more than 9?

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

We cross-posted, alatar - from the context, I would disagree with your conclusion. The Elves were not making jewelry for the Dwarves, they were making it for themselves!

That's what they thought too! But surely Annatar influenced the making of the Seven, which turned out to be useful to him. Seven large hoards of gold to attract seven large greedy dragons, mistrust/discord within and between different clans, secrecy, Balin (you gotta feed Balrogs somehow), etc.

And I'm going to go with wraitherize along with the new BD "I got wraitherized at the Barrow-Downs" clothing line. Maybe enwraithed is the correct word and that makes more sense to my British cousins, but this is 'Merica.

But to be serious for a moment, I guess that the elves made all of the rings, lesser and greater, for some purpose. Assume that all rings, excluding the One, were somewhat identical in purpose. What was that? What were the Elves, with or without Annatar's influence, trying to achieve? Why were these rings so perilous to all folk (even, I assume, to the elves with the exception of the Three)? Was that strictly due to Annatar? In todayspeak, did Annatar encode a backdoor into each ring that allowed him to slip some corruptive influence in?

Sorry, but as always, more questions.