City of Sinister Angles

A Poet Whose Medium Is War

Relevant excerpts from the correspondences of the elf Glinor Silevon, 10,831st General Laureate of Valinor Island, during the closing years of the Great Crusade. Tentatively dated between -3 and -1 Anno Urbis. Translated into Lemurian by Matriarch Seraphina Baal.

1

War has brought an invigorating crispness to life on Valinor. The art world had been, dare I admit it, stagnating of late. We needed something to shake us up, and these humans and their crusade are exactly that.

Imagine it: even now hostile invaders walk the shores and groves of precious Valinor with their muddy boots, and befoul the sweet air with their hot breath. Think of the romance, the grandeur, of war brought to our own homeland for the first time in the memories of even the longest-lived trees! Our generation has been given an unprecedented opportunity to distinguish ourselves in this most anapestic of wars, and it's one I'm not keen to squander.

The humans, for their part, fight like dogs. There is no beauty or meaning in their attacks, just base violence. At times I feel like I am in a singing competition with a braying mule. Still, one must work with the materials one is given. Only a poor artist blames his tools.

I take particular pride in a counter offensive I launched in the early days of the war, the aftermath of which has necessitated my extended hiatus from the conflict until just recently. I relay it here now, while every tiny exquisite flavor of the event still linger on the palate of my mind.

The humans were marching on Hirilorn, and our scouts spied them three days out. I knew the form the human attack would take, for it it always the same: they would mass a great many humans armed and armored with their crude instruments of war. The most important humans would be mounted on great stinking beasts, adorned with feathers and other gaudy baubles. At the appointed time they would move forward towards the enemy in a single formation and commit indiscriminate violence, with no rhyme or rhythm, upon all that cross their path.

Knowing this, I was able to surmise both the most likely time and location the humans would choose for their crude assault.

I sent word around my camp and had my people gather a large number of grape seeds, which I then suffused with fertility magicks. The seeds, thus enchanted, were strewn about the field which served as the most likely point of battle.

Using magic herbs from my personal collection, and those procured by local druids, I had many dozen torches made that would burn with star fire (translator's note: common Elven metaphor for puissance). These I distributed to my most trusted of retainers.

When the humans came marching, my servant stood downwind from them and lit the torches. Wisps of magic smoke spread over the field and awoke the power sleeping in the grape seeds. The effect was more spectacular than I had anticipated; a veritable conflagration of fertility magic ripped across the field.

The seeds, the field, the humans, all were magically unified in a single purpose. The human bodies began to rot while they still lived, turning to sickly-sweet-smelling fertilizer where they stood. Vines burst through the ground, growing up and into the humans, who trashed as best they could as they were eaten alive by the voracious plants. 

Within the hour the field, and the human army in it, had been transformed into a magnificent vineyard. It was necessary for me to take off the next few seasons to oversee proper wine production. The nutrients from the humans have allowed for an incredible grape growing season that has yielded a singularly exquisite vintage. Although I regret having been away from the war for so long I'm convinced anyone who tries this wine will agree I made the correct decision.

This is how I won the battle of what is now being called Glicoll Tawar (translator's note: literally Red Honey Grove).

2

Early in the war we purported ourselves with imagination and honor. Now we have become tired and derivative. It is sickening to see our proud people be humbled so thoroughly. Let me relay the most recent in a string of vile indignities. I honestly do not know which side in this story is more outrageous in their blasphemy. The humans at least have the excuse of not knowing any better, deformed children that they are.

It all began when General Laegel Calen ordered his people to carve a statue into the side of a mountain, which was intended to be an object of such awe and terror that it would frighten the attacking humans to death. This, of course, being a cynical misappropriation of the work of Gladhwen Uilo in the battle of Minas Nivon (translator's note: literally West Tower), when she composed a song so melancholy it drove the opposing humans to suicide. You can change mediums all you like, Laegel, but your plagiarism seeps through!

In spite of this complete artistic bankruptcy, the statue is quickly finished. A lack of integrity makes for fast work, I suspect.

The humans finally do arrive, and that's when things get interesting. Instead of being frightened by the statue, whose imposing beauty and authority their primitive minds could never truly understand but must have been mystified by, the humans bowed down and worshiped it.

For one brief glorious moment it looked like the attack, in spite of itself, would have some artistic merit after all. Sometimes this is the way of things; the work becomes larger than even the artist. I was so excited to see what festivals and cultural institutions these humans would develop to please the statue.

Unfortunately what passes for the government among the humans caught word of the situation and, the vandals, the defilers, the irredeemable criminals against all that is beautiful and pure and sacred and worthy, they cut the statue out of the living rock in an act of art defacement on a scale heretofore unimaginable.

Not content to merely deface the work, they loaded it onto some ugly wooden contraption, a cross between a crude boat and a sledge, which they pulled along with a horde of stinking beasts of a like I am unfamiliar with. They were even more foul than the usual riding beasts the humans favor, if indeed that can be imagined! The entire production was like watching the death throes of some diseased behemoth. It's all my constitution can do to stomach the thought.

Naturally the budding religious movement followed their god, and they now comprise an elite unit of fanatical zealot soldiers who do not fear death. These soldiers, of course, fight with all the honor and dignity of a cornered animal, but that's beside the point.

So there we have it: a derivative pedestrian battle plan becomes found art in spite of itself, only to be defaced and paraded around by humans who have fashioned it into a crude tool of war, like apes using an intricate music box to hammer on their leather drums. That is what my beautiful war has become.

It occurs to me that killing humans might be an act of beauty in-and-of-itself. Does not ugliness and mediocrity dilute the beauty of the world, just as water dilutes wine? By removing the tarnish of humanity does all other life not shine brighter?

I pose these not as rhetorical questions. The answer to all of them is "yes".

3

It is pointlessly self-indulgent of me to sit in my litter writing letters bemoaning the state of the war. If anything is to be done someone is going to have to stand up, to serve as an example and restore artistic integrity to this war. I never asked to be a hero, but it seems lady destiny has thrust heroism upon me. Who am I to deny her?

I have dedicated myself body and soul to this grand project, sunk my entire fortune into it, but it will all be worthwhile. I will single-handedly redeem our people with a performance of battle the likes of which has never been seen by mortal eyes!

I will not spoil the sumptuous details prematurely, but suffice it to say that my next offensive will be such a triumph of aesthetics that the generals in the salons will be talking of it with awe and jealousy for centuries. The deaths of my foes will be such poetry that they will weep at the beauty of it as they expire!

(translator's note: the correspondences end here. Glinor was struck by a stray arrow during the Battle of Valinor and died of the resulting infection three days later.)