The Lament of the River of Dread

In the elder days of the First Age, before the breaking of the world, there flowed a torrent of singular malice known as Ascar. It was a tributary of the great river Gelion, rising in the rugged heights of the Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains. Unlike the gentle streams that watered the vales of Beleriand, Ascar was born of stone and shadow, a violent, rushing water that carved its path through the wild lands of Ossiriand. Its name, in the tongue of the Sindar, signified the rushing or the impetuous, a testament to the fury with which it descended from the peaks, foaming and roaring against the silence of the ancient woods.

The significance of Ascar was forever altered by the tragedy of the Nauglamír, the Necklace of the Dwarves. Following the ruin of Doriath and the death of King Thingol, the Dwarves of Nogrod sought to bear away the treasures of the hidden realm. They were intercepted at the crossing of the river by Beren, son of Barahir, leading a host of Green-elves and Ents. In the ensuing battle, the river became a shroud for the transgressors. So great was the slaughter that the waters of Ascar were choked with the bodies of the Dwarves and stained with the blood of the fallen, earning it the new and terrible name of Rathlóriel, the Golden-bed, for the treasure of the Nauglamír was cast into its depths, turning the riverbed into a glittering tomb of gold and gems.

The history of Ascar is a chronicle of the transient nature of beauty and the inevitable toll of greed. It remained a boundary of sorrow, a place where the pride of the Naugrim met the righteous wrath of the Edain and the Eldar. Yet, its existence was bound to the fate of the lands of the West. When the great war against Morgoth reached its climax, and the earth itself was rent asunder, the geography of Beleriand was shattered. Ascar, along with the lands of Ossiriand and the mountains that gave it birth, was swallowed by the encroaching sea. It vanished beneath the waves of the Belegaer, leaving behind only the echoes of its rushing waters in the songs of the survivors who passed into the later ages of the world.