Session 4-27, 4-28: Post-production Script Review, Parts 3 and 4

Certainly, there's more than one way to achieve this outline of the battle. One can alter the details as necessary to tell the story. But I am not a fan of this endless invention of subplots just to make something play out in a particular way.

There is no reason not to have Gothmog kill Edhellos. None. It's something Gothmog would do, they're both on the battlefield, and it makes sense as an end to her arc. Are there other ways she could die? Sure. She could simply run into the front line and get taken out by orcs/trolls in a suicidal rush. She could run away and drown in the swamp. A bolt of lightning from the blue could strike her dead. I'm not worried about coming up with alternate ways to kill her. I am concerned with why we think it important to do so.

I know you have written Sauron killing her, Rhiannon. And it is true that Corey Olsen spoke positively of the scene you wrote (with the light through the clouds and the stone troll, etc). But he also said he didn't think it fit the story to have Sauron kill Edhellos. He essentially vetoed that idea. One can disagree with him, sure. But, at the end of the day, one does have to accept that this is his project, and recognize that his decisions will stand moving forward.

You have the opportunity to try to convince people, but if you fail to convince, the answer isn't always to keep arguing for your own personal vision. Sometimes, you have to try to figure out how to preserve what you think is essential while working with someone else's idea.

So, if you want my honest feedback, it would be to take the parts you liked best about the Edhellos death scenes you've written, and substitute Gothmog for Sauron. There's no reason to lose the ray of sunlight and her final prayer for Angrod. But all of this effort to put Sauron in that scene looks and feels contrived and unsatisfactory.

I am not at all convinced that we lose *anything* by not having Sauron personally kill Gil-galad's grandmother that he will never meet. Sauron's torture of Edhellos was sufficiently personal, no? Nor do I think it important that Sauron personally break Aegnor's Valinorean sword to inspire Maedhros to commission a dwarven-made replacement that will be Narsil. Narsil being a replacement for a broken sword is sufficient dramatic irony.


I remain thoroughly unconvinced that Angrod needs to survive this battle. Sure, he *can* survive, and I'm fine with that, but I don't think it's very important one way or another if he dies now or dies in the Dagor Bragollach. Corey Olsen likewise isn't set on his survival, though he would actually prefer if Angrod die now. So, yes, you were granted a reprieve with the death of Angrod being postponed until late Season 5. But that reprieve was conditional. It was conditional on the death of Edhellos satisfying the balrog rule by having the balrogs in the battle kill a major character the audience knows and cares about.

But I don't think it's even a question of which is more important to you - the survival of Angrod, or having Sauron personally kill Edhellos. You were able to convince Corey Olsen that the death of Angrod was unnecessary (because the death of Edhellos filled that role). As our two hour discussion of Episode 9 showed, you were not successful at convincing him that Sauron should be on that battlefield or the one to kill Edhellos. Nick and I weren't convinced, either. Neither is Haakon. Please keep that in mind moving forward.
Thank you for the breakdown of the tension and themes of this episode. I am certainly not as invested in having Sauron kill Edhellos as I am in the survival of Angrod, and I will change the script so that Gothmog kills her if necessary. However, I think it is both possible and worthwhile to work out a way for both to occur.

While I definitely don't want Sauron to seem to appear on the battlefield for the sole purpose of killing Edhellos, I also don't think Sauron's presence in the Dagor Aglareb requires an elaborate subplot to explain. He shouldn't appear out of the blue, but his forces are nearby, the main characters from Angband with whom he usually interacts are nearby, and the viewers know that he holds a high rank in Angband and Morgoth thinks favorably of him. Little hints about capturing more prisoners or doing spy-work or something like that are all I think the viewers need to be convinced of why he is there.

Since Sauron cannot be commander of the second army of Orcs, as I wrote in my first script, his presence requires another explanation. As long as it is not wildly out of character for Sauron, what specifically that is is not super important because, to the viewers, Sauron's character will be shaped by his actions. I've been making suggestions because I want to know what kind of questions I need to answer in order to write them in a way that does not seem contrived within the script.

