I created a group for it, but since I only recently joined FimFic, folks recommended I post about it here.

https://www.fimfiction.net/group/205504/the-ponymarillion
Dedicated to discussion and work on the Ponymarillion, a 5,000 year history of the creation of Equestria based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion. A collaborative crossover / art project, edited by Ponyweed. Additional writers / artists / Tolkien fans welcome and encouraged. Drafts, snippets, and additional material posted on the wiki page here. This is a family-friendly project with "teen-rated" elements -- death, dark stories, emotional tragedy, satire.

It's still under development (I've been working on it slowly since late 2011, and half of it has been incomplete sketches, maps, ancient ponese language fragments and so forth. I promised a couple friends who are huge Tolkien nerds like me that I would start a thread on the subject, and FimFic seemed like the best place to do it! (I occasionally also post about it on Ponychan but /collab/ there is inactive.)

Most of the snippets I have written aren't long enough to post up as a story. The first two chapters are draft-complete, but they are heavily derivative of the original work so I don't know if they "count" as fanfiction (in isolation), but I can post them up as drafts if people think it makes sense to do so on Fimfic.

(The first two chapters are a creation myth of the world of Equestria, and are a parody of Tolkien's quasi-Biblical language. Subsequent chapters are a lot less meta, as they dive right into the conceit that this is an ancient pony text, mis-translated by Tolkien. So it has a distant prologue, as Tolkien, or more precisely a pony familiar with the myth of the Sub-Creator Lauren Faust, would have written it.) I did the first two Prologue chapters as an experiment in seeing how far I could go in terms of satire vs. seriousness and hewing to the source material. I say "experiment" because I wasn't expecting the Prologue to work so I didn't do a lot of re-writing; but I got a surprising amount of positive feedback on Ponychan from Tolkien and non-Tolkien fans so I decided to keep it and integrate it with the story as it progresses.

Subsequent chapters will begin to diverge in significant and not-so-significant ways. I'm using several conceits here, so it's turned into quite a complicated alternate universe:

* Alicorns = High Elves (Luna and Celestia's kin)
* Unicorns = Grey Elves (led by the immortal pegasus, Derpian)
* Pegasi = High Elves (another branch who lived on the peaks of Mt. Poniquetil in the Undying lands of Alinor, but some stayed in Little-Equestria)
* Earth Ponies = Tolkien's Men (less advanced, appeared on the scene later after the creation of the Sun and Moon)
* The Pony Gods = the show-runners and other demi-gods (loosely ponified as godlike anthropomorphic beings)
* Llaúren Faûst = The Creator of the Pony-verse (unseen; said to resemble a cosmic alicorn)
* Tírek = Morgoth;
since this was originally a re-imagining of G1 Tirek as a FiM character, the character we see in the show is subsumed into the Morgoth personality/role, imagined as his true being before he was reduced to a shadow of his earlier self.
* Discord = early Sauron (less lawful evil and more chaotic, resembling his alter ego from the early Silmarillion, Tevildo, the Prince of Cats)
* Discord, Luna, Celestia and arguably Derpy are canon alternate-backstory characters.
* Most other characters are Silmarillion OCs or (more commonly) Silmarillion characters merged with FiM characters under the "ponies playing their distant ancestors" conceit.

* Tolkien got the story mostly right (with some stretchers here and there), based on the Red Book of Westmarch. However, in translating the source material, he misunderstood the nature of the beings depicted. The ancient race depicted in the source material was not in fact "elves" as commonly understood, but unicorns and other magical talking ponies. Changes in cultural folklore over the centuries, along with a decline of belief in ponies among the later human residents of Earth, can be blamed for this misconception. Much like hobbits, the pony race was doomed to "fade" into the cute and cuddly denizens of the fields and meadows we know today.

* The fic was originally inspired by this illustration in late 2011, and by Hearth's Warming Eve.

