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07-12-2006, 05:30 AM | #201 |
Elf Lord
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course' a liddle bitsy bit of water down Bruinen way was enough to knacker up their bodies ... personally i think any sword could destroy their "physical" bodies ... why then did the WK "die" though ..or is he just effectivly out of action for the duration of the rest of the time period between Pelenor and mount doom?
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07-12-2006, 11:56 AM | #202 | ||
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07-12-2006, 01:59 PM | #203 | ||||
Elven Warrior
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07-12-2006, 02:17 PM | #204 | |
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07-13-2006, 10:22 PM | #205 |
Spaceman Spiff
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Is there a 'How to kill a Nazgul' thread somewhere?
I'll just ask here for now since we're talking about the barrow blades killing the WK. The prophecy says no living man could kill him right? So why wouldn't Legolas' arrows hurt him? I remember someone saying something about that. Also, if the WK had killed Eowyn wouldn't the onslaught of the Dead Army be able to kill him too? I mean, they aren't living men?
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07-14-2006, 02:20 AM | #206 | ||
Elven Warrior
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Moreover, we see that Tolkien switched between man and Man as he saw fit - though Legolas can be said to be a 'man', by gender, he is not a 'Man', by race: Quote:
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07-14-2006, 04:46 AM | #207 |
Elf Lord
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can we really call elves men in the sense you mean when they apparently don't like to have sex much?
yes you'd assume Sauron might still have some stock of mithril lying about ...but maybe not ... in the words of the stones i guess he could always paint it black Best BB * interesting piece jammi - mainly for the questions it riases (oops wrong thread on that one!) Last edited by Butterbeer : 07-14-2006 at 04:48 AM. |
08-10-2006, 11:29 AM | #208 | |
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10-04-2006, 03:12 PM | #209 | ||
Elven Warrior
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I found another interesting quote in the Reader's companion; it sort of refutes the idea of the blades being known only to the dunedain of Cardolan, but it also gives the blades a good deal of importance:
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10-04-2006, 03:35 PM | #210 |
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nice. so when the people made those swards, they bloody well knew what they were doing.
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10-04-2006, 04:39 PM | #211 |
Salt Miner
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Landroval, I don't want to nit-pick, but I don't follow how that does or does not demonstrate that only Cardolan smiths knew the secret of making these blades.
I am uncomfortable with the idea myself; but context drives me to accept it. Consider that:
I think the only conclusion is that they never knew or understood the significance of the blades: the knowledge had been lost to the Dúnedain, & the Eldar either never knew or, as with the Second Age Númenóreans regarding the Rings of Power, never knew enough. I'm not saying you're wrong, only that I can't derive your claim from your post. I'm not saying I'm right, only that I feel compelled to my position because nothing else fits. To paraphrase Sir A Conan Doyle's words in the mouth of Sherlock Holmes: When all other possibilities have been eliminated, what is left, however unlikely, must be the truth. -|- It's a wonderful quote, though! I had specifically looked for gems from that vein, but I missed that one. Last edited by Alcuin : 10-04-2006 at 04:42 PM. |
10-05-2006, 12:58 AM | #212 | |
Elven Warrior
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10-05-2006, 02:34 AM | #213 |
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well, what do you expect from a man who was constantly going between different ideas throught the 14 years of writing the story.
