[Kalimac]

OK Thingol, you got me [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] - I haven't read the Unfinished Tales yet (well, bits and pieces, but mostly about Ungoliant/Ungwe Lianti for some reason), still getting through the Silmarillion. Sorry for jumping to conclusions about the guardians.

Now that I've read the thread over again, I'm wondering if maybe Gandalf the Grey was on the right track - maybe the pull had less to do with Sauron (comparatively) than with Pippin. The reason I say this is because of the famous stone-in-the-well incident in FOTR, where Pippin feels "a curious attraction to the well" and drops the stone in, thus bringing down hordes of Orcs around their ears and almost getting everyone killed. This is really similar to Pippin feeling attracted to the Palantir, foolishly looking into it and getting (as the Mines of Moria) quite a bit more than he bargained for. Also interesting that in both cases Pippin was humbled by a stone. And while the Mines of Moria were certainly evil, it's hard to believe that Sauron was lurking in the well the same way he was lurking in the Palantir. Maybe it was just something about Pippin - his taste for pranks may have been twisted by the evil of his surroundings into an unfortunate ability to "tune in" to the well or the Palantir or whatever, to be attracted to whatever it was that would wreak the most havoc. Does that make any sense at all or am I just theorizing to the point of absurdity?

Just another thought on it; it's true that Pippin is not alone in not having a will of adamant, but he really seems to be the only one who tunes into those things quite that way. Boromir wasn't exactly a master of resisting temptation, but as far as we know he never gave the well a thought one way or the other - though how Boromir would have reacted to the Palantir is an interesting what-if, considering how Denethor was. Personally my thought is that Boromir, not having the long-sight in the least and being more the straight-up warrior type, wouldn't have had the thought occur to him that the stone could be useful, but who knows.