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Elves and Maiar scaling

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NaturalDestroyer

NaturalDestroyer

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It seems confusing that several elves are rated as comparable to the Valar, while the strongest Maiar are vastly beneath them. Gothmog killed Feanor, but is only 6-B? Why doesn't he scale? Why doesn't Sauron scale? Or Unrestricted Gandalf? If Fingolfin fighting Morgoth is valid, which it obviously is, it seems that there is some serious Maiar downplay going on here.
 
Well, you can follow my earlier instructions regarding asking people knowledgeable about the verse to comment here.

Azathoth might also be able to help out.
 
allow me to give an answer:


The world of Tolkein is a world determined by the force of will of the individuals.


While the spirits, or Ainur, are beings of great power from birth, The childrens of Eru, or the mortal races, are not so lucky.


Humans in the middle earth are generally on the level of normal humans on our earth, elves are superhumans, but nothing more, and dwarfs are dwarfs.


However, Unlike the Ainur, the childrens of Eru have the capability of augmenting themselves into unbelieveable hights, due to their force of will.


The ainur as well can be augmented by it, but the childrens of eru, spesifically elves and humans, reach unimagineable hights under pressure and with great force of will.


For example, with his great will, Sauron managed to augment himself to reach beyond his limits, becoming strongest maiar, stronger even then end of first age morgoth.


However, Fingolfin, with sheer force of will, ascended to near Vala level and matched Morgoth in power for a while.


Feanor, in his fanatic endeavors, did the impossible and caught the light of the two trees inside of gems, andlater fought against an entire squad of Balrogs, driving them away from him.


Ecthelion, an elven lord, drawned Gothmog, a Balrog, to death.


And there are many other examples for that.


However, humans are even more amazing:


Beren fought with his bare hands against Vampires and werewolves, all of whom were low maiar in level, and lasted in the dungeons longer then the king of the NOLDOR!

Tuor fought and killed elves with royal noldorian blood, has been known as one of the strongest soldiers of Gondolin, who's been a city populated by noldorian elves, defeated a dragon on his own, spoke to god older then existence itself, and even won their trust and became immortal, first and only human to achive such a state.


Hurin was the last man standing in battle of uncounted tears, staying behind to let the elves run away for their lives, and stopped an entire army of orcs on his own.


By the end of the day, the BALROGS had to come, and climb over the mountain of corps he stood over to catch him alive.


His son, Turin, constantly overpowered first age elves, beat fully equiped high elves while being bare handed, casually outrun them by jogging, killed humans by tossing pebbles at them, took on entire armies on his own, became the supreme general of a noldorian army, and eventually even killed Galurong, the first Dragon of the middle earth.


Earnedil, which was related to pretty much all of them in blood, including to fingolfin, managed to take on Ancalagon and kill the behemoth. Said monster was a dragon who was so big that his sheer size crashed an entire mountain range, with each mountain being 10KM in hight, far higher then mount everest itself!


For more "recent" examples, Isildur used sheer force of will to force immortality over an entire nation, dooming them to become wraiths and ghousts for all eternity, or until they would fulfill the promise they gave him.


Elendil managed to, alongside Gil Galad, overthrow and beat Sauron himself in a hand to hand combat, and said Sauron was Sauron after his made the ring, so he was even stronger then usual.


Aragorn managed to wrestle control over a palantir from Sauron, using his force of will and right of inheritence.


Sam was able to overpower the ring, leave it dumbfounded, and stroll through mordor, defeating an entire legion of highly trained orcs.

and he is a HOBBIT.


Force of will is the defining factor here.


For maiar and Valar, force of will exists, but not very active.


It is most likely due to their initial great strengh, which causes them to be quite slow.


Hence why Gandalf is without a doubt the maiar with the greatest force of will, after walking through the earth for so long in a human form, being subjected to human weakness and to the hardships of life.


He obtain such a great force of will through his great trials.


Many, if not ALL of those great childrens of eru obtained such a great deal of will power either by the trials they went through, or achived it through the years due to their fierce intelligence, and other reasons.


Defentially the person with the greatest force of will in the entire history of Arda would be Fingolfin, who not only left Valinor after his brother, but he left it through Helcaraxë, essentially super antarctica, while leading an entire nation through this frozen desert, and eventually, when he arrived at the middle earth, after years there, when he finally confronted morgoth, his rage and will was so fierce, that it was able to rival the aura and pressure a vala would give, and so everyone, including morgoth himself, assumed one of the valar decided to show up to face morgoth once and for all.


Force of will is a supplementary for power in lotr.

The greater the force of will, the greater the superhuman, unnatural feats one could do.
 
That's not entirely true, some scaling has to be done. As Tolkien himself explained in his Letter 246.

On facing a Sauron weakened by the loss of the One Ring, Tolkien is adamantine:

In his actual presence none but very few of equal stature could have hoped to withhold it from him. [...] Confrontation of Sauron alone, unaided, self to self was not contemplated.
So no Man or Elf and very few even among the ealar!

