RAR - Sauron invades our Earth

[Tiriol]

Just how would he meddle with us? What could a medieval warlord with a few (mediocre) magic tricks be able to give in order to gain influence? And remember, the moment he opens his portal, he can't close it, anymore - the moment people find out (and they will - you can't hold this kind of thing secret for very long in our time) , people will realize that this is middle earth, and then its O-N (with capital letters)...

You seem to forget that
1. we know what an asshole Sauron is
2. While his powers seem enticing for a middle earth peasant or even prince, his abilities and powers are nothing that anybody in first world wouldn't be able to emulate with the help of "SCIENCE!"

Yeah, a mediocre magic trick of shapeshifting (it's never said that he can't take on new forms, just that he can no longer appear fair and pleasant), mental domination, telepathy, summoning spirits of the dead etc. Most of those tricks he has actually used to a good result, even in the book: Pippin, a member of a race unusually resiliant t outside domination and temptation, was catatonic after a brief discussion with Sauron and that's when Sauron was fairly quick with him. Saruman came under his control (Gandalf makes a convincing hypothesis that Saruman didn't have much of a choice after first making contact with Sauron, that he was compelled to make reports to the Dark Tower and though he could try to lie to Sauron, even a master Wizard and a being of the same near-divine origin as Sauron himself, he couldn't do so well enough or shield his thoughts from the Dark Lord) and Denethor, who actually had an advantage with the Seeing-Stone, went insane. Sauron has enough power to make just about everyone subservient to him with very few exceptions - even during the Second Age only few had the strength and will to face Sauron with his Ring. And those were near-mythical beings when compared to the beings of the Third Age, Aragorn and Gandalf being notable exceptions.

1. We know that as readers of LotR, but Sauron's pretty good at lying. He might go for the strategy of pretending that the LotR is a major piece of propaganda and that he was portrayed unfairly. And if he sends Mannish agents first, they would pretty much think that he is a divine ruler, not a demonic overlord.
2. Tell me, what SCIENCE allows you to crush someone's willpower and turn him into a catatonic puppet parroting your words with no heed to outside world? What SCIENCE allows you to change shape or to convince your greatest enemy to make you into his closest advisor after he has defeated your army and dragged you in chains into prison? Was Saddam Hussein not SCIENCE enough for that? And how the fuck does SCIENCE make someone virtually immortal (like Sauron did with the Nazgûl - the backstory doesn't mention how long it took for them to become wraiths, but it wasn't that quick) or let him come back from the dead?

You danced around my statements quite well, but still, being able to shift your shape, dominate the will of one person, cast a shadow over land, etc, are not that great magic feats, after all, and still, what would be a gain of having Sauron on your side?

How did I in fact dance around your statement, now when the posts are in context (which I do notice you cleverly avoided doing)? All what I can say about "mediocre" magic tricks is that I don't know how you define being "mediocre", so I must at least give you that, it's so subjective statement. I notice that you dropped your SCIENCE! when called on it, though. It's almost as if... YOU were doing the dance.

And as I've stated, Sauron can spend centuries building up his base of power and network of contacts and influence. It's not like he just showed up in Eregion and they instantly started doing his bidding, he actually had to gain influence on them first and sink his hooks into their ambitions. And with the Ring in his hand, he can do that in a matter of years at most - of course, Eregion was populated with Elves, not with (mortal) Men, who just tend to have a somewhat different view of timetable and time management than effectively immortal Elves. Sauron turned Ar-Pharazon from his greatest foe into his little lackey, who sacrificed humans, worshipped Morgoth of Elder Days as a god, made Sauron his chief advisor and the high priest of entire Numenor and attacked the Valar at Sauron's suggestion. And that was without Sauron having any contacts within the King's close circle (that we know of) beforehand.

Bending the will of a person? Nice, but with money, you can buy as much influence as you want to.

Firstly, money can't buy the kind of influence that Sauron can gain. It doesn't matter how much you give money to someone, he still chooses to obey you or go along with you. Sauron doesn't give that option, as witnessed in Saruman and Pippin. You have no choice but to obey him and his commands. He can drive you catatonic without lifting a finger to do so. Do you intend to throw huge stacks of cash on someone's head until they are plummeled to brain-death?