Narsil is not the only benefit I see from having Sauron present in this scene. I think having Sauron there allows for more development of all the characters involved. The scene demonstrates that Sauron, who previously defended his prisoners from Gothmog, is perfectly willing to kill them off when they no longer serve a purpose. Edhellos' charge at Sauron somewhat redeems her character rather than seeming completely mad and suicidal. Angrod, Aegnor, Orodreth, and their friends (especially Celebrimbor) and family have much more to discuss, and by seeing Sauron shift into Angrod, all the Elves nearby get a sense of just how horrible torture in Angband is.

If Gothmog were the one to kill Edhellos, the viewers and characters would be reminded that Balrogs like smashing Elves.

What I asked to write at the end of our discussion was a new version of Episode 9 in which Sauron was the one to kill Edhellos and there were Balrogs present in the battle, which Corey Olsen seemed open to. He suggested that Sauron could be waiting opportunistically around the fringes of Gothmog's troops and trying to capture prisoners and conceded that, while that would not bring Sauron to the front, it would certainly bring him closer to Edhellos. While he seemed skeptical of no named characters getting smashed by Balrogs, he still seemed open to my suggestion of making the Balrogs terrifying enough that the Balrog rule could be ignored.

I don't want to come across as inflexible or unwilling to change what I have written, but I would want us to be sure that it is absolutely impossible for Sauron to kill Edhellos before we abandon the idea.
 
I don't have a problem with killing off Angrod or keeping him alive. I just don't know how he could be kept alive if he can see Edhellos' demise and doesn't get killed. Aegnor would have to pommel him over the head and drag him away.
Poor Angrod. :( Losing someone you love does not necessarily make you suicidal.
 
What do you mean about Aegnor?
I have this idea about Aegnor being present when Andreth dies since her death is concurrent with the Dagor Bragollach, and he goes berserk with grief and what he could have had with her, and just kills everything in his path until he is killed.
 
I have this idea about Aegnor being present when Andreth dies since her death is concurrent with the Dagor Bragollach, and he goes berserk with grief and what he could have had with her, and just kills everything in his path until he is killed.
I'm pretty sure Aegnor dies before Andreth. That's why Finrod says to Andreth, "thou shalt live long in the order of your kind, and he will go forth before thee and he will not wish to return."
 
Aegnor and Andreth is very much a conversation for Season 5, which we have not yet gotten to. No final decisions have been made on the timing or manner of Aegnor and Andreth's deaths nor on which exact content of the Athrabeth we will use. I reminded people that Corey Olsen had said that he did not expect to drop a philosophical debate into the middle of a TV show, so we're certainly not using it in its current form. We can talk more about this next season.




Transcript of the final 15 minutes of the 3 hour discussion that was the 11/14 session:

Corey Olsen: ... I really like the scene you wrote as it's depicted. I think it's a wonderful scene.

Nick: Yeah.

Corey Olsen: But the larger plot context of it is what I disagree with. I don't see Sauron being on the battlefield. I don't see any.... I can start listing a bunch of reasons for him not to be on the battlefield, and I can't think of very many good reasons for him to be there. He's gonna have other opportunities to follow up, to continue his work. If what we see here is Gothmog smashing his work, then that seems to me.... And again, that helps to further solidify the rivalry.

Nick: Right, the rivalry.

Corey Olsen: And if anything, it almost allows Gothmog to recoup something from the battle. Okay, his idea, his smash-offensive, didn't pan out. So he goes back to Angband with egg on his face. And that's true, and he's sorta lower than Sauron, but he has something. He can be like, yeah, well, at least I smashed his little pawn. I showed how useless that was. He can comfort himself that he accomplished something. He at least stuck it to Sauron.

Nick: It makes me think of a line from The 13th Warrior, which I know you said you haven't watched.

Corey Olsen: I still haven't. Still on my list, but I still haven't.

Nick: Anyway, so the line is, "Any fool can calculate strength." The idea being that the main characters are sending a message to one of their antagonists that just because something is stronger doesn't mean that it's better. And I feel that that message is totally lost on Gothmog. In Gothmog's mind, when he crushes Edhellos, because that tool was so weak, it was useless. It totally passes by him the value of this creature.

Corey Olsen: Yes, yes. Because he is like the avatar of the strength doctrine. Gothmog is. Absolutely.

Nick: Yes.

Corey Olsen: Yeah, yeah. That strength doctrine which of course is one of the things that attracted Mairon to Melkor in the first place. He appreciated Melkor's strength. He admired his strength and his willingness to exert that strength. Rather than withholding. He knows Manwë has strength, but Manwë doesn't use it. And he admired that strength. But when it's just the strength, when it's just the thug-power, we see him at odds with it in Gothmog.

