never have I seen the idea of a darker middle earth, that lost to sauron been discussed. I have always found the idea fascinating, having the last spark of hope rebellion/hope being fought from Rivendell to defeat a middle-earth controlled by sauron
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So, Midnight?
Midnight is exactly this, yes. OOP now though, I believe.
They released a version for 5e. No idea if it was good or not, but I dont remember much buzz on /tg about it.
The general reception was that it's pretty alright but undercooked, desperately needing more content/conversion from the 3e version. I wouldn't say it's worth buying at full price, but it's worth a peak as a DL or if you get it for 15-25 bucks at a con or something.
didn't know that setting, but it seems really neat, the 2d edition (3.5 based) is very good apparently and a straight up upgrade from the 1st, the 5e version is said to be almost a copy past of the previous lore with basically not a lot of unique addition. I'll probably just buy a pdf of the second book as I don't have my Vault torrent anymore
This is like a mashup of the siege of angband, the last alliance and a typical (boring) D&D setting. Everything is like a less-interesting version of its Middle Earth counterpart.
>grimdark lotr setting
Have you seen the mtg lotr set?
>Have you seen the mtg lotr set?
Wow. Looks like Arwen is getting the old Pringles can.
WELL WELL WELL
SHEE-it
Fun fact, did you know started an unfinished sequel to Lord of the Rings, that he stopped because it was too "grimdark", as you say?
I only read it once but the story happened in Gondor where an evil cult dedicated to Morgoth and Sauron was assassinating people, etc. Quite an interesting story, both as written and as explained.
>that he stopped because it was too "grimdark"
No, he stopped because he realised he had nothing else to tell and decided to stop
It's not even an unfinished story, it's a few lines about a story that he could have written, but the basic jist is that men turn to evil practices and spoil their own peace. There are a variety of reasons why he chose to keep working in the 1st and 2nd age, and not outline the details of the 4th age, but "too grimdark" is certainly a fair characterization of one of those reasons. The point where the elves are gone and the magic is dying and men are being evil of their own accord is the point where (from Tolkien's point of view) the charm goes out of it. It makes sense for the story to go there, it's consistent with everything he wrote before, but that doesn't make it fun to work on.
You worded it better than me, but yeah - my point was that if it was too dark for Tolkien himself to continue, as in not fun for him, it might have been a good starting point for OP who wanted something of that nature.
What you want is Midnight.
LotR is already grimdark you mong.
>never have I see
Really? They used to talk about this in the tolkien threads. It's worth noting that this basically happened in the 1st age (Morgoth conquered the whole continent before the war of wrath), and also that anything east of Mordor is dark as frick in any timeline. Also the sacking and looting of Mordor would be a very typical dungeon delve, and would be dark as frick, there's scary stuff in Mordor even after the ring is destroyed.
The appeal of the bad end is that it's an alternate timeline, you get to see alternate (bad end) versions of all the things that you're familiar with from the basic LoTR story. New badguys can rise, and it might still be the same basic goal of "get the ring and hide/destroy it", but the circumstances are all different and it makes the game feel like it isn't on rails.
Darth Gandalf is especially cool. IIRC, Tolkien implied that he might have actually mastered the ring and turned it against Sauron (which is what Sarumon THOUGHT he was going to do, but Tolkien's comments on the matter aren't encouraging. Through the Palantir, Saruman has already been engaging in contests of will with Sauron, and he's been losing). Gandalf becomes a very different character if he loses his aspect of humbleness, but that makes me think about how humbleness could be perverted to evil. I could see some cabal of tyrants ruling in Gandalf's name, while Gandalf-and The Ring wander Middle Earth in the disguise of an old beggar, "trying to understand the hearts of men". He'd be terrifying, and people would be terrified.
You mean Midnight?
That's called Morgoth and the Silmarillion
>he doesn't know
It's not grimdark, it's just revisionism.
Feels like a no-brainer. Just set the entire story in the parts of Middle Earth under Sauron's dominion.
