What did the non-One Rings actually do? Like I get that Sauron used them to fuck with everyone...

They contain the Light that was, the Light that SHOULD illuminate the world.
The sun and moon are pale imitations that ware made as a replacement

Imagine it like an exponent after your power level, or like a magnifying glass.

>power level of a hobbit: 2
2^2=4 so thats a strong hobbit... but even that isnt very potent. Hence it doesnt do much
Sauron power level = 1,000
1000^2 = 1,000,000 so thats kinda how it works.

It turbocharges your natural abilities and makes you the best you can be.

They are essentially incorruptible pure energy gems that can destroy anything even remotely evil.

They're very shiny.

They're REALLY shiny.

I don't think you get how shiny they are.

They are like....really pretty.

They're INCREDIBLY shiny.

S H I N Y
H
I
N
Y

They have a modest luminescent property, or so I have been told.

I'm calling bullshit... nothing could be THAT shiny.

Everyone in the Tolkien universe is basically a magpie, and the SIlmarils were basically the shiniest shinies around.

They were so shiny that they turned most people who looked at them insane which indirectly caused the destruction to Beleriand.

this. it's like a glimpse of heaven, this state of perfection as the world was intended. Basically, it was just this little window into true bliss and happiness in the universe.

...So it's tits?

The one that Elrond had allowed him to control the river that ran by Rivendell. When Aragorn and the 4 hobbits were trying to get away from the Nazgul, Elrond caused the river to flood.

Perfect, divine tits.

So how bad did Shadow of Mordor/War fuck with the lore? I don't know much about it, but it's all /v/ seems to talk about

>when your mortal mind literally cannot comprehend true beauty and can only make vague comparisons to the fat deposits on your own body

You know when you fight in the Breastriary in Nippopolis and you win, but she never shows her rocking tits. Well, the Simarils are her tits user.

It fucks with the lore more than Peter Jackson did. Basically, it is better to ignore everything that happens in those games.

>that can destroy anything even remotely evil
Ultimate evil guy wore them on his head for centurys

too evil

even the first one?

Think about how good you felt when you stared at that one girl that was completely out of your league and when she looked up you just had conveniently looked away or had a reason to look nearby anyway. Now put that feeling into some real fuckin shiny gems and have fucking God amplify the shit out of it. That's what looking at them is like.

On a scale of 1 to Tauriel?

Don't know much, but what I heard was:

>Celebrimbor never stole the One Ring and build an orc army before dying.
>Shelob was just a smart evil spider.
>The falls of the Black Gate and Minas Ithil happened centuries before The Hobbit (while the games are set between that and LoTR)
>Isidurl and that Harmer...something King were never Nazguls, they died long after/before (can't remember) it was a thing

Not as bad as the 2nd one, but still yes.

They preserve whatever the wearer cares about the most. For dwarves, it's their piles of treasure. For elves, it's their homes which they must protect from millennia worth of erosion and other natural forces (this is why elves had to fuck off in the fourth age even though the good guys won. The Three Rings stopped working and the only place left immune to time was Aman.) For men, it's their own lives, which is why the Nine Rings turned them into wraiths instead of letting them pass on naturally. Hobbits are a subspecies of men, so the One Ring had a similar effect on Gollum and Bilbo, "stretching out" their lives. Hobbits would also like to be left alone, please, which is why the ring makes them invisible.

The nazgul were a thing well before Isildur, but it's true that he was never a wraith. He lost the One Ring and was killed, after which point he was simply dead.

Have they ever been put on an ork? Or an animal?

Well if they're on his head then how is he going to look at them directly then, huh? That's the safest place he could possibly put them.

No. Orcs aren't big on caring about things, even themselves, and so might not get much out of hacing a ring. Normal animals probably wouldn't register that they had a magic thing, and intelligent animals have a weird place in Tolkien's metaphysics and there's no telling what would happen.

They burn evil on contact, and fucked his hands up bad, but they couldn't harm him from his iron crown except by causing him neck problems because he was too obsessed with the gems to ever take it off. Its canon.

Putting the ring on an orc would probably engender it with the sort of nihilistic destructive nature typical of Melkor himself, on a much smaller scale.

