight around it as if it were a rite, or a spectacle. Maethor hadn't decided which.

He stood apart from the main gathering, arms folded, watching with the disapproval he had earned the right to carry.

One of the Awakened at Cuiviénen. One of the Thirty-Three Elders of the Avari. Old enough in wisdom to remember the first days by the waters of the lake, when the world was learned with words, not with fists.

And he had to watch as two young Lindar circled each other inside the ring — barely more than boys, moving with the nervous energy of people who'd trained to hurt. One got the other's arm twisted behind his back.

"Submit!"

The trapped one slapped the ground. It was over.

Applause scattered through the crowd. Hesitant at first, then growing when no blood appeared.

This is what we've become, Maethor thought. Cheering while our children beat each other in the dirt.

The second bout moved faster. A veteran against a young fool who thought quick feet could overcome experience. It couldn't. The older warrior put him down in three moves, not unkindly, but thoroughly.

More cheers. Louder now.

By the third bout, people were shouting advice. By the fifth, Maethor could see tokens changing hands — knife beads, carved bits of bone, anything that could stand in for a wager.

Wagering on violence. Between our own people.

He should have walked away. Should have gone to Selas with another formal objection that the Chief would hear, consider, and politely ignore.

Instead, he watched.

Selas stood across the Circle from him, Celestia beside him. She looked skeptical.

Good. At least someone else saw the madness in this.

But then Selas said something to her, and her expression changed. Shifted from doubt to something like reluctant understanding.

Maethor followed her gaze. Not to the fighters. To the crowd.

They were… different. The tension that had been coiling tighter for months, the snapped tempers and petty fights and dangerous silences — it wasn't there. People who'd been avoiding each other stood shoulder to shoulder, shouting for the same fighter. Rivals from different clans slapped each other's backs when a bout ended well.

A Lindar woman and a Tatyar man entered the ring. Old grudge, by the way they looked at each other. The kind that festered when people lived too close for too long.

They fought hard. But clean. No cheap shots, no hatred beyond what the Circle could contain.

The woman won. Barely.

They helped each other up afterward and clasped arms. The Tatyar said something that made her laugh.

When did they last speak without snarling?

Maethor didn't like this. It offended something deep in him, some memory of how the Quendi were supposed to be. Graceful. Peaceful. Above this kind of crude physicality.

But they weren't those Quendi anymore.

The Chief caught his eye across the Circle. Nodded once, acknowledging his presence.

Maethor didn't nod back. Let him see the disapproval.

But he didn't leave, either.

The Circle continued that day. And the next. At nearly every stop after that.

Maethor kept watching. Kept disapproving.

And kept noticing that the fights outside the Circle — the real ones, the dangerous ones — had almost stopped entirely.

He hated that it worked.

—•——•——•——•——•——•—

[Year 1139. Autumn. The column]

[Amalaë POV]​

Amalaë had never expected to become someone who mattered.

Back at Cuiviénen, she'd been a singer. One voice among many in evening choruses, nothing special, nothing memorable. She'd followed Selas at the Sundering because her parents had, not because she believed in anything he said.

Belief came later. Crept up on her somewhere between the second winter and the third summer, until one day she realized she couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

Now she sat in what they called the school wagon — one of the large carts converted into a classroom that moved with the column — surrounded by faces too young to remember anything but this.

"Today," she said, "we're going to learn about where we came from."

"The wagons?" one boy asked.

Amalaë smiled. "Before the wagons. Before the march. Before any of us were born."

She pulled out the teaching stone, a flat rock worn smooth by handling, images scratched into its surface with careful precision. Crude compared to real art, but children didn't need beauty. They needed something they could touch.

"This is Cuiviénen." She pointed to the largest symbol, a wavy oval meant to represent water. "The Water of Awakening. Where all the Quendi — all the elves — first woke up. Where the stars first saw us, and we first saw them."

"Was it pretty?" A girl this time, hair braided with bits of colored thread.

"Very pretty." Amalaë traced the carved lines, remembering things she hadn't thought about in years. "The water was so clear you could see stars reflected in it, like looking at the sky twice. And the trees…"

She stopped.

Realized she was tearing up.

