The Quendi

Underrated Characters: Mablung, Balin, and Mandos   1.) Mablung  Mablung was the captain of the guard in Doriath, who slew the werewolf Carcharoth alongside Thingol, Beren, Beleg, and Huan and was tasked with protecting Morwen and Nienor. Interestingly, it was Mablung who removed the Silmaril from Carcharoth’s body, meaning he was one of the few characters who actually held one of the gems in his hand. Even so, it often gets overlooked that he didn’t hesitate to give the Silmaril back to Beren; he wasn’t swayed by greed.  Furthermore, his apparent failure at the borderline impossible task of protecting Morwen and Nienor, was actually not his fault at all, and he actually did a comparatively good job of damage control for the House of Hurin’s curse (and their general recklessness). Mablung did everything he possibly could have to protect them, even leading an amnesiac Nienor by the hand for miles in an attempt to bring her back to Doriath. Everything that went wrong was co...

 Who would win in a fight, Gandalf/Mithrandir/Olorin or Sauron/Gorthaur/Mairon?  Rules: • No power restrictions! (As in hypothetically, the Valar tell Gandalf he has license to use his full powers, and Sauron is not disembodied) • No allies! (As in Gandalf can’t summon eagles, etc. and Sauron can’t summon Nazgûl, etc.) • Focused on three categories: strategy, combat skill, power  1.) Strategy: Gandalf Sauron’s strategic skills are somewhat lacking. For example, if the only thing that could destroy the One Ring was to throw it in the fires of Mount Doom, then why didn’t he just have his servants destroy the volcano, or at least the bridge that leads straight into it? If the volcano was completely blocked, nobody would be able to destroy the ring. He also purposefully engineers the demise of Numenor, and fails to account for his own presence in the kingdom at the time of its fall, idiotically getting himself killed in the process. Gandalf, on the other hand, tends to have g...