This has probably been addressed, but it’s been at the back of my mind for years.
Frodo gets accosted on Weathertop. A Nazgul (the Witch King, perhaps) stabs him with a Morgul blade. The tips breaks off inside of Frodo. If it works its way to his heart, he will become a Nazgul.
Really? How do we know this? If a precedent has been set, why aren’t there more Nazgul running around? Or did Sauron leave some documentation lying around in the archives at Minas Tirith? Or perhaps Strider was just talking smack?
Point of clarification: he will become a WRAITH. Not one of the Nazgul, exactly, since their rings put them in thrall to Sauron, and they were already tough sorcerer-kings before their wraithification. But Frodo would be mostly out of the world of the living, and would be pretty helpless in the other world he found himself in (unlike the Nazgul or an elf like Glorfindel, who were extremely formidable in the unseen world). Figure on him becoming helpless baggage (not unlike how he was treated by the orcs in Cirith Ungol).
Because Aragorn, Glorfindel, Elrond, and the rest are Wicked Smart. They can tell things that we can’t, by virtue of their wisdom/magic.
IIRC, Aragorn and Glorfindel are concerned about the wound, and the weapon that dealt it, but didn’t necessarily know about the fragment. I think only Elrond discovered, after working on Frodo for a long time in Rivendell, that there was still a fragment of the blade left. (I’m sure Qagdop will correct me if I’m wrong.)
Yep, “Nazgul” refers specifically to the servants of Sauron who were corrupted by the Nine Rings. There’s no way you’ll see any new ones unless perhaps one is destroyed and Sauron gets the corresponding Ring out of his safe deposit box and sends it to some other schmuck. (And by the time one of the Nazgul was destroyed, Sauron didn’t really have enough time to find another candidate. :p)
Come to think of it, though, by the latter part of the Third Age Sauron had recovered three of the Seven. I suppose if he had a mind to, he could have found some likely men to ensnare with these, seeing as dwarves proved unsuitable. Maybe he just liked the number nine. Or maybe he was in the process of doing just that, but such was never recorded in the histories? I suppose the fate of the remaining Seven shared the same obscurity as the Nine in the chaos following the destruction of the One.
The morning after Frodo got stabbed, when Strider found the knife what done the deed, it is observed:
So although it perhaps wasn’t known with certainty until they reached Rivendell, there was at least some sign.
Was the tip breaking an intended result of the use of the knife, or did the stabber buy it from a stand in Tiajuana? Cuz have the tip break off is a sign of really shoddy workmanship, especially if all you stabbed was a hobbit.
But the broken shard was making its way to Frodo’s heart, wasn’t it? Seems like it must have been designed to do that - otherwise it’s a very strange bit of coincidental magic.
I stand with muldoonthief on this. Moreove,r there was definitely precedent. The barrow-wight the Hobbits faced earlier was a similar form of uncontrolled undead creature, and Gandalf implies damn heavily that this is not the first time Sauron’s minions have used such weapons (it is probably a favorite tool of the Witch King more than Sauron per se).
A quick related question about Nazgul: Where were the other eight during the Battle of Pelennor Fields? Specifically on the morning of the arrival of the Rohirrim and later Aragorn. IIRC, only the Witch-King is named in the narration of the battle.
The entire Nine were spoken of during the Siege of Gondor, but not during the Battle. So what were they doing: leading the assault on Lorien or Dale?, running messages, ferrying wounded back to Mordor ;)??
At least one of the Nazgul responded to the alarm at Cirith Ungol as Sam and Frodo escaped; that happened at about the same time as the Witch-King was breaking the doors of Minas Tirith, just before dawn on the same day as the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Frodo feels one overhead shortly thereafter, possibly the same one; just after that they hear the ruin of the Witch-King. I don’t remember mention of any others on that day, but there were also battles in Mirkwood and Lorien on March 15, so they may have been needed on other fronts. Sauron may also have been keeping an eye on Orthanc.
Me too. I always had the impression that with the stab—and the tip—the mission was accomplished for now and the nazgul might as well retreat into the darkness, to pick up the hobbit-wraith later on, and not bother with this ranger character who seems to be quite an annoyance.
Also, one of the very foolish scenes in the movie is right here on Weathertop, when Aragorn throws the torch in the “face” of one nazgul, who appearantly has no idea where he is, what the whole dust-up is about, and that he is a ring wraith—and then gets a torch somehow stuck in his non physical head and runs away with a girly scream of sorts. There are several “illusion breakers” like this in the movies, which still bothers me. Sorry.
“The Nazgul came again, and as their Dark Lord now grew and put forth his strength, so their voices, which uttered only his will and his malice, were filled with evil and horror.”
Maybe, but why not just kill them right then and there. Surely, a ranger and a few halflings are nothing for even one of the nazgul. Did they have some sort of intel about that ranger being Aragorn? Even then, they could have saved their lord a lot of trouble by getting killing them off.
That Aragorn, Elessar etc, was something else, is in the Tolkien universe certainly picked up by the nazguls without any intel. Just him flashing the broken sword or the special flag and so forth moved ghosts, wraiths and armies alike—so you have to reckon with the unseen and even untold in this universe.
But why not kill Frodo? I don’t know, why would they? They’re certainly not interested in the life or death of this hobbit, but perhaps if he’s killed, the Man with the Fire might bury the hobbit and wear the ring instead. I do not know the minds of the nazgul; perhaps Sauron told them to take the hobbit to Mordor?
‘Come back! Come back!’ they called. ‘To Mordor we will take you!’
Sauron probably felt that “killing was too good” for someone wearing or holding the One Ring. Dead ringbearers can’t be tortured in the Dark Tower for daring to have the Precious.
I’m certainly not a Middle Earth expert, as some of our fellow dopers, but it seems to me they were drawn to Frodo and was chasing him because of the ring, because they could sense the ring, but perhaps more importantly, it looks like “a hobbit with a ring” was something of utmost importance to Sauron and later Saruman. As far as I understand it, the wraiths was carrying out the will of Sauron without much talking needed, and the uruk hai did what they were told, but none was in one way or the other told to kill hobbits.
They can tell things that we can’t, by virtue of their wisdom/magic.