~Linhalaith's The Lord of the Rings Online Picture Diary~

The Lord of the Rings Online is a well-established MMORPG set in Middle-earth, the richly detailed European fantasy world immortalised in J.R.R. Tolkien's literary works. I decided to make an SSLP in it.

What you're about to read is the picture diary of Linhalaith, a kind and courageous Elvish warrior with a camera and a very full scrapbook. I aim to cover everything from the tutorial lands of Thorin's Gate, to the unknown place where I'll probably get bored of The Lord of the Rings Online in a few months.

Chapter 11: Linhalaith's Spring Fling

The first embers of warm April weather saw Linhalaith move to a new server, the thrillingly 64-bit "Meriadoc", where most of the roleplaying community from Laurelin had made their way. As happened every spring, the people of Bree-land were holding a Spring festival, where Linhalaith's first destination was the hedge maze.

"I wouldn't say it's the most helpful of signs..." --Linhalaith, examining five variations of "That Way"

Deeper in the maze, some of the locals were having a keg party. In good spirits, Linhalaith decided that a small glass of bitter wouldn't hurt.

She woke up next morning in Woodhall, with a terrible headache and someone else's trousers.

She isn't wearing the trousers, they're in her handbag. But wait, isn't that Arwen's handbag?...

Poor Linhalaith made her way back to the festival, swearing off alcohol for at least the next week or so.

Linhalaith, who knows exactly where she's going

Linhalaith, who might be a bit lost

Linhalaith, definitely lost

Linhalaith, with a bear, at the top of Ost Baranor

Eventually, our heroine found the Festival Grounds again. She saw how Bess the dance trainer had set up shop again, and this time had drawn a decent crowd. Then for a time she volunteered to bring the wine, which she poured surreptitiously on the flower beds and swapped for grape juice. After a while, she became friendly with some herbalists who'd travelled from Gondor to bend the ear of anybody and everybody nearby about the medicinal uses of flowers.

The herbalists, explaining how Purple Anorloth flowers were descended from the now-extinct Anarlosse, and can be used as an aphrodisiac for sheep

Linhalaith, reluctantly gathering basketfuls of Purple Anorloth

A bloke named Haerandel had been dropping eaves nearby, and felt he had to weigh in. Purple Anorloth wasn't descended from Anarlosse at all, he explained; it was just a flower with a similar name. Anarlosse, sadly, was extinct.

Haerandel went on to explain how he and his brother Edlothon had been travellers long ago, and had seen tall, yellow Anarlosse blooms throughout Middle-earth. The first Anarlosse had been sewn by Elendil, but with the death of Elendil's son Anarion, the flowers were driven to despair, and soon went extinct.

"Gosh, his words are so evocative, it's as though we're right there in his memories!" --Linhalaith, who respects a good framing device

A lady named Faregild had been dropping some eaves of her own, and swore she remembered seeing some flowers just recently that resembled Anarlosse. They'd been around Stock on the eastern border of the Shire, lined up next to a fence... or next to a road, something like that.

"I'm not drunk, I assure you! Unless I mistook a yellow marigold for an Anarlosse..." Faregild

Linhalaith suddenly remembered the flowers she'd seen on the way back from Woodhall. There had been many, it was a flowery country, but hadn't she lain in drunken sleep under tall, yellow blooms? Haerandel was delighted at the possibility, then in despair he smacked his forehead, for his brother was due to sail to the Undying Lands that very day.

While Linhalaith wasn't exactly an Elf's Elf, she knew that letting Edlothon depart Middle-earth without knowing the fate of his favourite flower would be a travesty. She mounted Bilberry and booked it towards the west coast.

Did I tell you her horse was named Bilberry? Well, now you know.

And here are Edlothon and company.

Edlothon was amazed. He hadn't noticed any Anarlosse-like flowers on his journey, but in fairness, he had been paying close attention to his feet after rolling his ankle the week before. He agreed to wait and see if there were any convincing signs that the flowers of old still grew somewhere.

Linhalaith searched with him. All too soon, they found not a sign but a painting.

Edlothon was transfixed by the painting, but Linhalaith, after a moment's confusion, burst into laughter.

"Anarlosse?! It has to be, for I remember the ones in your brother's memories as clearly as day, but it's also undeniably a cocking SUNFLOWER!" Linhalaith explained.

"And are they common?" asked Edlothon, sidling a little further away from her.

"I wouldn't call them common, necessarily, yet they're far from rare. Somehow I never quite noticed. Here in the Shire, in gardens or lined up beside the road, you'll find them anywhere flowers grow. Just like in my grandmother's day!" --Linhalaith

"Your grandmother...? I don't understand. How young must you be, then?" --Edlothon

"Er, about eight hundred years." --Linhalaith

"A mere stripling! Yet even so, thank you. For so long, I never dared to hope I would see one again, but now..." --Edlothon

Linhalaith left Edlothon to catch up with Haerandel, and made her way back to the Festival Grounds.

Sunflowers... It was strange to think they were the same flowers Elendil had brought from Numenor (because that's the sort of thing you do when you're Elendil), nearly unchanged after so many years. Linhalaith wondered whether death was as simple as people tended to think. Murdering one sunflower would be as easy as slicing its stem, but all of them? All the sunflowers - the Anarlosse - in the world? That, it turned out, was impossible.

Oh, yes, and she also bought a new coat.

"In this mild weather, it's much nicer than my other one!" --Linhalaith