Make Room for Dragons

year 1000. "The Tale of Years" in The Lord of the Rings says that it was Sauron's alarm at the growing power of the Numenoreans which led him to make Mordor as his new home. The Numenoreans had not, by that time, established any permanent havens in Middle-earth. But Sauron must have foreseen the time was not far off when they would do just that. It's all very vague and mysterious, and one wonders what the heck was going on in the wastelands of eastern Middle-earth. Aldarion, while he was still sailing to Middle-earth and scouting out the lands for Gil-galad, doesn't seem to have met any dragons. Tolkien surely would have mentioned such an encounter. And Aldarion doesn't seem to have strayed far from water anyway. His role was chiefly as an ambassador on behalf of Gil-galad, who sought out Men deliberately, to either forge alliances with them, or to gain knowledge about them and perhaps to forestall their succumbing to the influence of the dark power he had perceived as stirring in the east. So if dragons were part of Sauron's scheme, they must not have been very effective for him in those early years. Why else did they not scrape the Elves off the scorched earth of Eriador? Dragons would have to be some sort of disappointment to Sauron, at least by the middle of the Second Age, or else they should have served him as a powerful weapon in his wars with the Elves. On the other hand, we are led to believe that many tribes of Edainic Men and perhaps several Elven nations vanished from the lands east of the Misty Mountains in the War of the Elves and Sauron. Sauron did not simply march against Eregion. He launched a campaign against the Longbeard Dwarves and their Edainic allies which all but destroyed the northern peoples. The essay "Dwarves and Men" (The Peoples of Middle-earth) describes the war so:

Very great changes came to pass as the Second Age proceeded. The first ships of the Numenoreans appeared off the coasts of Middle-earth about Second Age 600, no rumour of this portent reached the distant north. At the same time, however, Sauron came out of hiding and revealed himself in fair form. For long he paid little heed to the Dwarves or Men and endeavoured to win the friendship and trust of the Eldar. But slowly he reverted again to the allegiance

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