The serious answer is it's juxtaposed with East and West. West being the Undying Lands of Valinor, and East being the much less well-explored Land of the Sun.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What's north and south?

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 7 points 2 days ago

More Middle-earth. South is Harad, and north is Forodwaith. Both of which are regions of Middle-earth.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Inner earth and outer earth.

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[–] root_beer@midwest.social 5 points 2 days ago

Beginning-earth and End-earth

Guess where we are

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[–] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I didn't understand this so I looked it up.

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Maiar

Pretty cool.

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (10 children)

So there were five godlike beings sent to fight Sauron. Only one of them did his job.

I need to reword it.

You are the big cool powerful god. One of your servants, a minor much less powerful god does bad things to the world. So you send five your other servants just as powerful as the bad one to deal with him.

A lot of time passes. Three of those spend their time chilling. One joins the bad one. The last one turns out too weak. Who solves the problem? Four hobbits.

You really should reconsider your politics after that.

[–] root_beer@midwest.social 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Isn’t much of the power of the Maiar in diplomacy and setting events in motion? Gandalf was as much of an interloper and manipulator as he was anything else, and his hiring Bilbo as a thief was the penultimate piece of his mission, as inadvertent as I’m not entirely sure it was. Right? No, really, I’m kinda asking, I don’t know for sure.

[–] WillBalls@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

As stated in unfinished tales, Gandalf didn't know that Bilbo would find the ring on the adventure. He originally wanted to help Thorin since having dwarves in the lonely mountain would prevent Sauron from attacking Gondor and Lothlórien from the north. The ring finding it's way to Gollum and then Bilbo was almost definitely due to slight meddling from Eru (just as Gollum's death was due to Eru loosening the rocks under his feet) so Gandalf could orchestrate the fellowship's journey.

[–] boydster@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Wait till you learn about Melkor! He's a Vala, or one of the Valar, which is a higher order than the Maiar, and was basically super-Sauron from the before times

[–] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

And he was scared of Ungoliant, and we don't know what she is, besides nasty, and hungry, and shaped like a huge spider (well, spiders are shaped like her, probably).

(He also got his foot almost cut off by an elf in single combat and walked with a limp ever after — well, at least until he got his hands and feet cut off by the rest of the Valar, I suppose —, but elves were mighty back then.)

[–] dditty@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do we know that the Istari who go east were just chilling? I thought they were trying to rally men in the east to fight Sauron. They might even have fought some of his troops in the far off east during the Battle of the Black Gate? Or were those just fan theories and never actually confirmed?

[–] WillBalls@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There's no exact details given for what the blue wizards (the two in the east) were up to. Tolkien only said they were sewing dissent against Sauron

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