Session 1.14

Whether they have physical implements or not, I've always thought the effect or damage caused would be elemental in nature (tied to the nature of the Valar).
 
Yes, I've also pictured it that way. They have to create some kind of massive security shield to avoid damaging or scaring the Firstborn, and I think of them as using earthquakes, lightning, storms etc. But some of them have to get up close, Tulkas must grapple Melkor (finally!) and Oromë could absolutely use a spear to hold off some tentacled dinosaurs or something.
 
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The battle should reshape the landscape. The audience should realize that this battle would wipe out any civilians in the area, so that the Valar's later reluctance to intervene will be more understandable.

So, giant chasms opening up when people smite the ground, the sea rushing in, volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, meteors, lightning storms....all of that at once. If we thought Ossë was out of control or violent before....ain't seen nothin yet!
 
As I read your post, the individuals wielding their power seemed evident to me. Varda with radiant light and meteors, Manwe with tornado-force winds, Aule's hammer should be the tool he uses to split the earth, maybe knock an entire mountainside down on one of his foes. Eonwe, Orome, Tulkas, and Nessa have more hands-on approaches. Now might be the time to see Nessa use her speed and agility in combat. Yavanna trees reach up with their roots, dragging the enemies of the Valar into the ground. It gives one chills.
 
Orcs don't need souls. They need to be intelligent enough to speak, they need to breed, and they need to be irredeemably evil. Middle Earth has all sorts of animals and monsters who have independent minds and who can breed. Why not have Melkor reanimate elf bodies to have them selectively breed with various animals and monsters until he has achieved a suitably intelligent and evil race of soulless monsters?

Elf corpses provide the brains and body design, animals provide independent wills, and monsters (plus evil necromancy) provide the irredeemable evil. Sauron could perform the operations. Let him run many iterations and breed multiple generations until there is a race with suitable characteristics that can sustain itself.

No Feas required.
 
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If Melkor starts murdering elves before the Valar find them, won't Mandos notice the elf Feas appearing in the Halls of Mandos? Maybe he doesn't say anything, as is his wont.
 
Orcs speak and have language. We will have just gotten through Aulë and his failed puppet experiment. We will have to deal with the question of where the orcs get their spirits/free will from at some point.

It is quite possible that no spirits of dead elves have fled to Mandos at this time.
 
I think there is a middle path. Is it not possible* for there to be creatures who are intelligent and who have language but who are not ensouled? Melkor cannot create creatures with wills, but he can modify existing creatures. Why not use elves as genetic material to improve a race of ape's intelligence? Melkor could be engaged in the Middle Earth equivalent of gene splicing and cloning.

Another possibility: orcs do contain elven souls, but ones that are entirely enslaved to evil. The wholesale slaughter of orcs is the only way to save them from perpetual torment. The question becomes one of the mechanism of their enslavement, and how it is unbreakable except through death. Maybe there is an orcish equivalent to original sin that destroyed their descendents' free will.

Does Tolkien establish a mechanism for elves' Feas to congregate in the Halls of Mandos? Maybe Mandos and his Maiar actively gather them.


*There might be an answer in Tolkien's writings somewhere.
 
I think that we can safely allow the Orcs free will, but have it suppressed as the hosts decided last week. However, I do agree that there is a sort of freedom achieved when the Orcs are killed. In fact, I believe that because of their situation, Iluvatar takes their souls to himself when they die, the same as he does the souls of evil men. What happens beyond that, I couldn't say, but I like to think that Eru, in his mercy, doesn't force them to remain in Arda, as the elves do.
 
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