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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Prince Atom" data-source="post: 373892" data-attributes="member: 6046">Edena, I think you're too hard on Pippin. So Pippin is tied up, ignored, treated like excess and unnecessary baggage, and generally intimidated...  BY HIS FRIENDS!  I don't think Frodo would have stood for this.  I don't think Merry or Sam would have, either.  Gandalf the Grey certainly wouldn't; for all he howls and yells, he doesn't wish them harm.By your own arguments, Edena, if they treated Pippin like this then the Ring wins.  If standing by and watching Gimli get shot down would increase the Ring's influence, then hog-tying and abusing Pippin certainly would, and it would shatter the company even faster.At least Pippin now knows not to drop rocks down strange wells.  And, IIRC, it was at least a day between the guard room and the assault in the crypt.  So the rock starts the drummers, and they summon up all the orcs and the various dark things Boromir spies in the hall beyond.  Where's your evidence that Pippin brought about the balrog?  I contend that it is just as likely that the One Ring or the mere presence of Gandalf himself brought Durin's Bane to see what was going on.And this is meta-story, but the whole Moria passage has to take place if we are to have Gandalf the White.  Can you imagine, in the scope of LOTR, anything but the balrog doing harm to Gandalf?  Orcs can't touch him; worgs can't touch him.  That'd be anticlimactic.  He needs something legendary to kill, and to kill him.  If we don't get Gandalf the White, then there's no one to replace Saruman of Many Colors, and thus to illegitimize him.As for your tactics of confusing and obfuscating the Ring's trail; you have some good ideas there.  I don't think of Rivendell as being all that mighty.  I don't know how many Elfs were there, but there can't have been too many.  Maybe Elrond wanted to conserve his strength and make mustering easier if he had to muster.But as for Frodo and Sam going alone...  Who would have led them through Moria?  They couldn't count on anyone going in, and so they probably wouldn't have.  So...  Gollum, who is lurking in Moria, never gloms onto Frodo, and is left behind.  Then there's nobody to help them through Mordor, or in fact to resist Frodo when he finally caves in.  The only person who could have destroyed the Ring is wallowing in Moria, strangling Orcs.As for the strength of Elfs; frankly, I never thought of them as particularly tall or strong.  They are described as tall when Frodo et al meet them in the Shire; but then the Elfs are described from a hobbit's point of view.  Men are tall compared to hobbits.  Plus, Elfs have always struck me as being slight things; they aren't totally in this world, and so there's not much physical mass to them.  If Legolas is so strong, why are Aragorn and Boromir sent to clear the trail of snow on Caradhras?  Why isn't he swinging a two-handed, ten-foot sword instead of that bow?  I just don't understand where Elfs are so superior to Men that not only are they immortal, but they always win arm wrestling matches.  Can you give me evidence of such strength, please?TWK</blockquote>

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