The girl with the braids was watching her with wide eyes. Amalaë blinked hard, twice.

"The trees were tall," she continued, voice only slightly unsteady. "Taller than anything we've seen since. And around them, the first Quendi built their homes. Learned to speak. Learned to sing."

"Learned to fight?" Another child, older, already wearing a wooden practice sword at his belt the way the warriors did.

"No." Amalaë shook her head. "Fighting came later. After the bad things came."

"Orcs?"

"Orcs. And other things we don't talk about with children." She set down the teaching stone. "But the Quendi learned to fight because they had to. Not because they wanted to."

She looked at their faces. Children of the march, every one of them. Born on the road. Knowing nothing of stable homes or familiar forests or a sky that didn't change every night. To them, the world was grass and wagons and the sound of wheels, and Cuiviénen was a story, no more real than the songs their parents sang before sleep.

The boy with the wooden sword was picking at a splinter on its handle. The girl with the braids had already forgotten her question and was whispering to her neighbor.

"Now," Amalaë said, "who wants to learn the counting song?"

Hands shot up. Voices clamored over each other.

Amalaë smiled and began to teach.

{image: Amalaë}

—•——•——•——•——•——•—

[Year 1140. Spring. The Rhûn Steppes]

[Celestia POV]​

Five years on the march had taught Celestia one crucial thing: scouts couldn't keep going on foot forever.

Not at the pace the column needed. Ranging ahead, circling back, doing it again and again without rest. You walked all day and the horizon hadn't moved.

She needed speed. Something that would let her people cover ground the way they had to — three valleys in a day instead of one, high ground reached before full dark instead of after.

She'd been thinking about it for months.

Now, finally, she'd found what she needed.

The herd grazed in a shallow valley, spread across the grass like scattered stones.

Celestia pressed herself flat against the rise above them, breathing so shallow her chest barely moved.

Wild horses.

{image: HORSES}​

Smaller than the great horse of Oromë that the oldest Avari still remembered, a vast creature that had shone like living silver. These were nothing like that.

Shaggy, compact, built for endurance rather than beauty. But their legs were made for distance, and their eyes never stopped moving.

If they could be caught. If they could be learned.

She withdrew as carefully as she'd approached, backing down the slope an inch at a time until she was sure the herd hadn't spotted her.

Later that day, she found Selas reviewing scout reports near the lead wagon.

"Wild horses," she said without preamble. "A herd. Two days northeast, maybe less."

His eyes sharpened immediately, that look he got when something clicked into place.

"How close did you get?"

"Close enough to count them. Forty, maybe fifty. They're skittish but not aggressive." She chose her words carefully. "They don't see us as predators. Yet."

"What do you need?"

"Time and patience. A few people who can stay quiet for days without going crazy." She held his gaze. "We move at walking pace right now. Horses could change everything. Scouts who can cover five times the ground in a day. Wagons that don't need people hauling them until their backs give out. Early warning that means something, instead of 'they're a day behind us and we found out this morning.'"

Selas was quiet for a long moment. She could see him running calculations behind his eyes, the way he always did, weighing costs and benefits and the thousand small risks that came with any new idea.

Then he smiled. Not his planning smile. His real one.

"Show me."

—•——•——•——•——•——•—

[Weeks later]​

The horses became part of the caravan.

Not all of them. The wild herd still ranged free across the steppe, and most of them wanted nothing to do with elves. But a few, the younger ones, the more curious ones, had decided that the creatures who offered grain and spoke in low voices and radiated a warmth that had nothing to do with body heat weren't the worst company in the world.

Celestia sat astride one now — a young mare she'd started calling Swiftwind, though she wasn't sure the horse cared about names.

"How does it feel?" Selas called from the ground.

"Strange." Celestia adjusted her weight, trying to find the balance point that didn't make the mare's ears flatten. "Powerful. I can see so much farther from up here."

"That's the point." Selas gestured toward the horizon, flat and endless as always, but somehow less oppressive when you could see more of it.

Celestia nodded, already thinking through implications. Patrol routes that took days on foot could be covered in hours. A rider could carry warnings back to the column fast enough to matter. And in a fight, height and speed changed everything.

