Editor's Note by Mapthor
You heard it here first kids! The MCME Times is getting a shiny new upgrade along with some shiny new members. Now I can’t fully disclose this classified intel just yet, but this once bi-weekly newsletter will be changed for the better. Trust me on this one, what’s the worst that could happen. Until then, enjoy your last look at this Times layout because it’s not gonna be the same next time!

Happy Sailing
Mapthor


Anduin - Lead: @Wyattrox03 | In Progress
Report by Wyattrox03

Progress on the Anduin has been going smoothly! The mine in Marble Hill has been given an update by Wyattrox03 and is now repurposed as storage space. Wyatt also did some more terrain smoothing in Ithilien. The texturing of the cliffs along the river has been worked on by Joske50, bruceboy55 and The12th in plots. More cliff plots are still up for grabs, if you’d like to help out just ask Wyattrox03.



Agar and Udul - Lead: @Orruss | In Progress
Report by aylalya

Heya all, I'm filling in for this Times Edition because Orruss, to say it in his words, "can't come up with a single suitable sentence" . While he's been dying at work for the last week (#welovethequeen), our new members have been busy. Matt has been testing out some sand dunes, while Beetle made some beautiful rock pool concepts. We did some more terrain shaping at the southern side of the mouth while Rudo has been practicing his cliff making. In the meantime, I have employed some Commoners to help me with some house building on a few more concepts for the fishermen village further inland (thank you for all who has helped), and Dahl is keeping the spirits high with a nice Patrick Star build. All in all good progress has been made, until the next time!



Gladden Fields – Lead: @Andrewpioneer | Now Begun
Report by Andrewpioneer

The Gladden Fields Revamp has now begun! So what will we be getting out of this update and why is it happening? Basically this revamp aims to accomplish the following; seamlessly connect the Gladden Fields to the rest of the world, flesh out the region by making more settlements, points of interest and spend more time recreating movie locations and finally to improve lore accuracy. So with those goals laid out, what will the new Gladden Fields look like?

The Gladden Fields at this point is a region in decline, most of its remaining inhabitants have relocated to the shores of the marsh for protection from the threats of Dol Guldur and the Misty Mountains. These remnants will be spread out across 4 surviving settlements as well as some isolated cottages. The rest of the Gladden Fields will be made up of ruined villages and an environment consisting of many fields, rivers, forests and meadows. Movie Locations such as Smeagol and Deagol’s fishing spot as well as Isildur’s Ambush spot will be included in this revamp, with some other lore references planned. As for seamlessly connecting the Gladden Fields to the rest of the world, this project will finish the transition from the Lothlorien and Mirkwood forests to the Gladden Fields, and will connect a series of roads between these regions, the aim will be to allow a player to walk through Lothlorien to a house in the Gladden Fields without encountering any work in progress areas.

So far this project is still in the planning phase. Jobs should be beginning soon, with mostly tree building jobs initially. Eventually once terrain is finished on the main world, we should be able to start other job types such as river building, marsh detailing and house construction. If anyone has any questions or is interested in a specific job or assignments list please contact me (@Andrewpioneer#3419) or a member of my team through discord or via the forums.



Moria – Lead: @DoctorDaom | In Progress
Report by DoctorDaom

I come from the darkness, to bring message from the Lord of Moria! To combat the non-existing progress at East Gate right now, I thought it would be wonderful to demolish my newfound energy with the stupid task to finish Lower West Gate this time... like really finish it. Human forced me to sign a document which prohibits me from redoing newly done areas, and with that knowledge in mind we finished the first area of Lower West Gate, including the Stables, a longer connector and a nice Hub Hall. The other side is completely restructured and done as well, but that happened a while ago. With that big chunk out of the way and finally having a good layout to go off of, we can slowly start working on the trade-related halls and storage halls, after that we just have to work on the long trade connector tunnel going into Upper West Gate and can call Lower West Gate finished.... till it starts all over again.... thanks again Human for being by my side and keeping spirits high as always.





