Sauron the bumbler?

Cafe Society
21

The Blues are mentioned, albeit indirectly, in the main text. When Gandalf is giving Saruman his last chance to repent, Saruman replies, in part,

We know of Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast, of course, which leaves two others. I believe that one of them was sent to the South and one to the Far East, in at least one of the versions of the backstory, so that’s consistent with them being absent. I don’t know, though, about Gandalf and Radagast dividing their responsibility at the Mountains; Gandalf seems to get around a lot more than that (his many names in different regions, as given to Faramir; his friendships with Treebeard and Galadriel; his role in the defeat of Smaug; etc.). I get the impression that the regions to which the Blues were sent were each as large as that mapped in LotR… Maybe the familiar area just needed more wizardly help, being the home of Sauron?

And Radagast was friend of Eagles, but then, so was Gandalf, in his own right: He once healed Thorongil, father (I think) of Gwaihir Windlord and chief of the Eagles in The Hobbit, of a grievous wound, and the other services that the Eagles performed were partly in repayment of that debt. (They were also, of course, decent creatures in their own right, and opposed to the likes of orcs.)

22

Well, I don’t know. Gollum was corrupted, and Bilbo and Frodo began to be corrupted, but in both cases, lost the ring before it could corrupt them.

23

It’s not that hobbits can’t be corrupted, it’s that they corrupt really slowly and aren’t too powerful. If you gave a normal human the Ring, he wouldn’t get much power and he’d turn into a wraith. If you gave an elf or a Numorean the Ring, they could resist longer, but once they started they’d be so powerful they could never turn back.

Whereas hobbits, as Tolkien was fond of pointing out, had astonishing inner strength combined with relative simplicity; they love their fat happy lives because they are capable of surviving much worse. They can’t use the ring very powerfully, and they go bad much more slowly and hang on much more slowly. Bilbo gave up the ring, and even Gollum held on to his Smeagol nature much longer than a human in a similar position would have.

The EEEEEWW!!! factor of Bilbo/Frodo slash is that a) they’re related and b) Bilbo is an old man. Frodo/Sam slash, while not my area of interest whatsoever, would be less disgusting.

Finally, something interesting reading the works of Terry Pratchett has done to me… In LotR you never see female dwarfs. In Pratchett’s Discworld series the logic behind this is that all dwarfs look like dwarfs and they don’t publicly distinguish gender. So…

Re-read LotR imagining that Gimli is a woman- a tough, axe-wielding dwarfish woman- with a secret crush on Legolas that can never ever be revealed. Very weird.

–John

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All together now: EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwww[sub]wwwwww[/sub]

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I feel such sympathy for any female that looks like John Rhys-Davies…

jayjay

26

My understanding was that the three elven rings were made secretly, without the aid of Sauron, but still using some of the lore learned by (Feanor?) through aiding him. Thus they could be bent to the power of the one ring, as all the rings could, but had no inherent evil drawbacks.

To avoid notice by Sauron and so remained hidden, they did their magics in small ways.

The phrase “unsullied by his touch” rings a bell.

Also, Sauron’s ‘eye’ kept an eagle assault away. The only way the ring got there was by avoiding notice and playing upon Sauron’s blind spots, the idea that anyone who possessed it would USE the power to challenge him, and the certain knowledge that all ways in to Mordor were guarded.
If Sauron can bear his will down on something, especially in his own land, he’s nigh omnipotent. Thus no eagle escort/taxi to Orodruin

27

IIRC Feanor bit the dust at the end of the first age when he assaulted Melchoir/Morgoth and he was surrounded by a bunch of balrogs, whom he killed and died from his wounds, an age before the rings were made. Feanor made the Silmarils, which Melchoir/Morgoth stole and Feanor convinced the elves to make war on Melchoir/Morgoth to recover them as they contained the only remaining light from the Two Trees that Melchoir/Morgoth destroyed.

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whoops - Celebrimbor, son of Curufin, son of Feanor. (Encycl. of Arda)

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Quick overview of Ring Lore

In the First age the original bad guy, Morgoth, put his power into Arda (Earth). This gave him a corrupting influence over Earth and its inhabitants. When he is finally bound and ejected beyond the doors of night, his power was left embedded in all things. (Side note: The whole story took place in a pre-biblical earth. This corrupting influence was only cleansed when the creator Eru-Illuvitar incarnated as Jesus. Not that JRRT believed this, it was the setting.)

In the Second Age Sauron, Morgoth’s chief commander, figures out how to tap into this ‘Morgoth element’. He then taught this method to a group of elves living in Hollin led by Celebrimbor. Originally a large but unspecified number of rings are created to tap into the Morgoth element and use it to accomplish some task or other. Gandalf originally thought Bilbo’s ring was one of these.

For the elves their primary concern was that, although they did not age and die, they eventually faded. This fading was never described in detail as to exactly what happened, but the only place it did not happen was in Aman (home of the Valar). The elves wanted the ability to preserve, prevent decay and fading. In fact Celebrimbor had already created a stone for Galadriel with preservative properties.

Eventually the elves, assisted by Sauron, made 16 great rings. These were designed to recreate the preserving ability of Aman. Sauron also tossed in a few powers not intended by the elves. These included a link to the spiritual world that the elves didn’t need, as they already lived in both the physical and spiritual world. There is some disagreement as to if there was any real difference between the 9 and the 7. In any case they were kept in separate locations.

At this point Sauron disappears for a while. Celebrimbor takes the opportunity to create the 3 greatest rings. Sauron had no part in their making, but Sauron’s methodologies were still used and they still used the Morgoth element as a power source. However they were more powerful than the 16, and they didn’t have the odd abilities thrown in by Sauron. One of the Three would not have made anyone invisible for example.

While Celebrimbor is finishing his greatest work, Sauron disappears and forges the One Ring on Mount Doom. The one is different in both purpose and power. Rather than preserve, the one is designed to dominate (it does have some preservation abilities as well). However the Morgoth element does not have the power to dominate the other ring holders, so Sauron places a large portion of his native power into the ring so that he can dominate the other ring holders.

At this point war begins and Sauron eventually captures the 16 and doles them out to those he would like to corrupt. He then settles down and begins a thousand odd year rule of almost all of Middle Earth; only few enclaves, mostly elvish, remain free. Eventually he fights a brief war with Numenor and is captured. But with his ring within a few years he corrupts them and they are destroyed (of course Sauron is too, but he gets better). He of course make two more plays for power and is defeated each time.

So was the ring a good idea? Well Sauron did rule over a really big area for a really long time. And he came within inches of doing it again a couple of more times. As long as the ring existed he couldn’t be permanently destroyed. But as we saw it was his one great weakness as well.