Secondly, Sauron can influence a huge amount of people directly (that is, maintaining a mental connection between him and them) and bend them to his will. His entire army lost its will to fight the moment Sauron turned his attention from them to Mount Doom and after his demise, every single creature who was bound to his will was driven insane or lost all hope. You don't do that kind of thing with money. No matter how god-awfully rich Bill Gates is, his existence isn't the single driving force behind a veritable army that will become filled with despairing and insane men and women incapable of any real action.

Military power - which was the base motivator for most who joined him (they knew he would win, anyway, as Saruman stated) - not possible - his armies are outdated and almost useless.

That wasn't the case in the Second Age nor it was the case during the many centuries in the Third Age when Sauron was gathering his forces and consolidating his hold on power. As I stated previously, Sauron can afford to think on a VERY long-term scale: if he had lived on our Earth, he would have single-handedly seen the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and the rise and fall of the British Empire - and the rise of the Egyptian and civilization to boot, as well. Why the hell would he attack an unknown enemy without gathering some intelligence first and WHEN that intelligence shows how ludicrously outclassed he is militarily, why wouldn't he try to bridge that gap, gather more resources etc.? It's not like he can die of old age so he has to hurry up. The only factor that may speed up his plans is how the portals work, how open/hidden they are etc. Otherwise he has plenty of time to do anything he wants.

[LaCroix]

Conceeding - I forgot he was controlling his whole army mentally. Considering that and his ability to sit and wait, we are screwed...

Disclaimer - "Science" was about the ability to dominate/ mentally cripple a person (drugs), the use of steroids to create superstrong soldiers, and other technical feats of military might.

[FaxModem1]

Here's a question, is our Earth familiar with Lord of the Rings? We might not want to enter dialogues with the giant eye on the tower if we know him as the big scary bad guy from those trilogy of blockbusters and famous Tolkien works.

If not, it's understandable we might want to try diplomacy with him. If not, even our most tolerant might go, "Screw that, launch missiles." and organize a force to take the ring from the debris and drop it airdrop style into Mt. Doom.

I can see the situation going with Sauron's army and industry being destroyed, him festering in his tower for centuries while we colonize the planet, making diplomatic relations with the survivors in Rivendell or wherever, and then being overturned into Sauron's new orc force and wiping out Middle Earth and Earth as Sauron's puppets.

[Tribble]

What would the Valars' response be in such a situation? Would they even allow Sauron to completely dominate Middle-Earth and try to conquer another world? Would Illuvater permit that? Sauron may want to think twice before trying to conquer a world completely outside his normal sphere of influence, lest he raise the ire of his superiors and get curb-stomped.

[Sea Skimmer]

Sauron spent how many centuries building up to the actual LOTR campaign, which saw all his strategic offensives completely smashed, before the one ring was even destroyed, even though his enemies were scattered, disunited and barely even communicating with each other? His long term planning abilities clearly sucked completely. He has massive limitations to his power without the ring, and even with the ring he still lost the first time after his tower was physical besieged and armies smashed. We are assuming here he won by fiat. The fact is in the actual record he massively lost two wars, after being part of the loosing team on a third earlier war. He had thousands of years of experience, and it all led to defeats, and his eventual destruction.

I see little reason to think he do much better with long term planning vs earth when he has to learn a massive amount just to start. Earth has too much stacked against him, while being run on average by people who are really massive assholes in their own right and used to high stakes power games as a matter of day to day life. It would simply not be possible for him to obtain enough power to take over the world without being noticed first, he can't just hide behind a wall of mountains and plot and gather forces in secret. Even if he could somehow take charge of entire countries on earth, what are really the chances he can get past a NATO vs Warsaw Pact level of power balance? About zilch. Except the populations of anything he takes over aren't going to be nearly as ignorant and willing to serve a physical dark lord as a illiterate population of mutant derivied Orks are. So far more effort may have to go into maintaining any level of power at all. The modern world is highly integrated, Sauron comes from a world which was not.

Whatever mental-magical powers he has, they could not keep his troops from breaking in combat, they could not predict his own defeats well enough to avoid them. They could not stop his defeat in personal combat with freaking swords when skill actually counts massively. Ergo it has serious limits. I would question his abilities actually working out to be any advantage over modern, let alone centuries future technology. Telepathy is great for example in an era when a horse and rider is the main means of communication, but does it really gain him anything someone couldn't with a radio and unbreakable one time pad system? Science being unable to exactly replicate a capability is not the same as that capability actually being a serious advantage.

