Thorin in the Blue Mountains

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I think that spiritual puissance is needed more that physical when confronting a Balrog. But this is a bit off topic, so I won't elaborate.

Also, it was one desparate Noldo with nothing to lose but everything on stake, and a thousand confused scared Dwarves.

Just think, if the Orcs had had the presence of mind, they could have rigged a Balrog costume, dressed one of the larger ones up in it, and taken Erebor from Dáin.

In support of the "Erebor or nothing" theory, there's yet more UT quotes from Gandalf:

'I was as eager as he was to see the end of Smaug, but Thorin was all for plans of battle and war, as if he were really King Thorin the Second, and I could see no hope in that.'

'Your own ideas are those of a king, Thorin Oakenshield: but your kingdom is gone.'

I take those to mean that Thorin simply didn't have the numbers for a flat-out assault on Smaug. Why not? Because a large number of the Erebor survivors had fled to the Iron Hills after Smaug's arrival. Why wouldn't they have flocked to him in the Ered Luin, if not because they didn't consider the possibility of a real dwarf-kingdom existing there again to be an option? Instead, they stayed close to the Lonely Mountain, the real kingdom of Thorin.

x/d with Puddleglum.- I didn't really mean to go into here the ease of which the Dwarves were kicked out of Moria; I was mainly being facetious.