They were responsible for halting or at least slowing the decline of magic in the world.
It was sold to the elves as a method of protecting their lands and keeping them magical and to be fair the rings did just that.
However all the rings that Sauron helped make were also designed to take control of the persons mind and to obey sauron so when they were eventually given out to high ranking elves Sauron could keep the world magical while controlling the most powerful and magical beings in that world.
The elves eventually figured out what was going on and refused to wear Sauron's rings and luckily for them 3 rings were made in secret from Sauron and were able to do their job preserving magic in elven kingdoms without mind control affects.
The rings now without wearers were given to the other races so they would have other uses.
The rings given to dwarves caused insane greed in them and also caused them to have ridiculous amounts of luck at mining and expanding their wealth.
All of this would eventually allienate themselves from all their potential allies and cause dragons to flock to these ring based hordes which lead to the downfall of their race.
The rings given to the most powerful human kingdoms would similarly cause doom to those civilizations while also turning their wearers into immortal wraiths as the thing humans feared most was mortality.

After the one ring is destroyed all rings lose their power and as they were the last hope of holding magic in middle earth all magic rapidly begins to vanish which is why the Elves leave middle earth.

Yes but it's explicitly non-canon or only canon to the movies at best. Still like the games though.

>the Light that SHOULD illuminate the world
The Trees are ad hoc bullshit, the light that shoulda lit the world was the Lamps.

Trust me, they're really freaking SHINY.

Well, all of them seemed to confer invisibility, and a general idea to see far off in both distance and time. They also seemed to be helpful in controlling other wills. They most definitely extend the posessor's lifespan if they're mortal.

The Elven rings had some kind of power to delay or at least alter the natural decay and change with the passage of time, Lorien felt like Valinor becuase of what Galadriel was doing with Nenya.

The Dwarven rings had an ability to "make gold, but they needed gold to breed gold", probably some way of making your general businesses succeed.

No, Gandalf knew it was one of the Great Rings "almost from the start", owing to Bilbo's obvious lie about how he got it.

They were concentrations of the pure Light of creation.

That is not true at all; powers like invisibility work equally well for Isildur as for a hobbit.

It's not clear that Vilya is what gave Elrond that ability. Elves have quite a bit of innate magic.

>What did the non-One Rings actually do?
They make you "more."

I've always thought of Vilya as being a great source of magic since it's one of the only named rings where we know something that was done by the wearer. You can create and name enchanted rings in the Elder Scrolls vidya, and I always made a ring that gave me limitless magic and called it Vilya.

I'm not sure how credible this is but I remember reading this somewhere on Veeky Forums
>Elven Rings prolonged the lives of the Elves
>Dwarven Rings helped the Dwarves mass wealth
>Human Rings let them hide even from Death, to some they appeared invisible though their evil aura could be sensed
>Bilbo (and following him, Frodo) while in possession of the Ring lived his extended life and incredibly wealthy.

I’ve always understood that the 2 elven rings basically allowed Lorien & Rivendell to remain unmolested & magical well into the third age, Long after every other elven location in middle earth declined. I mean thranduils Hall basically was done by LOTR time right? The only other elven area was the grey havens, which isn’t even really described and is basically just a harbor

I was under the understanding that was ulmo's doing, given the connection between the valar, horses and the sea

>Putting the ring on an orc would probably engender it

I read that as "transgender it" and with your picture it totally made sense that they would try to look cute to make sauronii-chan notices them like he wanted melkor to notice him.

Why did Gandalf take so long to get the plot moving? Wasn't it like 40 years in the book.

They were made with the light of the sacred trees, and when Melkor and whatshername slayed the trees, they were the last of a beautiful light that the Valar thought was the most beautiful thing, and caused Feanor to go into jealous rage, that along with the Kinslaying, they are the most beautiful and most hideous gems in all of existence at the same time.

The One Ring allowed Sauron to influence and control the bearers of the other Great Rings as well as multiply his power and influence over Middle-Earth itself.

What even happened to Ungoliant after she tried snacking on melkor? He fled, but how did she die?