* The goal of the fic was to half-seriously "explain": How ponies came to value nonviolence (and other just-so stories); what happened to the alicorns (Luna and Celestia's kin); the origins of Tirek and the Elements of Harmony; what happened to all the sea-ponies; and so forth (this was mostly all outlined by 2012, and of course I considered myself quite clever for re-imagining G1 Tirek as the original Dark Lord of pony-kind... not a new idea but one that was considered odd by some readers at the time. I even have the G2 ponies as the Petty-Dwarves. ) So the events of Season 4 which could have contradicted the fic, fit in quite surprisingly and have advanced the fic. I had even originally planned to re-design Tirek as a goat-centaur, and the fact that he changes form a lot allows me to keep my original design which was close to what we see in the "storybook" interlude. The origin of the Elements as described in the show actually fit in well enough with what I had previously written down that it solved a couple minor plot inconsistencies.) Likewise, Fluttershy was chosen to play Lúthien very early on, before Hearth's Warming, before It's About Time, before Flutter On and before Bats! (prior to the "pageant / cartoons playing historical figures" conceit, I had no explanation for why main ponies were playing historical figures, so it was just going to be a series of disconnected parody illustrations that I still have the sketches for somewhere.)

* The heroic pony characters from the second half of the book (basically the third act where a lot of exciting stuff happens) are crossed over with Mane Six and other characters using the "pageant" conceit employed by Hearth's Warming Eve. In other words, the hero pony characters are ancestors of the Mane Six, or are otherwise "playing" or modeled after the historical characters, who are, after all, semi-legendary.

* The ancient world of Equestria was forgotten by both Ponies and Men, who came later and inherited the "new lands" that were created after the reshaping of the world at the end of the Second Age. At this point, the worlds of Equestria, Earth, and the Undying Lands of Alinor were sundered from one another, and ponies dwindled in both, becoming a folk of field and gardens; less so in Equestria, as we've seen.

* As per Tolkien's original wishes and critical feedback, I'm dividing up the Silmarillion / Book of Lost Tales chapters into sections which would be headed by brief framing devices. There might be a thru-story to the framing device intros / sub-chapters. I could really use collaborative writing help from someone who is better at dialogue than I am, at least on the framing bits, since I'm better at description and emulating Tolkien's style. (Funny how those two things go together, grin)

This is probably more info than needed, but it's hard to boil it down without an "edit" feature so I figured I would post about it and invite a couple friends (who are fantasy fans) to comment.

More general info about the characters and setting:

* The lead character who gets the story going is Princess Starfall, the greatest of her generation of alicorns, who is the pony version of Fëanor (Fire Spirit). Since the early alicorns all have elemental powers to a greater or lesser degree (and are in that regard quite considerably more powerful than some of the Eldar, less so than others, but more approximating the Fae in their magical connection to the elements), Starfall is the princess of the Stars (natch.) She created the Elements of Harmony from the light of the Two Trees of Harmony (this part came together in 2012, unpublished of course, so I'm happy canon followed suit). She also created the Milky Way Galaxy as a star-bow to light the way to Little-Equestria when the Alicorns rebelled against the gods and fled the Undying Lands to make war and reclaim the Elements.

* Luna and Celestia are half-sisters in this version of the story. Starfall and her sister, the once and future High Queen of the Alidar, had a falling out over Luna and Celestia's shared father. Luna was estranged from her other sisters (the Seven Daughters of Starfall) as a result. Luna's side of the family swore a terrible oath to reclaim the Elements of Harmony from all who would challenge alicorn ownership of them, casting a pall on the essence of their power and essentially defeating their purpose. This led to the centuries-long war between the Alicorns and Tirek in which many, many ponies died, and the Alicorns gradually reduced to a few lone holdouts who ended up ruling over the non-alicorns. The bulk of the story is set in Alfalfaland, a magical subcontinent of Little-Equestria that ultimately sank beneath the sea in the ensuing conflagration, leaving the largely wild lands of Middle-Equestria to be populated by earth ponies and others.