Couldn't you run it as a fantastically-themed Star Wars? The shadow (Empire) has won, and is tightening its grip across the land. A ragtag fellowship of rebels stand against the tyrrany and yadda yadda yadda. Would Sauron here have returned to physical form after reclaiming the Ring, or would he still be a shade?
Somehow, Sauron has returned.
It would be pretty funny if he came back but was stuck looking like Deadpool or Palpatine.
i mean, he's not dead at the end of LotR. He's just lost so much power he can't be a direct threat anymore
I wonder where did that power went. Melkor got send to some void beyond spacetime, but a lot of his spirit is infused into the land itself.
The ring is melted, so does that mean Sauron is the mountain or core of the earth? It's a bit inconsistent.
Good gods are described as being able to put physical forms on like clothes, then take them on like clothes, in the same way that a person can take their clothes off and suffer no diminishment of their self. It makes it explicit that the material elements of their forms are a secondary thing and are totally replaceable. But Sauron and Morgoth were different from the others in the way that they permanently spent their power in pursuit of dominance, and this goes back to the essay on "art"-vs-"the machine", it's part of the nature of the world that pursuing your own best-possible-self causes you to naturally become mighty and stay mighty, while pursuing dominance over the world around you causes you to spend yourself, getting more dramatic gains in the short term but diminishing yourself in the long term. Melkor started as the greatest of the gods and then diminished himself to the point where he got beat up by an elf. And it seems like Sauron's ring lore is a double-down on that concept, like if this were gurps then Sauron re-specced all his character creation points into being (ring dependent) character creation points, and this gave him big gains in the short term but if the ring is lost then he's gone.
There's a line about how Morgoth's machinations caused him to become bound to his body over time, does anyone else remember where that is? Because it was the same with Sauron, that's why Sauron kept having to worry about his beautiful body being destroyed (though some of that may also be tied to the lingering curse of Luthien, it's all rather unclear, but with general themes that seem clear).
He is functionally the same thing as dead. He is at the same level as a ordinary ghost that cannot affect the physical world at all.
But also at the end of the third age there is still two failed Blue wizards, and Radagast in Middle Earth, so that is three maiar still around. Saruman did not spend his power like Sauron and weaken himself so that is also a belligerent maiar somewhere in middle Earth that could come back at some point in the future. The Balrog is another issue, it will never be capable of constructing a body like a Balrog again but an evil maiar of Morgoth hanging in Middle Earth is still an issue that cannot be handled by most people.
He put far too much of himself into the ring, when it was destroyed that amount of Sauron's spirit scattered to the winds and not back to him. Plus it is likely he did the same when creating other servants in the same way Morgoth did. He empowered the witchking before the battle of Gondor. He likely did more of that to create fell beasts and other things like Olog Hai.
Saruman died as a human, killed by a mistreated slave, Tolkien directly contrasted this with Gandalf who stayed true to his purpose and then died and then came back and then went willingly back to Valinor. This is the forking path of the istari, and yea, we don't exactly know what happened to the other wizards or what remains of Saruman.
Saruman and Gollum seem to be the only characters with visible insanity on them.
Gollum is obvious, but Saruman's gradual slide into complete depravity was something disturbing.
Does not matter when he is still a maiar and more powerful than most beings found in Middle Earth.
Saruman was an istari, that's an entirely different form of being than a maia moron.
Istari were the order of Wizards, all of whom were Maia.
Powerful beings don't get killed by npcs. Saruman's power dispersed with his lack of commitment.
Think of it as a light beam, the more coherent and focused your existance, the more powerful you get, just like Gandalf went from grey to white, and so Saruman dispersed from white to a multitude of weak individual colours until he was dressed in rags and powerless.
This is not a MMO with level based restrictions or an anime where powerlevels are required to defeat enemies. Take your powerlevel homosexualry elsewhere.
Think of it as shut the frick up moron Saruman was for all intents and purposes a human being with a really powerful spirit living inside it. Since i have read the books and you have clearly never read a wiki before.
>Since i have read the books
>posts this bullshit
LMAO, k moron.
>Think of it as a light beam, the more coherent and focused your existance, the more powerful you get, just like Gandalf went from grey to white, and so Saruman dispersed from white to a multitude of weak individual colours until he was dressed in rags and powerless.