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Good morning, afternoon and evening MCME. Now in light of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee we asked her to honor us with an interview. However, sadly she was unable to do the interviews. So we asked the next best person, Tolkien himself. Sadly, due to current circumstances, he was unable to join us.
So the MCME Interview team thought it would be best for you to get to know us better. So may I introduce this weeks interviewee, Mr. LordReavan!!!
Interview with @LordReavanPlays

Who are you LordReavan?
Well, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a story began... not mine but it's a cool one and I thought I'd start off with a Star Wars reference . Anyways, I can describe myself pretty basically by saying I'm a full-force nerd and proud of it. I spend my time trying to learn as much about the world of Tolkien as I can through both MCME and the various books written by and about Tolkien. Along with that, I also love Star Wars (which is the origins of my name, it's basically a typo of Lord Revan), and videogame lore, Kingdom Hearts and Legend of Zelda in particular. I'm an avid videogame and Trading Card Game player, I love reading comics and books, and I also play 3 saxophones, the fourth of which I refuse to play because it's a golden clarinet and it's just pretending to be a sax.

How do you come about joining Minecraft Middle-Earth, what was your first impression of both the server and the community?
It's almost been one year since I joined the server and I remember looking through the Minecraft servers wiki and seeing MCME pop up. I had just finished the school year and wanted to join a new server so I figured MCME'd be a good starting point. And, surely enough, it became the only Minecraft server I've played on in a while since I joined! After getting through the questionnaire, the beautiful scenes of Bag End and the shire immediately satisfied my need for a good LotR server that I had been looking for for a while. The community was as welcoming as it usually is, though I do remember having a few commoners egging me on to building Goblin Town for them which actually turned out quite nice in my very non-artistic opinion.

If you could live anywhere in Middle-Earth, where would it be and why?
So, the place I'd want to live in middle earth isn't actually a canonical place, but it's a good one nonetheless. Fennas Druinen is a town in eastern Eregion and I just love the way it's represented in MCME and the atmosphere of the town itself. It's placed right next to a forest which is my favorite place to hang out, especially in the hot summer when you wanna be outside but don't want to turn into a puddle. I also love the way the castle turned out on MCME and it's one of my favorite spots on the server. Here’s a lil’ screenie I took of it not too long ago:

If Hover and Exeter lead two armies, who do you think would win?
In all honesty, I'd have to say Hover. Exeter is probably a very good tactician in his own respects, but considering Hover already has his own mini army in the form of Hover Cult, I'd have to place my bets on him. Now if we were to get technical with it, then my answer would be a little different. We’d need to determine their strategic abilities in combat, leadership skills, mastery of the blade/bow/whatever weapon they’d use, etc. The War of Hover and Exeter, coming to Disney+ Spring of 2023958 (aka never).

Do you have any hobbies outside the world of Tolkien?
Star Wars is a big one alongside Marvel. I love reading up on the lore of the different heroes and villains, their powers, their weaknesses, and their backstories. I don’t really know why but DC never really stood out to me too much. I'm also a big music person. I play a bunch of different instruments (Sax being my favorite and the best of them all) and love all different types of music with the exception of Death Metal. Something about it just doesn't feel very "musical" to me. Either the hairy grown men screaming at the top of their lungs or the smashing of the instruments at the end of their performances. I do love Jazz though, particularly Big Band Jazz which I always loved the sound of. Also, I am a bad joke enthusiast so I apologize for my incredible sense of humor that some of you may not understand.

Who's you celebrity crush?
I'm gonna go with Evangeline Lily on this. She's a very good actress that you might know from Marvel ( the Wasp), Lost (Kate Austen), and/or The Hobbit (Tauriel), and everything that I've seen her in has been very good so far. I think I'll keep it PG though and just say she is a very beautiful and generous person that I'm sure would be a pleasure to get to know better.

If you had the power to run Minecraft Middle-Earth for 25 hours with no repercussions, what would you do with your Qly statues?.
Well first off, I'd check to see if someone had been messing with the roles again, and then, once I know nobody is for sure, I start by advertising the Easterling Village project a bit more, which it's not dead, I've just been busy with school and haven't had enough time to give the amount of attention to it that I'd like to. After that, I'd get Givet to run a 3-4 hour tour, announce that Dol Guldur is done as it is now, give Stephen an honorary guide role, change adventurers back to Droogs, and ask someone to change the corn texture to something with a little more electric blue or somethin'. Maybe a little mauve in it as well (really gross pink).

