Welcome to the Lord of the podcast.

I've previously talked about the inspiration for the hidden cities of Gondolin and Nagarthrand.

And I didn't want to have to bring up another episode about this, but here, here's some behind-the-scenes stuff.

Here's some inside baseball. We are currently at chapter 15 of the Somerilian.

Chapter 15 is titled of the Noldor of Belerian.

And most of this chapter talks about the founding and the construction of these cities.

We do have a big section in the middle, though.

That's very interesting and very

important because it relays more information about how Mellion finds out what's actually going on

with the Noldor, Galadriel's relationship with her, that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of important things going on here,

at least upon first reading. But the actual construction of these hidden cities, the locations of the

cities, the fact that they are hidden itself is a very important theme for Tolkien.

He draws from this tradition of the fairy and the fay and the myths of those kinds of creatures

and the fact that they exist just beyond the realms of

the natural and the normal into these other kinds of places that are hidden, hidden away.

And the realms you've noticed of Balearian typically are different than just common places where people live.

Sure, you've got the Sons of Feanor living in certain sections along the northern parts of the map that we've talked about,

out in the open, in these regular lands, I guess you could say.

But even then, oftentimes their settlements are in forests and places that are necessarily

easy to find.

But then you have places like Doriath and the girdle of Mellion separating an entire forest

from the rest of the geography, the rest of the land.

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