Nothing you said corresponds to how power works in the context of Middle Earth. There is no dispersing based on how one is killed. There is placing one's self into objects to make it more powerful and based on Tolkien magic being largely diminishing returns, they do not get any of that back or rebuild up their energies once it's done. And it is certainly not related to intent or emotion at all here. Melkor imbued the world with his spirit, corrupting just about the entire planet. He imbued his minions and made them way more powerful, he also did it to raise mountains or drown nations. All these things eventually drained him and lowered his overall level.
Gandalf became the white because he was allowed to use some more of his inherent power than before, his restriction was lifted somewhat so that he would have an easier time in his mission. And it was clear he was not going to use his power to get to work dominating anyone in ME.
Also you really need to keep in mind, this was many decades before the core concept of someone being more powerful than someone else not being able to be defeated by them RPG rules was a thing. Anyone physical being would be killed by a dagger poking their organs, it does not matter how much internal power they had. But a more powerful being like a maia or vala could rebuild that kidney or just make a new body later, like Sauron typically did. Remember he was killed by a dog once, a fricking dog. Not a godly dog, or super magical dog, but a dog.
>A whole book of moron
except no you're wrong and I don't need to waste time telling you why. This is just stupid and anyone else is stupid for attempting to read it.
It's kind of sad you need to samegay to pretend anyone else had the same fanfiction grasp of things as you.
I'm gonna need you to actually back up this claim. where does it state Saruman lost his inherent abilities because he abandoned his purpose?
>y-you are samegay you!
Pathetic.
I don't recall exactly where, but there aren't many scenes with Saruman anyway. It's either when he captures Gandalf, or later when the latter talks with him post-ents. The implication is clear.
I don't know what you're talking about. Gandalf explicitly speaks that Saruman has lost his mind, purpose and as a result lost his power and position.
Meanwhile Saruman had not infused himself into anything.
He just got weak and at the end of it, he only got his innate voice left and even that not so much.
Read the damn books.
Let's take a look at letter 156
>There are naturally no precise modern terms to say what he was. I wd. venture to say that he was an incarnate 'angel'– strictly an ἄγγελος: that is, with the other Istari, wizards, 'those who know', an emissary from the Lords of the West, sent to Middle-earth, as the great crisis of Sauron loomed on the horizon. By 'incarnate' I mean they were embodied in physical bodies capable of pain, and weariness, and of afflicting the spirit with physical fear, and of being 'killed', though supported by the angelic spirit they might endure long, and only show slowly the wearing of care and labour.
They were weak old men because they were specifically limited in what powers they could use, and had every limitation of being a weak old man. And one of those is death by dagger.
Also it takes centuries for a maiar to recreate a physical body after being killed. Sauron's first death it was not recorded when he became physical again, but his second took about 300 years to come back from, and his next took almost 1800. Plus there is another letter that covers how it is an incredibly mentally damaging thing to go through the pain of death for a maiar. Even if their spirit is fine, they go through all the pain and anguish of physical death and that mentally damages them for a long while after. Saruman not being nearly as diminished as TA Sauron, could potentially come back a few centuries into the fourth age. but no more books were ever written. But it is a possibility.
>A whole book of bullshit
aint no one gonna rad that chief, and you are still wrong because you never read shit and don't know what you are talking about
This is fricking sad, just frick off already. you lost the argument, nothing you said was right, you do nothing but spew fanfiction inhere and I seriously doubt that is an actual quote from anything. Show me print or frick off.
I suppose I can partially agree with this.
However, Saruman is still isn't equal to even Gandalf, much less any other much more powerful Maiar such as Sauron, whom Gandalf actually was afraid of.
And secondly, if you want to be so pedantic, there is direct description of his face from the letter on the Wiki.
>Whereas Curunir was cast down, and utterly humbled, and perished at last by the hand of an oppressed slave; and his spirit went whither-soever it was doomed to go, and to Middle-earth, whether naked or embodied, came never back.
Saruman was banned from the afterlife and so went away completely. So I'm not sure it was even possible for him to reform after being diminished similar to Sauron.
