Balrog Breaking and Entering

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by alatar

Eventually, the balrog could worm no more, and so lay down for a sleep in some cavern under Caradhras...that is until some hammer-banging Dwarves showed up...

Yeah, I can imagine just how it happened. The Balrog, finally having found a nice little hide-out to settle down in away from all bossy Dark Lords and vindictive Gods, is awoken early one Sunday morning. A bit hung-over from the day before there's only one thought in his head:

"What's that infernal noise?"

[Boromir88]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Yeah, I can imagine just how it happened. The Balrog, finally having found a nice little hide-out to settle down in away from all bossy Dark Lords and vindictive Gods, is awoken early one Sunday morning. A bit hung-over from the day before there's only one thought in his head:

"What's that infernal noise?"

That sounds like one of my days a few months ago, getting an unexpected (and unwelcomed) visitor in the ridiculously early hours of the morning. Ai! Ai! You saying I'm a balrog!?

I can see stealth being in the Balrog's repetoire. He wasn't a hulking beast that was all scrunched up in tunnels and mine shafts. The tallest Balrog was the one Glorfindel killed, which was said to be twice his height. Durin's Bane was roughly man-size, it was hard to discern his exact height because he could control shadows. Besides being cloaked in darkness (a stealth tool for sure!) He is described as leaping, bounding, and skipping across fissures to reach the Fellowship (and Gandalf on the bridge). They were Maiar after all.

[Sarumian]

From reading the LOTR I tend to think that embodied maiar were able to look much larger on some occasions.

Gandalf at Garadhras:

In the wavering firelight Gandalf seemed suddenly to grow: he rose up, a great menacing shape like the monument of some antient king of stone set upon a hill.

Balrog at Kazad-Dum originally seemed to be

a dark form, man-shaped may be, yet greater

suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall