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Morgoth...

Sauron...

Saruman...

Shelob...

here we can discuss the forces of evil...why they became evil...who influenced them...there goals and intentions...ect...

it seems like many were once good and something influenced them to go over to the side of the darkness...

You guys decide

why shelob, why not ungoliant she is way bigger and more powerful

Morgoth: Became evil by being evil.
Sauron: Used to be a maiar that was twisted by Morgoth.
Saruman: A good wizard gone bad in his attempts to claim the Ring and by Sauron.
Ungoliant: A maiar that was corrrupted by Morgoth and became a giant spider that destroyed the Trees of the Valar.
Shelob: Daughter of Ungoliant, not evil, but hostile

-sauron-you can talk about ungoliant i just put a FEW examples up there...not ALL of the forces of evil...

does anybody know how long saruman was evil?...like when he first became evil?.....

Sauron...i wonder what would have happend if Aule hadn't shown him his smithing talents?...Sauron would have found some other way to enslave the free peoples...

Morgoth:...all he wanted to do was share some of his own music....sure it was a little diferent then Iluvatar's...but so?...he just wanted to make something that he could call his own that people would sing and say:"oh yeah Melkor wrote that one"...but to others it sounded distorted and uncordinated they couldn't except it...you know the rest...eventually Melkor is cast down with some of his followers...and he begins to wreck havoc on Beleriand...no mater how hard the Light side work to rebuild his destruction...he persist to the end...

...it interests me that even after all he did they unchained him for a time...his sly words of deciet that he used so often to trick and insnare people...he used for his freedom he thru around promises and vows...saying he would help them and that he had given up on evil...but can a person realy change?...once they have been corupted?...Gollum seemed to come prety close but he still couldn't he was still evil at heart...Once you have become a vilan...murderer...thief...lyer...ect..is there any hope for you?...can you change?...if you could change would you even WANT to?...now that you have crossed over does the world of light seem to vauge...to distant...i think your mind would be so converted that you might just forget all that you once loved and adored...abandoning reason for madness...so to speak so that your darkness takes over completely..and you don't even want to go back...and then help is beyond YOU...and you must depend on others to bring you back...it is SO VERY easy to become a servant of darkness but its very difficult to come back to the light...
...
...

in regards to Gollum, IMO he never was truly evil from the start, maybe full of malice and mischief but not evil...and quite possibly the reason why Gollum gave in at the end was because more than likely he had no will of his own to overcome his overwhelming desire for the ring...it's like a smoker who wants to quit in a sense...he more or less became a slave to the ring and all his actions and willpower was governed by the ring itself...

As for Morgoth(one of my favorite char. btw)...he truly was not evil but full of pride and the attitude to go with it for the fact that he had a power of each Ainur in the beginning...depending on which version you read of Tolkien's work...he was afterall the mightiest of all the Ainur...And in a way, if I've read the early works and the Sil, and I like to think I did, Morgoth did care for the fate of Arda and of the first born yet to come when he and all the others saw them in the beginning...

Even if he did go about it differently than, say Manwe...But he did care for them in his heart...But again, he was full of pride and jealousy and greed, because in the end he did want to rule all and be the first king of Arda...However, he was not stupid that no matter how powerful he was and what resources and strength he may have, Morgoth knew he was no threat to Eru, so he wanted ME for himself...even if he did forget that no matter what he did or willed, it's source still did come from the one...

which makes you wonder if Eru is evil...

The Valar were capable of great good, but not evil...Morgoth succumbed to being evil and lost all goodness...Iluvatar is capable of encompassing both good and evil at the same time...So the question is, who's the greater evil?

I will or may continue later with Saruman and Sauron...
*fingers tired from typing too much*

Melkor when he was first created was given, like the rest of the Ainur, that which we call "Free Will". That is he could make choices within certain limitations. But when he "sprung from the thought of Iluvatar" he must have had some darkness within him. This darkness can only have come from Iluvatar himself as all that the Ainur were in the begining came from the One. Melkor was not the only Ainu to be possesed of this darkness.

From The Silmarillion: Chapter 6, Of The Unchaining of Melkor.

So we have Manwe who "was free from Evil and could not comprehend it" while Ulmo "was not deceived" and Tulkas who "is slow to forget". Both Ulmo and Tulkas had to have some darkness within to understand the Darkness of Melkor, while Manwe had no darkness as is shown by his complete lack of understanding of Melkor.

So in the beginning, all of the Ainur were of different parts of Iluvatar, some light, some dark, most inbetween. All then had chances to grow and choices of how to grow. Melkor decided to go alone into the Void and to conceive thoughts unlike the rest of the Ainur. This was his choice and the path he chose.

