how powerful are the nasgul let's take a look hi everyone this is Robert welcome to indeep geek on this channel we dive deep into tolkien's legendarium as well as A Song of Ice and Fire And The Witcher welcome the nasgul are sauron's chief and most terrible servants he uses them both as battle commanders and on secret missions while he stays in Mordor they are his left tenants out in Middle Earth spreading fear wherever they go but how powerful actually are they well let's build up an understanding of exactly what they are and what they can
do they once were all human of course chosen by Sauron to receive rings of power the deal there was pretty simple the ring allowed them to turn invisible see the invisible realm live long lives gain wealth and whatever else they desired in the Mortal realm and during this time when they were still all men they became Mighty in their day Kings sorcerers and Warriors of old of course one by one they fell under the power of the ring and turned invisible permanently becoming wraiths and completely in the thrall of saon but it's worth noting that
when they started out they were Mighty humans already some were warriors some Sorcerers and they presumably carried those strengths into their new life or unlife as wraiths it's easy to think of the nasgul as all the same because with the exception of the witch King and Camu the easterling we don't really know much about any of them individually but they are all different the witch King is the obvious outli here in terms of power apparently creating and controlling wraiths of his own and this at the Ford of Bruin just outside Rivendell then the leader who
was now half across the Ford stood up menacing in his stups and raised up his hand Frodo was stricken dumb he felt his tongue cleave to his mouth and his heart laboring his sword broke and fell out of his shaking hand so the witch King can with a gesture strike someone dumb and break their sword impressive but it's not just him all of the nasgul are powerful very experienced former humans some with magic powers of their own Immortal with limits which we'll obviously come on to and crucially cannot be harmed by normal weapons that's quite
a powerful place to start basically they can't be damaged or killed by ordinary soldiers and can cause a lot of damage added to which saon equipped them with some pretty powerful accessories their black horses were specially bred to carry them and then they got those flying fell beasts air superiority is a rare thing in Middle Earth dragons didn't Venture that far south by the end of the third age the eagles only turn up when they are really needed and outside of tolk's more steampunky ponderings about numor no one had invented flying machines Nazgul and Fel
beasts basically ensured air dominance and then there's the morgal blade that the witch King stabbed Frodo with it was enchanted so that the fragment that broke off worked its way into Frodo's body towards his heart if it had reached there he would have become a wraith himself and under their control Frodo survived 17 days but evidently that was a surprise most people would last a lot less and not many have access to a Healer like Eland so a weapon where you just have to stab your opponent and with an a couple of weeks or so
they become a wraith under your control powerful stuff we don't know if it was only the witch King who held such a blade but it clearly wasn't One of a Kind Gandalf referred to it as a morgal knife not the morgal knife as a practical aside though it's quite an important one clearly the nasgul can hold and use physical weapons despite being invisible and ethereal beings they seem to be able to throw or fire deadly black darts at weathertop they used swords and the witch King sometimes uses a giant mace they aren't just ghosts they
exist in and can manipulate the land of the living too then there is the black breath this is basically poisonous breath that knocks out opponents that's what happens to Mary and Brie when he goes for a little wander about town and passes too close close to the Black Riders to be honest Mary got off quite lightly there when the nasgul are deployed in combat situations it's actually quite deadly both faramir and Awin get caught and we're told that they both fall into deep cold sleeps but for Aragorn's intervention in time a shadow would pass over
their faces as they sunk deeper and they would never recover in fact the black breath itself is just the most extreme example of the kind of zone of fear that surrounds the nasgul it's actually their main weapon as tolken said their Peril is almost entirely due to the unreasoning fear which they Inspire like ghosts he went on in The Lord of the Rings to describe the impact in this way during the battle of the pelenor fields the Nazgul came again and as their dark lord now grew and put forth his strength so their voices which
uttered only his will and his Mal were filled with evil and horror at length even the stouthearted would fling themselves to the ground as the hidden Menace passed over them or they would stand letting their weapons fall from nerveless hands while into their minds a Blackness came and they thought no more of War but only of hiding and of crawling and of death this is dark stuff even the most stouthearted would freeze and drop their weapon in In The nazguls Presence by Dent of being wraiths they can also see things and people in the spiritual
realm like when someone puts on the one ring or powerful beings like glendel all of which makes them seem extraordinarily powerful and they are particularly when facing ordinary folk without magical defenses and the like but for all their power they do have weaknesses and some pretty significant ones they are often described as being more powerful during nighttime and in the dark and can see very well without light but the flip side of that is obviously that they are weaker during daytime and don't see very well in full light they can sense the presence of other
beings and smell the blood of the living but one of the reasons they tend to go about on the back of animals horses fell beasts is so that they can rely on their eyesight they also like many evil creatures are sensitive to things that are good and pure Aragon suggests to Frodo that him simply invoking the name elberth that's V the queen of the Val at weathertop harmed the nasgul eliciting a shrill cry from the witch King and in that same scene of course Aragorn leaps to the rescue wielding fiery Brands the fire couldn't harm
the wraiths per se but light could and having your robes catch on fire is very annoying even for the nazgol and there's also a hint of foreshadowing in that scene when Frodo draw draws his sword blink and you miss it but two of the three nasgul advancing towards him see it glow red in the spiritual realm and paes why because Frodo at that point is carrying one of the blades they got from the Barrow Downs Mary keeps hold of his all the way through to the pelenor fields and stabs the witch King with it it's
a magically forged sword imbued with power against the witch King's Army it's quite a WV moment because at weathertop Frodo slashes his sword at the witch King narrowly missing him they later find the witch King's cloak with a cut in it but what if he'd hit did Frodo's weapon have the same power as Mary's it's very possible and does that mean that Frodo could have killed the witch King there and then with a luckier strike it's worth considering anyway some combination of Aragon's fire seeing those Barrow blades and thinking they'd achieved their objective in stabbing
Frodo with the morgal blade meant that the nasgul with Dre and it's not the only time we see the nasgul if not exactly defeated then pushed back by Mighty foes or circumstances gandal holds them off at weathertop for an entire night saying after that I was hard put to it indeed such light and Flame cannot have been seen on weathertop since the war beacons of old so the might of the nine nasgul was great but one Gandalf the gy could just about hold them off and at another point at around that time five nasgul stumbled
across glorfindel and took a long detour just to avoid facing him they could see his power in the interest of fairness we should probably note that these things happened in The Fellowship of the Ring tolken says in one of his letters that the witch King in particular was given a power up by Sauron before the battle of the pelenor fields well he didn't say power up exactly but an added demonic Force which probably amounts to the same thing which brings us to their greatest weakness which ironically is actually the source of their power Sauron it
was sauron's power through the rings that kept them bound to the Mortal realm he who controlled them and he who could give them an added demonic Force when he wished when he was destroyed when the ring that bound them to his power was destroyed they also met their Doom the Nazgul were hugely powerful almost Unstoppable to normal humans without any magic invisible magical invulnerable to normal weapons sowing fear amongst their enemies but to those who knew their weaknesses or were powerful beings themselves then they stood a chance as per gandal glorfindel and Aragon and ultimately
they were vulnerable it was their own lust for power Millennia earlier which led to them falling to the power of the Rings and it would just take the destruction of the one ring to rule all the rings of power to bring bring their own destruction if you'd like to see more videos like this diving into token's legendarium there's a playlist appearing now on the left of your screen or to support this channel thank you there's a link on the right of your screen to my patreon page thanks for watching that's all for this time I'll
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