PugJesusMOTIVATION MATTERS
https://piefed.social/c/lotrmemes/p/1942590/motivation-matters
makeshiftreaperIt’s almost like 500 years of direct experience with the ring makes him slightly more qualified to track it than its fan club
That’s what’s wild though. Didn’t they each also possess the ring in their lives?
Sure he’s god some millennia of Ring time over them and whatever qualities of character even permitted that. But also Sauron gave them fell beasts and they can smell the Ring
They had rings of power, but never the ring
ohhh. is there a hard description of what the other rings actually do to a mortal? I know big ring just does whatever is required to satisfy your ambitions but can we power-scale it with the others to understand what exactly happened to Shmeagle?
Rings of Power
The Rings of Power were twenty magical rings forged at about the middle of the Second Age, seventeen of which were intended by Sauron to seduce the rulers of Middle-earth to evil. Disguised as the benevolent entity Annatar, Sauron taught the Elf-smiths of Eregion, led by Celebrimbor, how to craft these rings. Nineteen were made: three rings for the Elves, seven rings for the Dwarves, and nine rings for Men. An additional ring, the One Ring, was forged by Sauron himself at Mount Doom. Sauron...
Right. Wikis to save the day.
But this kind of sounds like the Nine are pretty similar to the One ring, with the exception of dying. Both fulfill your ambitions, both make you serve Sauron. But maybe not dying is what made Golem the master-tracker. Or maybe ring-lust is a quantifiable characteristic that the living possess far more of
I’d say most of the magic in Tolkien’s works is pretty hand-wavy and vibe-based, rather than explicit. I really enjoy the mystique it creates.
For sure. Maybe I’m robbing the mystique by wanting to understand the rules. Part of me thinks that they’re just fun to speculate on. Also I think that if you identify them they kind of have this weird way of tying in to the themes of the story. like Tolkien seems to have a lot to say about human ambition and greed.
He also hits nature vs industry themes pretty hard, and a lot of hubris. Denethor believed that he was too cunning to be affected the palantir, and Sauron’s downfall ultimately was his belief that no one could resist the power of the one ring, so it never occurred to him that they would attempt to destroy it instead of use it against him. He could have just had some guards posted up at Mount Doom lol
Right? All this stuff has thematic implications.