Living and breathing Middle Earth

My chief character was an old woman who was known as the Lore Master. This was my way of getting the attention of other hardcore role players who also spoke Elvish. While they were skilled enough in battle to sustain the illusion of being elven lords, I could not muster the coordination either online or offline to pull off the deadly grace of a 3000-year-old elven warrior, even though I knew enough lore to play that part convincingly. It was a shame as here, within me, was the player that this game server needed—a massive Tolkien fan with enough lore and storytelling skills to help the server grow by building its fictional universe.

I was frustrated—for myself and for the game—until I found and created this character that would start my game addiction. Up until then, it had been fun to be in a place where my Tolkien skills had meaning. As a child and teenager, I had always been one to play with imaginary characters and would spend hours in my own imaginary worlds. But now, this fantasy world became real, because my Lore Master character piqued the interest of other characters.

It’s an amazing thing to realize that you’re in a space that you thought only you could see but finally, one day, others start telling you that it’s real and you realize that not only is it real, but you matter in this space. It’s a confirmation, it’s almost like love. It became my drug.

Creating the perfect couple

After this period I created a character whom I called Ilmare. She was an Easterling who suspected that she had elven blood (kind of reflecting my own mixed Indian-Filipina background). I made her young and inexperienced because this would reflect my bad gaming skills, but her back story was that she was in search of her father, an elf who had deserted her human mother.

I would play by myself, role playing with my panther Sirith in the safe woodlands behind the town of Bree. But I started this character also to get the attention of others and there was one character in particular whom I was interested in…

You see, I was never one to have a crush on someone; I always had crushes on couples.

As a child, I used to go around and tell random couples that they were beautiful. Whether it was Elizabeth Bennett & Mr Darcy, Jane Eyre & Mr Rochester, Arwen & Aragorn or Aerin & Aegnor from Tolkien (only mortal female and elf male pairings interested me), it was the dynamic of couples that I was into.

In fandom, we call this “shipping” or “ships” (relationships)—it’s when you get so into the couple and the tension between them that it’s almost voyeuristic.

According to Wikipedia, “Shipping, initially derived from the word relationship, is the desire by fans for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters, to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise. It is considered a general term for fans’ emotional involvement with the ongoing development of a relationship in a work of fiction. Shipping often takes the form of creative works, including fanfiction and fan art, most often published on the internet.”

The character that I wanted to attract was one of the few high elves on the server. I would see glimpses of him from far away when he’d ride through my camp in the Bree woods (the only place where the orcs/goblins did not get to, so I was safe here as a gamer). I can’t remember exactly the name of the elven lord—I think it might have been Aegnor Aikanaro.

One day during game play he talked to my character. And I was smitten. Absolutely and utterly. I was starting to see my character and this elven lord as a potential couple.

I was shipping my own role play character and I was almost in love with the relationship. Real life with real friends and family seemed pale and unexciting next to this online existence that I was suddenly drawn into. Who needed to be a person when I could be a living character in Middle Earth?

The emotional attachment and attraction that I was developing for this other character who was my dream catch only cemented this addiction.

Back to reality

In 2004, privacy was the name of the game on the internet and there was no social media yet except for Friendster. So in my mind the elven lord was exactly what he was; I knew he had a player there controlling him, but I was more interested in the character than the player. It was a time when imagination was rife—you went online to escape your world and to enter a new one.

I was so happy, I can’t explain it, but I was up all night and all day. The first thing I did in the morning and last thing I did at night was go online and play this game. Even thinking about this time all these years later makes me happy.

But my mother knew that something was not right when one of my best friends was in town and I made an excuse not to see her—the only time in my life that I have done this. My mother came in one day, took my Neverwinter nights discs that I needed to log in, and broke them.

Fan fiction and the long aftermath

That was the end of my online affair. With my heroin gone, I was bereft so I did the only thing that a storytelling addict could do—the internet forum became my methadone. I went to the gaming server’s Internet forum boards and started posting the backstory of my character. I had just started exploring this with the elven lord so I was hoping that the player would respond and role play with me online. However he/she never did and I became more engrossed in the storytelling of my character (through role play fanfiction on the the internet forums)  and the relationship between her mortal Easterling mother and elven father.

The server is long gone, and the internet forum shut down. I wish I had kept the screenshots of the game that I had—the only relic that I have from this time of bliss and addiction are the forum postings that I made. They tell the story of my character’s background and her parents’ relationship; they even include the fan art that I commissioned of her parents (whose relationship I was more into than my character herself)—see the pages of that story below.

I have yet to log into Lord of the Rings Online, as it’s inevitable that I will get addicted again – even after all this time has passed. However if there is a Virtual Reality game I will just have to try and see….

The Story of Ilmare