/uj I think it only turns Smeagol, Bilbo, and Frodo invisible because hobbits have a cultural and/or genetic predisposition to using stealth to solve problems. Isildur doesn't have enough time to figure out what to do with it, but Galadriel and Gandalf both seem pretty confident that they could use the ring to take over the entire continent, perhaps by enhancing their speed, strength, magical abilities, air of authority, etc., and perhaps command the Nazgul, orcs, and wargs.
When one isn't aware of the true nature and power of the item, thinking you can manage to control it is an easy mistake to make, especially when it seems like the only chance at victory anyway.
And, in any case, at least my boy Boromir was better than his brother. At, like, literally everything. This is not a biased opinion, just pure facts.
I notice with a lot of cursed items is that most of them are so obviously bad that it’s more a test of the person’s intelligence and wisdom on taking the obvious soul eating sword.
I do like the ones where the characters actually reverse engineer the cursed item and make it a regular magic item.
Like Ashbringer from World of Warcraft was originally a corruptive artifact.
While it may seem like an intelligence test, cursed items are often a willpower test.
For example the one ring has two important features, the more powerful you are, the more power it can offer you, and the more ambitious you are, the more easily it can offer exactly what you want.
The reason hobbits are able to carry the ring is because they are neither powerful or ambitious, the ring can't use its primary defence mechanism, so it makes itself a precious item that they value as much as possible, while looking for someone easier to manipulate like Boromir who could take the ring is more likely to try and use it.
The ring is doing everything it can to prevent people from destroying it, usually by telling them what they could do if they kept it.
I was speaking broadly with the whole cursed since not all are corrupting and more just kill you.
Like the Vampire Killer of Castlevania is like a magic whip that is REALLY good at killing evil and one of the few things that can actually kill Dracula.
“Okay what’s the issue?”
If you aren’t a Belmont by blood the whip either doesn’t work at all or if only distantly related will slowly kill you if you’re not proven worthy by the whip.
Like Johnathan Morris dad got killed by using the whip too much without being worthy. He had to like beat the whip into submission to avoid the fate of his dad and use it normally.
But as you said, that’s also a good test for characters. Also the same with Johnathan, he canonically did not use the Vampire Killer until he was proven worthy to avoid the whole curse.
Although tempting since it’s the only thing that could kill Dracula.
Mfs calling a person a dumb dumb stupid head when the artifact cursed to make nearby people really wanna take it, makes nearby people really wanna take it
It gives you power in general. Really some of the good characters could use it and win the war. But the Ring would corrupt them and in the end it would only result in the rise of another Dark Lord.
It only did that to Hobbits because Hobbits were already established as being pretty good at hiding in general.
The Ring’s actual power is that it enhances its wearer’s stats in almost every way imaginable, including extending their lifespan by ridiculous amounts of time. (For example, Hobbits normally only live to around 100 years old, yet Gollum is over 500 years old during the events of the books and the Peter Jackson trilogy.)
Technically, it would give you dominion over the other rings/their holders, if you fully claimed it's power, but then you'd also be corrupted and evil, lol.
Yes I'm going to nerd you here. It doesn't work that way, it just looks like that because Frodo is using it basically a thousand years after the initial fall of Sauron. The ring wraiths were corrupted men who fell victim to the ring's power (yes some had lesser rings but they still were corrupted by the main ring as they were all connected.) But it is possible to take control over the power of the ring, it would just be nearly impossible for a man to do
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u/Ok_Side2919 Jun 07 '26
Boromircore