Gothmogs and dragons and noobs, oh my

[Macalaure]

Originally Posted by hewhoarisesinmight

Back to dragons, if they were made from some type of animal, how did Melkor manage to make them sentient?

I don't think making them sentient is the greatest problem. He could have done it like he did with the werewolves, though that procedure is strange in itself. The more interesting question to me is: how was he able to make them so powerful? You could argue that they were more powerful than Balrogs (Maiar!). That's a lot of power to be put in a lizard, though I have to concede that it would need as much power if he devised them from scratch.

Originally Posted by The Might

I could personally imagine this corruption as similar to what Sauron did with the winged beasts during the Third Age:

But Sauron's beasts are dwarved by Melkor's dragons. Even if we take into account that Melkor was more powerful and probably more skilled at corrupting beasts, and even if we assume that pre-dragons were already stronger than pre-winged-beasts, I don't think this fits.

I never thought of the Were-worms. A nice idea, I admit, but the fact that they're mentioned nowhere but in the Hobbit makes it improbable. And the prefix 'were' suggests that they were strongly influenced by Melkor already. But maybe they had a common ancestor.


PS: I also enqueue in the 'Gothmog was a man'-camp, like in the old poll.