[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Alfirin

If I had to guess as to what Sauron's ultimate ideal plan for Dwarven Domination was, I imagine he was probably shooting for something along the lines of waht he did in Numeor. This is especially true later, once he realized the rings weren't working so well, and doubly so in the Third Age, when he was short of spare rings and was trying to get the dwarves on his side via guile.

In The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, Sauron's motive for meting out the Great Rings he had recovered are given, if rather vaguely.

But Sauron gathered into his hands all the remaining Rings of Power; and he dealt them out to the other peoples of Middle-earth, hoping thus to bring under his sway all all those that desired secret power beyond the measure of their kind.

His hope was to dominate the keepers of those rings, but to what end? The desire of "secret" power may be notable, in that the keepers of the rings were perhaps not intended to reveal to any that they possessed them. If that was the case, was Sauron looking for a general civil discord arising from the users of the rings evil deeds? Was he wanting to make them all wraiths to lead the people over which they had influence to follow Sauron? I think something along those lines may have been at the heart with the Nine, especially with the hunger for immortality Sauron had used to good effect among the Númenóreans.

The Dwarves would not have been susceptible to that line, so maybe it was Sauron who began the idea in their minds that the Seven would "breed gold", as an inducement to get them to accept them. I don't see how an association with Mahal fits in there, and in any case, one might think that survivors of Eregion might have warned the Moria dwarves of Sauron's evil, as Moria had attacked Sauron's forces after the sack of the House of the Mirdain (Unfinished Tales, The History of Galadriel and Celeborn). That might fit with the apparent belief of the Dwarves that the ring possessed by Durin in Moria was given to him by the Elves.

Originally Posted by Alfirin

The seven rings were presumably orginally planned to go to the head of each house (the fact that there are/Sauron chose seven rings to be dwarf rings (the difference depends on whether seven rings were designed for the dwaves, as per the song, or Sauron took sixteen as yet unaligned rings when he sacked Eregion and later decided that seven should go to the dwarves and nine to men later) and seven fathers/houses of dwarves is too big a coincidence in my book) as tokens of favor between the dwaves and thier "God on earth" ("with these rings, I bind thee and thy houses to thy god.")

The Silmarillion goes on to say:

Seven Rings he gave to the Dwarves; but to Men he gave nine, for Men for Men proved in this matter as in others the readiest to his will.

I read that as saying the Dwarves ended up with Seven, because Sauron wanted more for Men.