There is no afterlife for Maia/Vala they just go to the physical continent of Aman and hang out with the rest of the Ainur and Calaquendi. The closest equivalent to an afterlife place is also the very physical halls of Mandos on the western shore of Aman. Everyone else who does not go west just sort of hangs around on Middle Earth and becomes a troublesome spirit.
Anon, the Western continent of the undying Lands is not even on Earth at all. It's a location in the sky off the world, that makes up a heaven-like existence. And it is only inhabited by Gods and spirits, that makes it heaven by just about every single definition.
Do you ever get tired of always being wrong?
>Talls of Mandos
That's what I was talking about. Saruman was apparently banned from coming there.
And unlike Gandalf, who died, went to heaven, was given a powerup and sent back.
There's also some sort of the void where Melkor is imprisoned away from everything.
Saruman's spirit wasn't allowed to return and hasn't returned to Middle Earth either. So for all intents, he just took to space.
.....where in all frick did you even get this shit? Did we even read the same book?
Melkor is from another book. Saruman's fate is from Toklien's letter, did you even read the thread?
The books homosexual, maybe you should try reading them sometimes.
Okay where to begin unpacking this one.
>No anon, Saruman would not be going to the halls of waiting as he is not the same type of being that would even go there or need to go there. Physical death for an Ainur means his shirt got ripped and he had to throw it away. He himself and all that is his being is perfectly fine. He's not dead in any classic sense because he is an Ëalar (spirits who did not require a body in order to be complete) not an Mirröanwi (races were those beings whose natural state is to exist as a union of fëa and hröa)
>If he ever did go there, that itself would BE the punishment since it is also a prison for Ainur who require imprisonment, Melkor was kept there in chains for three ages.
>Melkor is tossed out the halls of night and outside the confines of Arda
We read that he was then thrust out into the Void.(10) That should mean that he was put outside Time and Space, outside Ea altogether; but if that were so this would imply a direct intervention of Eru (with or without supplication of the Valar). It may however refer inaccurately to the extrusion or flight of his spirit from Arda.
>Saruman is on Middle Earth as a naked spirit like Sauron
Whereas Curunir was cast down, and utterly humbled, and perished at last by the hand of an oppressed slave; and his spirit went whither-soever it was doomed to go, and to Middle-earth, whether naked or embodied, came never back
>He cannot leave the world as no ainur has the power to leave the world, they are there until the final day like the elves
Your opinions here are really tainted by the movies and filling in holes with your own ideas. Just about every single one of the questions raised have been answered in the letters and Heroes of Middle Earth.
>He cannot leave the world as no ainur has the power to leave the world, they are there until the final day like the elves
>Whereas Curunir was cast down, and utterly humbled, and perished at last by the hand of an oppressed slave; and his spirit went whither-soever it was doomed to go, and to Middle-earth, whether naked or embodied, came never back
So he remained as a spirit, and left Middle Earth for good.
He doesn't return to the rest of the spirits, he cannot leave the world, so where is he?
Movies get absolutely no indication of the outside setting, moron.
You should stop trying to project your own insecurities, it's really bad taste.
>Just about every single one of the questions raised have been answered in the letters and Heroes of Middle Earth.
If so, you could have easily stated as such in the first place and answer directly.
What really happens is that you have no idea of the exact answer either, but keep b***hing because other opinions do not align with your headcanon.
>Makes shit up
>Calls direct quotes from HoME "headcanon"
So you are either incredibly stupid or trolling at this point
What quotes, you colossal homosexual? Stop your passive-agressive whining and speak clearly or frick off.
Are you talking about the made up words, the homosexual that kept changing the names, or the same homosexual that spewed his fanfiction for a few paragraphs and then raged that no one was impressed by it?
Why do you think spitting out some fricked up word soup is supposed to make you look smart or convince anyone that you know a single fricking thing? First of all making up words to pretend you are using some super dooper insider deep lore terminology is really fricking stupid.
Second, you cannot even keep your own story straight here. You mistakenly said Melkor when referring to Morgoth twice. You already have no idea what the frick you are talking about. you also used an example involving someone else to try to refer to Saruman, that was also meaningless and not the same thing, there IS no Curunir in Lord of the Rings trilogy so any story involving him is equally trash.