Is summoning blatantly dead things to fight going to do anything but galvanize a world against him? Remember we have photos and film now, and a population indoctrinated to accept incredibly intensive levels of violence in combat, not easily shocked and broken in battle. It doesn't seem like anything he can do actually is much more effective then large amounts of money and indoctrination already are. Japan got people to crash thousands of planes into ships, charge as living bombs into tanks, live on sunken ships as suicide commando divers ect.... what is Sauron really able to do that is any better then this? Oh he can make people immortal and a few other tricks, but he cannot seem to do them on mass scales, and the modern world, and modern military force is all about mass, as well as the final ability to negate all mass, with nuclear weapons.

I suspect if were talking centuries in the future anyway, some of Sauron's tricks may well in fact become scientifically possible like near immortality. The Nazgul could still be killed. At least the Witch King could be. Stabbed in the head by a women, I wonder if that works with a cluster bomb dropped by a women pilot? Certainly the Nazgul couldn't just overrun Minith Tirith in a nine demon commando raid, otherwise, you'd kinda think they would have?

This is really besides any consideration of the earth knowing exactly who he was and how to beat him, or at least deprive him of a physical form until the end of time. If earth knows all that, instead of at least having to learn it from prisoners, its kinda unfair. He's just be hunted to destruction once earth got past the WTF factor. Then DRILL FOR OIL!

[Tribble]

So.... how would we fare against Melkor? Or, if Melkor at the height of his powers were far too great for us to handle (which I think was the case initially) at what part in the story would he and/or his armies had been weakened where we could take them out? Even at the end I wouldn't say it would be a cake-walk - he'd have a few balrogs, sauron, and dragons, especially Ancalagon the Black - the one which was large enough to hold back the entire host of the Valar, bloat of the sun from the distance and reduce the three tallest mountains in Middle-Earth to rubble when he fell. A dragon that big might take more than a single missile or artillery shell to take out (though nuclear weapons would likely be sufficient).

[Skywalker_T-65]

Melkor/Morgoth at the height of his power is basically a god in almost every sense of the word. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details (I haven't read the Silmarillion in a couple years) but I'm not sure if we could beat him at full power.

That being said, even at the beginning of the War with the Noldor, he was weakened enough that a (presumably) human sized Elf (Fingolfin IIRC) was able to duel him and wound him with a sword. So I don't see a reason why Morgoth as of his duel with Fingolfin can't be taken down with a barrage of tank shells or an airstrike or two. He only gets weaker as the Age goes by I think (again, fuzzy on the details).

[Tribble]

Ya, Morgoth at the end was pretty weak, but that was because he was dispersing his power into other creatures. Somehow during the process the power can be amplified, at least in the case of Ancalagon - he held off the entire host of the Valar until Earendil showed up with the Simaril (though it's unknown of any of the Valar joined in) which Morgoth clearly wouldn't have been able to do on his own.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Sea Skimmer pretty much nailed the point I was trying to make, but I would also like to add another argument against the idea that patience and immortality could trump Sauron's numerous and massive disadvantages. If you had immortality, super-genius intelligence (no evidence that Sauron possesses this, but let's be generous), significant but not unlimited powers of seduction and mind control, and the patience to wait hundreds or thousands of years for world domination, but no ability to foretell the future, who would you turn to your side in, say, 1500 A.D. whose influence would still matter today? The fact of the matter is that the world around you would change faster than you could shape it, and there is no way you could possibly forsee the technological changes, upheavals and revolutions, and births and deaths of schools of thought, nor you could prevent larger societal forces from marginalizing the once-powerful forces whose behavior you've altered away from the zeitgeist. If you have no special ability to anticipate that which cannot be anticipated, it does not matter how many years you have to strive in vain for dominance.