* Rarity's character, Glamoros, is one of the Seven Daughters of Starfall and is the princess of the surviving alicorns of Starfall's line after Luna initially refused the crown. Her sister Glow-belle is a poet and a singer who becomes important to the story later.

* Dashion of the Fountain is the Commander of Cloudfountain, the hidden city of the Pegasi. As war ravaged Alfalfaland, it became the greatest city of ponies to be built in Little-Equestria. Only a few heroic pony characters discover its location, including Tripkë, daughter of Lyre, who led to its undoing; and Clover, who eventually fled in a ship to plead for help on behalf of the three pony kindreds of Pegasi, Unicorns, and Earth Ponies.

* The story of Pinkamena and the Children of Píe will be primarily rewritten as it would most likely be too dark for the tone of the fic if it followed Tolkien's outline; however, Pinkamena Diánbar I (Pinkie's distant ancestor on her Grandma Pinkie's side) is basically a moody, unpredictable Nordic trickster hero, in the manner of Sigurd and Loki. She leaves a trail of (often unanticipated) destruction in her wake, although she ultimately prevails and becomes a star (literally). Clover also becomes a star of the piece, eventually.

Awesome idea! I haven't read the Silmarillion or Book of Lost Tales though. But I'd be willing to write Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit MLP-fied.

I would love to work with someone especially on the dialogue bits...! the framing device parts in particular would be more "present" and dialogue oriented, presumably set in the distant future of present-day FiM (i.e. Pinkie Pie telling a story of how Equestria was made; scenes from the Second Age when the plot of FiM begins to diverge from what we see in LOTR (which Tolkien considered fantasy Earth, like Equestria Girls), culminating in the separation of the two worlds some time around the Battle of the Last Alliance; Luna telling Twilight Sparkle about her origins in a dream, or in a more psychologically dark tone, as one person suggested, a character is thrust back into her ancestor's story in a vision as Twilight was in Princess Twilight or Sweetie Belle in that jealousy episode); more prosaic framing interludes could be descriptions of old texts that were discovered in the remains of Twilight's library, that sort of thing. :) I'm good at imagining how the characters might think, not so good at writing actual dialogue. (Ironically if I hew close to the book, there's hardly any dialogue, but the Silmarillion reads like a musty tome of epic stories -- it's still awesome though!) If you're familiar with the later Tolkien books, please do point me to any writing sample you think would go nicely with the tone; if it's got dialogue in it, it's probably better than mine, grin.

Here's a synopsis I wrote for the fic:

The Ponymarillion -- an epic fanfiction re-imagining J.R.R. Tolkien's Quenta Silmarillion as the history of ancient Equestria. -- It was a time of war and chaos. The Alicorns, immortal, fairest and wisest of all beings, rebelled against the Gods and set sail for Little-Equestria to wage war on Tirek, first Dark Lord of My Little Ponies, for control of the Elements of Harmony. In this conflict, none suffered more than the agents of actual harmony: the Unicorns, noble and proud, inhabitants of the magical realm of Alfalfaland; the Pegasi, warlike and civilized, who built the greatest city Equestria had ever seen, hidden in the mists of Feathergrim; and the Earth Ponies, brave and rustic, a young and short-lived race. For the children of Princess Starfall swore a terrible oath: to wage undying love and tolerance on anypony, immortal or earth pony alike, who stood in the way of alicorn ownership of the Elements. But their cause was hopeless even as it was begun: for the Trees of Harmony had been extinguished, and the Elements had been stolen, locked away in the Iron Crown of Tirek in the nethermost hall of Tartarus, beneath the peaks of Changorodrim far in the north. The unsullied light of the Trees lived on only in the Elements, and the last two fruits of the Trees had been given to the fillies Luna and Celestia, who went on to rule kingdoms of their own. The Ponymarillion tells of the heroism of Apple and Flutterén; of the tragedy of Pinkamena and her sisters; of the triumph of Clover, Starswirl's pupil; and the fall of the kingdoms of Derpîath and Cloudfountain as all Alfalfaland fell to the forces of evil.

