I need some help...

[Gwaihir]

I'm thinking of writing a story of Middle Earth during the first age. I am a bit of a Purist, and I want to do this without changing or hurting Tolkien's works. If possible, I even want to use Tolkien's way of writing! I need to do a lot of research, but digging through the Sil is a hard work. Can anyone tell me all you know about Ossiriand, its history, land scape, anything! And also about the people that live there, especially Elves. I need to know all I can about those. Thank you!

[Aragorn's Latest Lay]

Try looking here:

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/

It would take most people here far too many pages to tell all they know of the era and its people (although I could fit all I know of it on the underside of a dead earwig) and it could give you some ideas for stories based on important events of the time.

Good luck.

A.L.L.

[Aragorn's Latest Lay]

Actually you could just go straight here:

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/chronicle.html?startyear=1&startage=1&endyear=583&endage=1

or here

http://http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/o/ossiriand.html

as a starting point. This is a full chronicle (as known) of the events of the first age. the second one is a bit about Ossiriand. There may be more information on the rest of the site. There are links on it to explain each bit and, whilst it is not always exhaustive in its history, it does give a great amount of detail which it would take a long time to collect were you to try it alone.

As you can see there are many well-known parts which you could centre your story round such as the awakening of men, Beren and Luthien, the first rising of sun and moon, the destruction of Morgoth etc.

If you want to find out about elves in particular then do a search on the Arda site for "Green Elves" as they are the ones who inhabited the woodland realm of Ossirand. There is actually quite a lot of information on the site for this race.

Hope this is of some help.

[Gwaihir]

Ok, thanks alot! I'll have to think up the plot now. It's so hard to write it without changing anything of Tolkien!