Tolkienpunk Tales

The sky over Hobbiton is a dome that shows blue skies and clouds—except where the screens have failed, out on the edges, to show dead black pixels or the eerie blue of error screens. In Rivendell, the ancient houses of the Elves have become slums while brighter, newer arcologies rise level on level above. Submarines swim through the ruins of old Numenor, bringing forth treasures long forgotten. In the south and east, the ashen plains of Mordor have blossomed into grasslands that promise new life for the hardy settlers eager to escape the megacities and arcologies.

Over two thousand years since the end of the War of the Ring, the world has changed. The Elves are gone, the Dark Lords vanquished. Magic fades...but it is not gone entirely. The ancient kingdoms of Orcs, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits have given way to megacorporations; computer networks stretch across the world, millions of signals fed through fiber-optic networks to the ancient palantirs to generate a Matrix that holds the sum total of information of Middle Earth. Dwarves forge guns in the deep, Beornings go claw-to-cyberblade with gangsters, ancient steel meets modern technology.

In the shadowed corners of the Matrix, the Goblins raise their darknets. The skulls of ancient dragons are used by megacorps as the foundation of Archaic Intelligences, the better to keep out hackers from their precious systems. Flesh is augmented with mithril and chrome, as the peoples of Middle Earth transcend the limits that Ilúvatar set for them. In the streets, broken beings fall between the cracks of society, and find their own uses for things—even the last vestiges of magic.

For there is a darkness that still festers in the heart of Middle Earth. Blood runs in megacorporate boardrooms during hostile takeovers, and in the gutters where homeless Orcs are recruited for gangs, or Hobbits are stolen to be trafficked to the brothels of Barad-dûr and Far Harad. Cults of the Shadow persist, and a populace crushed in poverty struggles between the old ways that have failed them and an uncertain future.

Yet it is a time of adventure and of love. Of the breaking-down of barriers and the building of new legends. Where every night, connections may be made and broken, where lips might meet, and ever kiss holds promise and danger for a tomorrow that may never come. Thieves and adventurers run through the shadowed streets, braving the perils of megacorporate security and the wights of a forgotten dark age.

The road goes ever on and on, and there are still stories to tell.

For the Tolkienpunk Tale that started it all, see Pipe-weed Dreams.