LOTR: the new series comes like the in rushing sea to Númenor:

[The Marquis de Leech]

21 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

In the letter Tolkien tries to spin it that the Ring looked like just a ring but in context that would be very hard to swallow - at Sauron's hand the Ring was never just 'a ring'. Not to mention that we would face the problem that Sauron's spirit now can transport things in its disembodied state back when he went down with Númenor (in a scenario where his body and everything on his might be destroyed utterly or be buried under tons of rock and/or water) but not when Elendil and Gil-galad destroyed his body outside Barad-dûr. Isildur cut the Ring off Sauron's corpse, he didn't take it from a living Sauron, so Sauron's spirit should have been able to take his property with him when he disappeared.

Easy explanation: being shunted out of one's body is traumatic, and takes some time to get over. Sauron in Numenor had copious time to recover the Ring from the depths. Sauron at Mount Doom had very little time before Isildur made off with it. 

[Lord Varys]

13 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

As per another Letter, "no mortal, not even Aragorn" could have withheld the Ring in Sauron's presence. He would not have feared Pharazon making off with it, and would have used it to psychologically eat away at the King.

That is the TA, not the SA. The Númenóreans in their might were gods among men. Sauron himself humbled himself before them. They were far more powerful than he ever was even with his Ruling Ring. Sauron defeated the Númenóreans with guile, not with power. Even in the end he was just the power behind the throne, not the actual ruler.

In a sense, Sauron would have actually lost his rights to the Ring once he gave himself up. He became a prisoner of the King of Númenor, so everything he owned was now the property of Ar-Pharazôn.

[Lord Varys]

12 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Easy explanation: being shunted out of one's body is traumatic, and takes some time to get over. Sauron in Numenor had copious time to recover the Ring from the depths. Sauron at Mount Doom had very little time before Isildur made off with it. 

Bad explanation: Being at the heart of a world-crushing and world-rebuilding event conducted by the creator of the universe himself should be infinitely more traumatic than being cut down by two old kings. Even more so since Sauron entered into the fight with Elendil and Gil-galad of his own free will, meaning he would have considered the chance that he might lose ... whereas at least according to the Akallabêth he never expected Eru to intervene or that he and Númenor might be destroyed. He would have been taken completely by surprise when Númenor was destroyed and he went down into the abyss with the continent.

If Sauron could recover the Ring from wherever his corpse was beneath Númenor we also don't understand why he never searched out Isildur in spirit-form to snitch it from his hands or neck. Shouldn't have been that hard. Also, why didn't he search for it in spirit-form later on, after Isildur's death?

We have textual evidence that Sauron either took up the Ring again once he returned to Barad-dûr or after he had reshaped his body there - both indicates he didn't wear the Ring for a time. If the spirit Sauron had returned with the Ring from the abyss he would have never laid it down again ... and he would have also had no reason to ever take it up again.

[The Marquis de Leech]

We know from The Lord of the Rings that he actually thought it had been destroyed at the end of the Second Age. By the time he realised it hadn't, he didn't have the foggiest idea where it had gone. I'd also suggest that having his body killed a second time - material bodies requiring time, effort, and power to develop - did a worse number on him than Numenor did.

(Also, Elendil - author of the Akallabeth - actually had no means of knowing how Sauron got back to Middle-earth, full stop).

[The Marquis de Leech]

39 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That is the TA, not the SA. The Númenóreans in their might were gods among men. Sauron himself humbled himself before them. They were far more powerful than he ever was even with his Ruling Ring. Sauron defeated the Númenóreans with guile, not with power. Even in the end he was just the power behind the throne, not the actual ruler.

In a sense, Sauron would have actually lost his rights to the Ring once he gave himself up. He became a prisoner of the King of Númenor, so everything he owned was now the property of Ar-Pharazôn.

"Gods among Men" is still Men, especially Men so open to corruption as Pharazon. Sauron himself was more powerful in the Second Age than the Third.

Meanwhile, Letter 211 makes it clear that Pharazon knew nothing of the Ring.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

We know from The Lord of the Rings that he actually thought it had been destroyed at the end of the Second Age. By the time he realised it hadn't, he didn't have the foggiest idea where it had gone. I'd also suggest that having his body killed a second time - material bodies requiring time, effort, and power to develop - did a worse number on him than Numenor did.