Nick: Right, right.
 
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Corey Olsen: Anyway, so. Again, one of the primary things I would offer there at the end is that I am willing to say that in the context of the story as you guys have developed it, the death of Angrod feels like overkill. Like it could be overkill. It's not needed in this new world in which Edhellos is almost as great a character, as significant a character as Angrod is. In fact, more so in several dimensions, she's a bigger character than Angrod by this time in the season. Because we know her better.

Nick: We're emotionally more connected to her.

Corey Olsen: Much more. And Angrod almost indirectly so.

Nick: We connect to these characters-

Rhiannon: We thought we were with Angrod for a full episode, then it turned out it wasn't him.


Corey Olsen: Right, exactly! Yeah, we think we know Angrod, and we don't. Exactly.

Nick: So, I can tell you, that when we were discussing this episode, it actually came up that at the end of the day, if Edhellos' death was cool enough, if we fought tooth and nail all the way up to this point...but if Edhellos' death was cool enough, that you might, as a consolation prize -

Corey Olsen: It's not! I didn't just intend it as a consolation prize.

Marie: Spare Angrod. Edhellos is enough pathos for this episode.


Corey Olsen: It's enough pathos, yeah, exactly. It is not a consolation prize. It is an acknowledgement of your achievement with Edhellos. Absolutely.

Nick: Is Bre around? I don't want to get yelled at for fridging again.

Rhiannon: This actually created a lot of problems when we were working out the wedding of Galadriel and Celeborn, because Galadriel needs someone to stand in as her mother, and all her female relatives are dead.

Corey Olsen: Right, it's true, it's true. If anything, it's getting to the point where we would have been fridging Angrod for Edhellos' sake. It's fine. Again, I still don't... In my heart of hearts, I will still confess that I think I see a better net gain from Angrod's death than his life at this point, but it's fine. I mean, hey, you guys did awesome things with Edhellos, I'm sure you can make excellent use of the parole that Angrod has been given.

Rhiannon: I just want him to die in the Dagor Bragollach like he's supposed to. He can choke on a marshmallow or something, I don't care. He just needs to die in the Dagor Bragollach.

Corey Olsen: I just don't see... For me, I'm much more willing to... I mean, Tolkien tends to kill off the main Silmarillion characters in waves, often. At least the minor ones. I mean, the big ones, like Fingolfin, and Turgon, Finrod - they all get their big important deaths, dramatic moments. But Angrod and Aegnor are just killed off as a pair. They're just like a set.

Rhiannon: We can make them a thing. They can both go down in battle together.

Corey Olsen: Absolutely. We can make that awesome. No question we can. I'm just saying that's the reason I'm not attached to making all the deaths happen where they happen, because Tolkien tends to throw away the lives of the lesser characters in bunches. And I don't think that we need to be compelled to bunch them in the same way. Because we are building each one of these characters to much more than Tolkien made of them, because of the kind of story he was writing. I would have no problem at all making each one a separate spotlight, rather than....

Nick: I'm just glad you didn't try to kill off Amras again.

Corey Olsen: Well, you know, that's always the fallback, right? If ever we need somebody to die, there's always Amras. Absolutely, yeah.

Nick: Except this time, because I honestly think you just didn't think of him.

Marie: I mean, he's not really there.


Corey Olsen: He's too fringe. Too fringe to the action here. Exactly, exactly.

Nick: Uh-huh, sure.

Corey Olsen: He is somewhere between a Star Trek red shirt and Kenny from South Park, I guess.

Nick: I think we can get into the particulars when it's not one o'clock in the morning.

Corey Olsen: Yeah, we can go over some of the particulars, and especially the B-plot with Turgon. I'd love to talk about that a little more, which we didn't get to. We can roll that in at the beginning of next time, and then move on to hopefully 10 and 11 as well, next time. I always knew this was going to be the big debate, so I don't regret going long, and I'm also really glad for the long discussion we had of the Spell of Bottomless Dread earlier on. So, anyway, yeah.

Marie: So the consensus is you definitely want Gothmog to be the brains behind this battle, and you definitely want balrogs to be-

Corey Olsen: "Brains"

Marie: Well, yeah. Or lack of brains. And you definitely would like balrogs to be fighting in this battle in some capacity.

