P&CE Discussion of Tolkien, LOTR, Silmarillion, and Amazon’s Expensive Commercial Attempt at Fanfic

The Nazgul are back in action on the fell flying beasts a little over a month after the company leaves Rivendell if not sooner. They first see one (in fairness really only Legolas can see it clearly enough to shoot and wound it) right after leaving Lorien but there are hints as to their existence even a bit earlier.

I think the simplest answer regarding the Eagles is the same reason Glorfindel doesn't go on the quest---their presence would be very quickly sensed. They're too powerful of beings to go unnoticed. Plus, Sauron was probably put on alert as to their (possible) involvement after Gwaihir rescued Gandalf from Orthanc. Remember, Nazgul had gone to Isengard to question Saruman about his knowledge of the ring's whereabouts, so they would've found out he had Gandalf and lost him, even if he didn't confess that.

 

I do think it's pretty clever of Tolkien that---if you think about it---of all the people who have access to a Palantir, only one of them---Aragorn---uses it effectively as a sort of chess move. Saruman---gets him into more trouble than his hubris can handle. Pippin---freaks the ******** out. Denethor---drives him mad. Even Sauron---makes him jump the gun on his war plans because he thinks Aragorn's confrontation of him using it means Isildur's heir has the Ring.

Bottom line: nearly 75 years ago, Tolkien predicted that Zoom calls can often go awry.

 

do you think Denethor saruman and sauron could all be on the same palantir conference?

 

I think it's hard not to conclude that the Eagle squadron plan with Gandalf and Frodo is a way better idea than walking, unless Sauron has some mysterious air defence we don't know about

The main advantage of the scheme is that the eagles are faster than any other mode of communication/travel in Middle Earth. So even if spies see the eagles moving, they can't get word to Barad-dûr with a couple of exceptions, and even then, how would they know the scheme? Wouldn't they just think the ring is going to Gondor?

The palantir idea could provide warning i guess, depending on flight path (from the north heading southeast?). But Saruman would have to know the plan on limited intel, and word still has to come to Orthanc. And why would he tell Sauron?

I suppose the other kind of FTL comms in ME is between the Nazgul and Sauron, so perhaps if they were flying combat air patrol ??

Otherwise something that isn't well defined is what exactly saurons eye can detect. e.g. if Glorfindel and Elrond and Gandalf set out on eagles from Rivendell can he 'see' this? IMO no.

There is a bit of a death star exhaust port to all this in that the approach to Mt Doom is very well defended from the ground, but the location itself is not defended at all. Like if there was a company of infantry there, the whole plan fails from the outset.

 

That is a really good point about the Nagul, though i guess if he was alerted, why didn't he guard Mt Doom?

 

Something that was identified by the MERP designers way back in the 80s is there are a few things that work in the books that make no practical sense if you go to the trouble of gaming it out.

e.g Gandalf sneaks into the Necromancer's lair of Dol Guldur to see Thrain. It's some kind of fortress and orc hold, and Sauron is also there with (some?) Nazgul. How does he do this exactly?

 

He was alerted that the guy who definitely knew where the Shire was and who had the ring had escaped from Saruman. He didn't know anything about the plan to go to Mount Doom. At the point Gandalf escapes, that plan hasn't even been formulated.

 

It's not really clear from any of Tolkien's writing that you could characterize Dol Guldur as a fortress with a large orc garrison. In fact, based on what he did write, it seems Sauron kept his presence there as low key as possible so as to not alert anyone that it was him residing there. And there's nothing to indicate any Nazgul were there with him. Yes, he imprisoned Thrain there, but he's Sauron---it's not like he needed a garrison of orcs to capture and imprison an older Dwarf who wasn't exactly mentally stable even before capture.

So I don't know that it would've been extremely difficult for Gandalf to do reconnaissance. It seems your image of Dol Guldur is based on Jackson's horrible Hobbit movies.

And of course the other possibility is that Tolkien----like every other fiction writer ever----had drafts and ideas and threads of stories. Some were completely thought out and finished. Some weren't. He wouldn't have been unique in that regard.

 

Seems like you missed the entire mid 80s MERP era of fanfic!

Yeah I am sure he didn't think about it. Once people started developing campaigns and adventures within the Tolkien worlds some of these things became apparent. I don't think they are a problem at all - it's why the eagle thing doesn't bother me. Just like why there are no guards at Mt Doom.

Tolkien can't have been expected to game it all out.

 

Sure but why are there no guards at all at Mt Doom?

Honestly I think it is too easy to pick holes like the Eagles. The whole quest doesn't make much sense analytically - but fantasy quests never do.

 

The books explicitly say this.

 

I stopped playing D&D in sixth grade and even when I did play, I never did any Tolkien-based campaigns.

 

I was chatting with next gen D&D fan about how we'd buy these books back in the day, which were carried in only one book store, and we'd be wondering why it was taking so long for them to stock Companion rules set - but of course this was all a tiny cottage industry around Gygax and it hadn't even been published yet. Then came AD&D so we bought that, then ICE's Middle Earth Role Playing just blew our 13 year old minds

 

Interesting to google this (as kids in 1986 we had no idea about any of this). The production quality of MERP does stick in my mind - the pullout colour maps were amazing and once you collected enough modules, you basically had an entire floor scale map of middle earth

A few issues later, in the October 1984 edition of White Dwarf (Issue 58), Sutherland reviewed the main rules system of MERP and thought that it "mirrors the consistently high-quality one has come to expect from ICE." Sutherland concluded that it "is a well-conceived, reasonably well-written system. I can't say it's easy and ideal for beginners but I can honestly recommend that you try it. MERP gets my vote as best new RPG this year; in fact I've not been so impressed since I first read Call of Cthulhu."[6]

In a retrospective review of Middle-earth Role Playing in Black Gate, Scott Taylor said "MERP, as it is more affectionately called, became the second leading RPG sold in the 1980s, and although miss-management and rather daunting licensing dealings with the Tolkien estate finally resulted in the games dissolution and the company's bankruptcy, the body of work put out by I.C.E. in a little over a decade remains the Middle-Earth canon for all role-players who truly take the genre seriously."[13] Taylor also commented on the maps of the game in 2014, "There is, and unfortunately never will be again, an astoundingly beautiful game like MERP that has kept gamers coming back for over thirty years. Frankly, if you ever intend to play in Middle-Earth I suggest these books being your basis".[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_Role_Playing
​

Call of Cthulhu is what I am playing now