Elena's TOLKIEN Blog

Mornings

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If residing in Tinnudir, Lothrin is usually the first to stir awake, way before dawn. Elves sleep but a couple hours a night, usually about two to four, and can go entire days without rest. Early in the morning, she will rise and make a start on the chores of the day. Tinnudir, a keep of such size and the surrounding land are always in need of hands to tend to them.

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She will quickly leave the keep and make her way to the animal pens. While LOTRO doesn’t show this detail to us, I strongly believe there were animals raised on the island. She will release the chickens and ducks from their coops, collect the eggs, feed the cows, goats, sheep, horses, and pigs and if time allows milk the cows and goats, then clean their spaces. If she is not present or otherwise occupied, someone else will take care of these duties. 

With a big chunk of the early morning gone, she will either help in the kitchens to prepare the meals of the day, or simply eat and be on her way. Depending on the season and food situation, in the morning or noon she may either go alone or take some company to cross the lake and hunt in the hills of Evendim.  Evendim is home to a big population of bears, so bear meat is plenty available to make stew or rugs from. 

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Afternoons

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With the time-sensitive chores out of the way and still plenty of daytime left, when in Tinnudir and not otherwise occupied with administrative duties, Lothrin’s hands would ever be busy with spinning thread or sewing clothing, as tailoring is one of her hobbies. In medieval societies aside from food, the two most important resources people needed were thread for cloth-making and wax for candle-making. The process involved in cloth-making is long and laborious, so everyone was urged to give a hand: from picking the plants, to dying the thread, to spinning it, to sewing the cloth itself and more. Making even one piece of a garment may take anywhere up to three hundred hours, depending on the complexity of the piece. 

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If the weather is otherwise not foul, Lothrin will join the dúnedain in the small gardens surrounding Tinnudir and tend to the vegetable plantations. What gardening needs to be done wholly depends on whether it is planting or harvesting season, but she loves the harvest best and all the work that comes with the season. One may always find her carrying entire baskets of vegetables, and helping with the making of jams, sauces, pickled vegetables and more. If strong arms are needed, she will help with woodworking and the upkeep of the various buildings, mainly repairing rooftops, as the dúnedain do not possess her elven agility and ease of movement. On more than one occasion messengers would find her high atop a roof, hammering nails.

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Evenings

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One regular activity she pursues in the evenings is patrolling the roads up to the King’s Crossroad, for any signs of trouble. If all the other sentries are away on errands, she will gladly take their posts and stand guard the whole night. If present in Tinnudir, she will help with serving dinner to the whole encampment of roughly fifty people, then either tell a story or leave for her study and pursue various scholarly duties in candlelight. As she is the sage of Evendim, every couple of years she rewrites her various notes on the life of the northern dúnedain. She has kept meticulous notes that date back to the inception of Arnor, detailing genealogies, customs, lineages and more. Her various manuscripts have been a treasure to the modern-day dúnedain, mainly with helping them remember their customs and their lineages. 

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Tinnudir is a keep with various floors. The ground floor is home to a small library, a study, a storage room, the kitchens, and some sleeping quarters placed around the inner pool. The upper floors are accessible through an inner stairway and are home to more sleeping-quarters and storage rooms. On the third floor rests the Study of Lothrin, a room filled to the brim with treasures of ages long past, scrolls and books, weapons, armour and in the middle of it all sits a desk, where Lothrin does her scholarly work. The room though cramped, is luminous.

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If the evenings are calm and quiet, she will delight in teaching the dúnedain children their history, with as much detail as she can muster. She will speak of the marble columns of the throne-room of Elendil, of the beautiful gardens at the heart of Annúminas, of the various gatherings the nobles of Evendim used to have, of all the kind and brave working-people who fought so fiercely for their kingdom. 

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Deviations

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The schedule presented above may suffer alterations depending on a myriad of factors. If orcs have been spotted in the area, Lothrin will join patrols and guard the borders. If the harvests have been lacking, she will hunt more and gather whatever plants and roots available for eating. If the coffers are emptying, she will join in the making of various products to try and trade them in Bree or the Shire. If the day allows and no pressing matters are ahead of her, she will often train herself, then train some of the younger dúnedain in close, then ranged combat. She is a strict but fair teacher. 

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Seasonal Work

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If the summer weather is especially kind, she would often be found at the farms in Barandalf, in south Evendim. The farms are the main source of food for the dúnedain of Evendim, so tending to them is of utmost importance. The farms, though small, are close to hobbit lands, so trade often occurs. If the farms are otherwise staffed, and the sentries are away on various errands, she will stand guard at the bridge of High King’s Crossing, inquiring the business of any travellers that wish to pass into the heart of Evendim. If the day is particularly slow, she may talk to the others and try and tend to the bridge, although she is no stoneworker or architect. 

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Although, she has long pled to the dúnedain that maintaining Annúminas is of utmost importance, the dúnedian are simply too few and too far spread to tend to a city the size of Annúminas. If present within the white-city, when not reminiscing about the past, Lothrin will help the sentries stationed there to maintain a road throughout the city, free of rubble. If otherwise unoccupied, she will scout the various half-flooded buildings for any objects of importance. If at Sarn Ford, she will act as a sentry and report to the on-field commander. Though her visits to Esteldin are rare, she will more often than not come for administrative business or high-councils, thus partake less in the day-by-day chores.

One of the big advantages elves possess is that they live for thousands of years. The lifespan of Lothrin, as of the War of the Ring is equal to that of fifty to a hundred human lives. In modern terms, in takes one human one lifetime to become an absolute expert in whatever domain they choose, can you imagine what we could do with fifty lifetimes? Lothrin, as an elf, had millennia of time to hone her skills, and thus can lend a hand to whatever needs doing.

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She will do anything that needs doing from more household oriented activities like sewing, cooking, baking, soap-making, wine and beer-making, house repairs, cloth beating/washing, childcare, makeshift barbering, to more scholarly pursuits like candle making, writing, chronicling, teaching, book-binding, sending messages, to more administrative pursuits like tax-keeping, act as a clerk, act as a judge, act as a baliff, hold council, to more agricultural pursuits like bee-keeping, cattle-raising, farm-management, hunting, animal-skinning, bird-plucking, to more military pursuits like commanding guerrilla troops, maintaining armour and military strategy. Though it is worth mentioning that just because she can do something, it does not mean she can do it as well as someone whose job is only that specific thing like a full-time farmer or woodworker.

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I hope you enjoyed reading this and that this small essay shed some light on my character.