Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarumian
The reason may be that a Balrog can one day leave Moria. While Sauron was absent, the Balrog had a potency to become a new Dark Lord. With Sauron back, both perspectives of Sauron subduing the Balrog or the Balrog obtaining The Ring were equally perilous.
However the nature of Durin's Bane was not discovered until the Company arrived and as it had never left Moria, no-one actually wanted to investigate the matter up to that time. Only some dwarves but they had failed to publish their findings  |
I still don't like the idea of the dwarves seing the balrog but the word not getting around...
1: It would be an extremely hot topic to talk about - all the surviving dwarves would have spread the story and it would just get so big people would know it. A balrog mowing down 20 000 dwarves - this MUST become a common legend.
Thus is makes more sense to me they didnt see it, since there's no legend.
The legend we have that something powerfull of an unspecified nature drove off the dwarves fits the Alien-scenario perfectly.
2: I also imagine the dwarves would want to seek help to drive it off and to get Moria back, much as Thorin did with the lonely mountain,
I don't like the current version where they just gave up Moria and shrugged it off.
It would be an obvious course to go to the Wise with a description of it and ask them for advice on how to kill it - and I think someone did it at some point.
In the version where they got mowed down by the balrog attacking them head on the Wise would recognize the balrog (or a high probability it was a balrog) - and they would have done something. They would AT LEAST least have told Gandalf about it, Aragorn also probably - and most likely they would have DONE something, Maybe not go and kill it as was discussed in the thread since it seemed hapoy to stay put in Moria anyway. But at least they would have kept a watch on it to make sure it stayed put, maybe seal or Moria - that sort of thing. It would be on Elrond's radar. It's a very very big threat so I don't think either they would just shrug it off and think never mind.
In the "alien" version they have nothing better to ask for than help with an "unknown monster" - it makes sense for me that the Wise would not consider it "their board" - the "unknown monster" is not important for general ME security so the dwarves would be sent away empty-handed with no help forthcoming
And this leads nicely to the storyline with everyone knowing theres probably "something" big and bad in Moria that killed a whole lot of dwarves on it's own - but noone is motivated to go and kill it.