[Kalimac]

Muse, neat question! One of those ones which gets twistier by the minute when you think about it - which is a good thing, don't mistake me [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. Thingol, your answer about Gurthang is really clever; I'd be inclined to say that's the best explanation. There are plenty of magically-endowed objects out there (all of Elvish make, as you say) but very few that talk, in fact I can't think of anything that does except of course for Gurthang. The only caveat I'd have about it is that while the sword may have been "inhabited" by Eol, the words don't sound quite like him. The bit where the sword gives its reasons; about avenging Beleg and Brandir "who was slain unjustly" makes it sound like Gurthang has loyalties outside of itself, and thus that there was a theoretical possibility that it could refuse to kill Turin if circumstances had been different and the sword thought him innocent of wrongdoing. Eol - and I may have missed something or be misremembering, but anyway - he doesn't seem like that type of personality. Not that he'd have any objection to killing Turin, just that he wouldn't feel like he had to state his case that way; his response in non-sword form would probably have been a statelier version of "Of course I'll kill you. Why not?"

OTOH the only alternatives that I can think of to its being inhabited by Eol's fea are these; the first is that possibly the Sil is being metaphorical and it actually was just Turin thinking to himself or experiencing a hypnagogic vision or whatever the best term is when someone convinces himself that he's being spoken to by someone/something unearthly. The second is that Gurthang basically operates on the same pattern as Sam's Lorien rope which "came at his call". The Lorien rope doesn't talk, obviously, but what it and Gurthang have in common is that they are both loyal to the spirit of their creators, so to speak. That is, Sam and the makers of the Lorien rope are both on the same side, have the same love of righteousness and loyalty (and of craft and ropemaking, for that matter) so it makes sense that the rope would "answer" to Sam, since he shared a mindset with its creators and it was being loyal to that.

Gurthang is an Elvish creation too, but was created by a very different sort of Elf. Eol was by no means the same sort of personality as the Elves of Lorien, so the type of loyalty with which his sword was imbued was quite different; it was loyal, but in a cruel and hard way, and the strength and unbendingness of its loyalty would transform its owners into similarly hard people, or encourage it in owners who were already bent that way (Turin was warned against the sword, I believe). Its rigid loyalty made it easy for the sword to exact vengeance; it's hard to see the Lorien rope being quite so enthusiastic about a similar project.

As for why it would talk - all I can guess is that since Gurthang was made in the days when the Elves were strong, and the rope when the Elves were fading and leaving, that the potency of the Elves' craft was also much more in the days of the Silmarillion, so that the power the Lorien rope had was just a shadow of the power in Gurthang. I don't believe the sword spoke so that others could hear, though. That would be a little clumsy; more efficient to just zap the thought directly to Turin's brain.