In saying this, he could not have chosen this path unless he had darkness from Iluvatar in the first place, Manwe could not have chosen to walk this as he had not the means of considering it. So they seem to have the opposite ends of Iluvatar's spectrum of thought in Melkor at the Darkest and Manwe at the lightest with all the rest somewhere in between. So Melkor was made in the beginning the greatest of the Ainur and was also given the greatest freedom of action to decide his path. Manwe although only slightly less powerful was given almost no freedom. Then Iluvatar gave the Ainur themes to improvise about, something like a map with a start and an end but no paths. The paths were then given in the Music made by the Ainur. It was at this point that Melkor started to show what he had done with the freedom allowed him by Iluvatar in that he wove into the music discords and thoughts that were not in tune. Iluvatar used Manwe to fight against all that Melkor did.

So in my opinion Melkor was not Evil by Nature, he was dark by nature but had the freedom to choose his path. His darkness would tend to push him toward Evil however. Manwe on the other hand was there to put limits on Melkor, he had no other purpose. When the thoughts of Melkor went too far, Iluvatar would start a new theme using his puppet Manwe.

Conclusion:
Melkor - Dark by nature, Evil by choice.
Manwe - Light by nature, Puppet by no choice.

very good post s-b
it is very interesting that melkor couldn't have had evil unless iluvatar GAVE it to him...why do iluvatar allow evil to happen?hmmm...???very perplexing...

heres another:


Osse the maiar vassal of ulmo, lord of the seas:...

melkor attemted to corrupt him...he promised him ALL the seas that ulmo had control of if he would swear allegiance to Melkor...
As a result osse raised a great tumult in the seas that threatend M:E....
Fortunately Aule...prayed to Uinen...Uinen restrained him and Osse repented to Ulmo...and made a vow to him....
although he still likes to bring up the waves sometimes for mariners for fun...so he still retained some of his evil

Woah such long posts *head hurts*

Hhmm..God/Eru could create a perfect Utopia where a bunch of mindless zombies always did good. Even a good programmer can do that. Instead, Eru created something much more incredible. He created a world where people had free will.

Perhaps Eru did not intentionally MAKE Melkor Evil, he had only darkness within him when he sprung from the mind of Eru, but it doesn't mean that he's Evil..but has the tendency to be Evil. However, I think Eru rather LET him be Evil ( an important thing to remember here is that Eru gave to the Ainur independent wills and thoughts, for he wanted to see his creation grow) He knew what all would happen, but yet he allowed it. Like mortals, we are not meant to know why these things happen. For why did God cast Satan down to Earth rather than destroy him?

It is illogical to assume that good would exist without evil. For can light exist without dark? For everything there is a positive and a negative.

Eru knew that Melkor would wreck havoc upon Middle-Earth and its inhabitants, but he allowed to it. Why you may ask? You might as well ask why do our loved ones die, or why there are mass murders and world wars where women, children, and the elderly are brutally slaughtered. Possibly, to teach us all a lesson which may save us all one day, or to give us an understanding into something that may be worth it for the greater good.

In any case, there is always something bigger and better than us in charge of affairs that we as mortals in our short lives and two-dimensional vision do not comprehend and very likely can't comprehend.

Light and Darkness, Death and Life, each is necessary for the other to exist. I am just thankful that someone who knows much more than me and is greater than us all is in charge. For who are we to question the ways of things that we do not even understand? Light and Darkness, Death and Life, Good and Evil; each must be in balance and each must exist.

Eru let Melkor be evil so that Middle-Earth would become what it was. Without his influence, things would be much different. Better you might say? Perhaps, but we do not know that. Perhaps without the influence of this Vala, a greater evil would have happened that is even way beyond what we could imagine.

i was goin to say what sauron said, ungoloint (drunk spelling), is more cooler, the fat thing never stops eating mwahaha

anyways, Morgoth was said the first evil, i think that is the reson what influenced the others to follow, they thiunk the dark side will always win and they want to have their share of ruling the world once the dark side always wins...however i cant recall a book or movie where this has occured

Discos - drunk, ya dig?

Let's see...I believe these are most of the Maiar enlisted with Melkor/Morgoth, not bred by him.
-Gothmog, Lord of the Balrogs and Captain of Angband
-Ungoliant the great spider, devourer of light
-other Balrogs
-and of course, Sauron

There are, of course, many other forces of Evil, but couldn't necessarily be considered as Maiar like...
-Watchers (various)
-Fellbeasts
-Wereworms of the East
-Great Spiders
-Ordinary Wolves like Carcharoth
-heh..Tevildo the Cat.

I'm not sure whether these are Maiar or not:

-Thuringwethil the Vampire, the "Lady of Shadow"
-other Vampires
-Drauglin the Werewolf, Lord of Tol-in-Gaurhoth

Ungoliant may have been a Maia, but we cannot tell for sure from the brief description. All we really know is that, according to Elf legend, she crept into Arda from the darkness outside (I don't have my books handy, so I can't give the exact quote).