How's life going?
Personally? Eh, I just wanna get this school year over with. The world's been kinda messy lately but I've just been trying to keep a realistically positive attitude about it all and pray for those who are less fortunate than I am. I think I'm just glad that I have MCME as a place to escape to when all the other aspects of my life seem to go wrong.

If you could get anyone to write and narrate your biography, who would you want?
I'd definitely want mapthor to narrate and write it. He does a great job with the openings for the times and I always have fun talking with him about Kingdom Hearts from time to time. He also has an amazing sense of humor and anyone writing a biography about me would need one, otherwise I would denounce it being about me even if it had my name on the cover.

Favorite LOL That Droog Said moment:
Not sure it ever got posted in the chat, but some time ago there was some kid that came on to the server and said "Nobody knows more about Tolkien than me!!". I asked him if he knew anything about the Kin Strife and I don't think they've ever come back to the server. No love for Castamir, so sad. As for one that is actually on the post, I don't actually have one but there is one where some guy called Poiman came onto the server, said "123", and then left.

Advice?
Not any particularly good advice, but I'll give it a shot. For starters, try not to live every day like it's your last, that saying always seemed weird to me. People spend a lot of their time worrying about the future or driving themselves insane over the past, but right now is all you really gotta focus on, cause "now" is a gift, hence it being called the "present". Don't ping mods too much, but a little reminder that anyone on the server can ping them isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world (especially if you’re looking to get banned). Take a moment to really ask yourself if that last cocktail sausage was really necessary, but only a short moment because the answer is almost always yes. Never build two block centered houses, you'll regret it later. Try checking out the Easterling Village, it's coming out really good so far! Don't eat chips vertically, it doesn't work. If some guy approaches you on the server asking you to build trees for him, run in the other direction. If you don’t like the way something looks, change it, and if you can’t change it, change your perspective. And lastly, don’t throw pennies off the tops of skyscrapers, apparently people don’t like getting hit in the head with money falling from the sky at 20 miles per hour. Hope someone found that useful . Ciao o/

Interviewer Closing Statement: Well that’s all we've got time for folks. Tune in text time to read more on what is behind the Minecraft Middle-Earth Community. If you got any intel for our Team please contact us at Times@mcmiddleearth.com. For now we say goodbye.

-Archimdes



This week we have another round of amazing builds and Media posts. We only choose from the best every time, so hard work does pay off. Sometimes it can get competitive and that is what will win a place here. Please give a warm welcome to this Times, winners of this week.

Media Winners


Themed Build Winners
(http://imgur.com/a/GZqm4fu)


Of Mordor

The Land of Shadow to the east of Gondor is walled by mountain ranges to the north, west and south, making it a highly defensible region for Sauron against the forces of the West. The Ered Lithui (Mountains of Ash), and Ephel Dúath (Mountains of Shadow) form sometime prior to the First Age under mysterious circumstances. Prior to the Ages of the Sun, the region of Mordor was occupied by the Inland Sea of Helcar, which disappears (possibly through the interference of the Valar in the Battle of the Powers), and is then replaced with the only known actively volcanic region of Middle-earth.

The main volcanic feature is of course Orodruin/Mt. Doom, where the One Ring was forged in the Second Age, but the entire Gorgoroth region is said to be covered in fissures and ash, indicating more widespread volcanic activity. Unlike conventional volcanics, Mt. Doom seems somewhat tied to the intentions of the resident Dark Lord, erupting in S.A. 3429 when he signaled his attack on the relatively newly established realm of Gondor. It again erupted in T.A. 2954, leading to the final inhabitants of Ithilien fleeing the region. Sauron’s forces then gradually occupied the region, as the volcano continued to erupt sporadically until the destruction of the Ring.

Whilst most of northern Mordor was barren as a result of sustained volcanic activity in the late Third Age, southern Mordor around the salty Sea of Núrnen was able to support crops, likely as a result of the volcanic ash making the soil there very fertile. This was where Sauron kept many slaves to work the fields. Elessar later freed these slaves and offered them the lands they worked to be their own after the War of the Ring.



This Week's Question:
When was the watch upon Mordor abandoned, and why?


Presented by: TheStephen



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