Bye Bye Balrogs

Hi,
I'm new to all of this, but I find this Silmarillion project very interesting, and long overdue. I'll see how much I want to get involved, but start by the occasional post here and there.

Regarding Balrogs, I think there has to be a happy medium between the original multitudes and the later 3 to 7. There were a lot of things later in life he said that are too jarring with earlier work to include in all their ramifications, and this is one of them. But clearly balrogs got steadily more and more powerful and fewer in number as time went on in his conception of things.

Solution? Have an unspecified number, but between 10 and 20ish. Use vague terms like some and few, and include all the famous Balrogs death battles. Ditto with size and wing or no: be vague, let people imagine what they will. In the words of Iris deMent, "let the mystery be." This also allows other mysteries to continue, such as the possibility that other Balrogs might be lurking somewhere.

They may or may not have wings, but I think it should be clear they couldn't fly - that would really mess things up back in the First Age.

I don't like the recycling idea at all, and think the second lives of the same small Balrog bunch should be eliminated as a solution.

Buldogs (sp?) are interesting - I don't remember reading about them. What are the details? Just the same, I don't think they should effect the debate very much.