[Gordis]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Well the title says it all.

I was just faced with this question when modding my werewolf game... I mean really, if they lose their cloaks and horses and travel as bodiless spirits, what on earth happens to their rings? Do they become immaterial for the time being? Or do the Nazgûl after all move around without their rings on? Or is there some other solution? I'm puzzled, please help/educate me.

The problem is that Tolkien changed his conception of the nazgul bodies, right in the middle of writing LOTR, sometime during the first drafts of the Pelennor Battle.

Originally, Nazgul were shape-shifters, that could look like a hobbit (one looking like a hobbit came to Hobbiton – see in HOME 6 or 7), or shapeshift into monstrous birds- vultures. In the first drafts for the scene with Eowyn, she destroyed the Witch-King SIMPLY by cutting off the bird's head! (By the way, there the WK only lost his shape, much like he did at the Ford, and was present again at the Parley (instead of the Mouth) and then even talked with Frodo after the Ring was destroyed in the Cracks of Doom.

But then, Tolkien decided that shape-shifting was mostly restricted to incarnate Maiar, not for Nazgul. After that, he changed the draft for the Eowyn scene exactly as it is now.

But Tolkien didn't correct the "Fellowship” and the “Two Towers" accordingly. Not all of it, at least, some things he had missed. So Radagast's: "disguised as black riders", Gandalf's " the black robes are real robes that they wear to give shape to their nothingness when they have dealings with the living,” and all the issues with "losing shape" in Bruinen River are the reminders of the original conception.

The worst bug connected with the former shape-shifting concept still remains in TT (the White Rider):

Gandalf: “For he was a Nazgul, one of the Nine, who ride now upon winged steeds. […]But they have not yet been allowed to cross the River, and Saruman does not know of this new shape in which the Ringwraiths have been clad.

Just imagine a happy owner of a new car saying:
“Behold the new shape in which I have been clad”


Yet when Tolkien later returned to the Bruinen ford episode in the “Hunt for the Ring” manuscripts (RC), he made it perfectly clear that none of the nazgul had lost his shape: they lost only their cloaks and boots (not a big issue), and the Witch-King had no difficulty riding his horse unclothed all the way to Mordor:

Only the bodies of 8 horses were discovered; but also the raiment of the Captain. It is probable that the Captain took the one horse that remained (he may have had strength to withdraw it from the flood) and unclad, naked, invisible, rode as swift as he could back to Mordor. At swiftest he could not accomplish that (for his horse at least would need some food and rest, though he needed none) ere November had passed.[...] Help no doubt was sent out to the other Ringwraiths as they made their way back, and they were bidden to remain secret again. RC, p 262