I know a little about it. I’ve read the Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy, though years ago, and I have of course watched the movies.
I never read the Silmarillion, though, and don’t plan to slog through it.
So. Sauron makes this One Ring. Here’s what I know about it:
It corrupts people upon wearing it. How?
It controls the other rings he made, the nine for the human lords, the ones for the Dwarves (though I gather it just made them greedy instead of truly evil).
He never touched the elven rings but somehow it can control their power, too, if Sauron is holding it? How in the hell does that happen?
How did he forge it?
I’ll probably have more questions but these have always been unanswered questions for me. If the answer is just “Tolkien never went into the details”, so be it, but I am hoping for more.
How? Because it does. Because Tolkien set up his universe that way.
It is a ring of power, more specifically The Ring of Power, the master ring that controls all the other rings – because Sauron, who forged all the others but the Three (Elvenrings) made it that way on purpose, for the purpose of gaining control over others. And Celebrimbor, who made the Three, used the technique Sauron (disguised as “Annatar”) taught him, so even the Three were at least potentially under the control of the One.
It corrupts other people because that’s its nature, to make one greedy for power. Sauron forged it in the Cracks of Doom within Mount Orodruin, an active volcano – being a Maia (creating angel j.g.), he can do this.
The trick is that, in order to achieve power over others using it, Sauron had to invest the greater share of his own power into it.
It’s vaguely sentient in its own right, dimly desiring to pull the (non-Sauron) ringbearer into wielding it, becoming corrupted and falling under its power, and also in finding its way back home to Sauron.
Note also that Gollum (in The Hobbit) showed no desire for much of anything beyond eating well and keeping My Precious safe, so when someone else (Bilbo) came near, who had a better chance at getting greedy for power and leaving that cave, the One Ring slipped away from Gollum and let itself be found.
Short answer: It makes you “Instant Hitler”. Everyone will respect your authori-ty, armies under your command will become invincible, and your kingdom will flourish.
But only so long as you can resist the Ring’s corruptive effects; then you’ll turn it all over to Sauron.
One of the resident LotR experts would have to chime in here, but my understanding of the subject is thus:
After Melkor/Morgoth, the fallen angel who marred and corrupted the world was finally banished from directly participating in the world, there was still the lingering influence of his evil, a propensity to corruption left in the world. The chief power of the One Ring was that it allowed Sauron to tap into and use and direct this influence. In persons wearing any of the other Rings of power, it gave Sauron the ability to directly exploit every weakness and flaw in a person’s character, and to control any work that had been accomplished with the power of any of the lesser Rings. The One Ring was an instrument that allowed someone powerful and skilled enough to effectively hack into the power of Original Sin over the world.
Well, that’s not exactly true. It didn’t even make Sauron’s army invincible, after all. Anybody else using the Ring would would find its effect proportionate to their own innate authority and strength of will. So for instance, a Ringbearing Saruman, Gandalf, Galadriel, or Elrond would be fearsome indeed. But Gollum or Bilbo with the Ring wouldn’t have had a chance going up against a ringless Sauron. Tolkien suggests that even Galadriel is mistaken in thinking she could take Sauron’s place. The Ring plays on people’s pride and desire to control others.
Again, not exactly right. Humans who used the lesser rings fell under Sauron’s thrall, but anyone wielding the One Ring would reveal themselves to Sauron, who (directly or through his minions) would take it by force, unless they were powerful enough to overthrow him, in which case it would corrupt them so much that they would become a new Dark Lord (or Lady), no matter how virtuous their original motives might have been.
I no longer have my MERP books, published by the now defunct Iron Crown Enterprises. Too bad, they might be worth something today.
But there was one book that listed all of the powers of the Ring. I can’t remember them. (Other than it makes you invisible, because you’re partly in The Shadow.) But I remember how much “power” it had.
Every person and monster had a power level. Sam, Merry, and Pippin were level 2 before the war and 9 after. Frodo was 3/11. Most members of the fellowship were around 30-40. Gandalf was something like 60/80, Saruman was about 70/9, Galadriel was about 80. The Valar were all around 500.
Before making the Ring, Sauron was 240th level. Since he poured half of his power into the Ring, both he and it were level 120. In the years leading up to the war, he built his power back up to 240. Had he recovered the Ring, he would have been an awesome level 360.
