What Is the Ancestry of Fellbeasts?

[Turin_Turambar]

I couldn't find a clear explanation about where fellbeasts came from on the internet. Where do you think these animals come from? from birds or cold dragons?

 

[grendel]

I always pictured the "fell beasts", the flying steeds of the Nazgul, as some form of pteradon; not a bird (Tolkien never mentions feathers), but some type of nasty creature that could fly.

It's interesting that you mention dragons. I recall (might be wrong) that Morgoth created the dragons, and later the flying dragons, himself as a weapon against the Elves of Beleriand. I do not recall that Sauron ever "created" something (living) from scratch. But I suppose the fell beasts could be some existing animal that he corrupted.

 

[Ealdwyn]

I always thought they were a lesser version of the cold drakes

 

[Turin_Turambar]

I always pictured the "fell beasts", the flying steeds of the Nazgul, as some form of pteradon; not a bird (Tolkien never mentions feathers), but some type of nasty creature that could fly.

It's interesting that you mention dragons. I recall (might be wrong) that Morgoth created the dragons, and later the flying dragons, himself as a weapon against the Elves of Beleriand. I do not recall that Sauron ever "created" something (living) from scratch. But I suppose the fell beasts could be some existing animal that he corrupted.

There were also dragons that could fly in the Second and Third Ages. But most of the dragons of the Third Age were cold dragons and lived in isolation in the mountains. Perhaps Sauron took them to his side and gave them to the Nazgul.

 

[1stvermont]

In one of his letters, Tolkien said they were basically pterodactyls.

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[Turin_Turambar]

In one of his letters, Tolkien said they were basically pterodactyls.

​

So why didn't Morgoth use these animals? why only Sauron use these animals?

 

[1stvermont]

So why didn't Morgoth use these animals? why only Sauron use these animals?

He might have I dont know. Sauron fed them certain meats and bred them to enlarge them so perhaps they were too small to be very useful in the early ages. Also, Tolkien said Sauron was smarter and more calculated. Morgoth had too much hate and it drove his actions dominance drove sauron. So it is the same with tools, Sauron bred them and made them into elite units rather than dull beasts they were in the early ages.

 

[Olorgando]

So why didn't Morgoth use these animals? why only Sauron use these animals?

Compared to the flying dragons, even the enhanced-by-Sauron (as 1stvermont speculates above - and for once I actually agree with him (!!!) ) fell beasts were hardly more than sparrows. And they were used as a very fast means of transport by the Nazgûl, while I don't recall ever reading that anyone rode on a flying dragon. Head-to-head, Smaug would have reduced all nine of them (or however many existed - there must have been reserves, as Legolas killed one before the breaking of the Fellowship, but later all nine Nazgûl are flying around on them) to a charred crisp with a single blast of his fire.

Any fell beasts approaching, say, Gondolin would have been ripped to shreds by the First Age Great Eagles who nested in the mountains surrounding Gondolin.

 

[Turin_Turambar]

In one of his letters, Tolkien said they were basically pterodactyls.

​

On tolkiengateway, it's written that fellbeasts are a distant relative of cold dragons, as many of us have guessed. Read under Middle-earth Role Playing.

Fell beasts

"Fell beasts", also called Nazgûl-birds, Black Wings, and "hell-hawks", were huge pterodactylic flying creatures that served as steeds for the Nazgûl.

tolkiengateway.net

 

[1stvermont]

On tolkiengateway, it's written that fellbeasts are a distant relative of cold dragons, as many of us have guessed. Read under Middle-earth Role Playing.

Fell beasts

"Fell beasts", also called Nazgûl-birds, Black Wings, and "hell-hawks", were huge pterodactylic flying creatures that served as steeds for the Nazgûl.

tolkiengateway.net

I believe that is just mentioning various ways they have been portrayed in movies/games etc one of them you mentioned above.

 

[Radaghast]

I couldn't find a clear explanation about where fellbeasts came from on the internet. Where do you think these animals come from? from birds or cold dragons?

I'm thinking they're of pterodactyl kind, and Tolkien basically confirmed it. Here's what he wrote in answer to a letter:

[Q: Did the Witch-king ride a pterodactyl at the siege of Gondor? ]

Yes and no. I did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl', and often is drawn (with rather less shadowy evidence than lies behind many monsters of the new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the 'Prehistoric'). But obviously it is pterodactylic and owes much to the new mythology, and its description even provides a sort of way in which it could be a last survivor of older geological eras.

— The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, #211

Here's the description he refers to:

The great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, fingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil. And the Dark Lord took it, and nursed it with fell meats, until it grew beyond the measure of all other things that fly; and he gave it to his servant to be his steed.

— The Lord of the Rings, "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields"

Pedantic note here, but technically 'fell beast' is not the official name of the creature. It's just a description that can apply to any monster. Tolkien just happens to use it twice in the text to refer to the Witch-king's mount.