Sauron, the Necromancer

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Ah, but John Rateliff's History of the Hobbit has rather changed things- from the very first draft of 'An Unexpected Party:'

"[Gandalf (> Thorin, confusingly):] "We must give a thought to the Necromancer."
"Don't be absurd" said the wizard. "That is a job quite beyond the powers of all the dwarves, if they could be all gathered together again from the four corners of the world. And anyway his castle stands no more and he is flown to another darker place - Beren and Tinuviel broke his power, but that is quite another story.""


So there you have it: "Sauron the terrible" was already "peeping over the edge" from the outset!

So... quite contrary to what I'd heard, The Hobbit was always meant to be set in the same world as The Silmarillion?

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Going with what Formy said, maybe Sauron, before his true identity was known, decided to take a nick name. Maybe he say the name Necromancer as a fitting name because it is associated with animated corpses and the like. Since he had just come back from dying... Just a thought.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

So... quite contrary to what I'd heard, The Hobbit was always meant to be set in the same world as The Silmarillion?

Yeppers- or rather, Tolkien drew on his legendarium as convenient to provide a setting for his childrens' story, which he didn't regard at the time as 'canonical.' Beren and Luthien, Gondolin, the Three Kindreds of the Elves and "Faery" in the West- all there from the start. On the other hand so also is the Gobi Desert.

Tolkien himself misled us all in his letters, making the claim for both Hobbit and the Numenor legend that they were originally unrelated to, but then brought into, the main mythology. In both cases it just tweren't so.

More on this on the "proto-geography of the Third Age" thread.

[alatar]

So, the question remains, were there actual 'zombies' in Middle Earth? As a native of the Pittsburgh region, I take my zombies seriously. We actually have a copy of "The Zombie Survival Guide' by Max Brooks in the office...you know, just in case.

Now this discussion has shown that there are many disembodied spirits that can be put to evil uses. Me, I'm looking more for the stereotypical zombie, the shambling reanimated corpse that attacks, Terminator-like, without cease, until it is dismembered or its brain is destroyed. The hobbits' experience in the Barrow give some indication that such creatures are possible. The skeletal arm that tries to grip the sword in the Barrow is, technically, reanimated dead, and so if we were to start with something a little fresher, add a little meat to the bones, give it a hunger for more than sacrifice...

And who knows what Sauron the Necromancer could accomplish?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Fortunately, the ancient weaponsmiths of Arnor perfected the +5 Shotgun of Zombie-slaying......