"We'll need more riders. More horses willing to carry us."

"So find them and train them." Selas's smile had an edge of challenge to it. "You've gotten this far."

She would. She'd figure it out the same way she'd figured out the rest — patience and stubbornness and the slow building of trust that couldn't be rushed.

But there was something else. Something she'd noticed over the past weeks but hadn't mentioned to anyone.

Sometimes, when she was with Swiftwind, she felt the mare's mood shift before it showed in any visible way. A prickle at the back of her neck before the ears went flat. A settling in her own chest when the horse relaxed, though nothing in the environment had changed.

It might have been imagination. Probably was. She'd been spending too much time with one animal. Reading patterns that weren't there.

Swiftwind snorted and tossed her head. Celestia leaned forward and slid a gentle hand along the mare's neck, letting just a thread of her Light seep through her palm. She murmured something, and the mare stilled.

Probably imagination, Celestia told herself again.

But she didn't quite believe it.

{image: Celestia}

—•——•——•——•——•——•—

[Year 1143. Eighth Year of the March. Winter. The Eastern Steppes]

[Selas POV]​

A harsh winter hit like a fist.

We had known winters before. Cold nights and frost on the grass. Wind that cut through clothing and made the fires burn too fast.

But never like this.

Never with wind that never stopped. Never with cold that didn't merely settle — it hunted.

It screamed across the steppes with nothing to slow it down. No trees, no hills, no ridges, nothing but flat empty grass that offered about as much shelter as a thought. Temperatures dropped until breath turned to ice before it left your mouth. Snow — real snow, the first most Avari had ever seen — buried everything in white silence that swallowed sound and color and hope.

We huddled in wagons, wrapped in every scrap of fur and cloth we possessed, pressed together for warmth because warmth was the only currency that mattered. The horses clustered in groups, their shaggy winter coats the only thing keeping them alive. Fires burned constantly, eating through our wood supplies faster than anyone wanted to count.

Six days into the storm, we had our first death.

Thindil. A Lindar woman, one of the few who'd been alive at Cuiviénen from the first Awakening. She had walked every step of the March without complaint, had buried friends and watched the world she knew burn behind her, and she had borne it all with the steady, exhausted grace of someone who had simply carried too much for too long.

She went to sleep one night and didn't wake up.

"It wasn't the cold alone," Mireth said when I asked. Her face was grey, eyes hollow from too many nights without enough sleep. "Her hröa couldn't keep its heat. Light helps, but even Light has limits, especially when the fëa is already loosening its hold. She was tired, Selas. Not in her body. In her spirit. The march had worn something down inside her that we don't have a name for."

I stood over Thindil's body — small, still, already cooling toward the temperature of the wagon around her. Another name for the list. Another family to sit with, to hold hands with, to offer words that meant nothing because no words meant anything in the face of this.

"Can we do anything?" I asked. "For the others. Anything at all?"

Mireth hesitated. Bit her lip the way she did when she was about to say something she wasn't sure of.

"There's something I've been thinking about. With Light." She looked at her hands like they belonged to someone else. "If we could share it. Not just push it into someone, but circulate it between people, keep it flowing in a loop. Maybe we could keep each other warm. Body heat isn't enough. But Light…"

"How would that work?"

"I don't know yet." She met my eyes. "But I'm going to figure it out."

She did.

By the second week, we had what Mireth called Warmth Circles — groups of Avari sitting together, hands joined, Light flowing between them in continuous loops.

The technique was crude, exhausting, and had to be maintained consciously by every person in the circle. But it worked. The air inside a Warmth Circle ran noticeably warmer than the air around it, enough to keep fingers from going numb and hearts from stopping in the night.

We lost three more before spring. Three spirits too weary to hold on, three names added to the count.

But without the Warmth Circles, it would have been dozens.

Mireth didn't sleep for the first four days of teaching the technique. I had to order her to rest before she collapsed, and even then she argued, standing in the snow outside her wagon with dark circles under her eyes and Light flickering unevenly in her hands, insisting that there were six more families who hadn't learned the loop yet.

"Mireth." I put my hands on her shoulders. "If you die of exhaustion, who teaches the rest?"

She glared at me. Then she went to sleep.