He didn't say and it was left open to interpretation, though Tolkien implied she ate herself out of her insatiable hunger

Except for the Three, because Sauron didn't have any direct hand in creating them, I recall.

He wasn't directly involved in making them, but Celebrimbor still used the techniques that Sauron had taught him and thus the Three were still susceptible to the influence of the One as long as it was worn by Sauron. However, they were also harmless to wear during the time when the One was lost.

They're shiny enough to slightly unfuck the half-eaten cosmology in the right hands, but as others have mentioned: all the characters are magpies.

This is why I couldn't bring myself to play Shadow of War

How did they find out that Sauron had sabotaged all the rings?

This

>How did they find out that Sauron had sabotaged all the rings?
lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Rings_of_Power#English

> However, when Sauron put the Ruling Ring on his finger, the Elves were immediately aware of him and took off their Rings.
I think it had something to do with the Three being made to resist evil

>The Three that remained to the Elves were carefully hidden from Sauron. They were not created as weapons of war or as a means to dominate others; their purpose was to preserve the beautiful Elven domains where their wielders resided, and to aid in healing and resisting evil.

...

But can they beat Gandalfs Frireworks?

Yes

On how many levels of fanfiction do you have to be on to cast SHELOB as a fucking unsung hero? I even like the Shadow games as retarded fanfiction that's fun to play for a bit, but come the fuck on

>I think it had something to do with the Three being made to resist evil
The Elves has hall nineteen rings at the time. They took off all nineteen. Not just the Three.

It's one of those "so-and-so was in a coma the whole time!" levels of reinterpretation.

Over 80 if you count it from the end of the Hobbit to the time Frodo leaves the Shire.

As for why, that's not really clear and has often bothered me, and most of the answers I come up with come to Gandalf not wanting it to be the One Ring, so he ignored the nagging voices in his head telling him it was.

It's not clear in the Legendarium. The two main "theories" proposed is what the other user said, she died of her own hunger, or that Earindil killed her. The former is the later "interpretation" that Tolkien wrote, the ones with Earaindil killing her are usually earlier.

Presumably, they discovered the degree of influence he had when he made the One and could feel its influence on the Three.

I'm guessing it's a combination of not wanting it to be true, it being very hard to track down reliable information, not wanting to raise a fuss of the highest magnitude without being quadruple sure about it, getting caught up in whatever nonsense and planning. I'd wager he maybe even made several journeys to Mordor to stake out the best route. After a certain point he probably also had the problem of who could carry the ring, because Bilbo had held it for too long and probably was too entranced by it to let it go.

No, the only power the ring confers to someone other than Sauron is invisibility (except to Sauron and those connected to him, who not only can still see, but detect it from far away). The other thing that the ring does is make others THINK that it will grant them great power and whatever else they desire

She fled to the old woods and assumed the form of a man, making schemes for the eventual defeat of Melkor, so that she might eat him for revenge

It also seems to prolong the wearer's life.

Oh yeah duh, whoops. And for some reason, even after you lose it

Oh and this reminds me, did Bilbo die before or after the ring was destroyed?

He didn't technically die at all

What confuses me is that it seemed like his health began to fail after losing the ring, but Gollum's physical health was unaffected for at least 80 years after losing it

Probably needed more time marinating him in its influence.

>What even happened to Ungoliant after she tried snacking on melkor?
She fled, changed her name to Tom Bombadil, and formulated an (extremely) long term revenge plan.

this of course assumes you don't subscribe to the "Tom Bombadil is really the Witch King" theory, which is clearly ridiculous.
although... you NEVER see them in the same place at the same time, so...

Bilbo was still a hobbit when he lost the ring, so his health was affected like a normal hobbit's would be, hobbits living past 100 was pretty common.

Smeagol obtained the ring as one of the mortal riverfolk, but over time it twisted him into an immortal that was sustained by the ring's power. Him losing the ring was devastating, but the connection he had with it let him find it again in frodo's hand, and with a connection that far-reaching and inherently magical you can bet there was a symbiosis going on. Gollum was supposed to hold the ring until Sauron could come and find it, but the events The Hobbit ruined that plan.