(Also, Elendil - author of the Akallabeth - actually had no means of knowing how Sauron got back to Middle-earth, full stop).

It’s interesting how Sauron thought that he could regenerate, even after the destruction of the One Ring.  Whereas, according to Gandalf, its destruction would leave him as just a malicious spirit, incapable of taking form again.

 

 

 

[Arakan]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That is the TA, not the SA. The Númenóreans in their might were gods among men. Sauron himself humbled himself before them. They were far more powerful than he ever was even with his Ruling Ring. Sauron defeated the Númenóreans with guile, not with power. Even in the end he was just the power behind the throne, not the actual ruler.

In a sense, Sauron would have actually lost his rights to the Ring once he gave himself up. He became a prisoner of the King of Númenor, so everything he owned was now the property of Ar-Pharazôn.

As a side question…though the Numenoreans declined morally and as such also metaphysically (symbolized by shorter life spans later on) they undoubtedly reached their materialistic/technical peak under Ar-Pharazon, so much so that Sauron didn’t believe himself able to defeat them at Umbar in open battle (unfortunately Tolkien later dismissed is original idea of somekind of steam punk civilization, would have been great, just imagine a Numenorean Army with 1860s/70s weapons technology). I always wondered how they would compare with the First Age Elves in Beleriand…

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

"Gods among Men" is still Men, especially Men so open to corruption as Pharazon. Sauron himself was more powerful in the Second Age than the Third.

Meanwhile, Letter 211 makes it clear that Pharazon knew nothing of the Ring.

We can dismiss that private self-interpretation easily enough. It was never supposed to be published while the Akallabêth and Of the Rings of Power were eventually prepared for publication. And in both those texts Sauron takes up the Ring after his return from Númenor. In context those passages make no sense if he didn't previously put it down.

It is also ludicrous that the Númenóreans had no clue about the Rings of Power when they came to the help of the Eldar in the wake of the Eregion crisis ... and then three of their elite were turned into Sauron's little pets in the centuries thereafter.

Sauron was a fallen Maia ... but Ar-Pharazôn did have the power to ravage Valinor itself. That is why Manwe had to call upon Eru to save his lands and his people. If he hadn't done that, the Númenóreans would have destroyed the Blessed Lands.

One falls easily enough into this trap that the metaphysical difference between the Ainur and the Children means the former were always more powerful ... but they are not.

We also get that for the Elves with Feanor being the greatest artist who ever lived, Beren and Lúthien pulling off something nobody else ever could, Túrin Turambar overcoming destiny through grief and suffering to be counted among the Valar in the end, etc.

2 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

We know from The Lord of the Rings that he actually thought it had been destroyed at the end of the Second Age. By the time he realised it hadn't, he didn't have the foggiest idea where it had gone. I'd also suggest that having his body killed a second time - material bodies requiring time, effort, and power to develop - did a worse number on him than Numenor did.

It should have still taken him much more effort to localize the Ring in whatever crushed state his mortal body was after the destruction of Númenor than it would have taken him to take it back from Isildur standing right next to his body.

In fact, if the Ring went into the abyss with Sauron and Númenor then this should have destroyed it for good. The cataclysm destroying Númenor was of a much grander scale than anything the Orodruin could come up with.

The destruction of the Dark Lord form wasn't that big of a deal - losing the fair shape caused him to lose to the ability to appear fair ever again, so that was a bigger blow. Sauron only needs much more time to recreate his body in the TA because he lost the Ring - after Númenor he is reincarnated pretty quickly because he takes up the One Ring again in Barad-dûr and uses it clothe himself in power.

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

It’s interesting how Sauron thought that he could regenerate, even after the destruction of the One Ring.  Whereas, according to Gandalf, its destruction would leave him as just a malicious spirit, incapable of taking form again.

That makes sense in context - Sauron must be too arrogant to think that the destruction of the Ring could do permanent damage to him - or else he would never have created it in the first place.

On the other hand ... he supposedly could never fathom the idea that anyone might want to destroy it, so he technically should have never expected anyone to destroy it, meaning he would have never thought it was destroyed at the end of the SA. But then - we have no idea what Sauron actually ever thought, we just have speculations from the good guys.

I think the idea that Sauron didn't think anyone would want to destroy the Ring makes sense ... so he would have never thought that it was destroyed after Isildur took it. Rather he would have expected it was lost somehow.

