Middle-earth Connections: Lore of the Rings

Lorien (in fact, since the Elves withdrew to deep within the woods, it would seem the extent of Nenya's influence was considerably less than the boundaries of the forest). Full Circle: The Rings, Time, and Wraiths So why didn't the Shire benefit from the presence of the One Ring? Probably because only the Three acted on any geographical basis, and though the One possessed the powers of the other Rings, it may not have possessed the ranges of the Three Rings because Sauron was not present when Celebrimbor made them. Sauron himself had no real use for creating a Valinor in Middle-earth, so why use the One Ring to hold back decay around him? On the other hand, Smeagol, Bilbo, and Frodo all went without wearing the One Ring for long periods of time. So it, too, must have had a minimal geographical range that was, perhaps, more keyed to who possessed the Ring than anything else. The Rings don't really hold back Time. They just slow the impact it has on a biological body. For something like a tree, which has no spirit (Ents and Huorns not considered), there is no real harm. An animal, though intelligent, might also benefit from the effect of the Rings because it didn't have a spirit. An Elf, whose spirit was intended to remain in Arda until the end of Time, would not feel stretched, as Bilbo put it. The problem for "mortals" was that their spirits wanted to go elsewhere. After a certain length of time, mortal Men had to die. They had to give up their spirits. A Ring of Power obstructed this natural tendency. The body would keep on living, functioning the same as the day it came into possession of the Ring. But the spirit would be constantly striving to leave. Hence, the struggle between spirit and body (or spirit and Ring) must have produced the "stretched" feeling that Bilbo complained about. He wasn't physically stretched, but just torn between powerful forces. Thus, when Sauron perverted the Seven and the Nine, he must have altered their natural tendency toward preservation to engage the opposite effect. The Nine keepers didn't become wraiths because they used the Rings, but because they possessed them. Using the Rings may have speeded the fading process, but probably any Elf who might have taken one of the altered Nine or Seven would have faded as well, and become just as enslaved as

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