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I had an intruging thought yesterday.
I made many arguments in favor of basalt over obsidian, and I still hold this as being more likely. In the case of Barad Dur, Dol Guldur and any other edifices Sauron constucted basalt blocks are still the go-to choice. With Melkor however I realize that the matter is less cut and dried. Unlike Sauron after him, Melkor had direct acess to the powers and spirits of fire (Balrogs, Dragons etc.). Thefore Angbad and Melkor's other constructions might not have been "constucted" as we understand the word, that its buy mortaring blocks of stone together. If Melkor could cause a three peaked volcano to come out of the the ground, then it occrs to me he migh have had the skills to literally congleal the fortress of Angbad out of the raw lava of the earth, all in one peice. No black, no mortar one giant fortress shaped chunk of rock. If that is the case, then the obsidian argumetn isn't quite a silly as I first sounded since if you could control the lava you could drive all of the bubbles out of it, maybe even control the internal stucture so that you wound up with a version of obsidan more like tempered glass than ordinary glass. Heck come to think of it you could make the thing out of black diamond of a sort, if you had that much power. All I'm trying to get at is that, if you have that much control over the earth all of the rules of constuction, as we understand it, go out the window.
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