OOC INFORMATION
Name: a scarlet thiiing (or just scarlet)
Contact: rancors@plurk, lacqueried@aim
Other Characters: nyet

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: mairon (more commonly known as sauron)
Age: too old. before the universe as his world knows it.
Canon: tolkien legendarium, elfs and shiny rocks edition (mostly, the silmarillion)
Canon Point: during the corruption of numenor
Character Information:

(headcanon will be underlined. the silmarillion is attributed to being written by a fictional character within the world itself; if this is true, parts of it are questionable, particularly any insight to the thoughts or motivation of Melkor and Mairon, given that the source would be collecting information from elves who would have a biased stance on the matter. this is going to a hopefully objective overview of his history. the latter half does include mentions, but not depictions, of torture and mutilation.)

In the very, very, very early beginning, before the Universe was born, the Ainur were made. This was considered a very bad decision by some. Or, well, some of them were considered bad decisions.

See, when Eru (also known as the Maker, the Creator, God, Iluvatar, He That Stands Alone, 'Worst Dad Ever') first made the Ainur (sometimes known as the Holy Ones, but that's just a literal meaning, no one even calls them Ainur) from his thought, Melkor was the only one. Some indeterminate amount of time and bad parenting mistakes later, Melkor had a bit of an identity crisis and became forever locked in a rebellious stage. Quite literally.

The other Ainur were made not long after, although 'not long' is subjective considering time didn't even exist yet. Each subsequent Ainu (singular) was given understanding of only a small part of their Creator's mind, unlike Melkor who was given a little bit of everyone else's gifts. They were given 'life' through a little something called the Flame Imperishable, or the Secret Fire, which Melkor sought for himself long before the others were made and was denied it.

After being given free will through this Flame, Eru taught his little darlings to sing. A little odd and ambitious of him, but they learned, despite not having bodies at all to sing with. Yet they sang, and it is said that some sang alone at first, and others in small groups. Eventually they began to gather and listen to each other's song, thus coming to know and understand a little more of the parts of Eru's mind that they didn't have in them, and their music became harmonized, and unified. (Except for Melkor, again, who went off to sulk and sing on his own.) Around this time, the Ainur would begin to gravitate towards those who seemed similar to themselves, and given Mairon's initial choice of masters later on, he gathered to Aule the Smith.

Then Eru had all his little darlings come together and Compose a Music into which they could weave their own thoughts and ideas. This kind of overwhelmed them because free will is a strange concept when nothing else exists. Also, high expectations. But in any case, they did sing-- three times, three themes. For the first two themes, Melkor was a shit and kept interrupting with his Unique and Different (or in Mairon's words, Discordant and Chaotic) ideas and thoughts, very few of which harmonized at all with the others. The Third theme that Eru helped conduct, however, incorporated Melkor's chaos and unruliness into it; one half of the song was influenced by Melkor, pompous and loud and seeking to drown out all the rest, and the other half was filled with "immeasurable sorrow", yet nonetheless containing endless depth and beauty, and together it didn't sound half bad.

Up until now, Melkor had been trying to defy Eru's will, trying to warp and destroy; but Eru then told him that any discord he tried to introduce was actually a part of Eru's will and plan, and not at all a rebellion as Melkor thought it was. He then showed the Ainur a vision of what they song created, and they saw the history of this world, Arda, Middle-Earth, though not the entirety of it. Even Melkor's discords were woven into it seamlessly. But then Eru took this vision away before they could see the end of it, and in the newfound darkness, they were restless at not knowing how the vision would end. Some say he perceived that they wanted this vision to be as real as they were. Perhaps he intended to make it real all along.

In any case, he waved his proverbial hands, and the Universe poofed into existence as a sort of bubble in the Void where they had all been hanging out. And in this Universe, perhaps several planets were made. But we focus only on Arda, or Earth and its consequent satellites, and those who wished to witness the history of his world in person were allowed to enter the Universe-- with the understanding that they will not be allowed to leave until it Ends.

