Sauron's Morgoth Moment

Haerangil said:
Reading through the script so far again...

I always had following scene in mind when it came to sauron or morgoth and captured elves...

There is morgoth and a small elven child or teenager ( i had tu/ tuvo from lost tales in mind, but i don' t know if he'll make an aüpearance in silmfilm later...)

The morgoth tells the child not to be afraid and he mustn' t fear him, and that he will teach him and make him his pupil the elf asks " teach what" and morgoths answer is " pain!"

I had morgoth in mind for the scene, because i was thinking of the lt story... But it could actually ne sauron ...
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That's a pretty cool idea. And not so different from the opening scene the hosts approved for S0201's main story. As it is, the one that exists fits a bit better with the cold open of the frame being the capture of Celebrían.
 
An idea for ten years from now, probably, but I want to jot it down before I forget.

Sauron's "Morgoth Moment", it seems to me, needs to happen before he goes to Numenor, given the whole Ruling Ring and Celebrimbor-as-banner thing. So what if we depict him as being (mostly) sincere when he comes to Eregion, but comes to see the potential in the ring-lore he finds there? His Moment, then, could be giving into the temptation to forge the One, to dominate and rule the others. Most of his 2nd and 3rd Age villainy descends directly from the Ring, so it makes sense to have his point of no return tied to it.

Also, this way, we can honestly and earnestly depict Sauron as conflicted and not wholly evil throughout the entirety of the First Age, and even afterwards, when he's in exile in Middle Earth as a proud but not utterly corrupted/corrupting force.
 
On a similar "10 years from now" note, this is the thread where we've been talking much of the feud with Gothmog right?

It struck me just how deep and personal that rivalry reaches in Sauron - ages later, he (presumably) forces one of his chief servants to take on that name and get bossed around.

Seems so petty. I looove it.
 
could this feud have to do with Gothmog being Morgoth's son?

a factor of jealousy or favoritism, or Morgoth playing each off of the other
 
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Gothmog might feel like he WAS Morgoth#s son, in a way like "Melkor made me!"

while Sauron's relation to his Lord is a different one. Plus I doubt Melkor would share Gothmog#s feelings in that way... He's a user and influencer... no father-figure, but he might play with such an image to reach his goals.
 
We had the balrogs be the Maiar associated with Melkor in the beginning. So, not his kids, no.
 
I didn't mean his kid in sense that melkor sired or created gothmog, but he made him the way he became. Not much like a teacher or like sauron idolizes melkor but more like he was able to form his personality or character..
 
(Just FYI I have received two email alerts for a message—substantially the same as far as I can tell—being posted in this thread by "Fell Critter" but the message hasn't shown up here either time o_O )
 
Melkor is canonically attracted to Varda, Arien, and Lúthien. I'm not suggesting that this would be other than you said - wanting to use or claim something for his own, not exactly like he would go off courting or something! More that he wants what he can't have.... And he does pour his own native power into things to create armies and such.

I don't want to give any of the Valar children, so I don't want Melkor to have children, either. I do think that the Valar/Maiar relationships are interesting, so I'd like to use that conceit in determining the rivalries and interactions in Angband. There *is* a difference in how and why Gothmog (and the other balrogs) follow Morgoth, and how Sauron does.

The balrogs have almost fanatical loyalty. They have been associated with Melkor since the Music, so they are on board with his view of Creation. They are very 'sir, yes sir!' about any orders from Morgoth. It should not be difficult for the viewers to draw parallels between the Sons of Fëanor following their father, and the balrogs following Melkor/Morgoth.

Mairon/Sauron, on the other hand, was originally a Maia of Aulë, and spent most of the first season of this show trying to reconcile Melkor and the Valar. He was acting as a go-between, and Melkor (perhaps confident that he'd win him over in the end), never made any demands of loyalty from him. By the Season 1 finale, Sauron has made his choice (and he obviously admires Melkor's power).

