The Sauron Strategies: Footsteps into Failure - Page 2
© Michael Martinez
Sauron's gradual emergence into the affairs of Middle-earth did not go unnoticed, and it may be that the catalyst for his return was the eastward migration of Sindar. Tolkien observed that, "seeing the desolation of the world, Sauron said in his heart that the Valar, having overthrown Morgoth, had again forgotten Middle-earth; and his pride grew apace."
In the "notes on motives in the Silmarillion" essay (published in Morgoth's Ring), Tolkien wrote: "[Sauron] did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and co-ordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction."
Sauron fundamentally believed that he could set the world in order, bring it out of the chaos that Morgoth and his wars with the Valar and Eldar had created, and restore it to its original purposes. But, because of his pride, "his 'plans'...became the sole object of his will" (ibid.). Sauron forgot why he wanted to bring order to the world, and simply focused on bringing order to it.
He clearly saw the Elves as potential instruments of his will. They had the sub-creative abilities to affect the wider world in ways that other creatures, such as Men, apparently lacked. Dwarves don't seem to have figured broadly in Sauron's designs, and that may be due to either a lack of knowledge about them on Sauron's part (such a perspective is reinforced by the fact that Sauron failed to convert any Dwarves into Ringwraiths) or to their lesser abilities (although we have too little information about Dwarven capabilities to compare them with the Elves in that way).
However, Sauron at first began organizing the remnants of Morgoth's creatures. They would have been easy for him to recruit into his service -- he would have known them well and they might have remembered him -- but he seems to have worked slowly and subtly at first. Gil-galad suspected that a servant of Morgoth had begun organizing peoples or creatures in the east before the year 1000 in the Second Age.
He recruited Anardil, prince of Numenor, to serve as an ambassador to men living in northern and western Middle-earth. At the time, Gil-galad seems to have striven to collect information and to build up goodwill among peoples dwelling near his kingdom, which lay upon the northwestern shores of Middle-earth, in the last remnant of eastern Beleriand. Anardil's activities in Middle-earth, and the growing presence of Numenoreans in the coastlands (through voyages of exploration and seasonal camps or temporary colonies such as Vinyalonde), induced Sauron to select a permanent base of operations around the year 1000.
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