Of those who entered, the greatest of them were considered Valar, or 'the Powers', whereas the rest, the lesser Ainur, were called Maiar, literally meaning 'the Beautiful'. Mairon falls into the latter category. Upon crashlanding on Arda, the Ainur (now used to only refer to those who have entered Arda) see that the land is.. barren. Empty. And so the Valar gathered to them those Maiar who were similar to them, and taught them more of what they knew. At this time, Mairon joined the 'household' of Aule, while Melkor gathered many chaos-and-power-loving spirits to him. Mairon didn't stay away for long (..subjectively speaking).

Somewhere along the way, Mairon was affected by Melkor's corrupting influence and was 'seduced to his allegiance' (verbatim), but remained with the Valar with the claim of spying on them. After a few scuffles with Melkor and quite a bit of work shaping the land, the Valar put up two giant pillars with glowing orbs set atop them, and the orbs were filled with the mist that was spread over the Earth since the beginning. These pillars lit up at intervals like giant nightlamps, and for the first time, there was day and night. Sort of. More like 'Night' and 'Less Night'.

Then Melkor decided he didn't like the light, so he destroyed the lamps while the Valar were celebrating some marriage, and the flames from the lamps spread and burned most of the land to a crisp. And then he crashed their party on their island and destroyed it. Just like that. And as the flames burned down the world around them, Melkor tried to convince Mairon to come with him again, but Mairon stayed and remained a spy, because the Valar still did not suspect him of treachery yet.

With the world now a mess, the Valar set about reshaping the lands into something that looked a lot more like the current version Middle-Earth, rebuilding what had once been destroyed. And of course, fending off Melkor, who again came back to cause trouble. Mairon joined the Valar in their new home of Valinor, a huge island west of Middle-Earth (so called because it later became the.. middle part of earth). There the Vala Yavanna, Aule's sweetie and basically Mother Nature, created the Two Trees, which is exactly what it sounds like; two trees, one silver and one gold, each giving off light the same way the lamps did, and thus creating a better version of Night and Day. Sometime after this, Mairon left for Middle-Earth to finally join Melkor's side completely.

He began in a lower position, a simple (or perhaps not so much) blacksmith or metalworker, occasional sciencer, until he soon proved to be a devoted and capable servant, wishing for the triumph of his master. By the time the Elves woke, Mairon had already become Melkor's lieutenant and had been given command over the 'newly' built stronghold of Angband. Unfortunately, Melkor did some nasty things to the Elves (including but not limited to supposedly turning them into Orcs - it's a widely accepted notion but no one really knows), and the Valar were upset so they marched up, demolished his first stronghold (not Angband) and dismantled-but-not-completely-wrecked the second (Angband), and hauled Melkor away in chains. Mairon was not captured.

In his master's absence, he ruled over Melkor's domain, repairing the fortress that wasn't completely demolished, and continued breeding foul creatures until Melkor finally returned some three hundred years later. And as he did so, Melkor destroyed the Two Trees with the help of a giant spider of blackholeness, tried to seduce an Elf, killed said elf's father, stole said Elf's greatest creations (three shiny rocks, can you believe it?), and probably wrecked a few homes on the way out as well-- not necessarily in that order. Melkor returned to Angband weakened, hands burnt by the Silmarilli (also known as Silmarils, or Holy Shiny Rocks), and no longer able to change his form, now stuck in a singular body.

And still Mairon handed the throne back to him.

Not long after (again, relatively speaking, even though time exists now thanks to the fruit of the Trees being turned into the Sun and the Moon), the aforementioned Elf (now named Feanor) led a host of Elves henceforth known as Noldor back to Middle-Earth into order to reclaim the Silmarils. He even had his 7 sons take an Oath swearing that they will retrieve the shinies no matter what, because they are his greatest creation, and Melkor (now named Morgoth by Feanor, also known as Black Foe) did not deserve to have them. Frankly, neither did anyone else, according to Feanor.

