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Old 08-11-2020, 06:52 PM   #4
Victariongreyjoy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Boromir88 View Post
The palantiri weren't useful as devices from a military operations standpoint. Unfinished Tales: The Palantiri is probably the most detailed and comprehensive information Tolkien wrote on the topic so I won't quote the chapter in full...but some of the main points.

They were presumably made by Feanor and their total number is unknown. But 7 were brought to Middle-earth by Elendil, Isildur and Anarion to be ways of communicating between their 2 founded Kingdoms, Arnor and Gondor.

The heirs of Elendil (and eventually the Stewards of Gondor) were said to be the 'rightful possessors' of the stones brought to Middle-earth, which is important in their use. This means the vast majority of people would have had no use for the seeing stones. If they were even interested in them anyway, as their perception was described as rather 'alien' to Middle-earth and devices only Elendil and his rightful heirs would have contemplated using.

There was a 'general strain' when using the stone, even for the rightful heirs. The viewer would have to concentrate a considerable amount of will to direct the visions/images they wanted to see, otherwise Tolkien describes the viewer would just see a bunch of random and unconnected images. This strain was considerable and noted why Denethor appeared older than he actually was.

Sauron only used the stone he captured when taking Minas Ithil as a minor part of his plan to weaken Gondor's resistance from within and attempt to control Saruman.

Overall their benefits were quite limited, yes and others could gain great knowledge but at a tremendous and dangerous cost. There were a limited number of people who could make use of them and they were still dangerous to those people who could. One of Sauron's biggest blunders was made because of the palantir when Aragorn used the Orthanc stone.
What about during Arnor's battle with Angmar? Wouldn't the stone be useful to expose the Witch King's forces whereabouts? Or Numenors war against Sauron?
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