What are the Balrog

[Caleb]

um no

[Ñólendil]

"Um no" to what?

[Caleb]

I just dont think you answer is correct

[Ñólendil]

Why is that?

[Caleb]

Because i think if the dood wanted to destroy everything he had the power to do so. Why wouldnt he destroy the silmarils, why was he bothering with the elves. Why didnt he just have his dragons and balrogs start choppin down forests and blowin up mountains and flooding stuff and let the lava flow. He wanted to control it not destroy it.

[Telperion]

Didn't Balrogs kill Feanor? I'm not sure but I think they did and I think there were seven of them.

[Ñólendil]

Yes, Telperion, although it is unclear exactly how many Balrogs it took to finish off Faenor.

Because i think if the dood wanted to destroy everything he had the power to do so. Why wouldnt he destroy the silmarils, why was he bothering with the elves. Why didnt he just have his dragons and balrogs start choppin down forests and blowin up mountains and flooding stuff and let the lava flow. He wanted to control it not destroy it.

He wouldn't destroy the Silmarilli because he lusted after them. It was a Holy Light he had always desired ever since he became aware of its existence. I'm not talking out of my @$$, it's all in an essay Tolkien wrote called Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion. Why was he bothering with the Elves? His final goal was to destroy them, utterly, and the World with it. But it's not so simple as opening up Angband. It takes strategy and a certain amount of patience. Morgoth's enemies were mighty indeed, and he himself was much diminished from his original form. Melkor did not win his wars easily, and the destruction of all Creation, even just the destruction of the Earth, was a long way off any way you cut it. If Eärendil never got to Aman, and Melkor would have at last gotton rid of his Beleriandic adversaries, driving them into the Sea, slaughtering them all and what not, he would have still have had the whole wide world to deal with, east and south. And there were the other Valar and the Maiar not in his service, and that's another great war Morgoth would have had to undertake before he could reach his goal. All enemies would have to die before he would be aloud to reducing the entire World into chaos. It probably wasn't even possible, but Morgoth had become nihilistic to such a point that Tolkien called it madness. Tolkien said that in the End, Morgoth would even destroy his own Orks and other makings.

Morgoth's ultimate plan sucked. It was a terrible plan and it just wouldn't work. Melkor could not annihilate anything, but he wanted to annihilate everything. Contentment in world domination is much more feasible.

Why didnt he just have his dragons and balrogs start choppin down forests and blowin up mountains and flooding stuff and let the lava flow.

This would not destroy all creation [even aside from what I have said above about the fights that would need to be fought, using your example, he would still have to destroy the Dragons and the Balrogs, the remains of the forests and the mountains, the waters and the lava], but even this is not that easy. He had opposition, fell opposition.

You can read the essay here, it's in the second post on the thread.

It's very interesting, but if you don't want to read the whole thing, I'll just quote this sentence:

Morgoth had no 'plan': unless destruction and reduction to nil
of a world in which he had only a share can be called a 'plan'.

[Beleg Strongbow]

balrogs have wings! it says so in FotR

[Lanelf]

Well, from what I recall of the Sil, the Balrogs were Maia that were twisted by Morgoth, and became big fiery demon thingys. And from what I recall of FotR, Balrogs do not have wings. As I remember, they had darkness that *looked* like wings, but if they did it begs the question: How come when Gandalf went down with that one, the Balrog didn't fly? Isn't that what wings are for? Or maybe it was just fat, or stupid. *shrug*

[Beleg Strongbow]

It's the admin-bugging eternally unanswerable question!

DO BALROGS HAVE WINGS?

[Radagast The Brown]

originally posted by Lanelf
but if they did it begs the question: How come when Gandalf went down with that one, the Balrog didn't fly? Isn't that what wings are for?

and then, could be, he didn't succeed to fly so fast and he hit the ground before he could've fly.
but then, when the balrogs fighted with their whip, I always thought there were on the ground.

[Gilrond]

Excuse me, but I was wondering on the size of Balrogs.

In the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Tolkien implies that Balrogs are somewhat smaller than trolls, because they fight with Elven lords, such as Fingon.

In the fleeing from Gondolin, Glorfindel battles a Balrog on the peaks, and again this passage implies that the fire-demons are a dozen feet tall or so.

In the film, the Balrog exceeds the size of a cave-troll, but that may be that the demon had grown in power and in size waiting in the Mines.

Can someone please reply? Thanx.