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  • The Lord of the Rings has lots of different kinds of people: elven people, dwarven people,

  • tree people, half-sized people, even people people.

  • There's like a million pages of background explaining this world that goes much deeper

  • than the books or the movies, but if you don't want to read it all here's a four minute summary,

  • starting with Wizards:

  • It's easy to mistake the wizards as humans trained in magic, like elsewhere.

  • But in the Lord of the Rings, wizards are low(ish) level angels. They're called Istari

  • (get ready for lots of names in this video) and there are five of them -- Sauroman the

  • White, Gandalf the Grey, Radagast the Brown, and the two blue wizards.

  • Their power comes mostly from being supernatural and not so much from book learnin'.

  • They're sent (by who? Well get to that in a second.) to help the people of world

  • stand against evil -- not wildly successfully either. Sauroman, the leader of the five with

  • a mind of metal and wheels gets corrupted, Radagast, gets distracted by all the pretty

  • nature, the blue wizards just kind of fade into the East -- possibly starting cults of

  • magic and it's only Gandalf that stays true to the quest.

  • Now, where there's angels there’s a god and in this Universe that's Eru Ilúvatar.

  • In the beginning there was naught but Eru and the infinite timeless nothing, which is

  • rather boring so he created lots of angels to keep him company.

  • Ilúvatar 's angels are called the Ainur and are divided into two groups The Valar (Guardians

  • of the world of which there are fourteen or fifteen depending on who you want to count)

  • and their servants The Maiar.

  • The Wizards are the Istari a subset of the Maiar, which serve the Valar, all created

  • by Ilúvatar.

  • Ilúvatar and all his angels sang together to make the world. The harmony started out

  • great But there was one Valar named Melkor, and just from the *name* Melkor, you know

  • what's going to happen, even before learning he's also the smartest, and the most powerful

  • of the angels. And also a bit of a loner.

  • Melkor didn't want to just be part of the chorus like his dimmer Valar co-workers, he

  • wanted his own song and creations and so his voice became discordant from the others and...

  • created all the suffering and evil in the world.

  • But Melkor's song also attracted some Maiar to his side including the balrogs. Which means

  • the balrog is a low-level angel making him on the same level of the power org chart as

  • Gandalf: which explains why an old man can hold his ground against a giant lava monster.

  • Through his discordant singing Melkor also created some of the evil creatures in the

  • world such as the dragons and trolls. Which finally gets us to things that aren't angels.

  • Other Valar, also made their own non-angelic creations, though in a cooperative spirit

  • with Ilúvatar.

  • Manwë makes the Great Eagles.

  • Aulë made the dwarves and his wife Yavanna made *all of the animals and plants in the

  • world* before capping off that minor task with the Ents, her own race of sentient creatures.

  • While Ilúvatar seemed happy to leave it to his Valar to make most of the stuff -- he

  • did personally create men and elves which makes them special and kind of above all the

  • other living creatures. (Sorry Dwarves)

  • And of these two, the men are Ilúvatar 's favorite children: and he show's this by giving

  • men shorter lives than everybody else and also the gift of death? Thanks a lot, Dad.

  • But their short lives set them apart from the other creatures and they aren't tied to

  • the music of creation and the world like everyone else and so are the able to forge their own

  • futures. These qualities make them the get-stuff-done species of middle earth.

  • Elves, on the other hand, are so connected to the world they're practically made of nature.

  • Same with the Dwarves in their own way, and the Ents of course. These species all but

  • follow the flow of nature and it's partly why the humans have such a hard time getting

  • them to do *anything*.

  • Even when faced with armies of Orcs, which brings us to Orcs. Melkor was powerful but

  • couldn't make his own creatures as great as the elves and men and so cheated by corrupting

  • some of them in the beginning and selectively breeding them over the generations into these

  • creatures.

  • This business Melkor was up to of torturing elves, making monsters, recruiting angels

  • from the other side eventually, but unsurprisingly, led to a war that Melkor loses and got him

  • banished into the void.

  • All of the conflict in the Lord of the Rings comes long after the epic good vs. evil fight

  • of that universe. Sauron, the Big Bad who caused all of the trouble in these books was

  • just one of the Maiar, though an unusually powerful one, who started his career as Melkor's

  • lieutenant -- after the war he did make a ring to focus his strength, but that's a story

  • for another time.

  • Last, but not least, we have the hobbits. Even though they seem related to dwarves,

  • what with the living underground and the vertical challenge, hobbits are a subspecies of men.

  • For such an important and pivotal race there is little written of their origin other than

  • the phrase 'related to men.' Turns out with a million pages you still can't talk about

  • everything, just like in a four minute video.

The Lord of the Rings has lots of different kinds of people: elven people, dwarven people,

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