Corey Olsen: They don't have to be on the front lines.

Marie: Right, right, right. They don't need to be in every army, just...

Corey Olsen: They don't have to be leading every attack, just fighting. Marie, I was thinking exactly what you said before. If we have balrogs there, and they never fight, it's like the gun on stage that's never fired. At least that's how it would feel to me if I were watching it.

Rhiannon: Can you...? I'll try to get another Episode 9 script written in which there are balrogs present in the battle. I'm still really in favor of Sauron being the one to kill Edhellos in front of Angrod, so give me some time to work out possible reasons why he might do that. A lot of the things that I bring into these scripts are things that I think of after our script discussions. Give me some time to think of a way to incorporate that and make those things work together, and I will have another episode 9 script...

Corey Olsen: Okay. The one thing that I would add to that, though, is that I don't think that there should be werewolves and vampires in the battle. In general. Because those are Sauron's troops, and if this is Gothmog's initiative, Sauron's not going to lend him his troops. And anyway, Gothmog would disdain Sauron's troops, because Sauron's troops are all sneaky-

Nick: Weird.

Corey Olsen. -weird. You know, Gothmog wants bashing troops.

Nick: And there's not a lot of them, either.

Rhiannon: But we do have Rhogrin getting captured and Annael getting captured, and they are captured by Sauron's troops, because Sauron is trying to capture them. But maybe Sauron could be doing something with his troops so he's operating -


Corey Olsen: See, now that's a Sauron-move. If Gothmog is marching off on his army, and he's over there... It's not a Sauron-move to for him to join the battle essentially as a subordinate to Gothmog or to try to make Gothmog... No, but it would be a Sauron-move for him to look for opportunities. He would probably think exactly what happens with Rog. He's probably gonna be like hey, you know what... And by the way, I love the fact that it's almost Aredhel, Aredhel almost is the one who would have been captured, and Rog's capture is in her place, setting up awesomeness in Gondolin later on. But anyway, really cool, love that whole thing, but again, this is exactly.... Sauron would see potential opportunities here. They're probably going to be sending runners. And knowing these Noldor, they're not just going to send lackeys. One of the captains of the Noldor might well either attempt to come relieve somebody and expose themselves to danger, or they might send... Look, Turgon sends Ecthelion, too. I mean, they often do this, and he would probably know that. So, yes, it would absolutely be a Sauron-move to be like, let's hang around behind Gothmog's smashy army, and see what opportunities arise. So I'm going to have a squad of werewolves standing by just in case we can kidnap any valuable commodities along the fringes of this battle as they try to communicate back and forth across Ard Galen. That, *that* is a Sauron-move.

Rhiannon: That would be a really good reason for Sauron to be there.

Corey Olsen: For him to be somewhere! That's not in the front, yet. That's not -

Nick: In the neighborhood.

Corey Olsen: In the neighborhood. But it gets him a step closer, I agree. We'd have to see if we could get him up to the lines of the battle, and I still am gonna be... If a balrog doesn't get to smash anybody I'm gonna get a little twitchy, though, still. That is one danger. There's a risk. If we have Sauron kill Edhellos, I might have to repeal the -

Marie: Gothmog kills Angrod, done!

Corey Olsen: - the pardon on Angrod.

Rhiannon: I think if the balrogs apply a terrifying enough force in this battle, make them significant enough, I think we can ignore the balrog rule in this occasion if we have it, they're obviously something dangerous and we should be afraid of.

Corey Olsen: Eh...

Rhiannon: Or you know what we can do? We can kill off a named orc that we...people are attached to because he becomes a named character...and that's the balrog victim.

Corey Olsen: Nah. No....

Marie: No, that's not how the balrog rule works.

Corey Olsen: That's not how the balrog rule works. That's... but anyway.

Nick: That's not how the force works!


Corey Olsen: That's not how the force works. Alright, anyway. So, we'll go over some of that stuff... I'll definitely read the new version of Episode 9.
 
I think we've painted ourselves into a corner. The Hosts want an all-out attack with the Balrogs present, and since it is an all-out attack, Sauron would inevitably wind up involved since everything that isn't necessary is thrown at them (still need Orcs to make more Orcs). If Sauron is in the battle, he needs something to do (he can't be dead weight), and with the Balrogs present, it's difficult to see how the Noldor win. If Sauron is present, he and Gothmog will get egg in the face for failing. If Sauron sabotages Gothmog, they'll still be in the doghouse for different reasons, and we want Sauron to be on a winning streak so to say before getting his ass kicked by Luthien and Huan.