1 hour ago, Arakan said:

As a side question…though the Numenoreans declined morally and as such also metaphysically (symbolized by shorter life spans later on) they undoubtedly reached their materialistic/technical peak under Ar-Pharazon, so much so that Sauron didn’t believe himself able to defeat them at Umbar in open battle (unfortunately Tolkien later dismissed is original idea of somekind of steam punk civilization, would have been great, just imagine a Numenorean Army with 1860s/70s weapons technology). I always wondered how they would compare with the First Age Elves in Beleriand…

Yes, the whole weapons technology thing is dropped, but we still get a scenario where Sauron himself - and more importantly his followers who worshipped him as a god-king - feared the might and power of Ar-Pharazôn and simply refused to fight him because they knew they couldn't win.

What exactly this entails is hard to say, but it clearly wouldn't be an advantage in numbers (Middle-earth's population must have been much, much larger than that of Númenor and Sauron controlled most of the continent) nor a completely baffling advantage in technology.

If you want to speculate about this one imagines that 'magical knowledge' would have been a factor there, whatever exactly this may have meant at that time. In any case, they must have had the means to crush whatever masses of Orcs and Men Sauron could muster with ease ... or else Sauron would have never humbled himself in the way he did.

We have to keep in mind that just because Men couldn't find a cure for death doesn't mean they couldn't figure out many other magical things. Minas Anor's walls and Orthanc are testament to that.

[Arakan]

21 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

If you want to speculate about this one imagines that 'magical knowledge' would have been a factor there, whatever exactly this may have been at that time. In any case, they must have had the means to crush whatever masses of Orcs and Men Sauron could muster with ease ... or else Sauron would have never humbled himself in the way he did.

We have to keep in mind that just because Men couldn't find a cure for death doesn't mean they couldn't figure out many other magical things. Minas Anor's walls and Orthanc are testament to that.

Very good points…so maybe the Numenoreans developed some kind of Avatar TLA style elemental „magical science“ weapons…which indeed would make them absolutely superior. I fathom FMA „transmutation“ magic is a bridge too far though. 

Thinking…Numenor was famous for its archery, so maybe one has to imagine magically enhanced bows and arrows accelerating the arrows to mach+ bullet speed as an example (and with HEIAP effect just for the sh*t and giggles).

[Lord Varys]

18 minutes ago, Arakan said:

Very good points…so maybe the Numenoreans developed some kind of Avatar TLA style elemental „magical science“ weapons…which indeed would make them absolutely superior. I fathom FMA „transmutation“ magic is a bridge too far though. 

Thinking…Numenor was famous for its archery, so maybe one has to imagine magically enhanced bows and arrows accelerating the arrows to mach+ bullet speed as an example (and with HEIAP effect just for the sh*t and giggles).

I think you pointed out a passage here where Tolkien's later changes actually create kind of a plot hole. With modern technology both Pharazôn's victory over Sauron as well as the threat his armada posed to Valinor makes more sense. Imagining that a bunch of guys with sticks and bows and swords could threaten the gods or intimidate the god-king of an entire continent isn't *that* convincing.

More importantly, the concept of soulless/evil modern technology challenging/destroying magical beings/natural deities and the like is quite common and seems to be Tolkien's original idea there.

Also keep in mind that one of his later ideas is that Eru's intervention actually physically destroyed Valinor and 'the Old West' is literally no longer a place but some kind of living memory in some kind of limbo state.

[polishgenius]

35 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Also keep in mind that one of his later ideas is that Eru's intervention actually physically destroyed Valinor and 'the Old West' is literally no longer a place but some kind of living memory in some kind of limbo state.

 

So Valinor is Gallifrey in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special?

[Lord Varys]

15 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

So Valinor is Gallifrey in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special?

Sorry, I don't know a single episode of Doctor Who.

[Marsala]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Also keep in mind that one of his later ideas is that Eru's intervention actually physically destroyed Valinor and 'the Old West' is literally no longer a place but some kind of living memory in some kind of limbo state.

According to his late idea in The Nature of Middle-Earth, Valinor wasn't physically destroyed but somehow the divine and Elven inhabitants were removed, along with the Pelóri, and the remaining mundane landmass became America.