I hadn't seen the "just-so stories" element of this before -- I like that a lot. I'll need to read through all this in more detail. And definite bonus points if this turns out to predict new revelations in Season 5 and onward! (It already predicted the Tree of Harmony, after all... :) )

I continue to think that the mashed-up names are a bad idea. Better to turn Elf names into racehorse names, which in most cases isn't very hard -- most Elven names are transparent, i.e., composed of elements that are recognizably meaningful in their language. I'm less sure what to do about the Ainur in this context... but perhaps their names could be left unaltered; many of the show's most powerful beings (Princesses Celestia and Luna; Sombra; Tirek) have non-transparent names.

Anyone who's read the Sil is cool in my book so right on brother. Though I think a lot of your ideas run the risk of being a touch difficult to 'mash together'. Though it's pretty clear you've put a lot of thought into it.

I'm surprised you didn't catch an easy reference. Beren and Luthien = Shining Armor and Cadance. Though you're not putting alicorns as Maia in this so that might get tricky.

It's also remarkably easy to make lotr and ponies work. You need less degrees than Kevin Bacon. For one. Lord of the rings takes place in a pre history earth. There's a Canon portal to earth for Equestria. Also where do you think the souls of men go when they pass out of Arda? Why to Equestria to be reborn as ponies obviously.

Also I occasionally dabble in a lotr crossover epic of my own that will probably never be finished so I wish you all the luck!

I think it's possible to do both, in the sense that the english "horsey" names should take priority... Like hobbit names. A lot of the most important characters' names are deliberately fim'ified as much as possible in that regard: 3769830

Fëanor --> Starfall (although Fire Spirit sounds awesome too), I wanted to connect her name to both the meaning of Feanor's name (spirit of fire) and his character while also having her be an elemental alicorn of some sort like Luna and Celestia, so I wanted it to have something to do with the stars, and Starfall just sounds awesome. (I'd like to use the name Fire Spirit somehow that you suggested, though.) Ironically a lot of elves have the word star in their names, so that part translates fairly well, if the alicorns before luna and celestia were mostly concerned with the stars (I had the idea of setting it so that the moon-fruit and sun-fruit are given to Celestia and Luna, and so Luna raises the moon out of grief over the death of her mother, so that is why the moon is less bright -- another just-so story). She's also called Starfall Starbringer because, in a related story, I have her creating the Milky Way to light the way for the ships back to (Little-) Equestria. (In other words, the stars will aid in her escape. ;)

Turgon / Fingon / Ecthelion (composite) --> Dashion but it could be Anglicized / fim'ified as Dashin or Dashing.

Twilight --> Tuor / Earendil (composite character for the sake of Twi's characterization) --> Clover the Unicorn
(as in Clover the Clever; could be the same character we see in Hearth's Warming, or that story is based on her.)

Either way, if Starswirl enters the story (almost certainly as Gandalf, but I also have him in the Rumil role, since
that's basically what he is in the show, an ancient scholar) he'd have a mentor relationship to Clover, probably as
one of the emissaries to or from the Undying Lands that "Lyrmo" rescues and sends back. And he'd be Starswirl.

Fluttershy --> Luthien --> Flutteren -- I think this name is fairly pony-esque as it is basically a "sounds like" Fluttering (like Cadance / Cadence)

Pinkie Pie --> Turin Turambar --> Pinkamena Dianbar, daughter of Pie (no change in name, there's precedent in that pinkie's got ancestors named pinkie already). Pie is the head of houseold for the Pie family and so is simply named Pie (in the tradition of old myths where the king is simply named "Lemagne" or "Beor" = bear, i.e. embodiment of the tribe's mascot or sigil... that was my thinking)

In the same vein, Applejack's character could simply be named Apple or Apple Bearin (if her counterpart is Beren, not sure if male or female char)

Rarity --> Maedhros --> Glamoros or Glamorous. I like this name a lot because all of Rarity's alternate characters tend to be synonyms for "glamour", moreover while it sounds like Maedhros's name, it actually is a synonym for Rarity's (so presumably her family names their descendants that way). But most importantly it refers to the older meaning of "glamour" = dangerous magic, the enchantment and allure of the Elves who would spirit people away to their realms. Similarly, Maglor, Maedhros' closest sibling --> Sweetie Belle --> Glow-belle.

