Mordor's Monsters

Now, I will be borrowing from Star Wars Legends here for a second. I know, this is probably a bit blasphemous. Oh well. But Sidious actually wrote a book in the old timeline - called "The Creation of Monsters". In it he states that illusions can be quite powerful but actual living things can be much more useful. He states that is can be quite satifying to create beings willing and even eager to devour enemies on command. This becomes useful not just to inspire disicpline through fear in allies and terror in enemy ranks. The use of such terrifying beasts allows one to turn attention elsewhere.   When he gets into the finer details regarding what makes a good monster, he sets out a few guidelines. First, their whole purpose is to serve their creator. This means intelligence and creativity beyond what is needed for them to follow basic orders might become too much. One does not a monster powerful enough to overthrow their creator also be smart enough to figure out how. Or more importantly, understand their mistreatment and desire that outcome.   Palpatine further elaborates that there needs to be some consideration for practicality. He mentions the placement of eyes specifically so that the monster would be better able to see their target. But he also mentions that the intended role needs to be taken into account. If the monster is meant to enter buildings, something the size of dragons and balrogs would seem unwise. Nor does one want some small little orc sized thing meant to inspire mass panic in open battles.   He states that ideally, the creator would start with a lower creature and aim to make them more destructive. New features that can be used in battle, strengthening muscles and other changes that make them better suited to take and deal damage are ideal. He then advocates for the proper testing of them - most often against their relatives. Though we can assume that this can also mean other "prototpyes". The creator can then tell if starting from the beginning is needed or if simpler modification of existing designs is good enough.   But, he warns against making the monster too strong. Ideally, one makes a monster that is strong where the creator is weak, but weak where the creator is strong. Ideally, this means a fatal flaw. Something that the creator, and only the creator, knows about and can exploit reliably. This goes back to that whole idea of expect to be destroyed by what you are too afraid to destroy first.     Keep in mind that one of the pieces of advice provided is to keep them hungry and in constant pain. That way they would be ready to lash out at whatever poor target is selected. This way that inflicting pain on others becomes a tool to help mask their own pain. But this also means that the monster in question would be quite motivated to seek vengence on their creator for inflicting unending suffering on them. Thus, if the monster could, it would. The only thing keeping them from doing so are the fatal flaw that keeps the monster too fearful to try. That, and the lack of enough intelligence to pull it off.   Now, we will be needing to look at Melkor and Sauron's attempts at creation. I want to see if they were able to wisely act on these principles or not. We will be looking into trolls, orcs, dragons and ring wraiths. Balrogs are a bit unique. They were not created by Melkor and thus were not influenced by his designs. Thus, it matters not what he wanted their characteristics to be. The others are different in that they were created by Melkor and Sauron to fill specific roles.   To answer this question we (unsurpsingly) need to break this down into subquestions. First, what are the monster's intended role? Do they fill a vital function that could not be accomplished with existing assets (strong where the master is weak)? Is their design practical for that role? Are they resistant to damage and sufficiently deadly? Do they inspire terror in opponents and obedience in allies? Are they smart enough but not too smart? Were they propery battle tested? Do they have a good enough fatal flaw? Are they a threat to their masters?   Lets address the issue of Melkor's most famous and lethal monsters here for a second - dragons and balrogs. Balrogs seem incredibly powerful but seem to fall into repeated spells of total inaction when Melkor is not giving them orders. Even Durin's Bane is incredibly seemingly passive. Yeah, he destroys all of Moria, but refuses to leave after that. Dragons on the other hand, seem to have moved on to the hunt. They may become passive for lon periods, but when tempting targets present themselves, dragons attack. Smaug attacked the Lonely Mountain, while Durin's Bane seemed to just want to be left alone.   This means to me that Balrogs would be ideally suited to a form of area denial weapon. These weapons (or tactics) are aimed at severely endanger an enemy army in the area by restricting an enemy's ability to occupy it or slow down their operations. The most famous of these are mines, booby traps or improvised exposive devices. Essentially, it is deterrence. The weapons make the area too costly to operate in. Now, these are generally banned for good reasons. They do not discriminate between friends, foes and civilians. Nor do they stop acting when the conflict ends. Just look at the problems experienced by farmers in France still getting killed by unexploded WW1 artillery shells. But an evil scumbag kile Melkor probably look at these problems as positives rather than negatives.   Meanwhile, dragons would be classic fail deadly systems. This is the idea that if certain conditions are met, an automatic, unavoidable and unacceptable set of negative consequences would fall on the actors who fulfilled this condition. It is often used in the context of nuclear strategy essentially meaning that safeguards are put into place so that the second strike occurs even if the first strike takes out the victim nation's leadership. That way there is no hope of avoiding that second strike. Dragons operate similarly. When Melkor fell, they started reproducing and having a good time raiding dwarves.   The result is the balrogs and dragons could be effectively used in a dead man's switch tactic. In this, Melkor would recognize his eventual demise and plan accordingly. In order that he lives to fight another day, he would secretly send his balrogs out to areas of strategic importance for his enemies, then hide. The idea is that over time, the fate of Moria would be intentionally replicated over and over again in ways that would be unavoidable.   The same would be done with dragons - moving secretly his likely much reduced army of dragons into a reserve area. Perhaps small bands of orcs would be scattered and hidden too. Then Melkor would loudly announce to his enemies the existence of these forces but not their location. Key in this would be the threat that if he is removed so that he could not hold them back, they would start acting on their own. The dragons would start doing their thing. Because there is no restraint on them any more and more of them would have been saved, this would be quite problematic. Then add in the fact small bands of orcs would essentially be acting as bandits all over Middle Earth now.   Now, one of the major tactical errors Melkor's enemies made in one of the wars against him was not following through and wiping out all the balrogs when they had the chance. Making this threat would certainly make sure that mistake would not happen again. Except it would mean the hunt for dragons and orcs too. This too me would be a much more "realistic" explanation as to why there was at most 7 balrogs in Middle Earth at the time of the War of the Ring and why only 2 dragons survived Melkor's defeat. Such small numbers we can expect to be reasonably easy to hide in the extreme locations we find them. Meanwhile, unless it is a war of genocide, most armies do not hunt down and kill their enemies down to the last man in cases of normal battlefield victories. There was a higher percentage of people who surrendered and survived the war between the USSR and Nazi Germany than we see balrogs and dragons survive the First Age. And "The Great Patriotic War" was horrific in the atrocities committed.   Another weird point here. The apparent duties and skills of balrogs and dragons overlap. Both operate as both commanders and shock troops. One provides air support while the other is land based. Thus they complement each other while having overlapping powers. If this is exploited, you can see the rise of a similar dynamic used by governments to protect their own authorities against potential coups. The most famous example was the political commisars in the Soviet Army. The US has something like 14 separate national intelligence gathering agencies. I mentioned elsewhere that the Roman Emperors had two separate bodyguard units - and the problems began after one was abolished. The idea is that overlap between the different groups will keep each one in line out of fear that the others will report on them or enough will remain loyal to crush rebels.   In this context, each might be the tool meant to exploit the fatal flaws of the other. Balrogs might have some ability to kill dragons mid flight. Dragons meanwhile might be somehow exploit the vulnerabilities of Balrogs on the ground. Both sides will know they are vulnerble. Both know that the odds of them being successful in their revolts are slim. It would also be clear that no mercy would be granted. After all, the other monster could step in and fill the same roles adequately.