What are the powers of the One Ring?

Morrus said:

Yeah, I've heard that. I knew that already. My question was that that is all very... vague. What does the ring actually do?

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Consider it this way - the One Ring is so powerful that, if it got used in the story such that we knew... the story would be over.

Umbran said:

Not quite true. He was there when the Seven were forged. He handed those Seven off to the Dwarves. Now, these were probably not Celebrimbor's best work - elves and dwarves have never really gotten along. The Seven aren't really powerful. Sauron can't really make anyone wearing one of the Seven do anything, ecept be very greedy and a little paranoid.

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Wait, so it can't control the three *or* the seven? Just the nine then?

This ring deal keeps getting worse! Not only does the ring not do much, it doesn't even do the few things I thought it *did* do!

Consider, Morrus, that there are three objects on the planet, that you have personally never seen or touched. Their owners turn them off and put them away in their sock drawers and under rocks, leave them inert, and never bring them out. How, pray tell, do you find them? Needle in a haystack!

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Yeah, but I'd probably start with the three most powerful magical elves on the planet.

Zander said:

Tolkien was a philologist who loved word-play and his Middle Earth stories are full of plays on words. The defeat of the Witch-king was an in-story play on the word "man" and its various meanings. It was prophecised that the Witch-king would not be defeated by "man".

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The actual quote is, "Do not pursue him! He will not return to these lands. Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man shall he fall."

The Witch-king took that to mean mankind. But the prophesy actually meant "man" in the narrowest sense, that is, a human male.

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Actually, the Witch-king was fleeing the battlefield when this was said, so it is not clear that he heard the original statement.

Later, at the battle in which he dies, he says, "Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!" Note that he's broadened it out from how he shall not fall by the hand of man, to how no man can so much as slow him down. Sounds like a telephone game, to me

That is why Merry as a non-human male and Eowyn as a human female were able to defeat him.

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Calling Merry non-human is a tad dicey. Hobbits consider themselves a different people, but in various places Tolien is fairly clear that hobbits are "relatives" of Men, a "variety" or "separate branch" of mankind. This is borne out in how, in the SIlmarillion, we know the origins of elves, dwarves, men, ents, orcs, and all. But Hobbits don't come up.

Nothing to do with politics. Everything to do with philology.

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I think it is also clear homage to Macbeth -

"Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth."

And Macbeth is then killed by someone who was, in effect, born by Caserian Section. This predated Tolkien by several hundred years - the trope solidly established.

Morrus said:

Wait, so it can't control the three *or* the seven? Just the nine then?

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The other way to look at it is that the Seven are kind of crappy. Sure, he can control them, but that's like controlling one of the very first toy radio controlled cars - the ones that go forward, and back-and-turn, and that's it.

Yeah, but I'd probably start with the three most powerful magical elves on the planet.

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Yes. Ge tried that - killed Gil-Galad, who didn't have a ring having handed it off to Elrond. Tortured Celebrimbor, who didn't break. After that, the rings are all sitting with those elves, in well-protected enclaves. Those elves let few non-elves in, and *all* the elves are on to your tricks. The only way you have to get at the rings is by frontal assault, and when you try to do that to one, they all gang up on you, and fight you off.

So how, exactly, are you getting your hands on the rings? Even if you know it is somewhere in Lothlorien... that's still a space the size of a city. Lots of nooks and crannies. How are you going to get it other than burning the place to the ground and sifting the ashes?

Umbran said:

The actual quote is, "Do not pursue him! He will not return to these lands. Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man shall he fall."

Actually, the Witch-king was fleeing the battlefield when this was said, so it is not clear that he heard the original statement.

Later, at the battle in which he dies, he says, "Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!" Note that he's broadened it out from how he shall not fall by the hand of man, to how no man can so much as slow him down. Sounds like a telephone game, to me

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Yes, it's true that the Witch-king may not have heard the prophecy directly and that it may not have been passed to him verbatim. But the fact that he understood it to mean that he could not be impeded by "man" is the salient point. It's his misinterpretation of the word - whether heard directly or not - that's key to the play on words. It's because of his understanding of "man" in the narrow sense, that he wasn't wary of Frodo like the other Nazguls were during the encounter at Weathertop. From the Witch-king's point of view, Frodo was a "man" and therefore not a threat.

