How to kill the Watcher in the Water
 

I have been thinking, presumably Moria was re-taken so Gimli could obtain Mithril to remake the doors of Gondor, so what happened to the Watcher in the Water? Did it suffer mass depression like the rest of the creatures of Sauron when the ring was unmade? Was it just left there with everyone entereing from the other side? Was it killed somehow?

If it was killed, then how? Several options present themselves to me;
1; hack and slash - a large force came and just chopped it up into little peices.
2; starvation - keep food away and the problem will go away.
3; breach the dam and then do something.

1 has inherent problems that it would take a lot of effor with potential for significant losses and the watcher could just retreat into the water and not play if threatened.
2 the issue of food never was that important (save for Hobbits deprived of one of their many daily meals). Perhaps even the watcher fed on aquatic life and kept a breeding stock alive in the lake.
3 with blasting powder as used in the assault on the Pelanor to breach the wall the forces of Sauron used blasting powder (as did the Uruks in the Two Towers movie), so this could be used, or just brute force and engineering to breach the dam, then as the water level receded options 1 and 2 above could become more viable. The watcher may also require water to breath or live in or something and may well die without it.

Any thoughts? Alternatives? Falicies in the above rambling?

Well, the Watcher did go after Frodo first, which could signify that it was somehow in league with Sauron, like most of the other dark forces. Therefore, I think it's safe to say that the Watcher sort of lost all power and died like most of said dark forces.

Or, it's never actually stated that the Watcher was a single creature -- the movie presents it that way, but in the book, Frodo asks Gandalf 'What was the thing, or were there many of them?', and Gandalf's only answer is 'I do not know.' So going on the theory that the Watcher was actually a great many snake-like creatures, Sauron probably used his dark powers to combine them into one force with one purpose: to kill anyone who tried to pass through Moria. But with Sauron gone, the creatures would have lost all unification and gone back to whatever they were doing beforehand, or possibly have died as well with the death of their master.

But it is my opinion that the Watcher was one creature. Anyone want to comment?

The problem with this 'it died after its master died' is, that the Watcher probably was not in league with Sauron, let alone mastered by him. the Watcher was one of the nameless things from the deeps of the earth, older than Sauron and unknown to him, as Gandalf says somewhere (paraphrased). The Watcher was 'just' attracted to the One Ring, because it was a source of evil and power, just as it itself was. It wanted to have this source of power, it was not ordered by Sauron to take it for him.

At least, this is what I think about it :)

I doubt Moria was retaken. There was still mithril around in Middle Earth, it was just really rare. Tolkien once wrote an epilogue to the Lord of the Rings, which was never published but can be found in HoME. There, it says that Moria was not retaken.

In the epilog it says only that Moria was not jet taken when the conversation between Sam and his doughter took place. Some HoME volumes later we get the original scripts for the Appendices and there it is clearly statet that Durin VII son of Thorin Stonehelm reestablished the Dwarves in Moria.

On the topic, I think that the watcher was one creature. And if I had to choose I would break the dam and try to kill the watcher when the water is gone.

Respectfullly
Findegil

I just noticed I had not answered the question in my first post in this thread :rolleyes:

Maybe it's best indeed to breach the dam and see what that will do. Maybe the Watcher was dead by the time the Dwarves came to that point in reinstating Moria. Or, perhaps, the Watcher had left the water and went back to the bowels of the earth where it came from. Or, would leave the moment the dam was breached by the Dwarves.

There's another alternative, although it would be almost impossible to accomplish.

Find another aquatic monster, transport it to the gates of Moria, and let them duke it out. Then, you would still have a guard, but not an actively hostile one.
An easier way might be to get large quantities of salt, and put it in the pool. Since the Watcher is apparently a freshwater creature, this would kill it.

Another interesting question is- How did the Watcher get into the Water in the first place?

Use A Bazooka !!!!!! M I Rite???

For a whole world of good guys who had just held off Sauron for some thousands of years, I doubt one little squid would be much of a problem.

For one,it's unknown wether it really was a squid or Kraken,and if it was it must have been a very remarkable one. It lives in fresh water and seems to have a mind of it's own.

I suspect it's more right to say nothing beyond that it was a Monster,perhaps one of the Nameless Things Gandalf speaks off.

Sure,a bazooka could do a nice job I guess,but to stay within the reach of ME people..I think using one of Sarumans explosive devices to let rocks fall down from the mountainwall on the lake would be a possibility. Otherwise, making the lake empty would be a possible,and better,alternative.

My nature-loving mind however tells me I'd rather have the creature be left alone, special, and perhaps even unique,as it is.

Hello. This is an interesting topic, which most readers of LOTR probably have thought about in passing. I actually thought PJ's version of the Watcher was acceptable. The concensus seems to be the Watcher was one creature (for example, the somewhat dated complete guide to middle-earth by Robert Foster, and it seems to me logical that the creature came from the sea. http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Sirannon , for general Watcher related observations.

It seems reasonable, since it's obviously a water creature, that at some time the Watcher came up the Gwathlo and the Glanduin, looked around and thought it had found a nice home that, suitably renovated (damming the stream) could provide comfort with a movable buffet feast nearby.

Maybe there were even nastier creatures in the seas that it was avoiding (hee, hee), isn't there some such allusion to dangers of the seas during the Council of Elrond about throwing the ring in there?
If the dam was breached perhaps it would take the hint and return to the sea?