[Zigûr]

I don't think we've seen the erstwhile Corsair around here for a while but I thought this was the best place to post something which occurred to me today:

What if Sauron hadn't made the Ring?

I don't mean if he hadn't been an evil tyrant who wanted to rule the world or anything like that. I just mean "if he hadn't made the Ring".

By the time he'd made the Ring he'd completely lapsed back into evil, deeming that the best way to bring peace and order to Middle-earth was through his "benevolent" dictatorship. In fact he'd already been stirring up trouble in the East as early as 500 or so according to the Tale of Years, and Gil-galad sent his letter of warning to Tar-Meneldur in 882. One assumes that by the time he occupied Mordor and began building Barad-dûr, around 1000, he had servants and something of an authority: "Men he found the easiest to sway of all the peoples of the Earth."

In "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age", no mention of Sauron being called a "Dark Lord" and utilising armies of Orcs is mentioned until after the forging of the One Ring. "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn" briefly mentions the deployment of Orcs in the War of the Elves and Sauron.

So this had me thinking: did Sauron need the One Ring to become a "Dark Lord"? If he hadn't forged the Rings, would he have come up with some other equally fiendishly elaborate master plan, and would it have made him as simultaneously mighty and vulnerable as the Ring did? Would he have become a great tyrant among the Men of Darkness, but nothing more? And if so, would he thus be able to antagonise the Noldor and Númenóreans indefinitely, or would he have become trapped, like Morgoth, in one body, and thus ultimately vulnerable to being militarily defeated and killed?

I don't know what people might think about this. It's a bit daft, really, isn't it? But Professor Tolkien indulges in a bit of what-iffery himself so I think it's acceptable.