Sauron's Super Army?

[Mornorngûr]

Apart from the practical reason that the Nine had already been dispensed by that point in time and there were no Great Rings remaining for him to give out, I think that Sauron simply did not want most of the Númenoréans to survive.

I thought that Sauron actually held 'The Nine'? After the Men he gave them to were corrupted, did he not take them back? or did the Nazgul still have them?.

Actually I have just been doing some research and it is clear to me that Sauron actually held them and therefore could re-distribute them if he wished.

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Mornorngûr

I thought that Sauron actually held 'The Nine'? After the Men he gave them to were corrupted, did he not take them back? or did the Nazgul still have them?.

Actually I have just been doing some research and it is clear to me that Sauron actually held them and therefore could re-distribute them if he wished.

Yes and no. Sauron did hold them physically, but each ring was still tied to a Nazgul. It's sort of the flipside of their being bonded to their rings, the rings are bonded to them. I tend to think that, as long as a ring was "occupied" it couldn't be given to another person; one ring, one slave. Otherwise, Sauron could have simply kept distributing the rings freely until he had THOUSANDS of ringwrathis If a Nazgul was somehow destroyed, I imagine it just might be possible for that ring to be reassigned (some people thing this may have happened, that, when the Witch King was slain, his ring was then either given to or slated to be given to the Mouth so as to grant that loyal servant immortality and further power to serve his master.)
That being said there is the fact that Sauron did have the ability to grant powers to Men WITHOUT making them ringwraths. The Mouth presumably had some powers granted to him (he's already supposed to be far older than a mortal man is supposed to live naturally) And there were at least two Chief's of the Easterlings that Sauron was supposed to have granted powers of some sort to. He also presumably had a few "special servants" among the Near and Far Haradrians (given how big a part of his armed forces they were, he'd want their leaders to be EXTRA loyal to him). Why he chose not to take this route in Numenor is unknown. Maybe he wanted to simply winnow out the indifferent of Numenor (who might serve him as long as those in power did, but who would rapidly change sides back should things go badly for then under Sauron's rule and leave only those who were TRULY devoted to him as a god (the Black Numenorians and therefore presumably, their decendants, the Corsairs of Umbar)

[Belegorn]

Originally Posted by Mornorngûr

Actually I have just been doing some research and it is clear to me that Sauron actually held them and therefore could re-distribute them if he wished.

I agree with Alfirin, yes he held them, but the Rings worked in a certain way. If Sauron could freely distribute them and create an unlimited number of Wraiths why had he limited himself to only 9 in thousands of years? We know that the Wraiths would not disobey their Lord so he need not fear any rebellion from them.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Belegorn

I agree with Alfirin, yes he held them, but the Rings worked in a certain way. If Sauron could freely distribute them and create an unlimited number of Wraiths why had he limited himself to only 9 in thousands of years? We know that the Wraiths would not disobey their Lord so he need not fear any rebellion from them.

I wonder if the maximum number of ring-slaves was not connected to the fact that even Sauron must have a limit to his power.

The Silmarillion makes note of the way in which Morgoth's own power was diluted by his expending it in the domination of his servants. Sauron, one could think, could have been 'watered down' similarly, since domination was the ultimate purpose of the rings he made. Maybe the more wraiths there were to share his power (which fundamentally they did), the weaker he would become, and as the Ring-lord, he should have been aware of that.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I wonder if the maximum number of ring-slaves was not connected to the fact that even Sauron must have a limit to his power.

I think this seems likely. When we hear about, for instance, the Lord of the Nazgûl being stronger during the War of the Ring due to being invested with "added demonic force" (Letter 210) it would seem likely to me that Sauron could only perform feats like this within a limited pool of power. Like Morgoth that power could not simply arise ex nihilo. Morgoth spent his strength on invigorating his servants repeatedly, with dragons, balrogs and so on. Beyond controlling his armies, Sauron's much lesser strength seems to have been confined to things like invigorating his most powerful servant. Presumably there would be, in the same way, a limit on the number of wraiths he could control, with or without the One.

