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Besides, it's not so far-fetched. After all, look at all the dinosaurs they bred for Jurassic Park and sequels, and in the 4th segment they wanted to put the raptors to military use..!!
If we could breed all those raptors and such why couldn't Melkor and Sauron breed the dragons, Orcs and things?
Let's see, by Fonstad's map that's about 110 miles in a straight line. Detailed map in my 2002 RotK a bit less, but definitely more than 100 miles.
As they would have to dig under the Ephel Duath, the Gotthard Base Tunnel in the Swiss Alps would seem to be the best comparison.
But it's "only" 35.5 miles long. Took more than eleven years to dig (late 1999 to early 2011, operative 2016) digging from both ends with state-of-the-art tunneling equipment.
So ...
The GondMord tunnel is three time as long (about 105 vs 35 miles), would make it 33 years.
But the Gondorians are doing it all from one side, no simultaneous digging from the other side as with the Gotthard, so twice as long, 66 years.
They'd probably need to hire every single Dwarf in Middle-earth (very expensive), but even those are unlikely to match modern tunneling machine monsters (they're H UGE, making the thingy in Deimos's above post look like a product of the company Matchbox).
Let's assume the Dwarves could dig half as fast as one of those machines, that brings us to 132 years.
To beat Sauron to the punch, they'd have to start digging in 2887 Third Age.
Or 54 years before Bilbo found the One Ring.
I see a motivation issue ... 🤔
"Olórin" has more vowels, (the middle one being "acutely" accented,) resulting in 3 syllables.
But "Gandalf" has more letters overall, yet only two syllables.
So yes, those two changes alone (more vowels, more syllables) would affect the dynamic with the other members of the Fellowship... probably adversely if they never learned Phonics.
"Olórin" has more vowels, (the middle one being "acutely" accented,) resulting in 3 syllables.
But "Gandalf" has more letters overall, yet only two syllables.
So yes, those two changes alone (more vowels, more syllables) would affect the dynamic with the other members of the Fellowship... probably adversely if they never learned Phonics.
"Olórin" has more vowels, (the middle one being "acutely" accented,) resulting in 3 syllables.
But "Gandalf" has more letters overall, yet only two syllables.
So yes, those two changes alone (more vowels, more syllables) would affect the dynamic with the other members of the Fellowship... probably adversely if they never learned Phonics.
Well, yes, of course... what else could possibly affect it? 🙄
When you've got everyday occurrences like:
A man who changes into a bear
A man(?) who talks to trees and is unaffected by the Ring
People who live in giant trees and who have magical mirrors and glass Phials that contain Light
A ... person... (I guess) whose eye ball sits atop a huge edifice, swiveling around worse than The one Mad-Eye Moody wears
Giant walking (and talking) Trees
Bowling balls that glow and are means of transmission that most Communications companies would kill for. Wizards! And now a wizard who changes into another ...wizard? So what else is new?
Then YES, changing the name of someone can be comparatively traumatic if you don't know how to pronounce it.
You've never mispronounced someone's name and gotten that soul-withering look from them?
Famous Last words - or they would be if we'd ever heard of them.
But we only ever hear the success-stories, never about the 9,999 failures per success. The old selective perception bugaboo ... 🫣
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the American military officer. For the American author, see John Sedgwick (author).
Not to be confused with John Sedgewick.