[Gwaihir the Windlord]

No wonder it took you so long, Rumil; you've been doing your research pretty well I should say. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Only one or two points for discussion in that.

Nilpaurion, I don't believe Orcs were sent to the West-Gate, unless you mean that they sent forces down there from inside, to sweep the area after the stand in Mazarbul. The Watcher in the Water held that entrance so that neither Orc nor Dwarf could have passed -- unless, being plainly some vile primeval creature of Melkor's, it recognised the Orcs and let them pass. But if that was the case, then the entrance was still barred to the Dwarves and didn't need to be guarded.

As far as I know, the attacking army came from the East as Rumil points out.

Actually, there is an interesting point here. When the Company themselves were assailed in the Chamber of Mazarbul, the door they had came through from the West was blocked. So was another door, and the only one that was free led to the East entrance and the way that they took out. As they had not bumped into any armed legions of Orcs in the passageways, they must have come around from another chamber.

This would possibly be the passage that Gandalf said contained 'bad air', or the one that he had a bad feeling about;

'I so not like the feel of the middle way; and I do not like the smell of the left-hand way; there is foul air down there, or I am no guide.'

I say the bad air passage, because it led down, and the Orcs seem to have infested the lowest dungeons as well -- the signal that Pippin's stone awoke. In the attack on the Dwarves, we know that Orc armies came through the Hall of Khazad-Dum and the East end, and it is probable that they then divided (requiring knowledgable and pwoerful leadership; there may well have been Nazgul, although not, probably, the Witch-King himself) and came around from these tunnels to trap the Dwarves in the Chamber inescapably.

They seem to have fleed and tried to get out from the West-Gate, but couldn't because of the Watcher. Then they retreated back to the Mines, were met with more Orc-forces which decimated them, and eventually came to hold the Chamber of Mazarbul. There they were surrounded and massacred.

I also wonder if any female dwarves came with them?

Definitely, I should say. They'd be needed to start a colony, and at any rate, as they behaved very much like the men folk and were tought anyway, they would not have been a liability for the dwarves in their hard situation.

Did female dwarves fight in battles? I don't know, but it doesn't appear so. It may be that they like to hide themselves away and live quietly with their more numerous male counterparts, but either way, there doesn't seem to have been any reason why they wouldn't have come.

And where indeed was the Balrog? I have myself always imagined it coming at the last, when the Dwarves were trapped in the Chamber much as it did to the Company, although since they couldn't escape it would then have walked in and slaughtered them at its will.

Durin's Bane was the chief reason why Moria could not be recolonised. It does actually seem rather odd, here, to think that it was armies from Dol Guldor and not the Balrog that destroyed the Dwarven colony. Could he just have done nothing? Maybe, as you suggest, he couldn't be bothered stirring.

Perhaps he did not want to be discovered by Sauron? There seems to have been a reason for this, a reason why he did not seek Sauron out (who would probably have been known to him) and serve him directly. He must have wished to haunt Khazud-dum forever and not leave until the End; waiting for the return of his true master, most likely.

Interesting indeed!