Umbran said:

Calling Merry non-human is a tad dicey. Hobbits consider themselves a different people, but in various places Tolien is fairly clear that hobbits are "relatives" of Men, a "variety" or "separate branch" of mankind. This is borne out in how, in the SIlmarillion, we know the origins of elves, dwarves, men, ents, orcs, and all. But Hobbits don't come up.

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The hobbits considered themselves distinct from but taxonomically equal to Men. When Merry and Pippin meet Treebeard, they suggest that his list of creatures that already mentions Men needs updating to include hobbits as well. Of course, the hobbits may have been wrong about themselves, but if the elf who foretold the fall of the Witch-king made the same mistake (of considering them distinct from Men), the word play still works.

Umbran said:

I think it is also clear homage to Macbeth -

"Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth."

And Macbeth is then killed by someone who was, in effect, born by Caserian Section. This predated Tolkien by several hundred years - the trope solidly established.

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Whether or not it's also an allusion to Macbeth, Tolkien patently isn't making a political statement about female empowerment. He explicitly stated that no part of the Lord of the Rings was an allegorical reference to real-world happenings.

In a way you can see that both Bilbo & Frodo were gaining some other benefits from the ring than invisibility, others listened to them and in a way, deferred to them. Was this just because of charisma or was the ring helping?

The main power of the One ring is to control the other rings. Saurons plan was to create rings of power for the mightiest members of the other races, then use his ring to dominate them. It worked on men..thus we got the ring wraiths. Due to the unique nature of Dwarfs in the Tolkien universe, they could not be dominated. So Sauron worked hard to reclaim as many dwarf rings as possible. The Elves created their own rings of power, very powerful rings that could do things like hold entropy at bay, but since those rings were created using the knowledge given to the elves by Sauron they were subject to the ruling ring. The moment Sauron put his ring off, the elves realised what was going on and took their rings off. They could only wear thier rings while Sauron did not possess the one ring. Since they were subject to the one ring, when the one ring failed, so did the elven rings. And since these rings maintained the elven realms in middle earth, the destruction of the one ring meant the end of elvish power.

The second thing the ring did was to enhance the inherent power of the person using them. Consider it a kind of spiritual focuser, taking the diffuse spiritual essence of the wearer, and focusing it into a more potent form..a bit like boiling water to get salt. Someone who has a great deal of spiritual power like Sauron or Galadriel would get far more use out of it than a simple hobbit. In DnD terms one could say that the rings added a crapload of extra levels, the more Wisdom and levels you have, the more levels it would add.

In Tolkiens universe objects of power are made by passing a bit of your essence into them. This can diminish the maker. In DnD terms, you are spending levels to create an artifact. (this was why morgoth got weaker and weaker over time..he mixed his essence into the earth and his minions to control them, and as they multiplied, his own personal essence declined) To make something as powerful as the great ring, Sauron had to pass the majority of his own essence into it. Now this wasn't a problem, as long as Sauron was wearing his ring because that essence is still usable by him. But with the ring gone, he lost the essence he used to make it, and his power was diminished, like a level 20 mage who places 10 of his levels in a ring, and loses the ring. To gain his full power, he needed his ring back.

In HERO terms, the One Ring is either an Inobvious or Obvious Accessible Focus.

That takes some major lurkage fortitude to register in 2005 and make your first post nearly 10 years later.

Umbran said:

Not quite true. He was there when the Seven were forged. He handed those Seven off to the Dwarves. Now, these were probably not Celebrimbor's best work - elves and dwarves have never really gotten along. The Seven aren't really powerful. Sauron can't really make anyone wearing one of the Seven do anything, ecept be very greedy and a little paranoid.

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This is wrong. The 7 were no less powerful than the 9. But it is said (Silmarillion iirc) that Aulë, when creating the dwarves, made them especially strong-willed and difficult to dominate, because of Melkor.
Therefore the rings did not have as strong an effect on the dwarves. They could not be subjugated, so Sauron corrupted them by amplifying their innate lust for gems and precious metals, which was as much as he could do *to the dwarves*.