Lastly, the Halls of Mandoss is an afterlife in another dimension that cannot be access by humans, it IS an afterlife and where all beings go after death.
>Saruman did not spend his power like Sauron and weaken himself so that is also a belligerent maiar somewhere in middle Earth that could come back at some point in the future
No. After his body died, his spirit was dispersed by the powers of the West. That’s in The Return of the King, the novel, not the movie. He’s fully dead, Jim.
I could get behind this, actually.
What are we talking about here? A Star Wars rpg reflavored as a Middle Earth rpg?
I can't see it really happening in the same way as Star Wars. If a powerful lord takes up ruling Middle Earth, a plucky human cannot really train up in power to match them like Luke learning to be just as powerful as Vader or the Emperor. No Man is going to be able to match the might of an evil Maia, hardly any elves in the third or fourth age either. Even then they can barely pull off victories since Maia get over being killed after a while and can come right back and set their empire back up again. It's not a problem Men of the world can solve on their own. Someone from Valinor is going to have to sail East and go be the hero they need.
On the other hand, Mannish sorcerers are kind of shit. They are not undefeatable engines of death Sith. They are absolutely a problem Men can solve on their own.
That's sort of the problem with the downfall scenario. If Gandalf falls and claims the ring, and becomes the new Dark Lord. Middle Earth is just outright fricked. Gondor will fall and there is no one left to be capable of contending with the new dark lord unless the west wants to finally send another army over and make a new War of Wrath all over again.
And then maybe they might learn the less to quit fricking sending over naive powerful beings that do not fully understand evil into the VERY corrupted lands to eventually be corrupted and turn evil themselves and become an out of context problem for mortal species.
So, relatedly, I ran a campaign that was basically a mishmash of Lucas and Tolkein. Essentially, "Sauron's" defeat corrupted magic itself, eventually poisoning the minds and spirits of those that practice it. Corrupted magic also infects the natural world, creating the twisted locales and monstrous creatures that plague the setting. The players themselves all met because they were imprisoned and due to be executed for witchcraft (or "Sorcery," as in "May the Source be with you") by agents of the dominant religion, which had been responsible for defeating the Dark Lord all those years ago in the first place.
It's not far off from what is in the text though. For the most part, a lot of Sauron's sorcery is manipulating the Morgoth element found in all of the world and using that corruptible matter to make supernatural things happen.
>Thus, outside the Blessed Realm, all 'matter' was likely to have a 'Melkor ingredient',(3) and those who had bodies, nourished by the hroa of Arda, had as it were a tendency, small or great, towards Melkor: they were none of them wholly free of him in their incarnate form, and their bodies had an effect upon their spirits.
>Morgoth's power was disseminated throughout Gold, if nowhere absolute (for he did not create Gold) it was nowhere absent. (It was this Morgoth-element in matter, indeed, which was a prerequisite for such 'magic' and other evils as Sauron practised with it and upon it.
I tend to think first age and half of the pre-Sun ages before it were pretty fricking grimdark to begin with.
The universal concept of evil rules the entire planet (that had no sun or daytime at all) and the rest of the gods and spirits of the world ran away and hid from him. While he got to kidnap people and animals, turning them into orcs, trolls, dragons, werewolves, and vampires in huge underground breeding pits.
Arda was fricking metal before hobbits showed up.
Pretty much, everything written about Beleriand and how it looked by the end, the land being so thoroughly corrupted by evil that the Valar raised the sea to drown the entire country feels like you could make it pretty fricking grimdark without even stepping outside of what's already described. Just change the tone and framing a little from high fantasy epic.
Isn't this basically what would happen if Gandalf decided to claim the ring from Frodo when he returned to the shire? Or if Saruman was successful at getting it?
Also if Saruman just killed Gandalf when he captured him this would be the outcome. It's just a tossup who would be that new dark lord.
