I've had to give this some deal of thought, since I have taken this idea from Tolkien for my own story in which the item is the villain's sword. Anyway, one of my local writers' group readers kept on harangueing me: "Why would he put that much of his power into the sword? Seems pretty stupid to me." The only way it could make sense was that the villain was powerful before, but became MORE powerful with the sword, but in a specifically focused way that worked to his advantage with a minimum of foreseen risk. Granted, he did lose the sword, as Sauron lost the Ring, and was thus less powerful afterward. A calculated risk. The focus in the case of the Ring - is to rule the other Rings, as has been said. That leads us to another question: Why were those other Rings forged? In the case of the Seven and the Nine, we know that Sauron had them forged in order to lure and then control the Dwarves and the Men - and the Kingdoms the Rings reaped for them. As for the Three, the Elves had different reasons: to preserve the beauty of what they remembered from the Youth of Middle Earth. Question: How could Sauron use that to his advantage? This is only a guess, but perhaps he could make the Elven Rings work in an opposite way to which they were designed - or perhaps he could make them work an a heightened or more extreme way. Gandalf' fire Ring - FIRE EVERYWHERE AND OUT OF CONTROL! Galadriel's Ring - please help me out - what was its power - prescience? preservation? Both? And what of Elrond's? I can't remember. Anyway, that's my thought on the matter.
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