I think we are going to portray a Sauron who has second thoughts about Morgoth's ability to fulfill the promises/dreams he bought into from Melkor....but that it will take some time for Sauron to get them. Right now, he's very much bought in, and trying to make the most of the situation. I think it is only as time goes on and Morgoth weakens (while Sauron's own corruption becomes more apparent) that we'll see Sauron reach the point where he thinks he could challenge Morgoth for power.

In the end, we are probably going to have a Sauron who thinks himself too weak to achieve his own goals, and has a weird worship/hungry relationship with power. This won't really come into play until the 2nd Age, when he makes his own bid for power and crafts the One Ring.
 
MithLuin said:
Melkor is canonically attracted to Varda, Arien, and Lúthien. I'm not suggesting that this would be other than you said - wanting to use or claim something for his own, not exactly like he would go off courting or something! More that he wants what he can't have....
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totally agree with this, I only meant in the case of the ogress - surely that would have to have been... expedient, somehow. I dunno, can ogres be attractive?

only wanting what he doesn't have is a deceptively elegant way of putting it, though
 
I believe ogre in that case means a creature of orcus, orcus is the roman underworld. So ogre here is a demonic entity i believe.. Tolkien after all was a linguist.

If we want to use the ogress we could make her a female balrog, that would be easiest i suggest.

But we already have a melkor clique at angband with sauron, gothmog, thuringwethil and boldog and tevildo. Orher roles, apart from outstanding extras, would just detract or confuse the audience i think.

But we could have a female balrog, just as we could have unnamed demons at angband as extras, just to point out we did not forget the lesser characters and show that they do exist in some way, even if they did not get dialogue.
 
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I don't find the need to include Ulbandi/Fluithuin. But we are going to want a court of background characters in Angband, so if one of these extras is inspired by her, I suppose that's fine. We can save our character development for Thuringwethil, though - she's a good example of each-man-for-his-own for demonic politics, I think.
 
I feel like I may have seemed to push the ogress harder than I actually intended there. Melkor as Gothmog's father was only something that seemed like it could add depth to a rivalry with Sauron, but in Melkor's ranks, I'm sure that simple competitiveness would suffice.

rather, I meant to inquire about the reason for that rivalry, if it was more than this. didn't mean to totally derail from Sauron...
 
I've been thinking about Sauro's rivalry with Gothmog. I may have flipped a bit on how I'd prefer to see it resolved.

Fact 1) Gothmog dies in Gondolin, slain by Ecthelion

Fact 2) Thousands of years later, Sauron has named his chief henchman "Gothmog" - clearly he's not over it.

We get to fill in around the edges of that.

Until now I have been of the opinion that the best way is to make it such that Sauron engineers the downfall of Gothmog via his puppet Maeglin (while still pulling off an overall victory, as far as the bad guys know, in Gondolin). This makes for a satisfying conclusion to their rivalry at that time.

But is this the most satisfying byilding block in Sauron's long-term character? If he gets a fairly clean win like this?

What if, instead, Sauron implements his scheme through Maeglin, but then meanwhile whoopsie-daisy Gothmog gets killed independently of his scheme. Sauron wins the rivalry by default, but never gets the satisfaction of a genuine win. It gnaws at him for millennia - could he actually have pulled it off? Would his scheme have worked? Confidence one day, crippling doubt the next. He even goes so far as renaming his chief cowering toady "Gothmog" so that he can shout orders to that name (in my mind he always thus renames whoever is his chief toady - a never ending string of proxy Gothmogs).

This is more satisfying, long term, I reckon.
 
Hmm... I always thought the gothmog, steward of morgul thing just reflects gothmog as " the master's voice". In the later ages melkor is gone and sauron fancies himself as the new master... So he gets himself a gothmog.
 
Yeah I used to look at it that way too. But that was before silmfilm and the discovery and developmemt of this rivalry.
 
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