[Tiriol]

Sauron spent how many centuries building up to the actual LOTR campaign, which saw all his strategic offensives completely smashed, before the one ring was even destroyed, even though his enemies were scattered, disunited and barely even communicating with each other? His long term planning abilities clearly sucked completely. He has massive limitations to his power without the ring, and even with the ring he still lost the first time after his tower was physical besieged and armies smashed. We are assuming here he won by fiat. The fact is in the actual record he massively lost two wars, after being part of the loosing team on a third earlier war. He had thousands of years of experience, and it all led to defeats, and his eventual destruction.

Sauron didn't spend centuries in building up his LotR campaign. His hand was in fact forced in many occasions: with the information he had at hand, he had every reason to believe someone would try to claim the Ring and use it against him. He was only starting to test Gondor's strength in 3018 and after that he immediately sent the Ringwraiths after the Ring - and once they returned to him he knew that the Ring was dangerously within his greatest enemies' reach, which made him go on offensive sooner than he had planned, much sooner. In fact Aragorn and Gandalf counted on that in their final offensive, because otherwise Sauron's attention would not have been fixed on the Host of the West, instead of, say, Mount Doom where the true danger to his empire was. Gandalf is a divine messenger and for all intents and purposes a literal deus ex machina after his return from death (a feat that had done only by few beings before, Sauron being one of them - should he have expected the Grey Wizard to successfully beg for mercy from Mandos like Luthien did?) Without Gandalf the White, the biggest obvious sign of divine intervention in LotR, Theoden won't be roused from his stupor and Saruman will dominate Rohan when the King is weak. Without that intervention Rohan will not go to war on Gondor's behalf and there won't Eowyn or Merry to stab the Witch-king. Without Gandalf's aid it is debatable if Aragorn would have been able to gather the spirits on the Paths of the Dead and take the Corsair fleet as his own and relieve Minas Tirith from its peril (the siege continued even after the Witch-king's death, after all).

Without divine intervention, Middle-earth in the Third Age is doomed. Erebor was besieged, the Dale and Lake-town under occupation, Rohan endangered by Sauron's other armies and Orcs of Mirkwood and Misty Mountains pouring out of their fortresses; and Elves of Lothlorien were fighting off invasion forces of Dol Guldur and couldn't help anyone. Only Eriador was relatively safe, but there wasn't much there to begin with, expect for some scattered settlements and Rivendell and the Grey Havens. Even with all the other losses, Sauron was still going to win the military campaign and only because Frodo had took pity on Gollum before and divine intervention kicked in, did the Ring get destroyed and Sauron's empire collapsed.

I see little reason to think he do much better with long term planning vs earth when he has to learn a massive amount just to start. Earth has too much stacked against him, while being run on average by people who are really massive assholes in their own right and used to high stakes power games as a matter of day to day life. It would simply not be possible for him to obtain enough power to take over the world without being noticed first, he can't just hide behind a wall of mountains and plot and gather forces in secret. Even if he could somehow take charge of entire countries on earth, what are really the chances he can get past a NATO vs Warsaw Pact level of power balance? About zilch. Except the populations of anything he takes over aren't going to be nearly as ignorant and willing to serve a physical dark lord as a illiterate population of mutant derivied Orks are. So far more effort may have to go into maintaining any level of power at all. The modern world is highly integrated, Sauron comes from a world which was not.

Whatever mental-magical powers he has, they could not keep his troops from breaking in combat, they could not predict his own defeats well enough to avoid them. They could not stop his defeat in personal combat with freaking swords when skill actually counts massively. Ergo it has serious limits. I would question his abilities actually working out to be any advantage over modern, let alone centuries future technology. Telepathy is great for example in an era when a horse and rider is the main means of communication, but does it really gain him anything someone couldn't with a radio and unbreakable one time pad system? Science being unable to exactly replicate a capability is not the same as that capability actually being a serious advantage.

Sauron's telepathy is clearly able to dominate other people's wills and force them into his servitude. How the fuck does a radio do that? And previously he fought near-mythical beings who had centuries to practice their skills in weaponry.

And Sauron commanded huge tracts of territory NOT filled with Orcs, but with Men. Do you claim that they are somehow less assholish than people of our Earth? That no one with ambition and lack of morals would have come up during the several thousand years when Sauron was building his empire? Where the fuck does the brain-bug that only Orcs and other monsters served Sauron come from? The book and even the fucking movies are clear in that there are Men there, as well.

