I've been a Tolkien fan for most of my life. I loved Lord of the Rings. But my favorite stories all take place in The Silmarillion, a collection of stories that take place long before the events of Lord of the Rings. It is in that book you get a much deeper understanding of the various characters.  You don't really get to scratch the surface of the real depth of middle earth in the movies. The books go into a bit more detail, particularly the appendixes at the end of Return of the King.

With Return of the King about to come into theatres, I figured now would be a good time to help give those of you who have enjoyed the movies and maybe even read the books some additional details on the characters and world that might make the series even more enjoyable than it already has.

Part I: Of Sauron, Gandalf, Saruman and the Balrog

These guys could be cousins. Literally. We understand that there is the race of men, the race of elves, the race of dwarves and even the ents. But Gandalf, Saruman and the Balrog belong to another race - the Valar.  Specifically, the sub-set of Valar known as the Maiar (basically those who are Valar but not as powerful). 

The Maiar are much different than the others. They are spirits essentially who can take on any form they choose. They can't die. Not in the way we think of death anyway. Instead, what can happen is that they can dwindle in strength to the point that they can no longer affect the material world.  Like all races, some Maiar are tougher than others. Balrogs are a particular type of Maiar. They're basically the name given to Maiar who took the side of Morgoth. 

Who's Morgoth? Well that's another discussion entirely. He was the one evil Valar. The most powerful, at the start, of them all possibly.  He was the most powerful being in Middle Earth. But ultimately he was defeated but his underling servant, Sauron the Maiar, survived and went into hiding until the Valar left again for the western most part of the world.

But getting back to how you can evil "kill" these guys, like I said, they can't die in the traditional sense. They can only be weakened to the point of being irrelevant. Sauron was once much much tougher than he is now. But he's already had his physical body destroyed twice. It isn't trivial, even for a Maiar, to come into physical being. When that body is destroyed, if the Maiar wants to again have a body it must expend its spiritual energy to do it. And that energy is lost forever. Morgoth expended much of his spiritual energy on making his armies and his weapons and other things.  That touches on the "magic" of middle earth. Magic, it could be said, is purely the spiritual energy of the various Valar or some of the first generation elves expended into a different thing. But once spent, it's gone.

Which brings us back to the ring. Sauron put much of his energy into a particular tool - the ring of power. He had to expend his spirit into it in order to make the ring powerful enough to dominate the other magical rings that had been made by an unusually strong elvish smith (named Celebrimbor who Sauron later killed). Think of the Ring of Power as being the magical equivalent of Black Orfice. With it, he could wield the power of all the various magical rings that had been created. But as you can imagine, doing that required sacrificing a great deal of power.  So if the ring is destroyed, Sauron will lose so much power that he will be effectively killed. He won't die though. He'll just be so impotent that he won't be able to affect reality anymore (i.e. the material world).

So what about Gandalf and Saruman? Why don't they seem so powerful?  5 Wizards. Technically called Istari. A special type of Maiar. Think of them as Maiar Cops. But they have been put under rules of engagement that they cannot break even if they want. For one thing, they have to take the form of men with all that comes with it (pain, hardship, hunger, etc.).  And, it could be argued, they actually had to invest more of their spirit in order to so accurately have the form of men. So if their bodies are destroyed, they risk not being able to form into a material form again.  In Gandalf's case, his spirit fled to the west when his body was broken during the battle with the Balrog. But he was decided he had remained steadfast and was sent back with his spirit reinvigorated and some of the invisible bonds that held him down loosened so that he could be more effective. 

You see, the Valar imposed these rules on the Istari because they didn't want Gandalf and Saruman to be tempted to go toe to toe with Sauron and take his place as a dark lord of Middle Earth. Clearly, given that Saruman became corrupted while even in his reduced form showed just how tempting it is for even Maiar to get corrupted when they're a lot stronger than those around them.  But Gandalf had proven his worthiness so the second time around he came back as Gandalf the white and much tougher than before. But still under all kinds of rules of engagement.  No going to the Dark Tower to battle Sauron one on one.  The Istari's job is to motivate the peoples of Middle Earth to work together to defeat Sauron.

As for the last 3 Istari that never get mentioned. No one really knows what the deal is with them.  One was named Radigast the Brown who makes only a brief appearance in the book and the other two are referred to as the "blue wizards" and just went off into the east never to be seen again.

So there you have it with regards to the Maiar. They are a particular group type of Vala who are pretty tough.  But to keep things in perspective, the first generation elves were about as tough as a Maiar. Elrond's ancestors could have kicked Sauron's ass. But we'll get to that soon enough...