[Mister Underhill]

Shade of Carn Dûm
Posts: 429
Re: If this is good...

But we hear nothing (as far as I know) of Gollum before he found the Ring. For all we know, it was the Ring sending out evil-Ring-vibes which made Gollum kill Deagol, and before that, he was quite nice (but we won't go back into the matter of Gollum's will and motives...)

I doubt the Ring, when not even in Gollum's possession, could work so sudden and evil a deed without some predisposition on Gollum's part for evil. Bilbo held the Ring for years, but he used it only to avoid unwanted callers and to play the occasional prank. He didn't use it to sneak around finding out information that he could put to malicious uses, and he certainly didn't throttle any of his close friends.

Mithadan, I don't think the Nazgûl were the organizing force behind the attack on Isildur. This quote from UT suggests that the Nine really had no will to speak of outside of Sauron's:

...his mightiest servants, the Ringwraiths, who had no will but his own, being each utterly subservient to the ring that had enslaved him, which Sauron held.

And anyway, these other quotes from UT indicate that the Nine indeed fled after Sauron's fall, and that the Orc band that attacked Isildur was a detachment sent by Sauron to trouble passage through the mountain passes by his enemies. They hadn't heard of Sauron's defeat and, indeed, thinkinging him victorious, attacked Isildur's "retreating" force in a bid to win the praise of their master.

It is unlikely that any news of Sauron's fall had reached them, for he had been straitly besieged in Mordor and all his forces had been destroyed. If any few had escaped, they had fled far to the East with the Ringwraiths. This small detachment in the North, of no account, was forgotten. Probably they thought that Sauron had been victorious, and the war-scarred army of Thranduil was retreating to hide in fastnesses of the Forest. Thus they would be emboldened and eager to win their master's praise, though they had not been in the main battles. But it was not his praise they would have won, if any had lived long enough to see his revival. No tortures would have satisfied his anger with the bungling fools who had let slip the greatest prize in Middle-earth...

The prof does mention that the ferocity of the Orcs' attack may have been due in some measure to the influence of the Ring, even though they were unaware of it.

This quote also seems to argue in favor of the Ring having some will or initiative of its own:

It was little more than two years since it had left his [Sauron's] hand, and though it was swiftly cooling it was still heavy with his evil will, and seeking all means to return to its lord (as it did again when he recovered and was rehoused).