[Clueless Northman]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

It’s interesting how Sauron thought that he could regenerate, even after the destruction of the One Ring.  Whereas, according to Gandalf, its destruction would leave him as just a malicious spirit, incapable of taking form again.

If Sauron assumed the Ring was destroyed by Isildur when he took shape once again, then War of the Rings Sauron had no idea and was blindsided by his previous suspicion that he had actually survived the destruction of the Ring when he reformed during the Third Age. He didn't think it through and reviewed his previous suspicion, when he actually got news that the Ring did still exist. This is probably one of his biggest mistakes.

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It is also ludicrous that the Númenóreans had no clue about the Rings of Power when they came to the help of the Eldar in the wake of the Eregion crisis ... and then three of their elite were turned into Sauron's little pets in the centuries thereafter.

Elven and human leaders knew about the Rings of Power. What I'm wondering is if they knew about the One Ring before seeing Sauron wearing it in the Last Alliance - or more precisely, did any Elf or Numenorean see Sauron and lived to tell the tale, before the came to Ar-Pharazon?

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

With modern technology both Pharazôn's victory over Sauron as well as the threat his armada posed to Valinor makes more sense. Imagining that a bunch of guys with sticks and bows and swords could threaten the gods or intimidate the god-king of an entire continent isn't *that* convincing.

The trouble with Valinor is that the Valar and Maiar didn't dare to directly hurt the Children of Iluvatar. That would mean the Elves would've had to defend the place, not the gods.

As for Sauron, the great army of the War of Wrath was mostly elvish, with limited intervention from the Valar. So even a massive Elvish or Human army must be able to destroy the bulk of Morgoth or Sauron armies - and Sauron didn't have such a big dragon airforce obviously. After all, he was eventually defeated by the smaller Last Alliance army, though it wasn't such a crushing flawless victory with massive dominance on the Alliance's side.

[The Marquis de Leech]

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

We can dismiss that private self-interpretation easily enough. It was never supposed to be published while the Akallabêth and Of the Rings of Power were eventually prepared for publication. And in both those texts Sauron takes up the Ring after his return from Númenor. In context those passages make no sense if he didn't previously put it down.

It is also ludicrous that the Númenóreans had no clue about the Rings of Power when they came to the help of the Eldar in the wake of the Eregion crisis ... and then three of their elite were turned into Sauron's little pets in the centuries thereafter.

Neither the Akallabeth nor Of the Rings of Power were actually prepared and published during Tolkien's own lifetime, of course. The Akallabeth as written had Pengolodh/Aelfwine narration - edited out by Christopher, to reflect Tolkien's later ideas of Mannish transmission (and in this case, that Elendil was the author). So it was still a work in transition, rather than a fixed point of reference. Meanwhile, Of the Rings of Power actually describes Frodo casting the Ring into Orodruin - which is blatantly false.

That said, even if we do give these credence here, "taking up the Ring" does not necessarily imply Sauron literally left it behind and picked it back up (would he not have worried that it would have gone missing in his absence?). It can just as easily refer to Sauron using the Ring to rule his realm again. By contrast, Letter 211 is explicit - Sauron took the Ring to Numenor.

As for Numenorean knowledge of the Rings:

• We do not know the degree to which information was passed onto the Numenoreans by the Elves. One can imagine that the Numenoreans of the earlier era merely saw it as Sauron trying a conquest. The detail of the Ring lore might have escaped them.
• 1600 years had elapsed between the Forging and Pharazon. This was ancient history for the Numenoreans by this point, and one suspects Pharazon had little time for history written in Elvish.
• It wasn't as if later Numenor was particularly interactive with the Elves.
• Isildur - an honest-to-god Faithful Numenorean - didn't know what the One Ring did.
• The three Numenorean Nazgul are framed with the forumula "it is said." That's the go-to loremaster formula when something is highly uncertain... which suggests that the author of the Akallabeth was reporting rumour, not solid knowledge. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

9 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

In fact, if the Ring went into the abyss with Sauron and Númenor then this should have destroyed it for good. The cataclysm destroying Númenor was of a much grander scale than anything the Orodruin could come up with.

This was also the cataclysm where Meneltarma was rumoured to rise again from the Sea. The destruction of an island that size ought to have taken the mountain with it... but it might not have done. Because we aren't dealing with mundane physics here, but rather something Divine. 

As such, I see no problem with the One Ring (a highly magical thing, hypothetically immune to Ancalagon the Black himself) surviving the Downfall.