Is summoning blatantly dead things to fight going to do anything but galvanize a world against him? Remember we have photos and film now, and a population indoctrinated to accept incredibly intensive levels of violence in combat, not easily shocked and broken in battle. It doesn't seem like anything he can do actually is much more effective then large amounts of money and indoctrination already are. Japan got people to crash thousands of planes into ships, charge as living bombs into tanks, live on sunken ships as suicide commando divers ect.... what is Sauron really able to do that is any better then this? Oh he can make people immortal and a few other tricks, but he cannot seem to do them on mass scales, and the modern world, and modern military force is all about mass, as well as the final ability to negate all mass, with nuclear weapons.

I suspect if were talking centuries in the future anyway, some of Sauron's tricks may well in fact become scientifically possible like near immortality. The Nazgul could still be killed. At least the Witch King could be. Stabbed in the head by a women, I wonder if that works with a cluster bomb dropped by a women pilot? Certainly the Nazgul couldn't just overrun Minith Tirith in a nine demon commando raid, otherwise, you'd kinda think they would have?

This is really besides any consideration of the earth knowing exactly who he was and how to beat him, or at least deprive him of a physical form until the end of time. If earth knows all that, instead of at least having to learn it from prisoners, its kinda unfair. He's just be hunted to destruction once earth got past the WTF factor. Then DRILL FOR OIL!

In Silmarillion Sauron used his powers to summon spirits of the dead and various phantasms of his own making to drive an entire fortress of battle-hardened Elves, who don't fear the spirits of dead Men, away, running for their lives in mortal fear. He tricked battle-hardened commandos with the same images into willingly surrendering to him and telling all of their secrets to him. So Sauron can do mass-scale magic as well. And Sauron's mind-control is basically a more fantastic version of Emperor Palpatine's or Joruus C'boath's Force mind control and I don't usually see anyone claiming that those are non-factor.

At least Tolkien stated supposedly in one of his letters that Sauron could have summoned the Witch-king back from the dead simply because the Ringwraith's spirit was tied to the existence of his ring and Sauron had those. So no luck there. They can shorn of their physical form, but so long as their rings and the One Ring exists, they will come back.

And once again the brain-bug that Sauron would immediately declare himself as Sauron the Dark Lord and not work through messengers and gather intelligence. He can also feed propaganda to us and quite frankly, if it was he who opened the portals to our world he probably should already have some idea about what we are up to and capable of. Sauron was defeated by divine intervention in LotR and by near-mythical beings in the Second Age (and by actual mythical beings in the First Age).

[Tribble]

Well that's just it isn't it? If Sauron is in control of the portals and can choose when and where to open and close them, we can't touch him. And unless the portals were somehow detectable with modern instruments, we wouldn't even know they were there. If Sauron is ever threatened, all he has to do is close the portal and move it somewhere else. it might take centurys or even milennia, but eventually he'll win unless we can somehow get to him.

[Borgholio]

The portals would be permanent once he opens them. Try to explain it in some technobabble or magical sense...but once it's open it's open for good. Otherwise yeah, if he can close them it's not much of a RAR.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Question: Would Sauron know anything of Earth before he opens his first portal? Because if he doesn't know where population centers are, he could end up opening a portal with the goal of stealthily scouting things out...and have it pop up in the middle of New York City or something like that.

[Borgholio]

Well he does have the ability to "see" things long distance. In the movies he can only really communicate long distance through the palantir or to whomever is wearing the ring. I suppose, if he regained the ring, and had centuries to grow his power and solidify his control over Middle Earth, he might be able to sense general ideas about our world. I don't think he'd be able to pinpoint major cities or anything like that.

[Tribble]

What limitations would our communications have when going through the portal? For example, would we be able to send radio signals back and forth?

[Borgholio]

What limitations would our communications have when going through the portal? For example, would we be able to send radio signals back and forth?

Yep, full two-way communication. Visible light, radio, telepathy, etc...