[Alfirin]

That also might explain why Sauron never made any attempts to make addional mortal/dwarven rings on his own. He made the One Ring from scratch himself so he had the skill, plus he had the original mortal and dwarven rings as protoypes so technically I don't see a reason he could not have done it (though it is also likely that the nature of the One Rings spell was such that it could only control those rings in existence at it's creation, not rings made after it; that you couldn't add more retroactively). Heck depending on how much of Celembrimbor's work Sauron was privy to; he might have known enough that, had he had the power and the spell allowed it, he could have made addional ELVEN rings, and see if he could find wearers among elves less "pure" than those who held the originals, or (if one of the theories is accurate) among particualry clever and loyal Orc captains.
It also occurs to me that extra mortal rings would have given Sauron an addional advantage beyond an unlimited number of wraiths, it could have given him an indefensible method of dealing with any and all opposition. As far as we know all of those who took the mortal rings did so willingly, but I'm not sure this is a prerequisite for the rings power and corruption to work. If he had unlimited mortal rings it would offer him the option of forcibly bonding anyone who was too much trouble to him. Capture the individual, force a ring on his finger and then either keep him chained up until the corruption did it's job or stab him through the heart with a Morgul blade (assuming my theories are correct and 1. the blade part of a Morgul knife can be replaced for additional uses (so they aren't quite as rare and valuable as they seem) and 2. If a Morgul knife is actually inserted DIRECTLY into the heart, wraithification occurs INSTANTLY). In short the amount of uses Sauron could have put additional rings or ring re-use to are so large it's is safe to assume that if he could have, he would have and that since he didn't he couldn't.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Alfirin

As far as we know all of those who took the mortal rings did so willingly, but I'm not sure this is a prerequisite for the rings power and corruption to work. If he had unlimited mortal rings it would offer him the option of forcibly bonding anyone who was too much trouble to him. Capture the individual, force a ring on his finger and then either keep him chained up until the corruption did it's job or stab him through the heart with a Morgul blade (assuming my theories are correct and 1. the blade part of a Morgul knife can be replaced for additional uses (so they aren't quite as rare and valuable as they seem) and 2. If a Morgul knife is actually inserted DIRECTLY into the heart, wraithification occurs INSTANTLY). In short the amount of uses Sauron could have put additional rings or ring re-use to are so large it's is safe to assume that if he could have, he would have and that since he didn't he couldn't.

That's interesting about the idea of forcible "wraithification". I would think that the reason Sauron didn't use that tack was that a willfully evil mind was more preferable for his purposes than an innocent/unwilling mind. And like I said, I think that the mere acceptance of something like a Ring of Power, which gave influence over the physical and spiritual world beyond the original measure of the wearer, was in itself a "sin", leaving the user more vulnerable to its effects. Someone having a ring forced on them might take a good deal longer to transform, as they would know from the start to be wary and to attempt to fight its effects. And those effects in the end might not have been quite the same as for a willing bearer, as maybe the difference of the influence of the One on Gollum and Bilbo might indicate.

[Alfirin]

All true. I never meant that I thought it did happen merely that, in a world where the ring supply was unlimited, Sauron might have attempted the experiment. It probably would take longer, but it mostly likey would happen in the end. Consider Frodo himself, as far as we can tell he did not "want" the power of the ring initially, but it did beat him down eventually. But I agree it might have taken a bit longer, perhaps too long in the case of simply waiting. Plus there is the matter of keeping the person alive until then (something tells me that Sauron's minions are probably not all that good at things like force feeding so unless Sauron was willing to expend addional power in keeping the individual alive a lot would probably simply starve themselves to death before succumbing. Plus, we are probably talking about a lot of people of Numenorian/Gondorian blood causing another problem with keeping them alive (I tend to interpret their ability to "give up life" as also allowing them to, in hopeless situations, simply WILL themselves to death.) So the "knife trick" would probably have to be real. But if it was then possibly forcible wraithification would have been possible and Sauron would had whole platoons of Nazgul "Poissible motto "Some are Born Wraith, Some Achieve Wraithness, and Some have Wraithness thrust upon them.