Dragons are said to have been created by Morgoth, but they may have been inhabited by Maia spirits, since Morgoth (as with all the Valar) could not create sentient life himself. Much the same, I should imagine, goes for Vampires and Werewolves.

I would doubt, however that Watchers were Maiar. They seem far more like beasts and, as such, are more likely to have been created and/or corrupted by Morgoth. And as for the great Spiders, even if Ungoliant was a Maia, I very much doubt that her Arda-born offspring would have been.

I'm not sure about the Werewolves, since apparently they were technically bred by Morgoth. Not like orcs, but similar. The werewolves were...
"Werewolves, fell beasts inhabited by dreadful spirits that he (Sauron) had imprisoned in their bodies."
The Silmarillion, "Of Beren and Luthien"
Then again, it could have been Maiar spirits that inhabited their bodies, it could also have been different.

About Vampires, Christopher Tolkien, in one of his notes I tracked down, speculates that "Vampires like Thuringwethil, being thus able to transform into a bat-like creature and fly aloft, were presumably Maiar or some such being." Also, both the Encyclopedia of Arda and Atlas of Middle-Earth (at least relatively respectable volumes of Tolkien, but not written by him) state that the Vampires either were Maiar, or something close to being Maiar.

At the end, we are not sure whether the Vampires and the Werewolves are Maiar or not.

The only Maiar that we can say for sure were persuaded by Morgoth to his cause are, Sauron and the Balrogs. Of the Balrogs, only Gothmog was named, although there are others individually identified (Durin's Bane and the Balrog which Glorfindel (of Gondolin) fought).

As for the other obvious cases, (Orcs, Trolls, Fellbeasts, etc.) I wouldn't explicate them further.

Very touching post s-b...
now to brake it down...

free will...yes that is why there is evil...because the people who are evil chose to be so....and Eru..(or in are world God) didn't enslave his children to do be good...in fact we are all sinners in God's sight...and it is by the grace of Jesus Christ and his death that we are saved and we can come to him....)))but anyway...*ahem*

of course...if there were no evil there couldn't be any good...because we would all be neutral...


evil does exist and you can't escape it...bad things happen...and we want to have reasons...like God is punishing us...or we deserved it...but thats NOT the reason...and some things just don't have all the answers....but we do know that it cannot last forever...and one day we WILL be deliverd eventually...and no mater what there is always something to hold on to thats not worth leting go....


Exactly took the words out of my mouth...we cannot even begin to grasp what happens around us. we see so little of everything and so much of nothing...that what we see seems like thorns and thistles...learn to see the roses and beutifull things in life...



thanks s-b...

Hee..thanks too for the reply.

My head....*pounds head on desk*

kit! NO posts under 1000 caracters!!



lol..j/k

mine to Kit too much to read!!!!

Can't let evil die!!!





Seriously, this is an interesting thread.

EVIL

I always wondered about the "goals and intentions", as Smodden said it, of Evil - ok for Morgoth it's quite clear, he wants might, he wants power, he wants to rule the world. Same for Sauron.
But why? Why the hell are there always people who want to rule?? Is there any personal advantage for them when they are the Lord over Lands they have never seen, they never went to, that aren't even paying taxes?? Is this ambition?

I also wonder what the personal goal of, for example, Dragons or Balrogs is, besides surviving. Why do they fight in battles?
Because they are commanded to do so?
They fight neither for plain surviving nor for freedom nor for so-called justice nor for anything they admire, they fight just for their Lord though they probably hate him.
Is it fun for them to kill?

have we discussed about Ungoliant?

she became evil simply because of Melkor offering her some fatty foods

at least she does have a reason ^^ SHINEY!

... unlike for example Dragons (ok they want gold but why kill random soldiers when there would be so pretty fortresses and treasuries? - obviously it took the dragons until the end of the second or even the third age to realize that ) or the already-named Balrogs.

lol yep shiney stars and trees......fatty

cool my kinda thread .... EVIL

ladygrim, you read the Silmarillion?

Ungoliant was a fat beast

Discos - like my mother-in-law....*drum roll*

It isn't very clear how Ungoliant fits in

on my way to brought it the other day

To answer this specifically in Sauron's case, perhaps he suffered from the "Why am *I* not a Vala?" complex. The Maiar were, after all, of the same race as the Valar, albeit somewhat lesser in stature. I would assume that, the nature of evil being what it is and always will be, the evil Maiar are always scheming to take the place of the big evil Vala, Morgoth. And when Morgoth was finally defeated, Sauron took his place, naturally. But, wouldn't there still be the same complex within him, the fear of others attempting to usurp his position, as he took over Morgoth's?

