The White Council

Re: Wraithness

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: How common was it? If the Witch King could reduce people to wraiths by stabbing them with a Morgul-knife, there ought to be quite a few of these unfortunate souls around. I wraiths would make excellent spies, makers of mischief and sowers of dread, so you'd think that the WK and Sauron would find it profitable to make as many of them as possible. But maybe they would be so weak that they would falter in the sunlight or stray from their purpose so easily that they would not be much use outside Minas Morgul, and thus we don't see them lurking all over the place? : Persosally I would suggest that it was no easy feat to prepare Morgul-knives. Perhaps such things could only be made by the Nazgul only, or maybe only by the Witch King himself. Perhaps it was only the power of the Rings which made such potent sorcery possible; I imagine that something quite special would have to be behind the weapons which could deny mortals natural death. But what would the knife-made wraiths have been like anyway? Would they have been mortal? What would have happened to the 'souls' of the people thus inflicted? Would all of them have vanished when the Rings passed? : What are your thoughts on this subject?

: -Foradan

Firstly I believe the wraiths would be very weak ones indeed, at least when compared to the Nazgul. They would also probably be able to be killed. The only reason the Nazgul could not be was because they lived so long as the One Ring (and therefore their own rings) existed.

I’m not sure that there would be all that many of them, otherwise I am sure they would have received a mention at some point. Probably the Morgul knives that created these lesser wraiths were used only in times of great need and importance. Maybe the Nazgul knew that the best way to get the One Ring was to poison the bearer into turning to their side.

Being a wraith, at least by this method, seems in some way linked to Sauron, since Gandalf said as much to Frodo in the House of Elrond. But this link, I believe, was through the creation of the Morgul knives themselves. There is no reason to suggest that they were linked to the Rings. The knives were simply items of power (of which there are loads of occurrence throughout the HOME), and Sauron being a Premier Division artificer and general maker of things (originally a Maiar of Aule after all) the making of them would not have posed too much of a problem for him. Or for someone under his tutelage (some like, but not specifically, The Mouth of Sauron).

I don’t think the Nazgul would have prepared them. They were mainly lords of men. Yes it says they were sorcerers as well, but I get the feeling that if man practiced magick then he practiced specific methods and modes and I don’t see those who became the Nazgul going for item making magick. More like zappy blasty kind of magick or domination magick (possibly why the Rings were so attractive to them).

As for the wraiths themselves, I think they were exactly like Gandalf described it. A lesser kind of Nazgul, but ones that could be destroyed since they had no Ring in existence to maintain their being. And they must have been able to act whatever the time of day, for surely the Nazgul wouldn’t have trusted to the method they did, knowing that the target was travelling towards Rivendell and a host of hard eldar.

Regards

Padster