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Old 03-02-2012, 06:28 PM   #10
Alfirin
Shade of Carn Dûm
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 435
Alfirin has been trapped in the Barrow!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Galadriel55 View Post
Oh that one's a treasure!

But then Gollum says that he couldn't touch the dead there. So are they really there?
That's a tough one, but my guess is "no".The Dead Marshes have some weird magic going on. The faces are described as "rotting" it think, but given the time that has passed, the faces in the dead marshes should be nothing but skeletons (if indeed still there at all). If the marsh is acidic and peaty, it could pickle the bodies but the water would likey then be too murky to see them. The faces are supposed to be mostly war graves as I recall (i.e. bodies that were actually buried, as opposed to simply left on the battle field). Even assuming that the modern "6 feet under" was practiced back then, the bodies would still be reachable by Gollum. Maybe not by simply sticking his hand in a pool, but Gollum, due to his long aquatic existance is (unlike normal hobbits) a good swimmer and diver; six feet would probably not trouble him much. If he says he can't reach them, they're probably illusions; or souls trapped in the land with all physical remnants rotted away, or Orc plundered (Orcs being orcs, I assume that if there was any good stuff left on the ground or in the graves,later orcs would have tramped in (maybe during the period before the marshes expanded, when the ground was still solid, and dug it all up. Orcs are not likey to respect burials).

Last edited by Alfirin; 03-02-2012 at 07:16 PM.
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