[Tribble]

Hmmmm... well if scientists are able to detect the portals due to technocalble or whatever, I'd imagine they'd be sending teams to investigate. Given that we live in the age of real-tie communications, no doubt they would be broadcasting their expedition on T.V. or Youtube or something. If upon arriving at the portals the scientists get slaughtered by guards or whatnot, that's probably going to raise some red flags. Alternatively, I would imagine that they would send a robot drone into the portal first, just to play it safe. If the drone sends images back of a giant tower with a huge flaming eyeball and a volcano in the background, that's also going to raise some red flags. At any rate, if the portals are permanent and two-way communication is possible, at some point it is likely that we will discover that they connects to Middle-Earth. Or if all the robots/expeditions we send keep getting destroyed/slaughtered, at the very least we will know that whatever is on the other side of the portal is very dangerous.

Cue the military taking over the site/expedition. If they know that they are dealing with Sauron, then I have no doubt that they will thoroughly study the books and/or movies before deciding what to do. If they decide to mount a military strike, then in all likelihood they would come to the same conclusion that we have here: use pilotless robots and missiles to do the dirty work. That way Sauron won't be able to directly influence the minds of soldiers. I doubt Sauron's telepathy extends to being able to control the programming of missiles and drones, nor do I think that his telepathy would work via computer/T.V. screen.

And let's assume the worse case scenario that Sauron is successful in his attempts to conceal his movements until he is ready to strike. As Tiriol stated, part of his defeat in the books was divine intervention. Would the Valar jsut sit there and watch while Sauron invades another realm, or would they intervene? And if not the Valar, what about Illuvater? Something tells me that he wouldn't condone Sauron attacking a realm which is supposed to be entirely outside his sphere of influence. At the very least I would say that the Valar and/or Illuvater would intervene in some way, even if it was just to send some emissaries like Gandalf. Worst case scenario for Sauron would be that they would decide that enough is enough and decide to intervene directly, in which case he would get promptly curb stomped without us having to do anything.

[Sea Skimmer]

Sauron didn't spend centuries in building up his LotR campaign. His hand was in fact forced in many occasions: with the information he had at hand, he had every reason to believe someone would try to claim the Ring and use it against him.

Nope, he spent centuries doing stuff, and choose stupid hiding spots and generally acted stupidly. It is the very essence of good planning that it is adaptable to the enemy's reactions. If your plans only work when the enemy does what you want, your plan sucks and you just are getting lucky.

He was only starting to test Gondor's strength in 3018 and after that he immediately sent the Ringwraiths after the Ring - and once they returned to him he knew that the Ring was dangerously within his greatest enemies' reach, which made him go on offensive sooner than he had planned, much sooner.

Which means his plan was bad. This is coming after he lost another big war, stupidly created the one ring in the first place, and was on the loosing team of the biggest war ever. Yeah, where does his ability to outwit humanity come from exactly?

In fact Aragorn and Gandalf counted on that in their final offensive, because otherwise Sauron's attention would not have been fixed on the Host of the West, instead of, say, Mount Doom where the true danger to his empire was.

In other words, Sauron was a complete fucking idiot. He threw all of his forces at a decoy force, even though he had a giant wall to hold them off easily, after leaving the back door into his own land open, and didn't even leave a token guard on Mount Doom when he still had thousands upon thousands of troops to employ. This more then anything else show's what a blind idiot he could be. You want him to undermine the world, he needs a hyper conservative approach. He's not showing it.

Gandalf is a divine messenger and for all intents and purposes a literal deus ex machina after his return from death (a feat that had done only by few beings before, Sauron being one of them - should he have expected the Grey Wizard to successfully beg for mercy from Mandos like Luthien did?)

Given what an idiot in general I'd figure not, but your the one apparently arguing that he is a good planner. Gandalf was only one of multiple wizards too, any one of which whom might have caused him trouble. Where was his planning to account for this? Why did he ever make the one ring that would be such a massive liability for him? Bad planning over and over. Villains tend to be treated like this in fiction FYI. Reasons exist for it, because otherwise it would be hard to have the good side also be militarily the underdog, but it is what it is.

Without Gandalf the White, the biggest obvious sign of divine intervention in LotR, Theoden won't be roused from his stupor and Saruman will dominate Rohan when the King is weak. Without that intervention Rohan will not go to war on Gondor's behalf and there won't Eowyn or Merry to stab the Witch-king. Without Gandalf's aid it is debatable if Aragorn would have been able to gather the spirits on the Paths of the Dead and take the Corsair fleet as his own and relieve Minas Tirith from its peril (the siege continued even after the Witch-king's death, after all).