*Incidentally, wouldn’t “Silmarillion” be a great-sounding vaguely-huge number? Like a jillion. Or a bazillion. And then imagine the look on people’s faces when they find out it’s “Three.”
Details aren’t explicitly in any of the books, but there are hints in the various papers he left unpublished.
In the beginning “evil” in the form of a desire to dominate others enters into the world. It’s part and parcel of the whole deal and personified through Melkor/Morgoth. Now for Tolkien the ability to shape and empower things resides in passing some of what you are into the object in question. What Morgoth (whom Sauron served in the Ages before LotRs) wanted most of all was domination over the world and he poured his powers and nature into the world.
A staggering amount really – we’re talking about the prime mover of evil imbuing the world with its nature.
Now, here comes the Age following the fall of Morgoth and the removal of most elves to a land untouched by evil. Some elves stayed and were ensnared by the offer of knowledge that Sauron (in a pleasant form) offered them. He played on their desire to slow or halt the inevitable decay of the world around themselves, attempting really to stay in the world and have their blessed land too. So he taught them and together they crafted the rings of power.
Now Sauron’s plan was to dominate the elves, so he crafted a ring that would allow him to dominate the wills of the other ring wearers. Since he knew how the other rings had been crafted (and had helped in all but the elven rings) he could access them. But he had to craft a ring of surpassing power, a ring that accessed the remaining essence of evil that Morgoth had poured into the world. The elves immediately removed their rings and so Sauron’s plan failed.
He then stormed the elven stronghold, took the most power rings remaining and passed them out to ensnare other races.
Partly by manipulating their minds; for that matter it can corrupt people who are just near it that way. And partly because it is in essence part of Sauron; truly mastering the ring would also be taking most of what makes Sauron what he is and grafting it into yourself (which is why mastering the Ring would destroy him just like melting it down would). It’s as if you somehow merged Hitler’s mind with your own in order to gain his abilities at demagoguery; it corrupts you because mastering it IS corruption. Mastering the Ring of Sauron is in a way to become partially a version of him. And I doubt that sucking up the essence of Morgoth through the ring to power your abilities is good for you either, considering it was put into the world specifically to corrupt it…
They were all made in part using knowledge provided by him. For a modern analogy, it’s as if someone had created computer code so useful it became copied all over the industry, that had a hidden “trapdoor” that let them into any computer that used it. With the difference that there’s apparently no way to “reprogram” the rings once forged.
Personally, my guess is that if someone had managed to invent their own ring forging process from scratch, then they could have forged a Ring of Power that Sauron would have no control over.
Sauron took night classes at the Isenguard Community College while waiting to reform. They’re one of only 4 universities in all of Middle Earth that allow palantir-based classes for disembodied entities.
He knew that finding one-ring and winning the war was a long shot, so he wanted to have a commercial-wizarding license to fall back on. He’d even picked the small orc-hamlet he’d have his practice in if and when things fell apart. He and Mouth-of-Sauron would talk about the house they would build and how cruel they would be to their servants. Those were lovely days.
Der Trihs, that computer analogy really helps, and I appreciate it. That’s probably one of the clearer ways for me to think of it.
(How sad that I should have to look at fantasy through the lens of computers. :))
Chronos, do you not think that, say, Gandalf could have learned to forge his own rings? Wasn’t he something equivalant to Sauron? Or was he a step “lower”? How about Saruman before he was corrupted?
Had they learned to forge their own rings, could they not have made them in their own way?
Thank you, everyone. Reading that blog now. Very nice.
Gandalf was a being of the same order as Sauron, but he was a lot weaker. Just like, say, Pippin was a being of the same order as Aragorn, but Aragorn would still kick Pippin’s ass all day every day.
Read my post about levels, and if you’re prepared to accept it (I understand if you’re not), you can see that Gandalf and Saruman were not even in the same neighborhood as Sauron. Same race, but vastly different power levels.
Gandalf was a little more closely matched to the power of the Witch King.
Originally, it was just supposed to help me find my keys when I lost them. Then I realized it also showed me where Celebrimbor left HIS keys, and things took off from there.
“I am Gandalf, Gandalf the White, but Black is stronger still.”
Or something like that, I can’t find the original quote. As for Gandalf making his own Rings…well maybe he could have made a lower grade version. The Elves did forge the Three without Sauron’s direct help.