During this strife against the Noldor, Mairon (now named Sauron, the Abhorred, by the other Elves because of all the gross things he's done) served as Melkor's chief lieutenant, surpassing all others in rank, a master of sorcery and illusion. When Melkor went to corrupt the newly wakened race of Men, Mairon alone directed the war against the Elves in his stead. Eventually, it conquered a little island that was later creatively named the Isle of Werewolves, and there he imprisoned corrupted Elven and Mannish spirits within the bodies of wolves to make werewolves.

Not long after (actually not that long this time), he was driven out of the Isle by an Elf-maiden on a mission to marry her Mannish lover. Her wolfhound wounded Mairon enough that he fled the battle bleeding from his throat, and hid somewhere in the dark parts of the forest, terrorizing it while the Elf-maid and her boy marched into Angband, sang Melkor the fuck to sleep, and stole a Silmaril. And then Beren proceeded to have the hand holding it bitten off by the resident guarddog, but that's another story. Only after the whole debacle does Mairon return to Angband.

Timeskip forward a few hundred years (give or take), and Melkor is defeated and dragged away. Again, Mairon was not captured. He came forward to the Eonwe, Herald of Manwe, also known as 'King of Arda' and Melkor's lil bro (technically speaking they're all bros, but. technicalities), and was told that he could not be pardoned by Eonwe himself, and that he had to return to Valinor and receive judgement and penance from the Valar.

Instead, he fled and hid in Middle-Earth for the next few hundred years, building a base in the land of Mordor and regathering his influence in the form of Men from the East, South, and Orcs. Taking the form of an Elf from Valinor, Mairon approached several Elven settlements for aid in a particular project, including Elrond in Rivendell and Gil-Galad in Gondolin, but was rebuffed from both. In Eregion though, he found a companion in Celebrimbor, the leader of the smith's guild there, and came to them as an emissary of Aule here to share his knowledge, and he called himself Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. With his help, the Elves of Eregion created the Rings of Power, and Mairon himself created the One Ring back in Mordor in order to control all those who wore those Rings of Power. Unfortunately, this also let the Elves wearing the rings see his own mind, and so they threw the rings down in frustration and anger and never wore them again. During this moment, Mairon also learned that Celebrimbor had forged in secret his own three rings, far more powerful than the others.

Mairon took an army and marched down to Eregion, demanding all the rings be handed over. Of course the Elves would do no such thing, so he and his host razed the city down and took the rings by force; except for the three rings that Celebrimbor had already sent away. So Mairon took Celebrimbor captive, trying to force him to speak of their location, in the end finding nothing and resorting to using Celebrimbor's body as a war-banner. He ruled over the land of Eriador for one year, pressing into the borders of Rivendell and Gondolin. Then the Numenoreans came and drove him out.

But he had what he needed, what he wanted out of Eregion. With the Rings in his possession, he distributed them among Men and Dwarves; Dwarves were too resilient, though they still fell into madness eventually. Men were easier to sway, and eventually he had chosen 9 particular individuals to be turned into wraiths, each bearing a single ring. At this point, it was a little over a thousand years after the One Ring was made. His goal was widely believed (among those that weren't his allies, at least) to be domination and control of the whole of Middle-Earth.

Numenor marched upon Mordor, demanding Sauron's surrender, and Mairon pretended to oblige. He was brought to their island as a prisoner first, but within three years rose to become an advisor to Ar-Pharazon, King of Numenor. And he corrupted Pharazon and the Numenoreans, turning them to worship Melkor instead of the Valar (even though they had.. kind of already stopped worshipping the Valar several Kings ago), even so far as to have them set up a temple to Melkor/Morgoth and provide human sacrifices.

And in the midst of it all, he is brought to Ryslig.