[Lord Varys]

14 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

If Sauron assumed the Ring was destroyed by Isildur when he took shape once again, then War of the Rings Sauron had no idea and was blindsided by his previous suspicion that he had actually survived the destruction of the Ring when he reformed during the Third Age. He didn't think it through and reviewed his previous suspicion, when he actually got news that the Ring did still exist. This is probably one of his biggest mistakes.

I don't think in context this can make much sense considering that Sauron suddenly panics when he realizes the Ring is in the Sammath Naur. If he thought he could survive its destruction he wouldn't panic to the same degree.

Then, of course, that's human narrators pretending they know what the Dark Lord is thinking ... although his panic as such was likely deduced from the actions of his armies and the Nazgûl around the time Frodo put on the Ring.

14 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Elven and human leaders knew about the Rings of Power. What I'm wondering is if they knew about the One Ring before seeing Sauron wearing it in the Last Alliance - or more precisely, did any Elf or Numenorean see Sauron and lived to tell the tale, before the came to Ar-Pharazon?

I'd suspect so - thousands of years passed between the Fall of Eregion and Ar-Pharazôn's reign. Sauron no longer could play the Annatar card to the Elves, but he did play the role of the benevolent benefactor when interaction with Dwarves and Men - who he gave seven and nine of the Rings of Power.

Sauron was no coward hiding himself in his tower in those days - he walked around a lot, met with people, conquered territories, etc.

And if you think about what the Ruling Ring is - both the embodiment and an amplifier of Sauron's power over Middle-earth - it would have always been very visible at whatever body he was wearing. The reason why the thing is so inconspicuous throughout most of The Hobbit and LotR is that its respective owners don't know how to use it nor do they have the faculties to use it properly.

When Frodo finally starts to get the hang of what the Ring is about it it becomes a burning wheel of fire forcing Gollum into submission.

Anyone meeting Sauron wearing the Ring would have been in utter awe of the thing and, of course, its wearer, the Dark Lord.

In context, reports about the Dark Lord and his powerful Ring would have been all over the place, reaching Númenor very shortly after the Ring's completion. And Minastir's forces would have actually encountered Sauron wearing the Ring in Eriador.

14 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

The trouble with Valinor is that the Valar and Maiar didn't dare to directly hurt the Children of Iluvatar. That would mean the Elves would've had to defend the place, not the gods.

That was only part of it. The implication also is that they couldn't have defeated them (easily) even if they had tried.

14 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

As for Sauron, the great army of the War of Wrath was mostly elvish, with limited intervention from the Valar. So even a massive Elvish or Human army must be able to destroy the bulk of Morgoth or Sauron armies - and Sauron didn't have such a big dragon airforce obviously. After all, he was eventually defeated by the smaller Last Alliance army, though it wasn't such a crushing flawless victory with massive dominance on the Alliance's side.

The War of Wrath was a massive 50-years-long campaign which destroyed all of Beleriand and the lands in the north, indicating that it wasn't even remotely a 'mundane war' but rather one fought with what we would have to qualify as 'magic'. That 'magic' would have been worked by both the Maiar and the Vanyar/Noldor making up the armies.

If think numbers then Sauron must have outnumbered Pharazôn just as he outnumbered the Western Allies during the War of the Ring - yet in the former scenario he had no chance to win in the field while in the latter scenario his enemies had no chance to defeat him in the field.

That means Pharazôn must have had an advantage the Western Allies didn't have.

The Last Alliance had the advantage that Sauron's power had declined during his absence and they attacked him before he could line up all his allies against them.

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Neither the Akallabeth nor Of the Rings of Power were actually prepared and published during Tolkien's own lifetime, of course. The Akallabeth as written had Pengolodh/Aelfwine narration - edited out by Christopher, to reflect Tolkien's later ideas of Mannish transmission (and in this case, that Elendil was the author). So it was still a work in transition, rather than a fixed point of reference. Meanwhile, Of the Rings of Power actually describes Frodo casting the Ring into Orodruin - which is blatantly false.

