Cotalatterin vs Morgoth

[BitVyper]

Okay I know there's like zero likelihood of anyone being familiar with Latte but fuck it, I just finished Unyielding (CW: it's an nsfw game) and she's really cool and all the world building around her was great.

She'll have her sword, All Is Ash, for this. Morgoth is in the state he was when he fought Fingolfin.

I'll describe Latte a bit, getting to the for real power level feat toward the end. This is obviously spoilers: spoilers:

She's "The First Hero," actual literal inventor of being a badass. We see her mostly as a sorceress, but that's just kind of a side thing she does because of reasons. She resists the mind altering effects of a curse that rewrote significant bits of the past and changed reality to make them "natural," to the point that she talks about said curse like it's kind of a neat thing to look at. She teleports freely and has the capacity to do things like raise huge stone walls way into the sky (Catelly's description sounds like she can't see the top) or make her voice heard for miles around. Characters with way less magic than her do all the usual D&D stuff like raising barriers and tossing lightning bolts or fireballs around. She's good enough to work out all the angles on the aforementioned curse and outright cure some other thorny magical situations. That's all kind of secondary though. In her own words, she's a swordsman not a sorceress. We don't get to see her skill level really at work because once she takes up the sword again, everything else is trivial, but she taught the heroes who taught all the other heroes (and in fact is the progenitor of the concept of martial skill) who (in groups because Shooters don't fight fair) fight small gods, giants, dragons, and weird horrors (like a mysterious circus that freely alters the minds and bodies of anyone who goes in or spirits them away entirely, and returns after being repeatedly burned down). With a "regular" sword that she instantly fashioned out of a rock, she can cleave stone walls fast enough that the protagonist is left dumbfounded. In the bad end, when she takes up *her* sword again, she teleports away, and in what is described as a heartbeat later, the curse affecting the main character ends because the incredibly powerful immortal archmage who cast it and was considered largely unassailable in his home without tremendous preparation, and fated to die by the main character's hand is dead by hers. Fairly minor gods in this setting can cause large floods, transmute people, and fight armies, and we're given to understand that Latte has been keeping *all* the gods in check just by existing for a long time. Before that, when humans and the gods fought, the gods worked together to summon an extinction-level meteor and take humanity out. A smith caught it on the edge of a sword he was making and fashioned it into All Is Ash, which specifically kills concept-style gods such that they can never return, and that's Latte's sword. Immediately after slaying the archmage, she teleports to the front line and ends the ongoing war by drawing All Is Ash and putting a miles-long trench between the armies. The sword also chokes the air with ash when it's drawn, for what it's worth. After that, war is over forever. Latte goes full dread sentinel, casts down kings, raises up the weak, and the world is collectively unable to do a single thing about it despite being full of organized D&D heroes.

end of spoilers

So that's fighting Morgoth. If she can beat him in a duel, she'll redo it, but she has to fight her way through Angband to get to him. And if she can do that, what do we think her odds are against Ungoliant.

[Sharpandpointies]

So she.....

1. Ignores reality warping;
2. Basically is a high-level D&D mage;
3. Kills gods who are on the level of 'much more powerful than divine beings that obliterate armies';
4. Subjugates - alone - a world full of D&D level heroes.

Versus Morgoth in 'Had a little trouble with Fingolfin' mode.

Seems somewhat stompish.

[BitVyper]

3. Kills gods who are on the level of 'much more powerful than divine beings that obliterate armies';

Whoop, just to be clear here, when I said "fight" armies, I did mean *fight,* not obliterate. I'm gonna just describe the situation so as not to overstate it here. There's a demigod named Fray. She's a tough fighter and able to contend with other gods on their own level. A bunch of minor local deities (like three for sure, probably five or six total) are being all "myeh myeh we don't bother with mortal conflicts" and Fray is like "welp that's too bad because I do, and guess who they'll pray to if you don't," so they all agree to make a first strike on the enemy's mages and leadership with the understanding that getting their physical forms destroyed won't matter for them (they're not material beings) but it will mean they don't have to deal with Fray anymore because she'll be dead. THEY aren't fighters, but they're still strong enough to smash into the enemy's main camp, *fight* hundreds of soldiers, and pretty much take out the enemy army's mages. Fray dies, and because her sole believer got a bunch of people praying for her, instead of staying dead, sheds her mortal side and experiences the equivalent of a battlefield exaltation; blazing corona of light and all. SHE, a proper fighting god, keeps fighting closer and closer to enemy leadership until they basically have to surrender because there's too many other problems going on with their invasion to pull anything back to deal with her. By this point, the other actual army is engaging, though some ways back. Far enough that they have to do some teleport hijinks to pull her back briefly so that they can line up the surrender in the precise way they want for political reasons. So think Dynasty Warriors character, not Goku.

Didn't mean to overstate that. But yes, there are much stronger gods, and we're given to understand that "Latte is out there somewhere with All Is Ash" is a big part of why they don't rule the world or bother trying to

Seems somewhat stompish.

Well you know, I'm trying to place her, and I seem to recall earlier Melkor stuff having continents get tossed around. Feel free to scale her against prior instances of Melkor stuff though. I did throw Ungoliant in there.

