[Formendacil]

It's an interesting mental experiment, this, but it seems to me that the Elven Rings would have been of very little use in the First Age. It seems to me that the chief usage of all the Rings is related to the preservation of things--even Gandalf's use of the Narya to strengthen hearts could be seen as a action of preservation directly specifically at someone's will. Assuming this interpretation, the whole point of the Three Rings, from the perspective of the Elves, is to preserve.

What, then, were they preserving? To me, it seems clear they were preserving Valinor. Each of their kingdoms in exile, and especially the descriptions of the Eldar realms under the Rings in Imladris and Lothlórien seem to me very much to be attempts to recapture Valinor in its fullness--but the Eldar themselves were very much at the height of their Valinorean-enhanced powers during the First Age, and the impression I get is that this had not waned substantially in the five-six hundred years spanned before the War of Wrath.

Indeed, it seems to me that the power of the Rings might well have inhibited the work of the Eldar, because it preserves things by arresting them in their current state--and despite war, the First Age was still a time of doing and making among the Elves. To postulate a Finrod and a Turgon with Vilya and Nenya seems to postulate, to me, a Finrod who stayed in Minas Tirith and never build Nargothrond, and a Turgon who stayed in Vinyamar and never build Gondolin.

Next, it seems worthy of mention that such protection as the Rings afforded the Elves, it was still unequal to the Girdle of Melian--the orks marched right through Nimrodel in The Lord of the Rings. The Rings do not strike me, therefore, as a practical protection, but rather as a preservation of those things which the Elves wanted to protect.

Finally, this all seems to reckon without due consideration for the Doom of the Noldor. The Three were made, in actual fact, separate from any participation by Sauron, yet they were enmeshed completely in the fate of the One. Is it at all likely, then, that had the Three been made in the First Age that it would have escaped the fate of its makers (unless you assume the Sindar forged them in Doriath...)? To me it seems highly unlikely--if the One Ring had the character of its maker, then I think one can assume this was true of the Three--in their case, Celebrimbor. If this were so of First Age Rings, then the character of its Nolder forger(s) would the character of the Doom.

Not a good thing--it might have hastened things ere Eärendil was born or the Valar be moved to intervene!

Fascinating topic, though, I must say!