Middle Earth questions

I have some questions I'd like you Middle Earth buffs to answer. Opinions are welcome with fact.

1) Who or What was Suaron ( Spelling? )

2) At anytime in ME history, could have anyone challenged Suaron's power?

3) Whats the diffrence between the elves in the Golden wood and Lothlorian? ( Spelling on that one again? )

4) What is a balrog, Where do they come from and how many are there?

5) What makes a wizard? How many were there?

Thanks in advance for your answers!
 

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1. He was the greatest of the dark agents of Melkor. I believe that would make hima powerful Maia, probably the most powerful of all. Consider him the greatest of all the fallen angels who sided with the dark god.

2. There were several members of the Noldor who challenged Melkor. None beat him directly but I am sure if they could oppose Sauron pretty well if they battled his boss.

3. Can't answer this one.

4. A balrog is also a Maia though a weaker one than Sauron. The Balrog used to be the battlefield lieutenants of Melkor.

5. Wizards were called the Isanti and there were only 5 of them. They were also Maia and were sent over from across the ocean to help fight Sauron.
 


1) Who or What was Suaron ( Spelling? )

Sauron was a Maia: a lesser diety, if you will. He was originally of the "People" of Aule, the Smith, and thus carried with him a lot of his prejudices and character from that background (incidentally, Saruman was also of the people of Aule and fell prey to the same temptations as Sauron) but was corrupted early on by Melkor. During the first age, Sauron was Melkor's chief servant.

2) At anytime in ME history, could have anyone challenged Suaron's power?

In what way? Without the ring, Sauron was relatively weak. Even with the Ring, his armies were defeated by Ar-Pharazon and then again by Gil-galad and Elendil, when Isildur cut off his finger. During the First Age, he wasn't even the Head Honcho of Dark-lordishness, so certainly he is never presented as a uber-bad-guy.

3) Whats the diffrence between the elves in the Golden wood and Lothlorian? ( Spelling on that one again? )
Nothing. Lothlorien is the Golden Wood.

4) What is a balrog, Where do they come from and how many are there?

A balrog is a Maiarish spirit, much weaker than Sauron himself, but still very mighty, who was corrupted by Melkor in the early days of the world. They took on nightmarish physical forms, and there you have it. In D&D terms, a balor (perhaps advanced in HD) is a good representation: they really are too weak to be diety level, as "high level" characters like Glorfindel do kill them from time to time. How many there are depends greatly on which version of Tolkien's texts you accept as accurate. There are some early texts that have entire armies of balrogs, while some late texts seem to limit them to nine (or was it seven? I forget) while other later texts are unclear or contradictory. Really, you can get away with almost whatever you want as long as you still make balrogs very rare.

5) What makes a wizard? How many were there?

Wizard is a "translation" into English of the elvish word Istari. The wizards, in this guise, are all embodied Maiar who gave up (or veiled) their power and apparently some of their memory to come to Middle-earth from Valinor as messengers and/or servants of the Valar to help elves and men contend with Sauron. There were only five who came: Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast and the two blue wizards who promptly disappeared into the east, although Unfinished Tales gives a small hint of what their role might have been there.

However, there are numerous other references to "magic" being used by mortals. Galadriel and Elrond certainly seemed capable of "magic" although, they didn't seem to understand the use of the word the same way the hobbits, for instance, did. Most other "sorcerors" and magic-users described (especially amongst Men) were evil and gained their powers through Melkor. Tolkien even wrote at one point that "magic", as a force that could be tapped by evil sorcerors and the like, was actually the dispersed power of Melkor throughout Middle-earth.
 

Man, oh man! Is that a can of worms you're opening or what? :D This thread will either be dead silent or break the server with all the replies.

Seriously, though, I am no ME scholar, but I'll take a stab at answering some of these.

(edit: I see there were already replies on the other forum. Oh well! :) )

1) Who or What was Suaron ( Spelling? )
Spelling is close, reverse the U and the A. Sauron is/was a lieutenent of Melkor; the chief baddie of ME (essentially Lucifer). Most of the Melkor-related stuff is in the Simarillion.

