Ok, so the Nazgul have the fell beasts to ride on, but no one else, is that right? Unless I am incorrectly remembering the books, only the Nazgul have them. why? Wouldn’t a calvary full of flying monsters be a huge weapon for Sauron? Is there something about the Nazgul that make them the only ones that can control the flying things? I am under the impression that the flying beasts are mortal animals, just like the Nazgul horses.
What’s the deal?
They’re high maintenance fell beasts, and its not economical to raise a lot of them. Besides, unless their riders are wraiths, the fell beasts tend to devour whoever climbs on them.
Actually, the above is speculation. JRRT didn’t write a whole lot about the critters, IIRC. Just that they were nasty, that he (the author) didn’t know in what savage land Sauron must have found them, and the nazgul rode them.
The Nazgul horses, AFAIK, were not “mortal animals” in the traditional sense. They were mortal in that they could die (as they did in the river), but they were like the Rigwraiths in that if you took off their cloaks, they’re invisible (or they disappear…I can’t recall the details).
As for the Fell Beast…AFAIK, there’s only nine of them, and Sauron has control of them because they are “mortal” as the Black Horses were.
IANA full-out Tolkien geek–my specialty is Hobbits. Sorry. I’m sure someone will be by to prove me wrong.
Horses
In “Many Meetings”, Gandalf explains why Frodo could see the Ring-Wraiths while his companions could not.
Frodo: They were terrible to behold! But why could we all see their horses?
Gandalf: Because they are real horses; just as the black robes are real robes that they wear to give shape to their nothingness when they have dealings with the living.
Gandalf means that the Nazgul’s robes and horses are real and visible, not that the horses wear robes to make them visible. He goes on to explain that “these horses are born and bred to the service of the Dark Lord”.
Fell beasts
The best explanation is in the chapter “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields.” Tolkien can’t come right out and say that they’re the last of a species of dinosaur, preserved and “enhanced” by the power of Sauron, but one could easily infer that from the passage.
Ah. Thank you, TWDuke
That’s a good explination. At least, it is an explination which helps me set aside that problem in my mind. I was worried I was going to go see the movie and just sit there asking myself “Ok, you’ve got airpower, the other guys don’t, why the heck aren’t your swarms of fell beasts dropping rocks on the humans?!?!”
I wonder if the flying beasts were intended as a commentary on airplanes, and the destruction they can do?
R.R. - who likes to say “fell beast”
Next – the gunpowder at Helm’s deep. Worst moment in the trilogy? Where are the bombs at Pelennor Fields??? (or anywhere else for that matter)
Blasting powder was developed by Saruman independent of any interference by Sauron and it was a new weapon at Helm’s deep. There was no time or method for the technology transfer from Isengard to Mordor.
yeah, but wasn’t Sauron plugged into Saruman’s head? And wasn’t the battle of Pelennor Fields a battle on Sauron’s time table? It’s his army that martches out from Mordor, IIRC, and attacks Gondor. If I’m the evil eye, I’d take a week’s breather to make some of the boom powder. Maybe he thought he had no chance at lossing, so there was no need to wait.
Didn’t mean to hijack my own thread; if there is anyone else with Fell Beast questions, comments, or observations let’s have 'em.
Well first off it didn’t seem to work all that well for Saruman so i doubt there was any “Man i gotta get me some of THAT” feeling going on. Second, Sauron really did not have a week to spare, he launched his attack on Gondor because Aragorn showed himself to him in the palantir from Saruman and showed him the sword reforged AFTER he saw a hobbit and found out about the defeat of Saruman, so in Sauron’s mind Aragorn had the ring, the sword, and was coming to kick his ass so he HAD to attack
Besides why bother trying to invent gun powder when you have a few hundred thousand orcs, nine ring wraiths, and troll powered catapults that shoot severed heads anyways 
Ah, good point. I forgot about what you put in the spoiler box. I still whish there hadn’t been any gun powder in the whole book, it doesn’t seem like they needed it. Back to the Beasts!
I’d always inferred that they were pterodactyl-ish, since the description in RoTK book includes a beak.
And I had always assumed that they were related to whatever critter Morgoth mutilated and distorted to create the dragons (or at least the winged dragons).
And I’m not sure if Sauron would have wanted more Fell-Beasts, even if he did have them available. The Nazgul’s foremost weapon is fear. Fear and surprise. Their two foremost weapons are fear, surprise, and a fanatical devotion to Sauron…
Oops, sorry about that. What I was getting at, is Nazgul on Fell-Beasts are a lot more frightening if they’re the only thing that ride Fell-Beasts. And given Sauron’s need for fear, both to panic his enemies and to keep his own troops in line, that might actually have been more valuable than the benefit of a vast army of Fell-Cavalry.
Meanwhile, the horses are most certainly flesh and blood. They (or their breeding stock… I imagine a Nazgul mount has to be trained at least from infancy) were stolen from the Rohirrim, an insult of the first degree to them.
The eagles are very much a factor at the black gate.
They were, indeed. In the book Theoden (I think it was) grumbled about their black horses being stolen and transported to Mordor.
DD
In the chapter, “The Siege of Gondor”, it seems certain that Sauron’s forces indeed have the secret of the fire of Orthanc. There are distant walls to the Pelennor Fields, and
"Now ever and anon there was a red flash, and slowly through the heavy air dull rumbles could be heard.
‘They have taken the wall!’ men cried. ‘They are blasting breaches in it. They are coming!’"
From Chapter IV: The Siege of Gondor
And Chapter VI: The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
And I believe that those two quotes are all that JRRT has to say about the beasts themselves. It would seem that his intent was to suggest that there was but one clutch of the things–lucky for the Dark Lord (who does not suffer his name to be spoken aloud) that there were nine of them in that happy little nest.
There may not have been. Only five were ever seen at one the one time. Nine of them are mentioned in a dream, but it wasn’t meant to be taken as accurate reality. By the time the Witch King had his beast killed, Legolas had already killed another one, so there need only have been six of them total. Or there may have been several hundred, but only five were ever let out at once. Or maybe only five of the Nazgul knew how to ride them. Or maybe the other four Nazgul were still recovering form their pummelling at the ford of Rivendell. There are any number of explanations. The point is that there could have been any number of these critters from five upwards.
There’s also this:
Again it leaped into the air, and then swiftly fell down upon Eowyn, shrieking, striking with beak and claw.
So the fell beasts were either bird-like, sans feathers, or dragons in Middle Earth are beaked.
Well, pteranodons are beaked…and otherwise very naked-birdlike. Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan as big as a small plane.
It could be that, by “older worlds”, JRRT means the world under the shadow of Morgoth, and that these are the last remnants of one of his creations - not dragons, but something else sub-created by Him, like werewolves and orcs
–
MrDibble
ME dragons are definitely not beaked since Smaug’s teeth are mentioned quite a few times.
However that doesn’t make the fell beasts particularly birdlike. As MrDibble has pointed out other animals have beaks as well. Not only pteranosaurs but turtles, platypuses, octopuses and mythological creatures like gryphons. Only the gryphon has an even vaguely birdlike head. There are lots of ways for a creature to have a beak without looking like a bird.