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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 9758094" data-attributes="member: 177">Guys, you seem to be arguing against a position I am not taking.I didn't say there's "no knowledge or people doing magic anywhere except for the wizards".  That is nothing like anything I have said.  So please stop.My argument is far more limited - that there is no *evidence in the text" for anyone other than Maiar being called "wizards" in Tolkien's world.  In the text, "wizard" is not used as a generic word for anyone who learns magic - that's a trope from other fiction and a D&D-ism, not an element from Tolkien.  Other users of magic are generally referred to as "sorcerers", not wizards, in Tolkien's text."Barrow Kings" are from the Game of Thrones.  You may be thinking of the barrow-wights.... Let's talk about their history....Back in the First Age, there was a big war against Morgoth - Sauron's boss.  Morgoth lost, and Sauron hid.  Humans that had stood with the elves and Valar against Morgoth and his forces were rewarded with their own kingdom, halfway between Middle Earth and the Undying Lands of the Valar, the place the elves go when the sail west across the sea.That kingdom was Numenor.  Its first king was Elros Half-elven, brother of Elrond.  The Second Age of Middle Earth was the age of Numenor. It is during the Second Age that all the rings get forged...Eventually, Sauron came among the Numenoreans - and aside form teaching some of them some dark magics, he corrupted them, until they broke the one real rule on them - to not try to reach the Undying Lands.  The last king of the Numenoreans tried, and for that, Numenor was destroyed, and sunk beneath the sea (if you see an Atlantis analog here, you're not wrong).  This beings the Third Age.Numenorians that had remained faithful came into Middle Earth, and set up kingdoms (including Gondor), and became known as the Dunedain.  The Witch-king  (the lead Ringwraith) set up the kingdom of Angmar, and over the course of some centuries he eventually destroys the northern kingdoms of the Dunedain.  He sets some evil spirits up in the barrow-downs, animating the corpses of dead Dunedain, to help prevent the Dunedain from rebuilding there.Aragorn, by the way, it pretty much the last of the Dunedain royal line, which is why he is eventually made King in Gondor.  He, and a few other rangers, still have a bit of Dunedain/Numenorean/elven blood.The blades the hobbits find in the barrow-downs, some 1700 years after the fall of the Dunedain, were incredibly old - of Numenorean or Dunedain make - forged by people who had been in contact with the Valar and elves for centuries.  These are not folks who were isolated and had to make up their own magic - they learned from the best.</blockquote>

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