She slept for fourteen hours.

Then she got up and taught six more families.

{image: Mireth}

—•——•——•——•——•——•—

[End of Chapter 16]​

GLOSSARY

CULTURAL INNOVATIONS

The Circle — Supervised unarmed combat between volunteers, established in Year 1139 during the March. Rules: no weapons, marked boundary, victory by submission or knockout. Created to relieve the mounting tension of years of marching. Opposed by Maethor and the traditionalist Elders, approved by Selas over their objections. The institution reduced unsanctioned violence between Avari dramatically.

The School Wagons — Large carts converted into mobile classrooms during the March. Run by Amalaë Talkrimael and her growing corps of teachers. Taught language (both Avarin and Quendian), history, mathematics, and basic crafts to children born on the road.

Warmth Circles — A Light-sharing technique invented by Mireth during the brutal winter of Year 1143. Groups of Avari sit together with hands joined, circulating Light between them in continuous loops, creating pockets of warmth that can sustain life in otherwise fatal cold. Crude and exhausting, but effective. Later refined and used during the Misty Mountains crossing.

CHARACTERS

Amalaë Talkrimael — Teacher and education coordinator. Former singer at Cuiviénen. Became the architect of Avari education during the March, running the school wagons and developing curricula for children who had never known anything but the road.

Thindil — Lindar woman, one of the first-Awakened at Cuiviénen. Died during the winter of Year 1143. Her death was not from physical frailty but from spiritual exhaustion — the slow loosening of the fëa's hold on the hröa that claims immortals when the will to live erodes past the point of return.

ANIMALS

The Wild Horses — Herds of steppe horses encountered in Year 1140. Domesticated by Celestia and the scouts through patience and Light-sharing. The first hint of ósanwë-bonding between Avari and animals, though Celestia doesn't recognize it as such at this stage.

 

[Valkorion510]

@Afkter02 the tags are one thing, but you really need to change the title to LOTR - Children of Refusal (Avari Elf SI), to fully explain the scope of the story. Also I just realized another issue, you need to move this into NSFW Creative Writing. Doesn't matter if you post sex or not, all the readers are on that forum page, the Creative Writing page is much smaller and much less traffic.

 

[Tertius711]

@Afkter02 the tags are one thing, but you really need to change the title to LOTR - Children of Refusal (Avari Elf SI), to fully explain the scope of the story. Also I just realized another issue, you need to move this into NSFW Creative Writing. Doesn't matter if you post sex or not, all the readers are on that forum page, the Creative Writing page is much smaller and much less traffic.

Click to shrink...

Can he even move it himself or would a moderator have to do it?

 

[Valkorion510]

Can he even move it himself or would a moderator have to do it?

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure, but couldn't hurt to ask a moderator regardless. It needs to be done if we aim to make this story more popular.

 

[Afkter02]

@Valkorion510 @Tertius711 thanks a lot guys, really appreciate the advice. I'll go ask a mod to move it to NSFW Creative Writing and change the title like you suggested.

Also no worries if the story doesn't blow up here, I'm cross-posting on WebNovel and AO3 too, so it's got other places to live lol.

Speaking of — quick question while I've got you: anyone here familiar with how AO3's search/tagging actually works? Like which tags pull the most traffic, how the filtering system treats stuff, freeform vs canonical tags, all that. I'm kinda fumbling around blind over there and any tips would be a huge help

 

[Valkorion510]

@Valkorion510 @Tertius711 thanks a lot guys, really appreciate the advice. I'll go ask a mod to move it to NSFW Creative Writing and change the title like you suggested.

Also no worries if the story doesn't blow up here, I'm cross-posting on WebNovel and AO3 too, so it's got other places to live lol.

Speaking of — quick question while I've got you: anyone here familiar with how AO3's search/tagging actually works? Like which tags pull the most traffic, how the filtering system treats stuff, freeform vs canonical tags, all that. I'm kinda fumbling around blind over there and any tips would be a huge help

Click to shrink...

I really love the worldbuilding and as a Tolkien fan am more than happy to help. For ao3, there's no metrics on how each tag is better, it works the same as the tagging system here or on Spacebattles. For specific tags, we can help give you a list. Also, worst case scenario, this thread is small and hasn't really taken off, so you could just shelve it and copy the chapters and upload all at once on NSFW by creating a new one.