Any solutions? I'm at a loss.
 
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I think we've painted ourselves into a corner. The Hosts want an all-out attack with the Balrogs present, and since it is an all-out attack, Sauron would inevitably wind up involved since everything that isn't necessary is thrown at them (still need Orcs to make more Orcs). If Sauron is in the battle, he needs something to do (he can't be dead weight), and with the Balrogs present, it's difficult to see how the Noldor win. If Sauron is present, he and Gothmog will get egg in the face for failing. If Sauron sabotages Gothmog, they'll still be in the doghouse for different reasons, and we want Sauron to be on a winning streak so to say before getting his ass kicked by Luthien and Huan.

Any solutions? I'm at a loss.
Here's a new idea: maybe Sauron and his forces could be aware that the Feanorians are coming. Having just found out, Sauron goes to inform Gothmog. He can't get to Gothmog because Gothmog is busy fighting at the front, but he does notice Edhellos revealing to Angrod that she was under the Spell of Bottomless Dread. Knowing that Edhellos is now useless as a spy, Sauron just decides to do as much damage as he can by killing her.

So the surprise of the Feanorians arriving isn't spoiled for the audience, we don't need to reveal what Sauron's news for Gothmog is until after the Feanorians show up. Gothmog would blame Sauron for the loss, but Sauron would be able to deflect this by pointing out things like Gothmog's poor planning and hinting that Morgoth will soon have a force capable of destroying all the houses of the Noldor at once.
 
I don't want to come across as inflexible or unwilling to change what I have written, but I would want us to be sure that it is absolutely impossible for Sauron to kill Edhellos before we abandon the idea.


See, I think this is exactly the wrong approach to episode plotting. I don't want to try every possible permutation that could make Sauron Edhellos' killer and only rule out the idea if it's impossible.

I want to look at the episode structure, and see what makes the most sense based on what we have planned, and start *there*.

So. Who is the main antagonist in this episode? I think it is clearly Gothmog. He is the one planning and executing the Dagor Aglareb, and thus most of the time the heroes are responding to his actions. Now, obviously, Morgoth is an overarching Big Bad who has a role to play here (Spell of Bottomless Dread), and surely Sauron can continue his ongoing storyarc of capturing elves. But the main, primary villain of this particular episode is Gothmog.

Thus, Gothmog should be acting in the event that makes this worst for the elves. The tension point I described as the 'nadir' (from the viewer and elvish perspective) should be the moment of Gothmog's almost-triumph. He should be doing something that they have to react to and deal with. He should...be villain-y.

This is the *only* episode in Season 4 in which Gothmog is the primary villain. Sauron has been hogging the spotlight all season, and Morgoth has been off being mysterious offscreen. We aren't going to see Glaurung until Episode 13. And so, I recognize that it might seem a bit unusual or a break from what we've been doing thus far, but it's rather important to see Gothmog acting in this episode. All of this talk about how Sauron could kill Edhellos seems to ignore the more pertinent question, which is - what is Gothmog doing right then? How is he bringing about the despair of the Noldor engaged in battle with his army?

I do *not* think it's a good plan to have Sauron sweep in during the final Act and kill off one of the protagonists under Gothmog's nose, robbing him of the spotlight and relegating him to an inconsequential villain role in his own battle episode. That seems unnecessary and defeats the purpose of having Gothmog be the primary villain in this episode.

Were Sauron and Thuringwethil the primary antagonists of Episodes 5 and 6? Sure. He was definitely personally involved in Edhellos' capture and torture. But that storyline had its conclusion when he got the information he wanted out of her. After that, she was tossed in the slave pit (general pop) rather than being kept in her private cell where he had a special use for her. Sauron essentially handed her off to Morgoth in Episode 8.

So...*why* does Sauron need to come swooping into this battlefield he doesn't even belong on to kill her? What's so personal or important that he needs to complete this task himself? Hasn't he moved on to other captives, starting to develop his own version of Morgoth's spell to overcome their wills? Wasn't she just planted as a spy?