Personality:

"I CAN MAKE THE WORLD BETTER I CAN TAKE CARE OF THE EARTHLINGS oops went too far can't turn back now"

That's a generally accurate statement for how Mairon's character turns out to be. In the beginning he was Mairon, the Admirable, Excellent one, derived from the Elvish Quenyan root maira, meaning "admirable, excellent, precious" or "splendid, sublime, only [used] of great, august or splendid things", which all prove to be apt descriptors. From Tolkien himself, Mairon is said to love order and coordination above all else, and disliked all confusion and wasteful discord. By this wording, he also values efficiency, practicality, under the assumption that would not mind discord if it were not 'wasteful' and had a use. These reasons are chief in his defecting to Melkor, because Melkor is nothing if not Chaotic and Discordant and Rebellious, all of which are things Mairon should avoid being associated with. And indeed, he did not join Melkor in the beginning of the discord, when many other chaotic spirits were drawn to him.

But he compromises, so to speak. "[I]t was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him." Quickly and masterfully are the keywords here. For all of Melkor's rebelliousness, his power was so great that he could do this work and destruction quickly; and for that, Mairon was impressed. Impressed enough to quite possibly be willingly to change his perception of how the world should be 'ordered' to fit Melkor's idea, which would later be as follows: "his original desire for 'order' had really envisaged the good estate (especially physical well-being) of his 'subjects'." And given that he is of those who have personally witness their Creator imparting wisdom to them, it wouldn't be far-fetched to say that he believes this is how Eru wants the world to be ordered as well; or at least, how Eru wants him to order it.

Another thing to be said is his sheer stubbornness. For as loyal as Mairon becomes, the most loyal of all his servants, as much as Mairon came to serve with pride and dignity, he did not come willingly. He knows his duty, knows what he loves and knows what he dislikes, and he stands by them for many long years. Even after joining Melkor he stood by them, preferring Order over Melkor's chaos, even to go as far as trying to bring order to Melkor's chaos. Because as loyal as he is, he has his own place in the world, his own duties assigned to him by Eru. Which isn't to say that he won't compromise, but he won't compromise them entirely, as evidenced when he chooses to take the path of Melkor's chaotic power to achieve the order he wishes; order is still his goal, but done with the efficiency that Melkor's power would have.

Being a Maia and one of the Ainur first made by the Creator, one could say he has a sense of superiority above others; not in the sense of being privileged, or better, or greater, but in the way that a god might see themselves as above a mortal. Because that is what he is, something different, something more. He does not consider his actions as immoral or wrong, or good or evil, because he is above those ideals. One might argue that he can't possibly see killing people as not wrong, but if we turn it around, we see that while Melkor wreaked havoc on Beleriand, while Sauron later 'enslaved' hundreds of people, the Valar also did nothing to stop them, despite being on the side of 'good'.

On the flip side, this superiority is also a bit of a self-imposed isolation. For most of the First Age (before Melkor was hauled off for good), he was in Utumno or Angband, surrounded by other Maiar (the chaotic ones known as Balrogs), and after the war all those who survived went into hiding, including himself. They never found each other again, and each quite likely thought themselves the only one left of Melkor's army.

But even so, it is said that he wants for the well-being of 'his people'; an implication that, as detached as he might be, he is still able to 'claim' others as 'his', as in the ruler of the country, and that he takes care of them to an extent. He's not incapable of compassion, at least at this point in time, even if it's only directed towards his own (and even more towards those of his own kind and order, such as other Maiar and Ainur).

