ok hear is a stretcher for ya.

LOR is the tale of the end of the last mana cycle, and here are my points.

Most meta-humans have already re-goblinised.
-the books end with a description of the hobbits turning into normal humans
-Only in tight communities where the expressive gene for being a meta-human has been selectively bread do we still see meta-humans.
-As the mana level has fallen only those with the strongest expression of the gene remain goblinisied
--the elven kingdoms
--the dwarven halls
--the hobbit grove
-actual meta-human orcs and troll are all but gone due to there lack of selective breeding to reenforce the gene
--orcs and trolls are normally nomadic
-the more exodic expressions of meta-humanity no longer have the needed mana
--many para-critters are being affect by insuffent mana levels
---tree wifes have disappeared
--what are referred to as orcs and the like are actually insect sprits altering there hosts body and deforming it.

mages are all but gone.
-there are no new mages awakening.
-only the oldest and most powerful mages remain. using there life extending magic.

the elves that can are leaving for a place to survive the new age
-immortal elves??

Sauron it the last horror
-the mana levels are not high enough for him to cross the plane divide normally
--he uses the rings to harvest karma/essence in order to keep his mana bridge up.
--The tower of Sauron is a controlled mana warp/shallow that allowes him to bridge
---it is not strong enough for him to take physical form, hence he must remain in astral

-wearing the ring allowes him to bond to it, and use the harvested karma/essence
--this allowes him to take physical form, and travle freely.
---however it binds him to a physiacl form
--removeing the ring breaks the folci's activation/bonding
---no longer having the energy to manafest in the low mana enviroment he is pushed back into the astreal, and or off the plain all toghther.

-the ring wraths are undead created by the horror as per earthdawn
-putting on the ring temporally makes you horror touched

Silly rabbit, Ehran was J.R.R.

lol you know AH, some how i just had a feeling you would be the first to reply to this.

I gotta get my laughs in where I can.

Heh, I like this. It's made especially entertaining by AH's assertion that Ehran = Tolkien. We should push this as being canon. Ehran wrote LotR to give hints to humanity about what had taken place in the past.

Why not?

i think i could draw a pretty good connection between: Númenor, and thera. both of which are allegory for Atlantis.
i can even see a conection between middle-earth and Barsaive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BAmenor

All of Tolken's stories occured well after the disiperance of numenor, by his own time-line. which we can translate to mean that the cycles were to low for the super city of magic, that was thera.

I'm just getting back into this. Back when I played, the ED connection wasn't there, so I'm only just now reading up on it. I know my Tolkien backwards and forwards (thank you, useless university courses on fictional worlds) but I'm not too sure on the ED connections. I'll have to keep JRR in mind while I read.

Well it is my undestanding that meta-humans do not revert to being human from a lack of Mana, and my take on Tolken's "Orcs" would be that they were Horror Constructs, but the idea that the Lord of the Rings has some buried truth to it does appeal to me, but that might just be my inner Humanis speaking out.

I don't see why Ehran wouldn't have been writing about actual orks. In the one piece of cannon writing by him that I can recall, he came across as one very patronising elven supremist. I could quite easily see him being very prejudiced against orks. I don't know what he was like in Earthdawn if present, however. So I could be wrong.

Great idea, by the way.

The 'new' Tolkien book - Children of something - could be interesting and usefull for Shadowrun....