MIDDANGARD (A Lord of the Rings Fan Fiction)

Chapter 1 - Welcome to Middangard

By 2020, the world had been turned upside-down, making old familiar landscapes unrecognizable.

Sadly, devastation reigned, as if an enormous fire had destroyed an old congested forest. The carnage had turned green to black and homes to ashes.

These changes began in 2015...

Cities and Nations were radically altered forever. Long range travel became virtually impossible overnight. Skyscrapers fell. Bridges crumbled. Communication systems broke down. Shock and then chaos ruled for a time.

The "Dreamers", the men and women who had foreseen the destruction, call the resulting new world, Middangard. They chant a mantra to it and the people echo their lament...

           Between heaven above and hell below there now lies              

                                               Middangard,                                                                                                  

  where the best of us and the worst of us must battle for the rest.

MasterPoe heralded the first warnings of dark times to come.  In the New York metro area, at least, he was the first.  No doubt, in other areas, there were others like MasterPoe... Lighthouses beaming into the consuming darkness… Voices ringing out in an ocean of fog.

Five years after the worldwide "conflagration", green sprouts again gather in patches. Black as pitch, some areas still lie in squalor and in filth. Much has been lost; more destroyed; countless have died.

Yet now, there is new growth in many locations and new hope in many hearts.

In Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, there are some Italians who have taken to living in the ground. They reside in clean, tidy hobbit-like holes, solidly constructed with what supplies are now available. In fact, the "holes” are more like mounds, half in the ground, half rising above it, like bumps on the Earth’s skin. Energy efficient, "earth-bermed" lodges may be a fair description, being totally windowless and door-less on the north facing sides; igloo-like in some ways, minus the ice.

These comfy little dwellings are cool in the summer and relatively warm in the winter. Some people might consider them to be "cozy". Delightful food smells drift up their chimneys all over South Brooklyn, from Coney Island to DykerHeights. Even old Bilbo Baggins may have felt at home there.

The "I-ties" are remarkable bakers and skillful carpenters. They love to cook and they love to sit by a pleasant fire with their friends while eating chunks of cheese, followed by cups of deep red wine.

Southwest Brooklyn is, of course, as far from the tainted hordes of Mor-dura as you can get.