As Tolkien describes it, "..in the view of this tale and mythology, Power, when it dominates or seeks to dominate other wills and minds (except by the assent of their reason) is evil." Despite this, however, we do not know if the Easterlings and Southrons that Mairon claims as 'his' are to be considered 'dominated', whether they have been 'enslaved' or have joined of their own free will-- even one corrupted into evil can be argued to have joined willingly, if they have kept their minds and wills. By Frodo's own (possibly biased and unfounded) words, the Easterlings are 'evil swarthy men', which is to say that they are at least not all enslaved into serving Sauron. Whether Frodo thinks of 'evil' the same way Tolkien describes it is another matter entirely, but the fact is that while Mairon might be 'evil', or as close an approach to evil as can be, being only less evil than his master, both Mairon and Melkor are shown to prefer willing servants and alliances over unwilling, enslaved ones. Not because they're actually nice, but because it's more practical in the long run. Any decent ruler will want to keep their citizens happy so that they won't rebel, regardless of whether they are on the side of 'good' or 'evil'.

..Which, of course, is not to say that Mairon is above enslaving others if need be. While he does 'convince' the Elves of Eregion to help him make the Rings of Power, and while he was true in his wanting to heal the hurts of Arda and restore order to it, the end result of the Rings is the wearers being completely under his control. Because he is considered a deceiver, a liar, and not someone trustworthy, due to his previous association with Melkor, he results to other means to complete his 'duties', to fix Arda. And that is by forcing others to do as he says. Power and domination is the second-most efficient means if one cannot convince them. The ends justify the means, so to speak, and he is willing to do what needs to be done to accomplish his goals, such as when he took over command when Melkor was taken by the Valar, only to give it back when his master returned. Ruling was not yet a thing he explicitly desired, only doing it as necessary.

While the Silmarillion says that Sauron had dark designs when he came to Imladris, Gondolin, and Eregion, Tolkien states that at the beginning of the Second Age, Sauron "was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all 'reformers' who want to hurry up with 'reconstruction' and 'reorganization' are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up." So while Elrond and Gil-Galad rebuffed his pleas for aid, and while Galadriel could not trust him, it was more because they rejected the notion of 'creating a Valinor on Middle-Earth', seeing it for what it was; a veiled attack upon the 'gods'. But the Elves of Eregion felt the same way Annatar must have, or at least they thought they did, in loving Middle-Earth and not wanting to leave, yet also wanting the beauty of Valinor with them. At the time of his corrupting Numenor, however, he is slowly sliding further down that slow, and his own goals are being twisted into something else.

Not least of all is the sense of fatalism that he might share with the other Ainur. As stated, the Ainur were shown a vision by Eru of the history of the Universe, and of Arda in particular. Those that chose to enter the Universe did so because they wanted to see that 'history' come to pass, and to see it with their own eyes, up close and personal. Or as personal as you could get while watching from entirely separate island. While not all events were shown to them, they certainly saw many of them, and the fact that there are some events that they do not try to prevent (the Flight of the Noldor, the Kinslayings, everything about Melkor) despite knowing what would happen if they came to pass seems to suggest a) a great amount of respect for the free will of the inhabitants of Middle-Earth that is unfortunately contradicted by everything they do in the beginning (summoning the Elves to Aman instead of leaving them be), and/or b) the knowledge and/or acceptance that nothing they do anymore can change the fate of Middle-Earth. Melian, for example, the mother of Luthien, could foresee many of the dark events coming to pass, and yet all she does is counsel her husband Thingol (an Elf-lord) about some of them and does not actively do anything else to try to prevent them from occurring.

In all, a demi-godlike creature villainous only in actions as viewed from a certain angle and not entirely in intent. For the time being.

5-10 Key Character Traits:
- loves order and coordination (and ordering and coordinating), and efficiency. a very practical being.
- dislikes discord and wastefulness
- a sense of superiority; does not consider himself even remotely human, since he is something far greater than that. like a boot to an ant, if you will. on the flip side, a self-imposed sort of isolation.
- has no qualms against doing what it needs to do in order to get the job done.
- gets mildly possessive over things that are his. much like a certain master of his.
- music is magical. even if there's no magic and he can't quite understand it the same way he used to.
- unfailingly loyal to himself and anyone who chooses to be loyal to. at this point, melkor's the only one.. but only when he's actually around.

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER?
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