Some beings like Sauron, are so vastly above others no amount of willpower can bridge the gap. On mastering the One Ring, Tolkien said it corrupts immortals and mortals alike, and the mortals would have fallen undoubtedly subservient to Sauron's will

Of 'mortals'no one, not even Aragorn. Of the others only Gandalf might be expected to master him ― being an emissary of the Powersand a creature of the same order, an immortal spirit taking a visible physical form. In the 'Mirror of Galadriel', 1381, it appears that Galadriel conceived of herself as capable of wielding the Ring andsupplanting the Dark Lord. If so, so also were the other guardians of the Three, especially Elrond. But this is another matter. It was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power.


On why Sam was able to temporarily bear the One Ring power: the things on which the One Ring would have relied to corrupt him were the same that already brought Sam on his - so, ineluctable - course of action.

Sam is meant to be lovable and laughable. Some readers he irritates and even infuriates. I can well understand it. All hobbits at times affect me in the same way, though I remain very fond of them. But Sam can be very 'trying'. He is a more representative hobbit than any others that we have to see much of; and he has consequently a stronger ingredient of that quality which even some hobbits found at times hard to bear: a vulgarity — by which I do not mean a mere 'down-toearthiness' — a mental myopia which is proud of itself, a smugness (in varying degrees) and cocksureness, and a readiness to measure and sum up all things from a limited experience, largely enshrined in sententious traditional 'wisdom'. [...] Sam could hardly have acted differently.


And Gandalf is not the greatest Istari because of his "humanity", but because he is humble. It is clearly stated by Manwe in the Silmarillion. It was his humbleness that made Gandalf refuse the ring and so saved the world from the rise of a second Dark Lord (or a third if we count Saruman). Always from Letter 246:

But the Ring and all its works would have endured. It would have been the master in the end. Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for 'good', and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great).
 
thank you for your comment.


Now, I do have a few things I want to say though:


1. Sauron, unlike Melkor, did not exactly "spread" his powers onto other things. Saruman was a fool, and did exactly that, resulting in him losing a lot of his powers, when he terraformed Isengard. And Melkor spent so much of his power, that by the end of the first age he was weaker then Sauron with the one ring.

However, Sauron was no fool.

Sauron knew not to weaken himself on purpose.

The ring is an ancour, and while he is in possesion of it, it strengthen him. However, it's absence does not WEAKEN him.

Third age sauron, barring his shapeshifting ability that was lost after the fall of Numenor, was on an equal footing as his former self in the first age.

The ring never took away power from him, just gave him additional power.


And as we know for a fact that a decent number of 1st age elven lords were more then capable of fighting against someone of his level, we can say for sure that there are amongst the Eldar those who can defeat him.

Fingolfin gravely wounded Morgoth, who at the time was still on the level of a Vala, light-years beyond the likes of Sauron.

Feanor fought against an entire legion of Balrogs, and drove them away in his madness.

Ecthalion killed Gothmog, who was the physically superior between the generals of Angband, and he did so while wounded, and after fighting a dragon with Tuor.

Earnedill Slew Ancalagon the Black, who was stated to be the mightiest of all of Morgoth's servants.

Luthien and Huan single handedly beat Sauron up, and Huan, while a mighty spirit, was not even a maia, let along a vala, and Luthien was a "mere" half maia half elven royalty.

Finrod Felagund, before Luthien and Huan, fought alone against Sauron, and they were mostly evenly matched.


By the time of the third age, the reason non could contest with him is that non of the great elves remained.

Cirdan, Galadriel and Elrond were all mighty and powerful, but even Galadriel, who was of Noldorian royalty, by that time was already old and weakened, and to begin with was never a true match to her siblings and other great family members.


Even without the ring, Sauron was the mightiest being in Arda at the third age, simply because all of the great mortals have passed away long ago, and non of the immortal spirits who could contest with him remained in this realm.


However, in the first age?

And before?

Sauron was not very impressive for many.


Sure, he was terrifying, and great in power, but his biggest strength was that he knew the limits of his power, and relied on his intelligence and sharp mind to win, rather then stregth, as the first age was full of people of equal, and greater statur of his.


The third age was when non could contest him but very few, and even they would lose in his presence, such as Gandalf and Galadriel.


with falling to the ring, again, only in the third age.

Before, in, for example, the first age, the power of the will was so great that a "mere elf" managed to wound the mightiest of the Valar!

This is a feat beyond anything Sauron can even scale to, honestly.


2. I agree about Sam, but you have to remember: his humbleness, stubborness, dumbness, and his undying loyalty to Frodo, all accumulated in a fierce mind and a near unbreakable force of will, which played a great rule in overcoming, even if temporarily, the effects of the ring and it's corruption.


3. Gandalf is not the mightiest Istari period.

That is Saruman.

Gandalf was, if not the weakest, on the weaker side of them.