Saruman also might then defeat Sauron on his own, since you know, that was his plan. Get the ring and use it to usurp him. This is another reason why Sauron was not smart. Generally dictators don't do well when they delegate power to rivals.

[/quote]
Without divine intervention, Middle-earth in the Third Age is doomed. Erebor was besieged, the Dale and Lake-town under occupation, Rohan endangered by Sauron's other armies and Orcs of Mirkwood and Misty Mountains pouring out of their fortresses; and Elves of Lothlorien were fighting off invasion forces of Dol Guldur and couldn't help anyone.[/quote]

Funny enough they did fight them off, and showed little signs of winning. Actually where do the forces of doom ever win anything except to take outposts of Minas Tirith?

Sauron's telepathy is clearly able to dominate other people's wills and force them into his servitude. How the fuck does a radio do that?

Actually isn't so clearly able to do that at all, he seemingly always had to promise them something in return. In any case this power was not able to defeat his major enemies militarily, even in an era of King's when people were actually expected to blindly follow the leader into death.

And previously he fought near-mythical beings who had centuries to practice their skills in weaponry.

Previously he lost, and was on the loosing side. Centuries of practice means precious little. The most skilled person ever still gets blown up by artillery ect.

And Sauron commanded huge tracts of territory NOT filled with Orcs, but with Men. Do you claim that they are somehow less assholish than people of our Earth?

Actually yeah, because they are in a considerably less advanced culture. People tend to be easier to manipulate the more ignorant they are.

That no one with ambition and lack of morals would have come up during the several thousand years when Sauron was building his empire?

Funny above you were claiming that Sauron did not spend centuries planning his rise to power. Now you are.

Where the fuck does the brain-bug that only Orcs and other monsters served Sauron come from? The book and even the fucking movies are clear in that there are Men there, as well.

Nothing is known about them or the motivations they had, other then that some were well known as pirates. Assuming Sauron controlled them by unconventional means is a real stretch.

In Silmarillion Sauron used his powers to summon spirits of the dead and various phantasms of his own making to drive an entire fortress of battle-hardened Elves, who don't fear the spirits of dead Men, away, running for their lives in mortal fear.

The first use of tanks in 1916 also did this to battle hardened Germans who had fought on the Somme for months, which was by any standard a half step into hell. And then the next time... it didn't work. Now tanks are normal and we have tens of thousands of them. One shot tricks are numerous in warfare, ones that work all the time, not so much. This is the damn problem with people discussing magic that annoys me so much, now maybe you don't think this way, but you come off like it, that just because something is magical it is special and thus an inherent advantage. In reality all that matters are the effects, and how often you can exploit them. Sauron's tricks did not win him wars. His wars were always about large scale use of armed force, and most of that force was always more or less regular troops.

He tricked battle-hardened commandos with the same images into willingly surrendering to him and telling all of their secrets to him. So Sauron can do mass-scale magic as well. And Sauron's mind-control is basically a more fantastic version of Emperor Palpatine's or Joruus C'boath's Force mind control and I don't usually see anyone claiming that those are non-factor.

Both those guys lost in wars, and actually a specific number was placed on the latter's advantage, what was it something like 20%? In any case dropping BZ gas on people can cause all kinds of crazy things to happen, while also working as a truth serum on people, though multiple drugs can do this in the right situations. How many times did Sauron do this, why didn't he win? Why didn't he scare away all his enemies from his besieged tower? Why did he have to come out, fight them with melee weapons? How many of earth's divisions shelling him from over the horizon will he be able to employ this on?

At least Tolkien stated supposedly in one of his letters that Sauron could have summoned the Witch-king back from the dead simply because the Ringwraith's spirit was tied to the existence of his ring and Sauron had those. So no luck there. They can shorn of their physical form, but so long as their rings and the One Ring exists, they will come back.

Considering how many things humans can kill, and how quickly, that doesn't sound like a very serious problem, if it apparently takes significant effort to summon them back. Otherwise you'd kinda of think he would have done it, at once, when his attack on Minas Tirith failed.

And once again the brain-bug that Sauron would immediately declare himself as Sauron the Dark Lord and not work through messengers and gather intelligence.

Like he did in the thousands of years he built up to fail before?

