The Hobbit

chaos_sl said:

Yeah but only because it would devolve into a crazed hentai porno

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i like where this is goin'. giggity! giggity! giggity!

I didn't think the Witch King died to prophecy but to the ancient enchanted blades the hobbits found in the barrows way back in FotR that were specifically crafted bane weapons during the first rise of the Witch King. Also, Gandalf/Elrond/Galdriel mentions that the ring wraiths have been defeated numerous times "but one cannot truly destroy their evil" and they reform after time due to Sauron still being around.

My understanding was that so long as their rings and the one ring exist, they exist in some form. The blade that actually "killed" the witch-king was whatshername's though Pippin crippled him with the leg blow from the barrow blade.

This stuff is all kind of iffy because half of it isn't very well explained, and probably on purpose. Nazgul are way cooler the more mysterious they are.

It is specifically mentioned that the only way to kill the witch king is through the fulfillment of a specific prophecy. I take that to mean that the other ring wraiths are killable without any overly specific means. Though maybe that means that they are killable the same way sauron was, in that in time they would simply reform.

Also, I don't think the balrog and smaug are as equal as people were saying. Balrogs were maiar, but they were weaker, almost feral creatures. They always came across to me as tactically minded trolls. Smart enough to lead an army but at the end of the day they were killable by the opposing army. Though smaug was pretty weak compared to the other known drsgons so maybe they were equal.. I still think smaug would win but who knows

Maiar Beast vs non Maiar Beast? The Balrog would garb hold of Smaug and beat it to death.

Gandalf sacrified himself to kill the Balrog because it COULDN'T be allowed to possibly ally with Sauron, although he wanted Smaug gone he didn't go all out and wasn't even there then he died.

Balrogs have duelled and defeated the Kings of the Noldor. Smaug would drop like a punk.

Dagor-nuin-Giliath, an army of 90,000 Orcs and Balrogs took on about 15,000 Elves and were like, completely wiped out. Hell, Feanor took on multiple balrogs all by himself and though he eventually died from his wounds (and from a beating from Gothmog), he still managed to kill his fair share. Even Gothmog, Lord of the Balrogs couldn't take down Fingon (who was the younger half-brother of Feanor) by himself without another balrog sneaking up behind him and giving him the edge.

Not to take away from the strength of balrogs or anything, but those elves in the earlier days of Middle-earth weren't nothin' to fuck with.

Nah, to be honest it's rather consistent when you know the lore. The Elves of the Third Age are no where near as powerful as the ones from the First, and for good reason. Tolkien really wasn't one to inflate/deflate power levels of characters for the sake of story. At least, nothing I can directly recall.

Asmadai_sl said:

Nah, to be honest it's rather consistent when you know the lore. The Elves of the Third Age are no where near as powerful as the ones from the First, and for good reason.

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What's the reasoning behind that?

I don't know for sure, but I vaguely recall stuff about elves "diminishing" in the 3rd age.

Cirdan and Maglor* are both older than Galadriel.

*unconfirmed alive or dead

in the films elves seem to diminish as a choice or rather galadriel chose to diminish when she refused Sauron's ring.

Galadriel chooses to 'diminish' when she rejects Frodo's offer of The One Ring. In doing so, she allows The One to be destroyed, which will also destroy the ring of power she wields (Nenya), which provides her with much of her strength.

Or so I always interpreted it.

yeah, all the rings of power serve sauron.

"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."
-J.R.R. Tolkien's epigraph to The Lord of The Rings

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the 3 rings that elrond, galadrial and gandalf have are not under the one rings control, When melkor/morgoth assisted celebrimbor with crafting the rings the 3 rings (narya, ninya, and vinya) were made separately without any corruption.

When The One was destroyed, the three elven rings lost their power:

The Encyclopedia of Arda - Three Rings