Olorin as well was a relatively weak maia, and a coward, that it.


He was humble because he understood his weakness, and the fact that his brain and empathy are his biggest weapons.


He was an advisor to the elves in secret, and was used to travel long distances across all of Arda, unseen.

He was never meant to be sent, but was sent anyway by Manwe's order with the other four to act as a sort of a balancing force, the same as Radagast, who was sent as a balancing force that was supposed to calm Saruman.


When Gandalf returned as Gandalf the White, as he said himself, "I am Saruman".

He recived the powers and position Saruman held, with a slight boost.


He won such a power from Eru by showing his bravery, and his resolve to the mission, and not for his humility.


As of the ring, yes, his humility did play a major rule here.


He was humble enough to understand his place in the world.

He was terrified from Sauron's power and might, and he knew very well that he could never truely control the ring, and it would corrupt him if he ever attempted to lay a finger on it.


What took Galadriel a long time and preperation, took Gandalf only a split second of thought, which is what distinguished him from the rest of the Istari, and from the rest of the characters.

But this is not the reason he became so powerful, and ended up being the mightiest being in all of Arda, after Sauron.

The reason, again, was his resolve and loyalty to the cause.

And this resolve and loyalty came from someplace.


and it's his humanity.


Gandalf is the most human character in all of the Legendarium, in my opinion, and it is to be expected, considering how long he has been amongst humans.


His love for the hobbits, his love for his life, and for the simple things around him, for humanity, for the middle earth, for all of the livings, and his very human traits, were the thing that caused him to be so loyal.

Even as the Maia Olorin, he was very much human, more so then any of them.


After all, his adventures in the middle earth did not start with him as Gandalf, but he did so for Eons before they sent him.

He lived side by side with mortals, gave them council, helped them in their trials, and learned their ways.


At the same time, he learned from the wise Neinna grief, mercy and humility, and from the wise Irmo about dreams, desires and passion.


He was defentially the most human of them, and understood very well the world around him, which also led to his humility and wisdom, which in turn led to his great force of will, bravery, and his ability to refuse, at least initially, to the temptation of the ring.
 
Okay. Is somebody willing to handle the updates?
 
Maybe the pages are admin-locked? If you write a list of all the exact page titles, my automatic script can temporarily unlock them for you to edit.
 
I think Eru should scale all the powers of the Ainur since it's pretty clear they are only fragments of his thoughts:

and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought [...] each comprehended only that part of me mind of Il├║vatar from which he came
and

Then Il├║vatar spoke, and he said: 'Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Il├║vatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'
At the very least he should scale Death Manipulation, Healing, Intangibility, Invulnerability, Precognition and Resistance to Death Manipulation. Mandos should have Resurrection since he granted Beren a second life and Eru should scale that too. Finally, Eru should have Type 5 Acausality, since Eru Iluvatar simply is, being eternal, immortal and unchanging, and no one on Ea and Arda can normally interact with him since everything in Arda is just a fragment of Eru's mind:

He had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Il├║vatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness. Yet he found not the Fire, for it is with Il├║vatar.
The Ainur too, as extensions of Eru's mind that predates Ea, Arda, time and space, should all be Type 4 Acausalities.
 
If the Ainur are just part of his thoughts, Eru should probably have their abilities, yes.

I don't think that concepts such as acausality have ever been referred to in TLOTR mythology, and we cannot base the statistics on speculation or guesswork.
 
Count Vlad III dracula said:
well, for starters, change the age of the Ainur.
They are not as old as the universe, they predated it.


Secondly....


Well, I guess it's fine, generally?
Click to expand...
1) The Ainur do predate the universe, but there physical bodies are as old as the universe. They entered at the very begining and have been there ever since

2) Does that mean no more revision threads? At least not till NaturalDestroyer comes back. That would be great.
 
@MasterOfArda

Are you willing to update Eru's profile?
 
Sure.

So, just to be clear, Eru should be:

Sleep Manipulation, Magic, Air Manipulation, Forcefield Creation, Clairvoyance, Healing, Summoning, Elemental Manipulation, Empathic Manipulation, Precognition, Fire Manipulation, Non-Physical Interaction, Telekinesis, Transmutation, Weather Manipulation, Air Manipulation, Matter Manipulation, Illusion Creation, Time Stop, Spatial Manipulation, Light Manipulation, Water Manipulation, Weather Manipulation, Healing, Intangibility, Invulnerability, Conceptual Manipulation, Willpower Manipulation, Immortality (Type 1), all the powers of the Ainur

Should he also have Resistance to all the powers of the Ainur (As they are his creations and it is made clear repeatedly that they can't hurt him at all), Type 5 Immortality (As he created the very concept of death), Higher-Dimensional Exsntence/Manipulation (As he created the Timeless Halls), and Void Manipulation/Existence Erasure (As he allowed Turambar to permanently destroy Morgoth).
 
I suppose that seems fine. I will unlock the page for you.
 
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