[Sharpandpointies]

Clarity is good.

Melkor pre-pissing away his power is capable of doing stuff like literally making the world shake when he takes on the Valar. He shatters coastlines, drains oceans, and flattens mountain ranges. If she's not operating in that region, she's not doing a whole lot to him.

This is pretty far above the gods depicted in what you have written, above, I would say.

Ungoliant is kind of worthless for feats unless she has been powered up by the Wells of Varda and draining the Trees. At which point she's capable of beating a weakened Melkor (who is nevertheless still capable of raising three mountains higher than Everest), apparently, but we don't have anything beyond that other than the fact that her powers are extremely vulnerable to fire. She's not a great Rumbles opponent, let's put it that way.

[BitVyper]

Yeah the closest thing to making the world shudder would be the event that created All Is Ash, and that's only referred to in background. Mind you, the sword does allegedly still strike with that force, but it only actually gets used once, and that's the some-plural-number-of-miles-long-trench strike.

[Nik Hasta]

At which point she's capable of beating a weakened Melkor (who is nevertheless still capable of raising three mountains higher than Everest),

If I may sidebar for a moment, I've seen this feat mentioned before and am somewhat curious.

How does one arrive at larger than Everest? I assume it doesn't name check the real world mountain in the text so it must be with descriptors. Do you have the relevant passage to hand?

[Sharpandpointies]

If I may sidebar for a moment, I've seen this feat mentioned before and am somewhat curious.

How does one arrive at larger than Everest? I assume it doesn't name check the real world mountain in the text so it must be with descriptors. Do you have the relevant passage to hand?

So, I go through the basics for this here.

However, there are further notations from people that study the stuff Tolkien wrote that Thangorodrim was basically the tallest peak(s) outside of the Blessed Realm (there were two mountains in the Blessed Realm that were basically noted as being the tallest peaks in Arda, period).

I'd need to hunt for the reasons why (probably has to do with Tolkien writing that they were 'mightiest of the towers of Middle Earth' - that's a straight-up quote - being Tolkien's usual flowery language, these not actual 'towers' but 'mountains'). This, to me, tells me they were at least the height of Everest, if not taller (for reasons given in the post I note above).

One can argue that they're not, but the lands of Middle Earth are full of mountain chains, some of which are noted as being 'really big'. If all of the above doesn't convince people that they were larger than Everest, I don't agree, but fair enough.

However, I would be rather unimpressed with anyone coming out with stuff like 'well, mountains vary in size, maybe they were small'. Because, again, all of the above.

Regardless, this isn't actually one of Melkor's best feats, and it's somewhat above what he does after he has pissed away most of his power. It's something he does kind of in the middle of all of that - he has squandered part of his power already, will squander away more, this re-raising of the Peaks of Thangorodrim kind of happens during his in-between period (and likely is the cause of more of his decline). His best stuff happens back in the beginning, when he's still full-empowered, screwing with geography, and getting in fights with the Valar that make the world shake.

Edit: Also Estrecca, the biggest claimant for the title of 'Tolkien Nerd Extraordinaire' in these parts (including Yours Truly), goes by 'big freaking mountains' as well in the thread linked above. ^_^

[Nik Hasta]

Thanks for the info, I don't have any designs on deconstructing the claim, I don't have any effective knowledge of LotR broadly as well you know. Was merely curious.

The specific citation to Everest that stuck out to me. It's a rather specific claim and, if you don't mind me noting, seems to be predicated on not incredibly specific information.

Like, a mountain of range of mountains being noted as being huge in the context of Middle Earth doesn't exactly tell us much about how it stands in the context of the real world without either some verifiable visual component or in-universe measurement. Come to that, even in our world, the size of mountains is pretty variable while still falling the region of "big,"

Like, the Rocky Mountains are undeniably "big", but they are on average fully half the size of the Himalayas. You wouldn't even need Everest to dwarf them. The Appalachian Mountains are 3/4 the height of the Rockies. The Andes are larger than the Rockies but smaller than the Himalayas still.

Obviously, I don't dispute that they are really big. But I would personally not use the specific citation of Everest because it's asking for anal nerds like me to quibble it.

[Sharpandpointies]

I get you. There is the fact that Tolkien’s world is actually our world, three ages ago, but again we’re getting into different sizes of mountains and so forth I suppose.

Another important point being that his entire world has mountain ranges all over it, and these three mountains are the biggest. In the world. Other than the ones in the blessed land.

But I suppose in the future I’ll go with huge mountains.

[BitVyper]

To be fair, I think like 99% of the time, "mountain busting" is good enough. Unless we're scaling against some extremely specific durability feats, or arguing who would win a beam war, seeing a guy smite Mt. Robson is probably good enough to say they're in about the same tier of offensive ability as someone who smites Mt. Everest. For that matter, busting something half the size of Everest would probably still "bust" Everest just fine. By the time you get into thinking about differences in size at that scale, you have to get into thinking about differences in composition and volume (just 'cause they're shorter doesn't mean they're smaller, for instance), which gets a bit whackadoo. If it looks rocky and has a slope and a peak and looms over the landscape around it, that's probably all we really need to know most of the time.