Understanding The Shadow

How I design evil in The One Ring TTRPG.

Middle Earth was one of the first fantasy worlds I ever explored — I remember pulling out the maps from my parents’ hardback copies of Lord of the Rings, poring over them, dreaming about the world long before I ever actually read the books.

When I run TTRPGs [table top role playing games] set in Middle Earth (which, for now at least, means Free League’s excellent The One Ring) there are two fundamental concepts that inform almost everything in my campaign. The first is time — Tolkien’s mythology is vast, covering many thousands of years. The second is the status of Sauron, because despite what you may have been led to believe, I don’t think Sauron is the big bad.

To understand Sauron, you have to understand that he is just one of many evil things in Middle Earth. There are many foul things in Middle Earth that have no loyalty to Sauron. For example, we know that around 1,040 years before the end of the Third Age the dwarves disturb one of Morgoth’s balrogs hiding deep beneath Khazad-dûm. It has remained hidden since the War of Wrath, and did not rally to Sauron’s banner in the Second or Third Ages.

Sauron is the Dark Lord in The Lord of the Rings. But he’s not the big evil in The Hobbit. In The Hobbit, the evil is Smaug, or possibly rampant capitalism. Admittedly, Tolkien retconned Sauron into The Hobbit in the guise of The Necromancer — it’s worth noting that Tolkien made a lot of revisions to his texts. But personally, I always thought The Necromancer sounded more like a servant, than the Dark Lord himself — perhaps the Lord of the Nazgûl.

The original Dark Lord, the being that created evil, is Morgoth, or Melkor to his mum.

Morgoth — meaning Black Foe — corrupts the creation of Eru Iluvatar [god]. At the end of the First Age he’s defeated in the War of Wrath by the Valar [demi-gods], including his brother Manwë [king of the demi-gods], who then cast him into The Void outside of existence. All corruption, deceit, pride, and hate stem from Morgoth.

In The Void, Morgoth is beyond time and space, but he’s not dead and gone. The Second Prophesy of Mandos — which either is, or is not, canonical depending on whom you ask, and is hinted at by Galadriel — says that at the end of the world, Morgoth will return for the final battle between good and evil.

Morgoth has several lieutenants prior to his defeat. The first and most terrible is Ungoliant, who poisons the Two Trees of Valinor and flees into the east after the theft of the Silmarils. The second is Gothmog, the Lord of the Balrogs, who is killed by Ecthelion at the siege of Gondolin. The next is Sauron.

Sauron’s body is destroyed by Gil-galad and Elendil during the final battle of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. His spirit survives to plague the world because it is bound to The One Ring. We know that Sauron is bitter, and craves vengeance against elves and men. We know he seeks to dominate all life. But we don’t know if Sauron believes the Prophesy of Mandos (that his master can and will be returned from The Void).

When Morgoth was the Dark Lord he dominated all of Middle Earth and most of Beleriand from his dungeon fortress of Angband. Sauron controls a small corner of Middle Earth and is fighting a hidden war for the rest. Sauron spends all of the Second and Third Ages trying, and failing, to fill the power vacuum left by Morgoth’s banishment. He hasn’t come close to matching his former master. That is the whole story.

So why all the focus on Sauron? Tolkien originally intended to write the history of Middle Earth covering The Silmarils and The Rings of Power. However, The Hobbit was something of an unexpected success, and the publisher wanted a follow-up. Judging Tolkien’s proposed epic to be too…epic, they said ‘no,’ and Tolkien compromised by writing The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s son Christopher spent most of his life piecing together his father’s notes and drafts for the rest of his history, beginning with The Silmarillion, published after Tolkien’s death. The bottomline is that Tolkien didn’t have time to finish his full history of Arda, he is the only person who can write canonically about Middle Earth, and so, Sauron is the canonical villain.

(In The One Ring TTRPG the year is 2965 T.A. The Ring of Power is in Bilbo’s pocket in Hobbiton. The Ring plays a negligible part in The One Ring TTRPG, and that’s appropriate, because not even Gandalf — whose literal job description is to foil Sauron — has worked out what it is. I imagine The One Ring TTRPG was named as such to appeal to fans of The Lord of the Rings rather than to accurately describe the game.)

In my campaigns, I treat The Shadow more abstractly. It is the discord in the Music of the Ainur; it is the death of the Two Trees of Valinor; it is every petty, selfish act ever committed. Yes, Sauron is part of The Shadow, perhaps even a controlling part for some of history, but he is not the totality of The Shadow.

I like to think of Sauron as afraid. Bitter, angry, malevolent, but afraid. Afraid of Rivendell; afraid of Aragorn; afraid of Círdan taking The Ring to Valinor; afraid of being supplanted as Dark Lord, just as he sought to replace Morgoth. I see him as paranoid and vicious, growing in power but with an appetite he can never sate.

With the exception of a few havens, Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age is a wasteland of competing interests. Many evil things harbour the ambition to fill the vacuum left by Sauron’s defeat. Many other evil things hold less grand, but similarly black plans.

Sauron is a terrible, albeit often-absent evil, but he’s merely one echo of Morgoth’s discord, whose pride and corruption seeps into every wicked act.

[ Image credit: Martin Sanchez ]