How come Rivendell was never discovered by Sauron?

[Mister Underhill]

<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wight
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/sting.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: Sauron's Plans

A bit tardy by now, Grey Fool, but welcome to the board!

With reference to the subject of this thread, I just read a bit in UT, in &quot;The Quest of Erebor&quot;, where Gandalf hints that Sauron, while still &quot;disguised&quot; as The Necromancer of Dol Goldur, may have been planning a stroke against Rivendell and other desirable northern objectives, possibly with the aid of Smaug as some kind of super-weapon, but that any aspirations he may have had in this area were dashed by the unexpected death of the dragon and the attack of the White Council which forced him to retreat to Mordor.

<blockquote>Quote:<hr> Gandalf: &quot;You may think that Rivendell was out of his reach, but I did not think so.&quot;<hr></blockquote>

It may well have been that Sauron's plans for Rivendell had as their prime objective the capture of Elrond's ring; I imagine that he hoped at the least to take it out of play for the coming war (he'd fairly recently gobbled up the last of the Dwarven rings, remember).

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