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10-05-2006, 05:05 AM | #214 | ||
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By implication, Landroval, you are still suggesting that the information was lost during the wars. The reasons are that
If you move the development and manufacture of these barrow-blades into the Third Age, then you have Noldorin smiths from Ost-in-Edhil living in Rivendell watching their friends and allies get their heads handed to them (literally) in a war against Angmar reminiscent in some ways of the destruction of Eregion; moreover, Elrond had blood ties to the Dúnedain, and he acknowledged that. Finally, all Dúnedain in the North knew about Isildur and the One Ring, because until the fall of Fornost in III 1974, that was the penultimate disaster in the history of Arnor. So a Dúnadan asking about the Nazgûl and their nature in the Third Age, especially during or just after a real crisis threatening the survival of the Dúnedain and maybe even the continued existence of Rivendell (the last refuge in Middle-earth of the Noldor: C*rdan ruled what should have been a mostly Sindar population derived from the survivors of Beleriand, while Lothlórien and Thranduil’s kingdoms were Silvan Elves), is a whole lot more likely to get a straight answer from the few remaining Noldor who knew something about the nature and manufacture of the Rings of Power than a Second Age Númenórean who might abuse the information. (Given the track record of Númenor toward its end, I think they would have abused that knowledge.) Elrond was going have to sign off on revealing those kinds of secrets. Now, Elrond or even Gil-galad might have given his blessing on passing along this information during the War of the Last Alliance, when the Nazgûl must also have been a scourge; but then, as before, Elrond and Wise should have recognized the daggers, and given their potency, they would be remiss not to tell the hobbits what they were. They should have attempted to recover what were left of them since Bombadil left the whole trove exposed. Again, lack of recognition is not a sure-fire indication that the Eldar knew nothing about the nature of these particular blades, but it’s highly suggestive that they did not invent them, and that they did not know what they were, even if they knew that such blades had existed in the past. The way out of that is to argue that Denethor did recognize Pippin’s blade: and of course, we know that he did. We don’t know whether he recognized the artwork and style, making that a cultural recognition (“Oh! that looks an 11th-century Anglo-Saxon brooch.” “Yes, it is. It came a nineteenth-century dig.”) or a functional recognition in the sense that Denethor knew what it did but did not say so. I have no answer to this part of the problem, it’s just an observation. Finally, let’s consider the nature of the weapons themselves. The barrow-blades are the “good” counterparts of the “evil” Morgul-blade the Witch-king used against Frodo on Weathertop. Aragorn and Glorfindel did recognize that weapon, both from its actions and from its appearance. That means that the Morgul-knives were used many times against Men in the Third Age. We know that Boromir Ruling Steward of Gondor received such a wound in III 2475 in the war against Minas Morgul waged in Ithilien. He did not turn into a wraith and continued to live for many years, indicating that the splinter that broke off was successfully removed, but his life was considerably shortened nevertheless. It makes sense that the Morgul-knives preceded the barrow-blades. Turning a living Man into a wraith by means of leaving a poisoned or enchanted fragment inside the victim is necessarily an act of necromancy. Sauron is The Necromancer, and his chief servant the Witch-king is also a necromancer. That they would make a weapon for this purpose is just par for the course. If these weapons first appeared in the wars with Angmar in the fourteenth century of the Third Age, then the Dúnedain, who were still fairly numerous in Arnor (or of course, its daughter kingdoms; though the Dúnedain in Rhudaur, where they were fewest, might have been wiped out right away in the first war) and still had a civilization all their own, should have started looking for a solution to this problem immediately. Instead of finding a cure, I think what makes sense is that the Dúnedain learned how the process worked – which by necessity had to include consultation with the Noldor of Rivendell, although the Noldor would not necessarily know the outcome of the efforts of the Dúnedain sages and smiths – and they were able to manufacture a weapon that acted on the wraiths in the same fashion as the Morgul-knives did on people. I think that fits with what you’ve quoted from Reader’s Companion. You bring up one interesting point I had not considered before, and I don’t recall its being mentioned earlier in the threads here or in the other forum that we discussed this. Aragorn said that orcs recognized the barrow-blades of which they despoiled Merry and Pippin were “bound about with the bane of Mordor.” I don’t how far to take that: I don’t know whether it means that Aragorn did positively know and understand what the barrow-blades were, or that he merely read the runes and ciphers on the blades. (If you recall, Glorfindel told Aragorn there were “evil things” written on the hilt of the Morgul-knife.) You could push really hard on this and say that the orcs knew for what the knives of Merry and Pippin were intended; I don’t think it works, but I think you could try it. I don’t believe taking the position that the blades were “bound about with spells for the bane of Mordor” means that they had to be made only during those times in which Mordor itself was openly occupied by Sauron or his minions. First of all, we are specifically told that these knives were made by the Dúnedain of Arnor (both by Denethor and by Tolkien as narrator) for the wars against Angmar and the Witch-king (by Tolkien as narrator). You’ve already pointed out that Mordor was presumably empty then. I wouldn’t go as far as to call Aragorn’s words “poetic license,” but I think that “the bane of Mordor” is indistinguishable from the “the bane of Morgul” or “the bane of Angmar” or “the bane of Dol Guldur.” They are all fruit of the same vile tree. Angmar is no more, but a weapon intended for the Witch-king in Angmar seems to me just as potent as the same weapon used against the Witch-king in Mordor – or on the Pelennor Field. The geographic location of the intended target of a hand-held, close-combat weapon is unlikely to be of any import. Quote:
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10-05-2006, 05:27 AM | #215 |
I'm Eru, and lord of Arda.
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more knowledge!
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10-05-2006, 07:58 PM | #216 |
Sapling
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Dropping a large object would work -- crush the Ring Bearer, with the Ring unharmed amid the muck.
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10-06-2006, 01:48 AM | #217 |
I'm Eru, and lord of Arda.
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i like your sense of humour.
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10-03-2013, 03:43 PM | #218 |
Sapling
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L.O.L. means Laugh Out Loud.
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