Laundry list of LOTR questions

Why did no one know Moria had been sacked? The dead bodies look like they've been there for 30 years and skeltonized.

- Moria had been under the control of orcs and goblins for a long time. Balin had taken a contingent of dwarves to take it back. It wasn't like people came and went there like it was the Mall.



Why were goblins still occupying the caves if a fricking Balrog was roaming the hallways.

- They were in the service of the Balrog, an alliance even.

How did Gollum get across the bridge a Khazad Dume when it was broken by Gandalf?

- There's more than one way through the deeps of Middle Earth for a creature like Gollum.

Why werent the Urak-hai created before and why the hell are they growing in some earth pod.

- Saruman, their creator, was originally good. But in using the Palantir he saw the might of Sauron and was corrupted to believe that there was no hope for the good people of Middle Earth. He despaired and then decided to make a deal with Sauron.

Why did Sauromon turn so quickly? Did he honestly think he could co-exist or defeat Sauron?

-See above

How did the Witch King beat Gandalf so easily? He's not even an angelic being like Sarumon, Sauron, the Balrogs and others, yet broke his staff. And speaking of the staff, why the wizards sometimes seem powerless without them and then sometimes don't seem to need them at all.

- In the novels he didn't.

And lastsly, what the hell did the one ring actually do besides cloud men's minds? Is that it? And why did Sauron wear it? Did it make him physically any stronger? He is the same being as the wizards, but he was seemingly far more powerful? Is that all because of the ring?

- Imagine the power of an evil god, like Satan let's say. Now imagine all that power infused in to a ring that is almost sentient in its own right. The full power of the ring was never really shown, but if Melkor was the baddest of the adasses, and Sauron was his right hand man, then you can imagine how powerful the ring was.

I’ll give you my take based from years of reading and researching Tolkien’s works. A lot of information has been changed and edited over the years, especially from Chris Tolkien.

1. No one heard from Balin and his party after they attempted to reclaim it after the events of the Hobbit. Gimli made a bad assumption that they were alive and well with a reclaim to Khazad-Dum.

2. Goblins/Orcs were servants to the Durin’s Bane, The Balrog, but obviously scared to death of it when it was pissed off.

3. Gollum had lived and survived in mountains for 500 years.....he learned a few things about scaling rock.

4. The Uruk-Hai were created by Sauramon using his own recipe (black magic).

5. Sauramon was actually looking for the ring himself in the books, and planned to overthrow Sauron.

6. The Witch King of Agmar was a wraith, neither living or dead. I don’t think it necessarily had more power than the Maiar, but they were feared by all because they had the will and control of Sauron.

7. Sauron created the rings to bind control over all races and dominate Middle Earth with no opposition. He wanted the leaders of Elves and Dwarves to fall into wraiths like the men. Sauron learned to put all of his own power in the one ring which would keep him alive as long as the ring survived. Pretty much what kept him around terrorizing Middle Earth for almost 4,000 years.

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6. The Witch King of Agmar was a wraith, neither living or dead. I don’t think it necessarily had more power than the Maiar, but they were feared by all because they had the will and control of Sauron.

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I do think their rings and their connection to the One implicitly empowered them.

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I thought Sauron was always a servant of Melkor, no?

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He was his 1st Lieutenant. Yes.

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I thought Sauron was always a servant of Melkor, no?

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Yes, but he served Aulë first. Here’s the difference between Sauron and Morgoth. Morgoth wanted chaos while Sauron more admired the structure Aulë provided. Even at the beginning of the Second Age, Sauron had some admirable goals to provide structure and order to Middle Earth before losing his mind to evil for good. Sauron saw Aulë as too weak to provide the structure to the Earth, so he betrayed Aulë to join Melkor (Morgoth) since Sauron also admired power and a grand vision.

And Morgoth had dragons that was a big plus

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Hard to see how the Elves defeated multiple dragons and Balrogs, and trolls. They must have been some bad arse Elves back in the day.

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Elves of the first age were bad arse warriors, and very determined to defeat Morgoth and reclaim the Silmarils. Fingfolin actually wounded Morgoth and The Sons of Feanor went toe to toe with him and all his evil creations before finally being defeated by their own greed and atrocities. Hell, Glorfindel fought and killed a Balrog, died in the process and was later resurrected.

They were bad to the bone.

I just finished reading the Hobbit to my 8 year old and am about 200 pages into the first LOTR book with him. I may have to come back to this to explain a few things.

Also watched the Hobbit movies with him and eventually LOTR movies when we're done, but I had no idea how different they were than the books.

Is the Silmarillion worth reading to an 8(9 in April) year old or will it be too over his head?

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Is the Silmarillion worth reading to an 8(9 in April) year old or will it be too over his head?

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Way too heavy in my opinion. It is written as more of a history book than a story.

If you think there are a lot of characters to keep up with and ancient lore to remember in The Hobbit and LOTR, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The Silmarillion reads like the Old Testament crossed with Beowulf.

Hell, as an adult it took be three tries to finally get through it, and I still don't feel confident discussing it in detail.