Durin, Nain, and the Balrog

[CSteefel]

Originally Posted by Celebdil

Are balrogs really this powerful? Could say, Gandalf, fight a company of a few hundred angry dwarves and live? After all, Saruman died from a single attack by Wormtongue, though he was caught unawares. And if Maia are really this powerful, couldn't Saruman have killed the hobbit army at Bag End? Gandalf did kill a bunch of orcs with his staff in that cave in The Hobbit, but I don't think he could have killed an entire company of dwarves without being killed himself. So it seems to me that the dwarf army should have been able to hunt and kill the balrog, but maybe the balrog ran away, forcing the dwarves to split up to look for him and then attacked smaller groups with better odds. Maybe this is how Durin died.

I doubt it. Saruman had been deposed when he was dispatched by Wormtongue. The powers associated with being a Maia are not cast in stone...

As for the Balrog, he must have been extremely powerful if he was able to defeat Durin and his entire army of dwarves. And the evidence from the First Age bears this out, since only the greatest champions were able to stand against the Balrogs, and then at the cost of their own lives. I know of no report of a large contingent of Men or Elves successfully ganging up on a Balrog. As Gandalf said, "swords are of no use here".

The events do suggest, however, that the Balrog did not necessarily feel compelled to step forward in every case, although one has the sense that the Balrog also restricted himself to Moria and the regions below, rather than coming outside to engage in the battle between the Orcs and the Dwarves. But what Dain saw clearly indicates what would have happened if the battle had moved inside of Moria...