I'm not much of a dragon person, but I can answer the balrog stuff for you
Gurthang.
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Are Balrogs immortal? Do they ever die without being slain?
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Seeig as they are Maia, I would think they are immortal.
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If they do live forever, as dragons do not, then they could still be around. Probably sleeping deep in the earth like Durin's Bane was.
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This brings about only one possible solution: Balrogs could still be around, but dragons are, in fact, extinct.
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Nope, at first in the Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien had a lot of Balrogs, and they
were weaker. He changed these thoughts in later works.
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('a host of Balrogs, the last of his servants that remained’) 'his Balrogs, the last of his servants that remained faithful to him'. In the margin my father wrote: 'There should not be supposed more than say 3 or at most 7 ever existed.'
(Home X: Morgoth's Ring).
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In
letter #144 Tolkien tells us the fate of the balrogs (just not the number). Two died in Gondolin, the rest (except for Durin's bane) dies in the War of the Wraith.