>The ring stays in Imladris since there is no Gandalf to lead a fellowship. Saruman sends his armies there to siege it and take the ring
>Boromir claims the ring, Sauron attacks Gondor and retakes it
>Rivendel is corrupted by it and Elrond claims the ring, Glorfindel claims the ring
Fellowship tries any damn way then you get
>They die in Moria, the Balrog claims the ring, a Great goblin takes the ring, Agents of Saruman take the ring
>Saruman's forces kill them on the road and Saruman takes the ring
If they do nothing at all and are successful in hiding the ring and no one gets it you still have
>Sauron successfully conquers Gondor, Saruman annihilates Rohan, they both burn down Mirkwood, then turn their sights on Lorien, eventually that falls too but it's the hardest nut to crack
>Saruman is eventually successful in recreating a great ring, he is now equal to or greater than Sauron. Middle Earth is now a hellscape of two warring Dark Lords burning everything down in a huge rivalry, eventually Saruman wins.
Either way, what you get is a very metal Middle Earth since there are no more good aligned forces left in the west and everything is corrupted back to the first age days of a Dark Lord ruling uncontested over Middle Earth while the Valar sit around for a few thousand years commenting on how it sucks over there while continuing to do nothing useful. The mortal world is a hellscape of orcs, evil men, dred spirits, wights, and fell creatures corrupting everything, and death is no escape from it either.
I don't think Saruman would have gotten away with just killing Gandalf, I think he would have had to deal with an early Gandalf the White, and I think some part of him knew that. Saruman's wincondition is to demoralize Gandalf and defeat him mentally, because Gandalf outranks Saruman and doesn't know it yet.
I think the quickest road to Dark Gandalf is the one where he has to take the ring, in order to protect it, because no one else will. Over time he would come to be mastered by the ring, and possibly even come to master it, but it would all unfold under the pretense of 'protecting the ring'. Meanwhile Saruman could finish his bootleg-ring and you could end up with three dark lords.
Continuing, it seems like Sarumon would have to flee Orthanc in order to finish his work, I don't think that Orthanc would be impervious to Sauron's forces and there's no telling what resources he may need. But the surviving forces of good would rally to Gandalf no matter how creepy he got. So for a while it would be a fading light vs a growing darkness,and Sarumon would simply go missing for a while, but when he came back the ringwraiths would obey him.
So then its
Sarumon with a fake ring hijacking Sauron's metaphysical machinery (and possibly his ringwraiths)
Gandalf with the real ring but he doesn't want to use it
Sauron seething, still in the best position, but afraid to commit to any decisive move and obsessed with fortifying Mordor. He may or may not fully understand that Gandalf and Sarumon hate each other.
Saruman is free to do whatever he wanted since there was barely any army left to contest him. And the ones that did exist were behind some strong barriers.
Sauron would have to march past Gondor, through Rohan, between Mirkwood and Lorien and over the Misty Mountains to get to Orthanc. So his challenging Saruman would have to come after successfully stomping Gondor and both woodland realms. This gives Saruman at least a century or two of preparation before any war is going to be on his front step.
Gondor is already at war in the south, still reeling from a plague a generation earlier, and in kind of a standoff with growing Mordor. They cannot commit anything north to Orthanc.
Rohan is already subdued for this reason, if there is a next step it's to shove Rohan into a war southward towards Mordor or to form up a bulwark against a Mordor traveling west.
Lorien and Mirkwood are going to have a lot of trouble traveling over the misty mountains to do a damn thing about Sauron and are also being harrassed by Mordor at this time, they cannot commit anything west.
Which just leaves Rivendell, which is in a state of steady decline and not in shape to handle the armies Saruman has right now. And this was the principle reason Saruman fortified Orthanc in the first place, to prevent Rivendell from interfering. also his capture of Gandalf was to ensure Rivendel never hears about his plans or buildup until it was time to march south.
>Saruman is free to do whatever he wanted since there was barely any army left to contest him.
In a timeline where the ring is never found, sure, maybe. But once the ring is found then he's on the clock, Mordor is going to war against elves and men, and the winner is probably going to take orthanc as soon as they can. Rallying orcs and men against Rohan was a move of desperation, as was his attempt to convert Gandalf to his cause, Saruman would have been in a much better position if he'd had a little more time.