There was nothing wrong with suggesting that Sauron could kill Edhellos. Of course he could. And there were positive aspects of the scene you wrote. But once it was established that Gothmog is the villain this episode is focusing on, Sauron slaying Edhellos makes significantly less sense.




I think we've painted ourselves into a corner. The Hosts want an all-out attack with the Balrogs present, and since it is an all-out attack, Sauron would inevitably wind up involved since everything that isn't necessary is thrown at them (still need Orcs to make more Orcs).

Not really. This is not an all-out attack. There is nothing to indicate that this is Morgoth emptying Angband or throwing everything he has at the Noldor. This is a Gothmog initiative, so all of Gothmog's orc and troll armies are present, but there's no reason for Sauron or his forces (vampires, werewolves) to be there. Gothmog doesn't really command Sauron.
 
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See, I think this is exactly the wrong approach to episode plotting. I don't want to try every possible permutation that could make Sauron Edhellos' killer and only rule out the idea if it's impossible.

I want to look at the episode structure, and see what makes the most sense based on what we have planned, and start *there*.

So. Who is the main antagonist in this episode? I think it is clearly Gothmog. He is the one planning and executing the Dagor Aglareb, and thus most of the time the heroes are responding to his actions. Now, obviously, Morgoth is an overarching Big Bad who has a role to play here (Spell of Bottomless Dread), and surely Sauron can continue his ongoing storyarc of capturing elves. But the main, primary villain of this particular episode is Gothmog.

Thus, Gothmog should be acting in the event that makes this worst for the elves. The tension point I described as the 'nadir' (from the viewer and elvish perspective) should be the moment of Gothmog's almost-triumph. He should be doing something that they have to react to and deal with. He should...be villain-y.

This is the *only* episode in Season 4 in which Gothmog is the primary villain. Sauron has been hogging the spotlight all season, and Morgoth has been off being mysterious offscreen. We aren't going to see Glaurung until Episode 13. And so, I recognize that it might seem a bit unusual or a break from what we've been doing thus far, but it's rather important to see Gothmog acting in this episode. All of this talk about how Sauron could kill Edhellos seems to ignore the more pertinent question, which is - what is Gothmog doing right then? How is he bringing about the despair of the Noldor engaged in battle with his army?

I do *not* think it's a good plan to have Sauron sweep in during the final Act and kill off one of the protagonists under Gothmog's nose, robbing him of the spotlight and relegating him to an inconsequential villain role in his own battle episode. That seems unnecessary and defeats the purpose of having Gothmog be the primary villain in this episode.

Were Sauron and Thuringwethil the primary antagonists of Episodes 5 and 6? Sure. He was definitely personally involved in Edhellos' capture and torture. But that storyline had its conclusion when he got the information he wanted out of her. After that, she was tossed in the slave pit (general pop) rather than being kept in her private cell where he had a special use for her. Sauron essentially handed her off to Morgoth in Episode 8.

So...*why* does Sauron need to come swooping into this battlefield he doesn't even belong on to kill her? What's so personal or important that he needs to complete this task himself? Hasn't he moved on to other captives, starting to develop his own version of Morgoth's spell to overcome their wills? Wasn't she just planted as a spy?

There was nothing wrong with suggesting that Sauron could kill Edhellos. Of course he could. And there were positive aspects of the scene you wrote. But once it was established that Gothmog is the villain this episode is focusing on, Sauron slaying Edhellos makes significantly less sense.






Not really. This is not an all-out attack. There is nothing to indicate that this is Morgoth emptying Angband or throwing everything he has at the Noldor. This is a Gothmog initiative, so all of Gothmog's orc and troll armies are present, but there's no reason for Sauron or his forces (vampires, werewolves) to be there. Gothmog doesn't really command Sauron.
I guess I assumed it was an all-out attack with the presence of the Balrogs.
 
I guess I assumed it was an all-out attack with the presence of the Balrogs.

It might be better to say that it is a large-scale attack with a goal - take Minas Tirith. This is the first time Angband has fielded an army since the sun rose.
 
Taking a forward outpost is a big deal. Especially in this case. Taking Minas Tirith would effectively break the siege, unlocking the soft underbelly of Beleriand. But it also demonstrates that Gothmog himself is just as useful as his rival. Sure, Thuringwethil's intel is informing this, but without the military might Gothmog (the "true" avatar of Morgoth's will) brings to bear, that's useless information.
 
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