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Originally Posted by Juicy-Sweet
The logical reason for the "alien" scenario with a stealthy Balrog is this:
Obviously Gandalf has no idea whatsoever there's is a Balrog in Moria. If he knew it was there, he would have picked ANY other route than Moria. Better to walk through Isengard then 
This means no elf knew it either - if they did, they would tell Galadrian/Elrond(some other leader, and eventually Elrond would hear about th Balrog and tell Gandalf.
So my assumptions is that if anyone remotely allied with the Elves knew it was a Balrog, the information would have winded up with Gandalf.
We ALSO know that all elves that heard the description of the balrog would know immediately what it was - Legolas reaction in LOTR - I assume as well that even a vague description would make them think it was probably a balrog. |
The elves were aware of Durin's Bane the 'Nameless Terror' as was Gandalf and Aragorn and others of the 'Wise.' The lack of specifics is easily accounted for given the poor state of lore amonst most of the peoples by this stage of Middle Earth's history. The Balrog was cloaked in fire and shadow, and the ancient world was not short of sorcerous big bad monsters: Werewolves, Vampires, Flightless Dragons etc. Each might comfortably (depending on their true nature) comfortably outclass any dwarf force of that age. Presumably there would be very few survivors of any confrontation or even rough proximity. Thus we're left with poor informed witnesses who were far enough away to escape. I don't think any automatic ID on a balrog is assured at all.
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This leaves two possibilities:
EITHER the dwarves saw the balrog, but didnt tell anyone about it, ever. This makes no sense to me, so I dont like this version. They must have wanted to find out what the *** it was, so they could find out how to kill it and get Moria back. So they should have gone around to all available loremasters with their best drawing of it asking "how do we kill this?". And yes, they are hostile with the elves. But I think the possibility of getting an advice like "ah this think dies from garlic" would have made them ask the elves in spite of their enmity.
Or ELSE they didnt see it at all, meaning noone ever figured out what it was and noone could help them.
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The hostility runs both ways (e.g. Ban on Dwarves in Lorien), so lines of communication are pretty weak at best. Plus word had reached the wise, it simply was clearly insufficiently informed or detailed to allow for an ID.
You're assuming the lore-less could simply get a good description on a Balrog, it's so sorcerously potent, and able to cloak itself in fire and shadow, any ID would very probably just a generic big bad evil.
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But all of this aside, it's inconcievable that the utterly warlike fire Maiar who could chase off Ungoliant (a big bad on a power scale to rival a Valar), would take to sneaking around.
Plus let's not forget that the earlier people's of Middle Earth were vastly more powerful than subsequent generations.
A Third Age Dwarf army/population is really not all that puissant in comparison to any host assembled in the First, and the Dwarves have never even been remotely on the same power level as the Eldar.
Balrogs who could plough their way through hosts of the Eldar really wouldn't even notice 10/20,000 Dwarves.