>This gives Saruman at least a century or two of preparation before any war is going to be on his front step.
No, this is silly. Sauron is likely to crush Gondor and march North (this is what Saruman expected). Gandalf getting the ring could perhaps have given pause to Mordor, somehow, but that again would lead to orthanc under siege (as we saw in the books), and I don't think Saruman would have been able to finish his bootleg ring with just him and Grimma in an indestructible tower.
I can see a scenario where Gandalf and Sauron are locked in a kind of stalemate, and Gondor stands but the Rohirrim get decimated, and in that situation Saruman might control the area around Orthanc with impunity for several years. Sauron would see Saruman as an ally fortified amid his enemies, and would dearly wish to leverage him against those enemies somehow, but we're assuming for the sake of conversation that Saruman was not entirely browbeaten.
Well, there's Boromir, and later Frodo, basically having the same problem Gollum did.
Denethor is spooky because he breaks instead of bending, he was never corrupted, he stayed true to his purpose until he had nothing left to give. He used a palantir because he wanted greater knowledge and mastery, just like Saruman, but Sauron was unable to corrupt or subvert Denethor's will as he had Saruman's, the best he could do was to drain Denethor's hope and drive him to despair.
There is no way Saruman could have come to the conclusion that Eru would rebody a dead Gandalf. And Saruman only ever underestimated Ganfald and had to o much trouble trying to figure out what his actual goal was since he could not really see a wandering pilgrim managing to acquire a lot of friends in high places.
Gandalf was viewed as a traveling nuisance by both Saruman and Sauron whichis why no one ever put a lot of effort into killing him. And Saruman did not kill him when he had the chance because he fell into Bond villain territory of wanting his enemy to see his triumph.
>There is no way Saruman could have come to the conclusion that Eru would rebody a dead Gandalf.
No, but he might have been afraid of killing another istari, or he might have just 'had a feeling' that it was a bad idea. Saruman was always afraid of Gandalf and jealous of Gandalf. Tolkien's characters usually have a well-rendered inner psychology, and do things for reasons, even when the reasons are somewhat vague or metaphysical.
Sauron would have given a lot to kill any of the istari, but he also had a lot of powerful enemies and he wasn't going to win the war by fighting them one at a time
Kind of a stupid question, but has Tolkien ever elaborated more on what lives in the sea and water?
I remember barest scraps of things about dark creatures under the sea potentially in league with Sauron and the dark octopus in the lake, but beyond that?
frick sauron, I want a setting where Gandalf takes the ring, claims it, and defeats Sauron using it. Tolkien himself said this would have been possible; that Gandalf could defeat Sauron himself using the power of the Ring. Of course the end result is Gandalf falls to its power, but for Sauron it would be the same as if it were destroyed.
So now you have super-powerful Sorcerer King Gandalf being continually driven to do more and more evil things by the influence of the Ring. Tolkien said he believed this would be a worse outcome than Sauron outright winning, because Sauron would leave good and evil as clearly delineable concepts, whereas Dark Lord Gandalf would "make good detestable and seem evil."
If you want grimdark LOTR, have Gandalf as Ringlord.
Oh god dammit you're back again to spread even more bullshit? Look, you OBVIOUSLY never read a book in your life, and I'm really questioning if you even watched the movies at all too. Enough with the fricking fanfiction already, none of the story is going to line up with your own specially made headcanon, so frick off already.
If they were maiar they would have been called maiar, they are istari a totally different form of being that shares the same afterlife as men. Read a goddamn book moviegay.
lol
like I said, I think it's possible that Saruman went of to wherever it is that human souls go, but most people would just assume that he persists in valinor as a broken maia or as a maia in maia-jail. Either way he's gone from Middle Earth, Tolkien was specific about that part.
There's no reason to think that Gandalf or any of the other istari went to the human afterlife, unless you think that the blue wizards became just as depraved as Saruman.
>Read a goddamn book moviegay.
Are you attempting some kind of moronic trolling? How can you even suggest to that anon he should read a book while you clearly never have?