Did Sauron not believe, in this vein of thought, that whoever had the One Ring would come against him in open war, wielding the Ring, as Sauron would have done? I wonder if this inspired fear in him, just as Morgoth knew fear and preferred not to face his enemies head on. It is thoughts like this that make me admire Aragorn all the more for revealing himself at an important juncture to Sauron through the palantir. A masterstroke of misdirection! For Aragorn was the one person in Middle Earth that Sauron could believe would come against him.

Another thought on why Sauron does what he does: evil impulse is part of a desire to supplant the One God, Eru, to impose one's own will as a supreme being. Thus, evil will seek to create thralls that reinforce the primacy of the evil "creator."

Another thing...I think I'm stoned again by saying this buuuutttt.....

I believe that Sauron was still acting on instruction from Melkor, whether or not he realised it.

There are supposedly the six attempts by Melkor on dominion of the world; the First War, the primeval one, across the earliest aeons of the creation of the world whereby he fell into evil -- evil that became a part of the very substance of the universe -- and whereby the Spring of Arda was ended; the second time, when he re-entered Arda and built Utumno (culminating in the Battle of the Powers); his escape from Valinor and the Beleriandic Wars against Angband, ended in the War of Wrath; the long Second and Third Age wars waged by the Free Peoples against Sauron; and the Dagor Dagorath, which I suspect is designed to be made possible through Men, and which either way hasn't actually happened yet.

This seems to imply that Sauron was indeed, as he believed, acting for himself when he tried to conquer Middle-Earth (and nearly succeeded). Ultimately, though, I believe he was acting through Morgoth's influence; his residual power in the world, his unbreakable connection with it and with Sauron that existed beyond the Walls of Night.

I don't believe there was direct communication between the two, but it is probable that Melkor was able to use/support Sauron and fuel him on. Sauron's urging of the Numenoreans to worship Melkor, however

seems to imply that Sauron remained faithful to his old lord. Certainly he was doing what Morgoth would like him to have done, and it would make him proud.

More coming...my mom is calling me.

Wow....good thinkng!

Very interesting idea, that would explain a lot sounds logical
Though it kinda in contradiction to the second idea - except if Sauron is indeed a really interesting and deep character. I think it's difficult to combine the wannabe-Vala-complex with remaining faithful to his old Valian lord ~ would form a very complex characterization of Sauron.

I totally agree with the second part
That he remains faithful is quite clear, but I also think that he really acted on Melkor's instruction more or less directly - both because of Melkor's earlier influence and also his always-present manipulation of Mortals' ideas and convictions.

It is made clear that the Archangels were "greater beyond compare" than any maiar, even those like Sauron. "Somewhat lesser" does not touch on it.

Wasn't the point about Sauron being bad to do with his not being faithful to Aule who was his proper master - any other role is improper whether or not it should resemble loyalty There was another maiar, (of Ulmo) who was mislead by Melkor and had his proper place restored by his resuming his place under the proper archangel

I think that the point is that evil is futile and unfulfiling

I think the point is that loyalty is very clearly defined - Melkor is a ne'erdowell therefore loyalty to him is a bad thing, hence doesn't count as loyalty

Why am *I* not a vala?

Interesting point, there...

But how mighty can it get?...Is there a point where it becomes SO mighty that the evil cannot be reversed?...or be defeated? Is there a line you cross where you can't turn back? I suppose Melkor crossed that line...And was beyond help, but nobody ever realy TRIED to help him...so we'll never know...*shrugs*

Sauron was too at the end of the First Age.

This is just a random post, not replying to any other posts, but I'm sooo bored and I wanted to write something so...

Morgoth was recorded as the most powerful of the Valar.

Power begs for corruption. It went to Morgoth's head and created within him the desire to be even more powerful. This need for strength is sated somewhat by dominating others, and that is exactly what Morgoth did, by corrupting the elves and creating his own little minions to do his bidding.

After that, it's only natural that he would want to dominate everyone else as well.

As for Sauron, well, one of his names was Thu, and if I had that name, I'd be evil too. (*ba-doom-ching!*)

Pride, greed, hubris...

Which, although it is a natural desire in Tolkien's opinion, both Melkor and Sauron take to extremes. Both are motivated by pride and a lust to take everything to themselves. Sauron is more of a possessor, but Morgoth, discovering that he can never rival the creations of Eru, turns to destruction and perversion. In the end he has no real goal other than to torture, warp and destroy the work of all those who hold Eru as the ultimate authority. Sauron resents Eru much less, but allows his pride and will to dominate to take complete control of his actions.

What caused Melkor and Sauron to end up the way they did?

A growing bitterness and greed that translate into a selfish desire for domination through violence. No sense of moderation.


Um...yeah.

now when you ay most powerfull - what part of strength to you mean?

Because if it's physical am sure it was proven that Tulkas was most strong,

powerfull as in having powers over others - then I agree with ya there