 

[Tertius711]

@Valkorion510 @Tertius711 thanks a lot guys, really appreciate the advice. I'll go ask a mod to move it to NSFW Creative Writing and change the title like you suggested.

Also no worries if the story doesn't blow up here, I'm cross-posting on WebNovel and AO3 too, so it's got other places to live lol.

Speaking of — quick question while I've got you: anyone here familiar with how AO3's search/tagging actually works? Like which tags pull the most traffic, how the filtering system treats stuff, freeform vs canonical tags, all that. I'm kinda fumbling around blind over there and any tips would be a huge help

Click to shrink...

Oh hey! My first reply from you author lol. I've been commenting so much on the Patreon chapters and asking loads of questions and still no replies XD.

How's the story's stats like on WebNovel and Ao3? Speaking of Patreon, I suggest continuing to keep your earnings private but do publicize how many subscribes you've got as that helps for marketing if potential patrons see you've got a lot of subscribers. You should also try and make your usernames on WebNovel, here, and Ao3 all the same as your Patreon username of Cuivorn for uniformity and branding.

As for Ao3, I'd say tag every fandom you can. LOTR, Silmarillion, all types. Even throw in Amazon's trash Rings of Power as blasphemous as it feels to get more attention. It's what I did for my own ASOIAF fics and the HBO show tags. Tag stuff like kingdombuilding and so forth. I can share my own profile and you can see what kinds of tags I used for my fics to give you an idea.

Tertius711 - Works | Archive of Our Own

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

archiveofourown.org

 

[Afkter02]

@Valkorion510 @Tertius711 thanks again to both of you, seriously appreciate all the help

@Tertius711 oh damn, sorry about the Patreon silence! Honestly the reason I don't reply much there is because once I start going through comments I get completely sucked in and lose hours to it lol. Between uni and actually writing the chapters I'm trying to protect my time, so I've been holding back — but I do read pretty much everything, and a lot of the comments genuinely fuel me and give me ideas. So please don't take it personally, the engagement means a lot even when I'm quiet.

Also yes, would love to check out your fics! I'm actually more of an ASOIAF guy than LOTR if I'm being honest.

 

[ganshunter1]

@Valkorion510 @Tertius711 thanks again to both of you, seriously appreciate all the help

@Tertius711 oh damn, sorry about the Patreon silence! Honestly the reason I don't reply much there is because once I start going through comments I get completely sucked in and lose hours to it lol. Between uni and actually writing the chapters I'm trying to protect my time, so I've been holding back — but I do read pretty much everything, and a lot of the comments genuinely fuel me and give me ideas. So please don't take it personally, the engagement means a lot even when I'm quiet.

Also yes, would love to check out your fics! I'm actually more of an ASOIAF guy than LOTR if I'm being honest.

Click to shrink...

I binged all your chapters so far. It's perfect! But how long until the MC Empire starts properly interacting with the other kingdoms?

Also, I definitely recommend reading Tertius ASOIAF fics. All of them are great and have an ending.

 

[Tertius711]

@Valkorion510 @Tertius711 thanks again to both of you, seriously appreciate all the help

@Tertius711 oh damn, sorry about the Patreon silence! Honestly the reason I don't reply much there is because once I start going through comments I get completely sucked in and lose hours to it lol. Between uni and actually writing the chapters I'm trying to protect my time, so I've been holding back — but I do read pretty much everything, and a lot of the comments genuinely fuel me and give me ideas. So please don't take it personally, the engagement means a lot even when I'm quiet.

Also yes, would love to check out your fics! I'm actually more of an ASOIAF guy than LOTR if I'm being honest.

Click to shrink...

So if I want you to answer me, I should DM you on Patreon instead lel?

And sure if you have time I'd be glad if you read my fics.

 

[Afkter02]

@Tertius711 yeah for sure, DMs are the way to go — I always reply to those.

 

[Tertius711]

@Tertius711 yeah for sure, DMs are the way to go — I always reply to those.

Click to shrink...

Gotcha.