It's strongly implied saruman was banned from Valinor. When he died his spirit was blown away with a strong gust of a western wind, eastward. This means far from the Valinor
>For a moment it [Saruman’s spirit] wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a cold sigh dissolved into nothing.
Saruman’s spirit is completely gone. He has ceased to be. Bruv ain’t coming back.
Yeah im not sure if you can say he was totally erased based from that. It's like Sauron - he doesnt have any form anymore, he can never raise and gain strength. He is invisible and impotent. I'd rather say something like this. Saruman is a powerless spirit without any form now, similar to a wraith in the darkness.
Morgoth for much, much worse deeds was simply tossed out from the world, not erased by Eru. I doubt valars would have the power to annihilate Cúrunir. And even if they did, they wouldnt without Erus permission.
Istari are pseudo-Men. Gandalf died and left the circles of the world. Saruman died and left the circles of the world. They are not Maiar.
Because I read the books and know what happened. You clearly watched the movies and know frickall
What the actual frick xD you mother is a pseudo man
Gandalf is Olorin, a maiar servant of the Valar Irmo also named Lorien
Saruman is Cúrunir, also a maiar, a servant of Aule
You uneducated frick, stop pissing me off. How can you be ao low iq stupid and bad at lying? You didnt even read Hobbit
What the frick are you talking about? I'm not that anon you are thinking of. But also thats not my headcannon. There's literally not a single mention of anybody being annihilated and Sarumans spirit isn't eituer
We already have the text posted in THIS THREAD that describes Saruman's spirit being annihilated by a wind. He's gone, he aint coming back, you are fanfictioning.
Neither Saruman nor Sauron can ever return or wield any kind of power ever again. They are disembodied, impotent spirits unable to affect the physical world any longer and unable to re-embody themselves. They'll roam the world until it ends and is remade, but they're nothing more than ghosts now.
Impotence is a fate worse than death.
Umm...do you just not have any idea that you are typing down your own invented narrative with your own invented names of characters anon? None of these things are in the books. None of these names are mentioned in the books. I read all of them multiple times, ranging back to high school and nothing you said here is in them. You are posting things you made up and pretending they are real. Quit that shit already.
Holy frick have you morons actually never heard of shit like the Silmarillion, or are you taking the piss?
All I'm seeing is you can't back up any of your words with print. Or else you would have done it by now.
Trolling is a art.
And I'm just suuuuuure you can back this up with print too can't you? From an actual book written by Tolkien, not something you dribbled down in middle school after watching Peter Jackson movies.
Lo
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Yes ! Exactly my point, good sir
Oh you! [Spoiler]i really wish there were ids on this board/spoiler]
You really need to stop. Do you even see that all you are doing is filling in gaps of information with your own headcanon and then coming in here to try and force your own invented headcanon on everyone else? Everyone is arguing with you because you are wrong. You have been wrong for the last 20 hours. And everyone has told you how wrong you are the entire time. It's not working, no one is being convinced of anything, actually try reading the books and see what happens for yourself instead of imagining scenarios to fit your own special philosophy.
>If they were maiar they would have been called maiar, they are istari a totally different form of being that shares the same afterlife as men. Read a goddamn book moviegay.
They are incarnate maiar without access to the majority of their power and with only faded memories of Valinor. You're the one who needs to read some fricking books.
Could something drive Sauron renounce his madness and make amends?
Can the defiled be sanctified? Can the fallen find rest?
>never have I seen the idea of a darker middle earth, that lost to sauron been discussed.
Because it would be a bit tedious. We've seen what a world ruled by Sairon looks like; it's called Mordor.
Personally I love reading Frodo and Sam's time there; book Orcs aren't psychotic, they're just soldiers serving themselves and surviving as best they can given that their bosses are evil ghosts. It's definitely a bit one-note and banal, though. Tolkien's idea of evil isn't cool, it's deliberately dull, tedious and needlessly painful.
>Because it would be a bit tedious. We've seen what a world ruled by Sairon looks like; it's called Mordor.
You could also set a Robert E Howard style Swords and Sandals game in Harad or Rhun in the Third Age and you wouldn't even need an alternative history.