Follow Up to the Blue Mountains Question - Gundabad

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Elmo

The dragons weren't just in the Withered Heath, that's just 'whence came the Great Worms'. Seems to be their original home in those mountains. The dwarves must have had settlements all around the Grey Mountains that were destroyed by the great beasts. Gundabad is only a stone's throw (or a dragons breath) away from the western edge of the Grey Mountains.

That's true. Scatha, after all, was the Dragon who threatened Éothéod - and that was by the northern end of Anduin.

Originally Posted by Inziladun

And if the Iron Hills was not considered a wealthy enough target, why would dragons have bothered a newly resettled Gundabad, which would presumably have taken very many years to repopulate and enrich?

But we are talking about the reason why Dwarves had not resettled Gundabad. The idea of Dragons coming to Gundabad is purely hypothetical (or at least that's how I perceive this discussion). But if I am a Dwarf, and I am judging whether to resettle Gundabad or not, I am not going to say: "Let's go there, because Dragons won't come there after we resettle it at least for a couple of years before we gather some hoard there, and look at Iron Hills for comparison..." but I am rather going to say "Hey, people, you sure you want to resettle Gundabad? Even if we manage to get rid of the Orcs in there, which will certainly weaken us, what if a Dragon comes there once it hears we are back there again, and weakened?" I think the Dwarves are very practical in this, unless there is really great zeal about it, but we don't know about Gundabad holding any Arkenstone so that it would make the Dwarves' hearts blazing with fire just in order to see it.