The Submerged Secret of Mar-nú-Falmar

Sauron's most pleasing shine-gilded form. 

 Once an Island in times by-gone! The island was brought up from the sea as a gift from the Valar to the Edain, the Fathers of Men who had stood with the Elves of Beleriand against Morgoth in the War of Wrath. The realm was officially established when Elros - Half-elven, son of Eärendil, and brother of Elrond and descendant of all the royal houses of Elves and Edain, became the first King of Númenor. Under his rule, and those of his descendants, the Númenóreans rose to become a powerful people. The Númenóreans were forbidden by the Valar from sailing so far westward that Númenor was no longer visible, for fear that they would come upon the Undying Lands, to which Men could not come.Over time the Númenóreans became jealous of the Elves for their immortality, and began to resent the Ban of the Valar and to rebel against their authority, seeking the everlasting life that they believed was begrudged them.With Sauron as his advisor, King Ar-Pharazôn had a temple to Melkor erected, in which he offered human sacrifices - the Elendili, Númenóreans who were still faithful to the Elves. During this time, the White Tree Nimloth was chopped down and burned as a sacrifice to Melkor at Sauron's direction. Ar-Pharazôn built a great armada and set sail to make war upon the Valar and seize the Undying Lands, and by so doing achieve immortality. Sauron remained behind. The greatest force ever assembled on Arda landed on the shores of Aman. As the Valar were forbidden to take direct action against Men, Manwë, chief of the Valar, called upon Eru. The Undying Lands were removed from the world forever, and the formerly flat Earth was made into a globe.Númenor was overwhelmed in the cataclysm and sank beneath the sea, killing its inhabitants, including the body of Sauron who was thereby robbed of his ability to assume fair and charming forms, forever appearing in the form of a Dark Lord thereafter. However, it lingers concealed as no more than a whisper of a legend... long-forgotten lore, that Numenor may have fallen but not fallen off the face of Middle Earth. After its destruction the land is usually called Atalantë "the Downfallen", but its ghostly denizes alone, invoke it with accursed affection as Mar-nu-Falmar, their "Home under Waves". What ilk of sorcery stirred the sweeping whirlpool as it swallowed the whole of Numenor, ask not, but this Apocalyptic Tempest, caught the Black Eye of Overlord Neptune himsElf and moved the depths of Mother Nammu's heart. And so they made Sacred Love in a ceremony of storm-cleaving marriage that stirred a wilder still Cyclon of Revival. And the Numenorians, downfallen and drowned as they were, empty shells, filled up with the immortal streams they so longed for. And their bodies twisted and turned, infused with the flesh and fin of all that creeps and crawls and swims into the fordidding Depths of the AllMother's womb, where no soul dares lose itself without due invitation. They rose as submerged creatures of the unbreathable Darkness, never to resurface, the delvers of the deepest wells, the traitors within the hollowest trenches, the takers of stolen breath. With fins as great as the sails of warships they once steered, as strudy as dragonwings and spiked trenchantly as the tallons of a sharp-set Nazgul. Their tails as agile and sinuous as the shed skin of eels dancing with the water in endlessly serpentine windings. Their hues darkening as the fathomless saphirre depth of Queen Nammu's sweet aquamarine embrace! So became the Númenóreans - at last - undying! At last - supercilious monsters of liquid blackmagic that ever flows within and without...The Netherflux! Now Sirens of Death unforseen, in retribution of their own demise, lulling many a maritime passenger to succumb unto a dismal end with songs of dreamy deception. Oh, and how they lust to leech the last whiff of breath between an elf's shuddering lips then lick their fins in revelry many tides after! Tearing elven flesh clean off the bone with fangs like spires, immersing their gnawed skeletal chambers to adorn the Royal Palace, offering up their souls in tribute to their one true King - Neptune that hailed from that vast Beyond! Be the dedication of grandiose proportions, only then does he seldom descend unto them to dine in their underwater Halls. And thence does he also make the strongest of love to his otherworldly Queen-spouse and they do orchestrate the finest and most deathly Sea Symphonies! Each Mighty Fortress of waves pounding itself into the open heart of the Ocean with the cataclysmic convulsions of sheer Ecstasy. Such is the ill-boding and stormbringing new life of these aborted children of land, adopted by the Sea. Therein their Kingdom of aquatic thraldom everlast, the corpse of Sauron, reigns second to supreme as King-regent, by the name of Thriton. But here the Valar seem to err. Pleasing he is still, to the unblinking eye, for Nammu's seabed shalt not lay unfilled, nor shall the Throne of Drowning Waters stand unseated! Vicemonarch Thriton - the only one with two limbs still intact to tread upon the mirky shelf - impregnated with an alien conscience, anew. Of whom or what nobody knows... Perhaps a puppet of Neptune's very own strings. Mayhaps not...