[Kuruharan]

find it difficult to accept that Iluvatar would provide a fea for all of the dragon children. I find it equally difficult to believe that Melkor had enough Maia at his disposal to invest all of the dragons with Maia (I’ve always imagined there to be around 80 dragons, I don’t know why, just feels right)....I offer a compromise that perhaps the original dragons contained maia spirits, but not the rest of their brood. Like the orcs, the majority of dragons would only be semi sentient.

What makes me hesitant about this is the lack of textual evidence. We know that Tolkien explored the possibilities of there being different classes of orcs because there are writings about them. No such materials exist for Dragons. The only classes that are mentioned of Dragons are the land bound fireless kind, the land bound fire breathers, and the winged fire breathers. (I'm sorry that I don't have the technical terms, my books are still partially unavailable.) There is no mention of 'spiritual' differences between them.

It would probably be easiest to believe that the land bound cold drakes were the closest to beasts, being only semi-sentient. However, if anyone had a Maiar spirit Glaurung was the one, but he was land bound and not the greatest dragon. But there were Dragons that came later that were also possessed of great cunning and power (Ancalagon the Black and Smaug).
Would it be possible for corrupt Maiar spirits to be just hanging around waiting for a Dragon of sufficient physical might to be spawned so they could inhabit the body?

We can assume she did. She was in 'humanoid' form, and capable of reason and vocalization. There is a big difference between attributing a fea to Goldberry and assigning an unattested origin to the Dragons' spirits. Surely you can see that.

Tsk, tsk, where does it say that? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Dragons were also capable of reason and vocalization. And Goldberry's origins are most definitely unattested.

I find it difficult to accept that Iluvatar would provide a fea for all of the dragon children.

The only way Maiar can procreate is by adopting a physical form: two discarnate spirits cannot beget offspring. This means that all offspring of Maiar would necessarily be incarnate, since they would have to be born from a physical mother. They could therefore not be Maiar, as Maiar are in origin incorporeal. Though that does not mean they could not potentially be as powerful as a true Maia, or born with supernatural abilities.

Perhaps it was not so much a matter of giving as Eru allowing a process that he created to carry through as designed, even though it would be creating great monsters of evil, because "greater glory could come through it." All the heroical slayings and so forth that make such good stories.

I had actually not been looking at the second part in quite the same way. I was looking at it from the point of view of that if something is not mixed then it is the same substance as it's...uh parent (for lack of a better word; although I guess that was what it was).

They didn't completely cease to be, but they were incapable of causing any more trouble. We have to assume that the deaths of both Balrogs and Dragons rendered their fea completely impotent, otherwise they would have simply taken new forms. Nobody seems to fear the possibility that Gothmog, Glorfindel's Bane, Durin's Bane, Glaurung, or Ancalagon will show up again.

I think that we may finally have found something to reach a concensus on! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]