He can also feed propaganda to us and quite frankly, if it was he who opened the portals to our world he probably should already have some idea about what we are up to and capable of.

And we can feed his side propaganda, money and freedom and massive proof of our accomplishments. As i said, it could get to Warsaw Pact vs NATO, maybe, but just taking over via underhanded means, that isn't happening.

Sauron was defeated by divine intervention in LotR and by near-mythical beings in the Second Age (and by actual mythical beings in the First Age).

Right, so that's why everyone always had huge armies fighting right? And built fortresses with physical walls? Because all that mattered was mythical beings? Clearly those myths had some big limitations still grounded in physics.

[Zwinmar]

Odds are he wouldn't/couldn't understand the technological advances made. In the books he Saruman was pioneering an industrial revolution so how would any of them know about radio, much less everything else?

Even then, what would he know about night vision/thermal devices? Even during the Iraq war people were mystified as to how the armed forces could see them.

[PKRudeBoy]

Odds are he wouldn't/couldn't understand the technological advances made. In the books he Saruman was pioneering an industrial revolution so how would any of them know about radio, much less everything else?

Even then, what would he know about night vision/thermal devices? Even during the Iraq war people were mystified as to how the armed forces could see them.

"In his beginning he was of the Maiar of Aulë, and he remained mighty in the lore of that people." While he wouldn't know about the technologies until he encountered them, I would expect that he would try to reverse engineer modern designs and industrialize Mordor before he launched any major attacks.

[Tribble]

@Borgholio

What, if anything, would be the Valar and/or Illuvater's response be to this? I mean, it could range from doing absolutely nothing, to sending emissaries like Gandalf, to deciding that they've had enough of Sauron's antics and curb-stomping him to the ground. Hell, if Sauron was able to create the portals than the Valar, being much stronger than him, should be able to close them if they wanted to. And if not, Illuvatar certainly could. Sauron is not the only player left in the LOTR universe, nor is he the strongest, and their response could completely change the scenario.

[Borgholio]

I'm not sure what they would do. Aside from sending the Wizards and reviving Gandalf, I don't recall they really did much of anything else during the entire Third Age. If Sauron won, I wonder if they would just write off Middle Earth and say "Fuck it"?

[Tribble]

@Borgholio

I'm not sure, but I doubt it. The Valar sent the Wizards because they were concerned that if they attacked Sauron directly there could be significant collateral damage. But even Morgoth was never permitted to rule Middle Earth entirely, and he was a much greater force than Sauron ever was. When the last outposts were threatened and Earendil made his plea the Valar decided to act. I could see a similar thing happening with Sauron - if the choice was between Sauron ruling all of Middle-Earth for eternity with an iron fist or accepting some collateral damage, I think the Valar would ultimately choose to take him out. And I think they would certainly want to take him out if he tried invading another realm, as he would be operating outside of his jurisdiction.

Perhaps Q has made some kind of deal with Illuvater so that he and the Valar are not allowed to intervene in any way? Because that's the only way I can think of where Sauron avoids getting curbstomped by his own people.

What do you think? lol

[Channel72]

Sauron's strategy in LOTR was basically to just built up a giant, mostly conventional infantry, and then just take over everything thru sheer numbers. The analogy to something like this on Earth would be establishing an industrial/economic/military super power over time, and then subduing every other nation. Of course, nuclear arsenals make this plan sort of a non-starter.

He'd have to mind-control heads of state, which is (1) not exactly very productive in a democracy and (2) not necessarily within his power anyway. It's not clear to what extent Sauron can mind control people at all.

[Irbis]

Here's a question, is our Earth familiar with Lord of the Rings? We might not want to enter dialogues with the giant eye on the tower if we know him as the big scary bad guy from those trilogy of blockbusters and famous Tolkien works.

The thing is, Númenor knew that even better than we do, yet it didn't help them.

Invasion plan: A) make Nazguls invisible; B) enchant them so the next sentence they say is perceived as trustworthy; C) teleport one to each of the G8 (and China) leaders; D) have them say 'this ring here will make you immortal for all time, take it'. You can even skip Canada and Italy and go for India and Brasil instead, once this is done, all the corrupted person needs to do is to call whoever they think can oppose Sauron for private 'meeting'.