Amph One Thread To Rule Them All: The Rings of Power + The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings Trilogies

There better be some Fall of Gondolin manuscripts that the public is unaware of.

 

It's no different than the Children of Hurin, an extension of the narrative given in the Silmarillion.

Alas, the Fall of Gondolin was never fully finished as far as I'm aware. The only part that was extended to Hurin or Beren length was Tuor's finding of Gondolin, which is in Unfinished Tales. It ends very abruptly with no conclusion whatsoever, ending long before the fall even starts.

It's a real shame, as the Gondolin story was my favourite non-Numenor part of the Sil.

 

I'm still sad we never really got any detail about Earendil, his voyage, or the War of Wrath. There's even less about that than there is about Gondolin.
(I would have also liked to have known more about Dior, son of Beren and Luthien, father of Elwing, king of Doriath at its fall... but Dior seems to usually be forgotten, despite also having a compelling story.)

 

A good writer could come up with a whole series of books about Earendil and his voyages. It could have been a LotR style Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which is my favorite Narnia book).

 

Haha, that much bigger than Smaug? I know it's just fantasy anyway, but that almost seems silly to suggest that an animal that large would be able to fly (or to eat enough to stay alive).

 

So...what exactly are the Grey Havens?

 

The ports where the ships leave to go to Valinor.






Valinor is the earth-like paradise where the "Angels" (good Ainur) directly dwell and rule, as well as many Elves. What Middle Earth would have been if it wasn't for Melkor and his underlings like Sauron.


(this is the short version, anyways)

 

That's because it is silly, they never actually pin down Ancalagon's size.

 

And yet, the scale of the thing is just... *shudders* I mean, looking back at the destructive capacity of Smaug, who was able to raze whole cities and kingdoms like a nuclear warhead (minus the radiation, but still), I can't even grasp the utter disaster that would follow Ancalagon. Whole countries annihilated? Continents sundered? All the glories of the first Ages aren't compensation enough for the risk factor. Give me the War of the Ring any day over facing such abominations...

 

Didn't Tolkien pin down Thangorodrim as being 3 peaks of Everest-like proportions? We know Ancalagon's falling body shattered those mountains at least.

 

He broke some towers and some mountain tops, Ancalagon is all hype. He is the circa-1995 Rob Liefeld of Tolkien monsters.

 

Yeah, that's why we know Ancalagon had to be huge, if just his deadweight falling down was enough to destroy 3 Everest-like mountains.

 

But would even Smaug be able to damage like that to mountains? Also, wasn't Ancalagon's fire hot enough that it could destroy the other rings of power? I don't think even Smaug could do that.

 

Nothing in Tolkien ever broke stuff bigger than itself while dying.

Except for basically everything doing that constantly.

No, any dragon could destroy a ring of power, "not even Ancalagon" could wreck the One Ring. I'm telling you folks he's overrated.

 

Thangorodrim:

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Thangorodrim


The exact size and height of Thangorodrim are unclear, though they were said to have been the tallest mountains in Middle-earth. One drawing by Tolkien illustrated in Karen Wynn Fonstad's The Atlas of Middle-earth, if drawn to scale, would have made each mountain 35,000 ft high and five miles across, and the statement that it lay 150 leagues (450 Númenórean miles) north of Menegroth puts it too far away for some of the action in The Silmarillion to make sense; a distance of 150-200 miles would have been more consistent. It is possible that with the higher figure Tolkien was not referring to 'as the eagle flies', but rather 'as the wolf runs': the plateau of Dorthonion forced a long detour, which added the extra 200, 250 miles to the distance.[8]

 

?

We're talking about three mountains. Crushed just by him falling on them. Meaning he was at least big enough to cover 3 mountains when he fell.

These three mountains in the north:

The Silmarillion also says Ancalagon and the winged dragons were on the verge of defeating the Valar, before Earendil arrived. Defeating the Valar, which even Morgoth and all his Balrogs could never do before.

 

Some dragons. Not all.

Silmarillion

It is said that the foundation of each of the Seven Hoards of the Dwarf-kings of old was a golden ring; but all those hoards long ago were plundered and the Dragons devoured them, and of the Seven Rings some were consumed in fire and some Sauron recovered.

LoTR

"Your small fire, of course, would not melt even ordinary gold. This Ring has already passed through it unscathed, and even unheated. But there is no smith's forge in this Shire that could change it at all. Not even the anvils and furnaces of the Dwarves could do that. It has been said that dragon-fire could melt and consume the Rings of Power, but there is not now any dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot enough; nor was there ever any dragon, not even Ancalagon the Black, who could have harmed the One Ring, the Ruling Ring, for that was made by Sauron himself.
There is only one way: to find the Cracks of Doom in the depths of Orodruin, the Fire-mountain, and cast the Ring there, if you really wish to destroy it, to put it beyond the grasp of the Enemy forever."

 

Yeah he needed backup like the punk-ass dragon he was. Sad!

Also I like that the size argument has shifted from "It's not specified" to "He's definitely as big as these three mountains [size unspecified]."

 

1. We're not a hive-mind
2. Those mountains were said to be the biggest in all Middle Earth

 

One way of looking at it - Ancalagon was to Thangorodrim what Smaug was to Lake Town. If we use Peter Jackson's length of Smaug (a little over 60m) and width of Lake Town (possibly obtainable from behind the scenes material?) then you can apply it to the Thangorodrim complex (on the order of 15 miles in diameter).

 

No, but speaking as a collection of bees orchestrating our collective will to be contrary about The Silmarillion I think I technically am.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. I'm also still not sure why the assumption has to be that deadweight crushed all three mountains given the actual text

Let's compare this bit where the Balrog dies.

We don't usually assume the Balrog is as big as a mountainside.

 

So... What would everyone here think of an akallabeth movie or miniseries? You could have conflict between the faithful and kingsmen. Some awesome battle scenes, Sauron in humanoid form. Ending with the exiles reaching middle earth and before that having Eru smack down the numenorians.

 

Yes, but on condition that insufficiently restrained, frazzled post-BotFA Peter Jackson directs, resulting in lots of pointlessly long action sequences and tonally dissonant scenes of decapitations played for comedy, arguably making a ruin of the source material even if it's technically a faithful adaptation.

This is the only condition on which I will accept any Silmarillion adaptation, for the record.

 

It's that he broke three mountains (the biggest in their world), at once, as he fell once killed. That's pretty big.

 

I heard in an Interview that Peter Jackson might direct a Simarillion Trilogy, (Or... Severaal Trilogies would be more fitting) Hopefully then we could see a bit more of Ancalagon's power.