I was thinking of the unicorns and of Rarity's Feanorians with their gem-lore as more connected to the earth, in the fashion of the unicorns who delved greedily into the crystal caves beneath Canterlot... the crystal ponies in this sense would have been refugees from the enemy who were enslaved by Tirek and originally lived entirely beneath the earth, and helped the unicorns dig those caves, like the dwarves did. (According to old MLP cartoons, that's where the crystal ponies came from, they were normal ponies that were enslaved underground by some villain and escaped, so the crystal ponies here are sort of like a cross between the Woses and the Dwarves.) The Pegasi would of course be more connected to the sky, and more prone to wear armor (since they are less magical than the unicorns); the Alicorns would of course have elaborate armor similar in style to this picture of Solar Flare (Celestia's nightmare moon form in fanon) which they don't expressly need (having both wings and magic) but they are more advanced than anypony else and they like to create things, so they have anyway. Similarly, Luna once she grows up (we first see them as fillies with their parents in the undying lands, similar to this) would resemble an early form of Nightmare Moon (sort of an inspiration before she "went bad", although what we have seen of alicorn magic on the show suggests they were never entirely pure and good, there was a shadow of darkness there as well, which casting them as the Noldor attempts to explore.) And earth ponies more connected to what lives on the earth -- trees, fields, farming -- sort of like the Entwives -- although they are playing Tolkien's Men, so they are more rustic in this era. Just some thoughts I was having about the overall tone.

The characters whose names sound more elvish to-date include Celestipon (the high queen, Celestia's Mom -- in this version luna and celestia are half-sisters, so Luna is Feanor/Starfall's daughter -- basically I just moved the family conflict one generation down from the book in order to split Galadriel's character in two, Luna and Celestia, and have one in each family, with them having a common dad, whom Starfall and her sister fought over -- a classic fairy-tale plot. This also explains why Luna and Celestia would be welcome in the mostly-unicorn kingdom of Derpiath -- presumably their dad was one of the original unicorns who made it to Alinor.)

This gets into the Derpiath plotline which is still in flux, but the gist is that the unicorns get lost on the journey to Alinor, Doctor Whooves character finds and rescues them, then encounters canon Derpy in the forest of Luna-Moth (then known as Namoth since Luna hadn't moved there yet) and the two fall into a time-warp, presumably into the present day Equestria or elsewhere (I'm shipping Derpy and the Doctor here for the sake of story, but Derpy's basically an immortal being disguised as a differently-abled pegasus, so...) whereupon the bulk of the unicorns get lost and forsake their leaders to look for him. They return as Hourglas and Derpiann and are crowned the King and Queen of the forest of Derpiath, Derpy being the only pegasus around at the time, but given Thingol's disdain for earth ponies, I'm re-casting him as the older 12th Doctor, basically Peter Capaldi as a unicorn. Ironically you mention canon following the script -- I had the idea of making Thingol and older, more recent incarnation of the Doctor (in order to recast him as a unicorn) long before Peter Capaldi! :P He was even going to look slightly similar, although of course Thingol is ageless. Flutteren / Luthien then is related to them, either daughter (and hence part-immortal) or cousin who left Cloudfountain to join them, although she would be the only other pegasus in the unicorn kingdom, and like Fluttershy, she mostly lives in the woods alone. Not sure if she (or other characters) become an alicorn as princess when they inherit the title -- that's undecided (it's about as unclear on the show, but it's possible the alicorns either all went to the undying lands or are the descendants of the unicorns and pegasi who went to the undying lands and hence became alicorns by virtue of magic and status.) And Dinkya of Derpiath would be Derpy's daughter in this timeline, playing Dior.