The Ring itself wanted to have a sedentary wielder, so it could be found easier by Sauron.

I thought Tom was Eru Illuvatar in disguise or something.

Pretty sure the Ring let itself get found by Bilbo because Gollum sat under a bloody mountain where nobody would ever find him or the ring

Power and magic in Middle Earth is symbolism, lore, reputation, etc. That same sense of wonder that an ancient artifact on display in a museum can evoke or a beautiful vista in nature. There is power in these things too. Power is influence upon the world, history, the living, the dead, and the unborn. In short, power in Middle Earth is godhood, divinity, infernality, etc. A god can do anything they want - they're gods. Sauron gave the great races an artificial godhood that served his infernal ends.

stationary ring calling to it's master through a living host is always a better gamble than letting it sit, quiet in a hole for millenia with no way back to it's master.

Tolkien explicitly denied it.

He's actually just JRRT's classicist ideal, a man who lives modestly with nature and has no desire for power or control (which is why the ring could not influence him). But it's fun to theory craft based on how the woods he lives in seem to be so actively hostile

Disproven by Frodo gaining far sight (think Amon Hen) and his ability to see into the hearts and minds of others (Galadriel), as well as his ability to perform compulsions and lay curses (gollum).
After. He goes to Valinor.

Yes he does.
timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/the_letters_of_j.rrtolkien.pdf

Letter 246

>Frodo was sent or allowed to pass over Sea to heal him- if that could be done, before he died. He would have eventually to 'pass away': no mortal could, or can, abide forever on earth, or within Time.

>Over 80 [years] if you count it from the end of the Hobbit to the time Frodo leaves the Shire.
Explaining this away is the one thing I really like about any of the various takes on the Resurrected Necromancer / Dol Guldur sub-plot. It gives something to occupy Gandalf's time and attention during and after the events of the Hobbit. My assumption is that, between trying to tie up the loose threads there, investigate shit related to Mordor growing in strength again, and probably Saruman pointing him the wrong direction a lot, the ring Bilbo found seemed like small potatoes.

Keep in mind that Gandalf and the other wizards weren't sent to middle earth until almost a millenia after the one ring was lost - so this would have been like ancient history to him at this point and not seemed very pressing. Probably nobody bar sauron himself had the ring on their mind for most of that period - and critically the bit about the ring "wanting to be found" was not general knowledge. The necromancer was by contrast a very tangible threat.

There was a pretty good scene they did for the movies that has gandalf actually traveling around to different libraries and cities and doing research that captures his "oh fuuuuuuck" moment very nicely.

>I thought Tom was Eru Illuvatar in disguise or something.
That's just silly. Tom Bombadil was obviously the Witch King.

>Pretty sure the Ring let itself get found by Bilbo because Gollum sat under a bloody mountain where nobody would ever find him or the ring
This was explicitly stated by JRRT I believe.

I figured that was Sauron and Galadriel influencing him, not the other way around

>He's actually just JRRT's classicist ideal, a man who lives modestly with nature and has no desire for power or control
And has a hot wife, don't forget. That is clearly part of the ideal.

What the fuck is this shit?

Nah, you have lines like this, towards the end of the Mirror of Galadriel

>`You have not tried,' she said. `Only thrice have you set the Ring upon
your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy
you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the
measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to
become far stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others. Yet
even so, as Ring-bearer and as one that has borne it on finger and seen that
which is hidden, your sight is grown keener. You have perceived my thought
more clearly than many that are accounted wise. You saw the Eye of him that
holds the Seven and the Nine. And did you not see and recognize the ring upon
my finger? Did you see my ring? ' she asked turning again to Sam.
>'No, Lady,' he answered. `To tell you the truth, I wondered what you were
talking about. I saw a star through your finger.

And given how Frodo's curse to Gollum is what ultimately pushes him into the Fire, you'd think Sauron would want to avoid that kind of thing.

>Frodo's curse to Gollum is what ultimately pushes him into the Fire
The medieval conception of a curse was that if I said something unpleasant was to happen to you, then something unpleasant would happen to you. I don't think we can assume that it had anything to do with the Ring that it happened to work.