2) At anytime in ME history, could have anyone challenged Suaron's power?
It was challenged. The battle the refer to in the beginning of the LOTR:FOTR movie is a challenge and an attempt to destroy Sauron. If you mean could another bad guy have taken over Mordor? If they had gotten hold of the One Ring, possibly. (I am not 100% sure on that one)

3) Whats the diffrence between the elves in the Golden wood and Lothlorian? ( Spelling on that one again? )
Couldn't tell you. Sorry.

4) What is a balrog, Where do they come from and how many are there?
On the "Organizational Flow Chart of EVIL" Balrogs are of the same type of being as Sauron; minions of Melkor. Though Sauron is MUCH more powerful, they all "reported directly" to Melkor. As to their numbers, I'm not sure. The number 12 jumps into my head, but I've have no evidence of that.

5) What makes a wizard? How many were there?
This is just my impression, mind you. Someone more knowledgeable may shoot this down. Wizards are not men. They are agents of Melkor's enemies (the good guys/angels). There are only 3 mentioned in the LOTR books. Radagast the Brown, Gandalf & Sauroman. There are supposed to be others, but I don't know who they are. For rating them in power/authority, they are roughly equivalent to Balrogs; though individually varying in power somewhat.


There are literally HUNDREDS of sources of discussion and speculation about Tolkien's Middle Earth if you want to research this more. There is also a d20 ME page hosted (I think) here on enworld.org. Hope this helps and is not TOO inaccurate.
 
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1.) Sauron was former Maiar. Sauron was one of the most powerful of Maiar, and the most powerfull of the fallen ones.

2.) Sauron, as all Maiar were lesser powers (angel level) so valar (god level) were more powerfull. Also Ungoliant, the Giant Spider of darkness was more powerfull than Sauron (Shelob was an offspring of Ungoliant)

4.) Balrogs were fallen Maiar of fire, a little lesser in power than Sauron. Exact number of balrogs is unknown, but there were at least twenty of them. Gothmog was the king of the balrogs.

5.) There were five of wizards, Istari. They were Maiar who were sent to the Middle-Earth by Valar. The names of the wizards were Gandalf (Olórin as Maiar), Saruman (Curumon as Maiar), Radagast, Pallando and Alatar.

(All names spelled as finnish versions)

Hope these help.
 

Actually, in all translations that I know of, the elvish names were unchanged. All of those Finnish version names are exactly the same as the English version names.
 

What were the hints in Unfinished Tales? Was Sauron attacking into the North, South, and East in addition to his known attacks into the West?

Also would the two blue wizards be considered weaker than Gandalf but stronger than the brown since their colors put them at closer to White?

One final question I have always had. If Saruman defeated Gandalf so surely and imprisoned him in his tower then why did he never take the Ring of Fire from him? It seems that Gandalf gained quite bit of power from it (Im thinking the Ring is part of the reason he beat the Balrog).

I can only imagine what the ring would have done for Saruman.
 

I never said anything about the relative strength of the Istari compared to each other. I don't think that there's any relation between color and strength, although there may be some relation between color and purpose. Unfinished Tales talks about some "magic cults" in the east that were supposedly remnants of teachings founded by the Blue Wizards.

As to Gandalf's Ring, it was hidden by some kind of magical spell or somewhat. Galadriel mentioned at some point that only the Ringbearer could tell who had them. Likely Saruman never even knew Gandalf had it.
 
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Joshua Dyal said:



In what way? Without the ring, Sauron was relatively weak. Even with the Ring, his armies were defeated by Ar-Pharazon and then again by Gil-galad and Elendil, when Isildur cut off his finger. During the First Age, he wasn't even the Head Honcho of Dark-lordishness, so certainly he is never presented as a uber-bad-guy.


I'm not sure that Sauron is actually weak, but just spread thin. One of the themes of LotR is free choice. The Valar let the Free Peoples (elves, humans, dwarves and throw in hobbits) choose their fates, while Melkor and Sauron enslave their forces. A great deal of Sauron's power is devoted to keeping his guys on his path.

So most of his resources are already spent, and there's little left for other tasks. It's generally assumed that by the end of the Third Age he could take on anyone in the world face to face. Aragon defeats him in mental combat for control of the palantir, but he whups both Saruman and Denethor.

PS
 

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