The scariest characters in the LOTR?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by The 1,000 Reader

When Sauron fought with the Ring, two minor characters (Elendil and Gil-Galad) slew him in combat. Right off the bat, that made me think that the Ring wasn't so mighty, and since minor characters are typically less important than major characters (they are minor characters after all,) it made me think that Sauron was a pushover.

I wouldn't call Elendil&Gil-Galad "minor characters" In the LotR book they do not appear, of course, but personally I think that at their times they must have been more famous than seven Boromirs put together. Oh, and we don't see the tower once, we see it at least three times I think, maybe more. But this doesn't matter.

Anyway... I'd subscribe most of what has been said here of the Nazgul, and I think the Balrog of Moria is pretty scary as well. Not speaking of the Watcher in the Water - as always, the creepiest things are those you don't see. This however, at least in my case, does not work for Sauron. Definitely not in LotR - of course in Silmarillion, this is something else (in the tale of Beren and Lúthien, not only in Tol-in-Gaurhoth but also the Gorlim part), however, Mansun introduced this thread as only for LotR, so I'll leave this now. Generally I'd say that I agree with most of the things the 1000 Reader said about Sauron - succintly, Sauron is too much "sitting in a tower doing nothing" to be able to awake some "personal" feelings in the reader. There is, however, still one moment where Sauron seems creepy to me, and it is the moment when Pippin looks to the Palantír. There Sauron looks exactly how I think he should all the time - this is the closest we get to him. He speaks (through Pippin, but...), he is scary, well, I think this is one of the most emotionally thrilling moments of the book.