Yes, yes, but insofar as publication is concerned, those text were actually written with the intention to publish them. And as I said, letter 211 appears (to me, at least) contain the germ of Tolkien's own doubts about the arguments he was making there. Take a look at the entire section:

Quote

Question 2. This question, & its implications, are answered in the 'Downfall of Numenor', which is not yet published, but which I cannot set out now. You cannot press the One Ring too hard, for it is of course a mythical feature, even though the world of the tales is conceived in more or less historical terms. The Ring of Sauron is only one of the various mythical treatments of the placing of one's life, or power, in some external object, which is thus exposed to capture or destruction with disastrous results to oneself. If I were to 'philosophize' this myth, or at least the Ring of Sauron, I should say it was a mythical way of representing the truth that potency (or perhaps rather potentiality) if it is to be exercised, and produce results, has to be externalized and so as it were passes, to a greater or less degree, out of one's direct control. A man who wishes to exert 'power' must have subjects, who are not himself. But he then depends on them.

Ar-Pharazôn, as is told in the 'Downfall' or Akallabêth, conquered a terrified Sauron's subjects, not Sauron. Sauron's personal 'surrender' was voluntary and cunning⁷¹: he got free transport to Numenor! He naturally had the One Ring, and so very soon dominated the minds and wills of most of the Númenóreans. (I do not think Ar-Pharazôn knew anything about the One Ring. The Elves kept the matter of the Rings very secret, as long as they could. In any case Ar-Pharazôn was not in communication with them. In the Tale of Years III p. 364 you will find hints of the trouble: 'the Shadow falls on Numenor'. After Tar-Atanamir (an Elvish name) the next name is Ar-Adunakhôr a Númenórean name. See p. 315. The change of names went with a complete rejection of the Elf-friendship, and of the 'theological' teaching the Númenóreans had received from them.)

Sauron was first defeated by a 'miracle': a direct action of God the Creator, changing the fashion of the world, when appealed to by Manwë: see III p. 317. Though reduced to 'a spirit of hatred borne on a dark wind', I do not think one need boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended. That Sauron was not himself destroyed in the anger of the One is not my fault: the problem of evil, and its apparent toleration, is a permanent one for all who concern themselves with our world. The indestructibility of spirits with free wills, even by the Creator of them, is also an inevitable feature, if one either believes in their existence, or feigns it in a story.

Sauron was, of course, 'confounded' by the disaster, and diminished (having expended enormous energy in the corruption of Númenor). He needed time for his own bodily rehabilitation, and for gaining control over his former subjects. He was attacked by Gil-galad and Elendil before his new domination was fully established.

I think the bold passage marks the moment where JRRT himself started to wonder how the hell Sauron's spirit could carry the Ring out of the abyss ... or at all. He was rather obsessed with the whole incarnation thing of his angelic spirits and one clear feature is that especially the evil spirits end up being completely dependent on physical shapes to interact with the real world, so at the time of destruction of Númenor Sauron shouldn't have had the ability to 'carry' anything while in spirit form.

In context, it is also not surprising that Sauron never considered the One Ring while writing the Akallabêth texts - only the LotR connected the Númenor myth with the Hobbit stories which retroactively gave the guy who ruined Númenor the Ruling Ring of Power.

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

That said, even if we do give these credence here, "taking up the Ring" does not necessarily imply Sauron literally left it behind and picked it back up (would he not have worried that it would have gone missing in his absence?). It can just as easily refer to Sauron using the Ring to rule his realm again. By contrast, Letter 211 is explicit - Sauron took the Ring to Numenor.

The passages we talk about are explict, too, and they do not imply that taking up the Ring means Sauron takes up his political rule again. Rather, taking up the Ring is explicitly linked to Sauron taking physical shape again:

Quote

From the Akallabêth:

And Sauron, sitting in his black seat in the midst of the Temple, had laughed when he heard the trumpets of Ar-Pharazôn sounding for battle; and again he had laughed when he heard the thunder of the storm; and a third time, even as he laughed at his own thought, thinking what he would do now in the world, being rid of the Edain for ever, he was taken in the midst of his mirth, and his seat and his temple fell into the abyss. But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dûr, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.

Here it is crystal clear that Sauron did return from Númenor without the Ring since literally the first thing he does upon his return to Mordor is take up his great Ring in Barad-dûr.

