XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name@mail.its.in.danmark   
      
   "Stan Brown"  skrev i meddelelsen   
   news:MPG.2ab466443fb5e1ef98da78@news.individual.net...   
      
   > One of the neatest tricks in the whole LotR is that Barad-dur's   
   > "foundations ... were made with the power of the Ring".  I call this   
   > a neat trick because the foundations were apparently the last part of   
   > the building!   
      
      This presupposes that Barad-dúr is one building, that was begun six   
   centuries before the One was made, and that the foundations of this building   
   were built from scratch after that.  A neat trick indeed.  Did Sauron have   
   the foresight to build the tower on stilts, or at least build it to sit   
   loosely upon the ground, so that he could swiftly add foundations once his   
   Ring was finished?   
      
      Another explanation is that Sauron began to build a stronghold around SA   
   1000 at that spur of  Ered Lithui.  It was near his forges in Orodruin, but   
   not upon that mountain where it would have been vulnerable to its eruptions.   
   We know that Sauron could not fully control those (or at least didn't take   
   the trouble to), or his slaves would not have had to repeatedly repair the   
   road that had been built between the two places.  Even without some sort of   
   magical tower yet it would have been an intelligent place for him to build a   
   stronghold.   
      Then once the Ruling Ring was completed, he built the foundations for a   
   mighty tower, to last as long as the Ring should last.  Upon those   
   foundations he built the tower itself, in a time so short that in the long   
   annals of the Second Age, compiled in the Third, the tower was completed   
   practically at the same time as the Ring.  No need for a tower hanging,   
   Laputa-like, in the sky, nor for prefabs. :-)   
      
      Yet another explanation is that structurally speaking, Barad-dúr was   
   completed before the One was made.  Then the One was used, somehow, to add   
   strength to the foundations.  This is at odds with Elrond's statement, taken   
   literally.   
      Elrond knows much, but of all the characters in the story only Ilúvatar   
   knows everything.  Therefore it stands to reason that he may gloss over   
   where he knows his knowledge to be incomplete; or he may get some details   
   wrong.  He was not there when Barad-dúr was built.  But he was there when,   
   presumably, the victors of the Last Alliance tried to do to Barad-dúr what   
   Galadriel later successfully did to Dol Guldur.  He does know, and conveys   
   to the Council, enough to take adequate counsel concerning the situation at   
   hand: that as long as the One endures, the foundations of Barad-dúr cannot   
   be destroyed by any might of Elves or Men.   
      
   Voron.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)