I'm not wedded to Celestipon though, as a name for Celestia's mom. It was mostly the idea of all those elves with the same prefix in their family name (Celestipön - Celestia - Celeripön etc. with "pon" or "pone" replacing "fin" or "el" as a prefix, as a "pony suffix" in Tumblrpon etc). But while I thought of a galaxy reference, most named galaxies refer too strongly to other characters (Andromeda etc) but it's a possibility. In any case, the High Queen's "element" would probably involve ice and/or lightning somehow -- I'm envisioning her as sort of the snow queen archetype, in the sense of her and her sister being a mythical higher power almost. (This was well before the movie Frozen... aargh, more canon in my fanon!) After all, their children are powerful enough to almost be worshiped. Although attitudes toward religion seem to be similar in the two universes (when you run into magical semi-divine beings on a daily basis...) Other "elvish" names include Tripkë or Tripkey which is really more of a pun that I wanted to keep, signifying something hidden, as it also sounded like Trixie + Maeglin, but I could give her an Anglicized last name that is race-horsey... what does Maeglin mean? ... and some other, less important characters.

But even the CMC characters (who mostly enter the story as adult siblings in the wake of their sisters) have anglicized "horsey" names -- Cinnamon (playing Mablung, but recast as Apple (Beren's) sister), Glow-belle. Scootaloo I have as Scûtalu Strongbow (playing Beleg, but recast as an emissary from Cloudfountain in Derpiath) but this is just a "quenyanization" of Scootaloo and hence presumably again an ancestor for which she is named. :P Also the story surrounding them gets back to the Derpiath plotline so their whole entire characters are in flux. Similarly I had Doctor Whooves as Thingol renamed (by the ponies) as Hourglas for the sign on his flank -- a vaguely elvish name, but could be Anglicized as Hourglass.

Oh yeah and Cadance (Miamore Cadenza) is a younger cousin of Celestia and presumably born after they returned to Equestria, like Gil-Galad, so she's playing one of the Noldor too, being an alicorn, but possibly born much later. I'm with you on Sunset Shimmer being Saruman. ;) Whew, sorry for the wall of text. :P

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I'm surprised you didn't catch an easy reference. Beren and Luthien = Shining Armor and Cadance. Though you're not putting alicorns as Maia in this so that might get tricky.

Yeah, I thought about this (I think I wrote about the problem in notes somewhere) the tricky part here is it creates problems for both of them. First off, I'd have to ponify Shining Armor separately from Twilight Sparkle since she fits in so well as Earendil / Tuor. (they are both "chosen one" sort of farm-boy / orphan types, like a Disney heroine, and Earendil actually is directly connected to the same "elemental power" as Twilight once she becomes an alicorn -- the evening star. Also, Tolkien once said that Tuor and Faramir were both author stand-ins, being more studious and intellectual than their counterparts Turin and Boromir.) They couldn't be Shining Armor and Cadance directly, since they were born much later, and this creates a problem since canon Celestia is in the story as her younger self, so Cadence presumably exists in the Ponymarillion (and lives in Derpiath, so that fits, assuming she's been born yet, but she'd be canon Cadence, who marries Twilight's brother three ages later!) More problematically, there's not enough characterization of the male ponies in FiM, although Shining and Beren both are sort-of blank-slate heroic archetypes, but I actually thought it would add a little dimension to Beren to cast him as Applejack. (they both come from a rural background, certainly.) Then there's the fact that the unicorns are in Derpiath (being a magical realm, and one with magical creatures that live in halls of stone and dig for gems like the unicorns apparently used to do) so Shining Armor being a unicorn would have grown up in Derpiath, and be welcome there, which would mean recasting the story and putting it all in Cloudfountain that I thought was too big a change (unless Trixie / Maeglin were removed and the two plots combined so that Dash threatens to have Shining Armor cast off the side of the cloud for daring to enter the kingdom!) But most urgently, Fluttershy is just too perfect as Luthien... I didn't have the heart to do it if that casting was not made... sort of like imagining the movies without Ian Mckellen. ;) Although it would make a good explanation for how Cadance "became" an alicorn if she started out as a pegasus, who fell in love with a unicorn / earth pony, and a more distant cousin of Celestia at that. But Fluttershy is too perfect...

