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Old 05-18-2016, 01:04 PM   #94
Gothmog, LoB
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Join Date: May 2016
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Gothmog, LoB has just left Hobbiton.
I think we can safely say that neither Círdan nor Gil-galad ever used one of the Three during the Second Age. Therefore them giving away Narya and Vilya doesn't cause a huge problem.

We don't know whether a ring-bearer actually is such a person if he/she just has such a ring in her closet somewhere. Especially the Three should be free of any direct evil influence causing any person keeping them to also use them. Not to mention the knowledge of those keepers that putting them on and using them would soon put them under Sauron's control.

But Galadriel, Elrond, or Gandalf easily parting with Nenya, Vilya, or Narya at the very end of the Third Age - when all of those rings had been in use for 2000-3000 years - is actually very unlikely.

As to the general effectiveness of the Rings of Power on Men:

Well, their clearly weren't designed for Men. Sauron wanted to use them the Elves of Eregion, after all. They were all elven-rings. However, they worked pretty fine on men, too. One assumes that Men mostly used the Nine to enhance their powers - to excel at whatever they were best at or wanted to be best at - but in the end they would have used the inherent preservation power of the rings (which was the main feature of all Rings of Power) on themselves, to be able to remain *alive* even after their time was long over. If pretty much nothing of that butter remains on that bread you most likely look like your average Nazgűl.

In some cases the preservation thing might also have worked inadvertently, with Sauron actually slowly transforming the wearers of the Nine into his Nazgűl-slaves. One assumes none of them actually intended becoming what they eventually became.

The Valar (and at least Sauron via the Rings of Power) clearly had the power/ability to bend the rules in regard to the whole Gift of Men thing. Tolkien's speculations about a Man living in Aman suggests as much, as does Morgoth's ability to keep Húrin alive against his will. I guess one can imagine this as the powers of the Valar being able to block a door or build a dam. Eventually the water is going to break through but if you put a lot of effort into this whole thing it might take a while. A pretty long while, actually.

If somebody like Morgoth focused his entire might on keeping one Man alive forever it most likely could work. It would be living hell for that guy, of course, but it would work.

Whether the Ringwraiths actually still retain 'human flesh' as we would see it isn't clear. Whatever keeps them able to interact with physical reality after their many returns (they go into the shadow after the Ring is taken from Sauron's body) might actually be closer to the fake-flesh the Valar/Maiar used make themselves visible or simply the sort of spiritual power that enables the Valar/Maiar to interact with the physical reality while they don't have any bodies (in the old days they could do that pretty easily).

I'd also assume that none of the Ringwraiths actually ever 'physically died' (and then sort of returned from the dead like a ghost) but that these men were actually physically consumed by the power of their rings - at least on a certain level - because their rings could actually not properly do this life preservation thing their bearers wanted them to do on their bodies. Perhaps Morgoth could have created Rings of Power that could have allowed a man to keep his body and good looks for millennia but that would have been too much for Sauron - especially in light of the fact that the Rings of Power were never designed for Mortals.

To fully become a Ringwraith you most likely have to become the total slave of that Ring. Isildur or Samwise didn't carry the One for a long period of time. It also didn't break down Frodo yet (or rather: not until the very end) but Gollum had a pretty good chance to never die a natural death but becoming more and more consumed simply by his connection to the One Ring and his continued existence.

I'm also not inclined to believe that a Man in possession of Ring of Power who has not become fully enslaved or been transformed into a Ringwraith could ever become if he dies a sudden and unnatural death - especially not the type of death after which his corpse is stripped off the ring which is then used by a new bearer. A violent death should be a sufficient trauma to separate spirit and body and could thus also break whatever mental shackles the ring had already bound his bearer with. Or not. That is really hard to speculate on.
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