Author's Note — A friend is currently developing an RP related to the finding of the weapons by Thorin Oakenshield's party in the Trollshaws. As a result, they've asked for prospective participants to share some information about their intended characters with links to Gondolin (where the weapons would have been crafted). I saw this as an opportunity to share my info using LA, as follows...
What is your name?
Ceneshar of Aman, later of Lothlórien, still the 'Keeper of the Silent Archive' and Loreward to the Court of Celeborn and the Lady Galadriel in these times.
Where do you live now?
Caras Galadhon; his talan lies close to the archives where he spends most of his waking hours among scrolls and sealed tomes.
What do you do?
He serves as chronicler and custodian of Lothlórien’s deeper histories. His task is to preserve and interpret the recorded memory of the Eldar, especially the fragments surviving from Beleriand and the Elder Days. He is an advisor to the court, though more often kept at a distance and routinely sent abroad as an emissary and scholar than permitted to sit in counsel, which he fervently, but quietly, resents.
What was your name in Gondolin?
He bore no name of that city, for he was never of its people. Yet in the First Age he travelled there as envoy and scholar, bearing messages from the western lords of the Falas, chiefly Círdan and his captains, to the Noldor. To some in those days he was called Cenethir, “seer of signs,” in Sindarin*, for his fascination with symbols and prophetic verse.
((*my use of Sindarin here is only imagined))
What was your profession?
Archivist, linguist, and historian of the Elder Days, even then. His work extends to the study of old arms and relics, particularly those of the Gondolin smiths, whose precision he reveres as the purest expression of elven mastery in Middle-earth.
Were you noble?
Yes. Ceneshar was born in Valinor during the Years of the Trees and came east in the following of Galadriel when she first crossed the sea. Though of lesser nobility, he has long served her household and that of Celeborn.
If yes, which house did you belong to?
Not of any of Gondolin origin, but is of an ancient line of lorekeepers attached to the kin of Finarfin. Sworn to Celeborn and Galadriel’s service since their earliest days. His charge is to keep the written word of the realm.
What do you look like?
Tall and slender, his hair pale silver as starlight. His eyes are grey-white and piercing, reflecting centuries of scrutiny. His garments are of elegant and exact design, every fold and clasp arranged with ceremonial precision. His voice carries a calm authority, but is edged with weariness and pride.
What are some places you frequented?
The archives of Caras Galadhon, the courts of Imladris on occasions for the exchange of lore, the halls of Lindon, and long ago the libraries and ringworks of Eregion and the various havens along the Falas. He was born in Aman.
Noteworthy achievements:
- Served in Galadriel’s host during the passage east and aided in the founding of Eregion.
- Assisted in the recovery and cataloguing of relics from Eregion and the Falas.
- Restored several Quenya treatises on the forging of blades of Gondolin.
- Often serves as Celeborn’s envoy to Imladris on matters of shared history and record.
Noteworthy family relations:
- Husband to Línael of the Nimrodel ward, slain by Men in the uneasy years that followed the breaking of the Last Alliance.
- Father to Pariathras, elder son of his house and exemplar of all noble qualities of the Lórien elves (as Ceneshar sees it), whose composure and wisdom Ceneshar praises often. Pariathras is presently away on a long errand, a quest undertaken at Ceneshar’s own bidding, in service of the Golden Wood’s lore and honour.
- Father of Naridalis, still young by elven measure, bright but restless. Their relationship is straining, for Naridalis feels an affinity toward the race of Men and often seeks to aid them. She accompanies him on the errands Celeborn dispatches him upon, for she longs to see the wider world as the young often do, and this difference of outlook troubles Ceneshar deeply. He sees much of his slain wife in her; the same courage, tenderness, and dangerous sympathy toward mortals; and this resemblance wounds him afresh each time he looks upon her, filling him with both pride and sorrow, as though her presence were a mirror of all he has lost and cannot protect again.
Is there anything else we should/might know?
Though outwardly dutiful, Ceneshar feels himself ill-used by Celeborn; sent upon 'errands' when his wisdom might better serve in counsel. The discovery of Gondolin blades stirs something fierce in him: reverence for a time when the Eldar shaped the world by will and craft rather than by compromise. He sees in such relics not only history but possibility, a sign that the mastery of the First Age might yet be reclaimed. Whether he recognises it or not, that longing marks the first step upon a darker road.