It's also remarkably easy to make lotr and ponies work. You need less degrees than Kevin Bacon. For one. Lord of the rings takes place in a pre history earth. There's a Canon portal to earth for Equestria. Also where do you think the souls of men go when they pass out of Arda? Why to Equestria to be reborn as ponies obviously.

Yep, you could do it like that. ;) The way I have it is a bit convoluted and mystical and could be interpreted similarly: Equestria is the pre-history of our earth, so when Tolkien found the text (in the remains of Twilight's library?) he mis-translated ponies as elves, but at the end of the second age the two universes were (canonically in both fandoms) separated when the world was remade, with the Ponies on one side and prehistoric earth on the other, sort of. Which would explain the portals between the two. Although I have Earth Ponies as First Age men, but I guess the implication is that men inherited the earth after the ponies "faded away" into their own dimension, like elves sort of.

occasionally dabble in a lotr crossover epic of my own that will probably never be finished so I wish you all the luck!

Cool! Well if mine ever gets to that point (the connection from Silm to LOTR / modern Equestria gets fuzzy as the two histories diverge) maybe we could connect it in somehow with existing lotr crossover fic and make it easier to write. ;) After all most of the Silm characters don't survive, so there's no danger of interfering with future LOTR plotlines there, lol.

I wrote:

we first see them as fillies with their parents in the undying lands, similar to this

Referring to pre-existing fan-art for inspiration. Here's a picture of Luna and Celestia's parents according to some other fan ideas. Interestingly, one of the parents is named Cosmos in this one, so that might be the name of their dad:

Of course, in the "Ponymarillion" version they have separate mothers, who are sisters, that fought over Luna and Celestia's father. And I already have slightly different, more specific ideas for what Feanor's character Starfall (as an alicorn) would look like.

Also the sun and moon weren't born yet; in the current version, Celestia and Luna inherit the sun-fruit and the moon-fruit before the death of the original Trees of Harmony and they turn it into the sun and moon because of attendant drama surrounding the death of the light of the trees and the exile of the alicorns, which "explains" a hint on the show: there is a sun-shaped and a moon-shaped depression in the Tree of Harmony we see on the show. It also gives us a chance to explore how Luna and Celestia arrived at their cutie-marks.

On one of the banner images is fan art of nightmare moon-style Alicorn armor, that is very "noldor" like, worn by Celestia's "dark" alter ego (Solar Flare) -- compare to the "Noldor" we see in the Battle of the Last Alliance (LOTR film).

It definitely is a lot to digest but it sounds so AWESOME! I'm a little confused about the moon and the sun not existing and then being born as fruit and turned into celestial objects by the alicorn sisters? I think the past versions of the main six. Also applejack and pinkie pie turns out might be related in the future so it makes sense that their past counterparts were together. Have you decided if you're making Apple a boy or a girl? or if you're swapping any of the other ponies' genders? Also what happens with the trees of harmony? There starts off with two but then they're both destroyed and they eventually plant a new one? If so, are the original elements somehow different? Just throwing stuff out there.

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It definitely is a lot to digest but it sounds so AWESOME! I'm a little confused about the moon and the sun not existing and then being born as fruit and turned into celestial objects by the alicorn sisters?

