4th Age Balrogs?

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by alatar

Is there a volcano in Middle Earth?

Other than Mount Doom?

Maybe that's the real reason Sauron moved to Mordor originally- he found a Balrog. That's what he's hiding in Mordor, not the thousands of orcs.

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Eönwë

Other than Mount Doom?

Maybe that's the real reason Sauron moved to Mordor originally- he found a Balrog. That's what he's hiding in Mordor, not the thousands of orcs.

You'd have thought that the Balrog would have made at least one visit to Osgiliath or Minas Tirith in all of those years.

And Galin, if I remember my HoME, at first Tolkien had so many Balrogs attacking Gondolin that Ecthelion's deed at the Fountain would have been less noteworthy, as you couldn't draw your sword without hitting three or four Balrogs.

[Galin]

Yep, very many Balrogs appear in The Book of Lost Tales, and this is one of those ideas that persisted for decades, still appearing in certain of the 'latest' writing in some instances.

For example: 'There came wolves and serpents, and there came Balrogs one thousand,...' (Of the Fourth Battle: Nírnaith Arnediad). This is but one example that, as far as I know, was never revised by JRRT for whatever reason, altered to → 'There came wolves and wolfriders, and there came Balrogs, and dragons...' (Of The Fifth Battle) 1977 Silmarillion.

And then there is Tolkien's own revision to Annals of Aman of (possibly) 1958, and his marginal note, as we know, to confuse things nice and good.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Eönwë

Maybe that's the real reason Sauron moved to Mordor originally- he found a Balrog. That's what he's hiding in Mordor, not the thousands of orcs.

Only a note for interest to this - the Balrog of Moria was originally meant to be sent there by Sauron (in the early concepts of LotR). (I can imagine that being also a kind of remains of Tolkien's "old thinking" when he thought that simply balrogs were more common in M-E - as you can see in the passages mentioned in the posts above. It may be that only later he slowly came to the revision "okay, there shouldn't be that many of them".)