Quote

From 'Of the Rings of Power':

Thus the Exiles of Númenor established their realms in Arnor and in Gondor; but ere many years had passed it became manifest that their enemy, Sauron, had also returned. He came in secret, as has been told, to his ancient kingdom of Mordor beyond the Ephel Dúath, the Mountains of Shadow, and that country marched with Gondor upon the east. There above the valley of Gorgoroth was built his fortress vast and strong, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower; and there was a fiery mountain in that land that the Elves named Orod-ruin. Indeed for that reason Sauron had set there his dwelling long before, for he used the fire that welled there from the heart of the earth in his sorceries and in his forging; and in the midst of the Land of Mordor he had fashioned the Ruling Ring. There now he brooded in the dark, until he had wrought for himself a new shape; and it was terrible, for his fair semblance had departed for ever when he was cast into the abyss at the drowning of Númenor. He took up again the great Ring and clothed himself in power; and the malice of the Eye of Sauron few even of the great among Elves and Men could endure.

Here it is somewhat more confusing since it implies that Sauron clothed himself in power with the Ring even after he had already taken a new body ... but I guess that's just badly written. The passage clearly are parallels to each other and supposed to establish the same thing - that Sauron took up the One Ring after his return to Mordor and that it helped him to appear as powerful and intimidating as he was in the shape he had when challenging Elendil and Gil-galad.

It doesn't strike me as unlikely that Tolkien added both those sentences to those texts when pondering the consequences of the idea that Sauron did take the One Ring to Númenor.

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

We do not know the degree to which information was passed onto the Numenoreans by the Elves. One can imagine that the Numenoreans of the earlier era merely saw it as Sauron trying a conquest. The detail of the Ring lore might have escaped them.

Knowing that Sauron himself wore a Great Ring isn't something you need to be familiar with the subtleties of Ring lore. You just have to meet Sauron and take a look at his fingers.

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

• 1600 years had elapsed between the Forging and Pharazon. This was ancient history for the Numenoreans by this point, and one suspects Pharazon had little time for history written in Elvish.

It wouldn't have been *that* ancient history for Númenóreans considering their lifespans but as I said - you don't need ancient Ring lore to realize that the Dark Lord wears a powerful magical artifact.

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

• Isildur - an honest-to-god Faithful Numenorean - didn't know what the One Ring did.

Nobody said that Pharazôn should have understood what the One Ring did - just that it was a powerful artifact he may have wanted to take from Sauron.

But then - if Denethor kind of understands what the One Ring does, so would Pharazôn and Isildur ... or do we imagine that Denethor was more learned than either of them?

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

• The three Numenorean Nazgul are framed with the forumula "it is said." That's the go-to loremaster formula when something is highly uncertain... which suggests that the author of the Akallabeth was reporting rumour, not solid knowledge. 

Well, I'm not defending the knowledge of the author there ... but if he wasn't wrong with that idea, then Pharazôn and his people would have possibly known much more about all that than Elendil. The king would have had access to all the knowledge and lore of Númenor.

And my arguments here are not even remotely based on Pharazôn's own character and personality - the man was a king, surrounded by a council and a court, and many of the men around him would have known things he didn't. The fact that they started a campaign against Sauron means they would have investigated the guy, prepared for the challenge this divine being could pose.

And Sauron himself first had to win the trust of the king before he could run the show and oust rivals and enemies at Pharazôn's court.

I don't buy that nobody would have had a clue what the ring at Sauron's hand might be ... but it would be even harder to swallow to assume that Sauron would risk that somebody might take the Ring from him - or try to take it, since he would likely never permit that. But if it came to blows over this his entire plan to seduce and corrupt the Númenóreans might fail before it had even begun.

[Lord Varys]

10 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

This was also the cataclysm where Meneltarma was rumoured to rise again from the Sea. The destruction of an island that size ought to have taken the mountain with it... but it might not have done. Because we aren't dealing with mundane physics here, but rather something Divine. 

As such, I see no problem with the One Ring (a highly magical thing, hypothetically immune to Ancalagon the Black himself) surviving the Downfall.

I'm not sure how relevant Ancalagon's fire are compared to a divine act?

And isn't there talk that the Meneltarma turned into a volcano during the downfall? If so, how good are the chances that Sauron's Ring escaped its fires?

[Werthead]

The tip of Meneltarma survived the Downfall in The Silmarillion and reportedly persists above the waves (from which someone may glimpse the straight path leading west to Valinor even after the Downfall), so presumably it was not turned into a volcano or destroyed.

[Zorral]

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/feb/20/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-series-race