• pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      So there were five godlike beings sent to fight Sauron. Only one of them did his job.

      I need to reword it.

      You are the big cool powerful god. One of your servants, a minor much less powerful god does bad things to the world. So you send five your other servants just as powerful as the bad one to deal with him.

      A lot of time passes. Three of those spend their time chilling. One joins the bad one. The last one turns out too weak. Who solves the problem? Four hobbits.

      You really should reconsider your politics after that.

      • WillBalls@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        To be fair, the istari were diminished Maiar who weren’t allowed to use their full power, and Sauron was a full Maia with no qualms about flexing his true strength.

        Had Manwë been given the license to send just Eönwë, then Sauron would’ve been rekt in a year tops

      • ditty@lemm.ee
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        3 hours ago

        Do we know that the Istari who go east were just chilling? I thought they were trying to rally men in the east to fight Sauron. They might even have fought some of his troops in the far off east during the Battle of the Black Gate? Or were those just fan theories and never actually confirmed?

        • WillBalls@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          There’s no exact details given for what the blue wizards (the two in the east) were up to. Tolkien only said they were sewing dissent against Sauron

      • root_beer@midwest.social
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        20 hours ago

        Isn’t much of the power of the Maiar in diplomacy and setting events in motion? Gandalf was as much of an interloper and manipulator as he was anything else, and his hiring Bilbo as a thief was the penultimate piece of his mission, as inadvertent as I’m not entirely sure it was. Right? No, really, I’m kinda asking, I don’t know for sure.

        • WillBalls@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          As stated in unfinished tales, Gandalf didn’t know that Bilbo would find the ring on the adventure. He originally wanted to help Thorin since having dwarves in the lonely mountain would prevent Sauron from attacking Gondor and Lothlórien from the north. The ring finding it’s way to Gollum and then Bilbo was almost definitely due to slight meddling from Eru (just as Gollum’s death was due to Eru loosening the rocks under his feet) so Gandalf could orchestrate the fellowship’s journey.

      • boydster@sh.itjust.works
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        16 hours ago

        Wait till you learn about Melkor! He’s a Vala, or one of the Valar, which is a higher order than the Maiar, and was basically super-Sauron from the before times