Yeah, basically, what you said. So it's an origin story for the sun and moon, since Luna and Celestia seemed to be linked to it by their cutie mark -- as in the Silmarillion, the elves spent a long time living by the light of the Trees (of Harmony, in this case) and the moon and sun were created out of two small gems or fruits to replace them after the Elements of Harmony were stolen. It's actually kind of similar to the plotline in the Season 4 intro where Discord poisoned the Tree of Harmony in the distant past and the Elements were needed to restore it -- I'm sure there's some Tolkien influence there already.

Of course the canon explanation (on the show) might be that the sun and moon already existed and the symbols on the tree signified Luna and Celestia's cutie marks when they learned to control it, but I felt it might make an interesting story to use the Silmarillion version and have the ancient alicorns identified with various elemental powers (like when they visited the undying lands, the Pony Gods taught them to control the various elements of nature, that sort of thing).

I think the past versions of the main six. Also applejack and pinkie pie turns out might be related in the future so it makes sense that their past counterparts were together. Have you decided if you're making Apple a boy or a girl? or if you're swapping any of the other ponies' genders?

Not sure yet, I think the story would work either way, but I don't think I'll swap any of the "other" Mane Six genders (past versions of Twilight / Clover and the rest) because I like the conceit that ponified Tolkien is a female-dominated universe, although side characters are fair game, since as you say the universe is crying out for a decent male alicorn, so we can complain about how there are too many women in Tolkien and Ponyweed can't write men, etc. instead of the common complaint that there are not enough women in Middle Earth ;) I think it'd be cool to have a fantasy AU where it's a fantasy society that's medieval / Tolkienesque but matriarchal in nature, it sort of tweaks the reader expectation that such things are for boys only, like ponies.

Also what happens with the trees of harmony? There starts off with two but then they're both destroyed and they eventually plant a new one? If so, are the original elements somehow different? Just throwing stuff out there.

I and a couple people I chatted with came up with a very interesting explanation for this after the Princess Twilight episode came out. I had been just wrestling with that issue at the time, since both the Tree(s) and the Elements seem to have different origins on the show, and I was originally going to hand-wave it as "it's a tv show" but based on that episode, it actually made more sense to say that the Tree of Harmony on the show is a seedling of the original (larger) trees that was preserved and rediscovered by Celestia in the court of the Two Sisters (like the White Tree of Gondor that gets discovered and replanted at the end of LOTR, the one in the courtyard of Minas Tirith). If so then we can assume the original two trees were poisoned, like the subsequent one was at a later date (in both canons, lol). So the original Elements were needed to heal it. However, three of the six original Elements were lost at the end of the war (Ponymarillion) so the other three Elements had to be broken (in two) to heal the original Two Trees, but this was not entirely successful since three of them were "missing" (one in the sky in an airship, representing the Evening Star -- which is sort of Twilight's elemental symbol -- Twilight's character Clover has something to do with this -- one in the fires of the earth, and one was thrown into the sea.) So they were broken in two and the six shards thrown up in the night sky as a ward against evil (this is known as the Sickle of the (Pony)tar and in the original book they are a constellation that occurs earlier). If you want to make it more canonical, when the Two Trees were partially healed they produced a third fruit (beside the earlier Sun and Moon) which is the seedling of the Tree of Harmony you see on the show; the Elements we see on the show would thus have been reborn from this one -- similar to the "fruit" that Twilight unlocks when they use the Elements to heal the Tree of Harmony on the show (Legend of Zelda sound effects optional) Just like they had to do in the book.

Oh and Pinkamena gets her own constellation too. Similar to Orion, that is due to a prophecy in the book.

Based on Pinkie's cutie mark, I assume her belt would have "three stars, not four."

I think there's a framing device chapter there waiting to be written, Pinkie telling a scary story to the fillies...

"And that's why my great-great-great (...) aunt Pinkie has a constellation named after her! See? Isn't that awesome?"

Sorry for overposting, but I just wanted to mention... since there's a couple people in the ponymarillion group, I wrote more info in this post about topics for discussion in working on this particular fic.

since we might end up collaborating with a couple folks on it, hopefully.