Sauron VS Lich King Q&A

 

Who is hell is Sauron?

"The following is a fan-made blog, whose opinion is only those involved in its writing. It is not officially endorsed by Rooster Teeth Productions or a representative of the views of the Death Battle staff at large."

-Before We Begin-

In a match like this, where both sides of the debate have a lot of conflicting interpretations, it is important to hold both Sauron and the Lich King up to the same amount of scrutiny as one another. Both sides were held to the same strict standards, and so many things were questioned for both of them. While we will be addressing specific arguments (as is the point of these Q&As), the intention of this blog is not to target or call out anyone specific over something as trivial as VS arguments; we’re just giving our stances on the matter. This match-up is very close, but hopefully this blog will help enlighten anyone on the bigger (and sometimes smaller) points made during the wait time for this episode. Now without further ado…

Sauron Questions

Doesn’t Sauron have a True Form? Where was that at?

No… well, yes and no. Yes, technically, but no, not in the way that a lot of people think he does. There’s a rather pervasive misconception that Maiar in Lord of the Rings are similar to something like Darkseid from DC Comics or Pennywise from IT, whose physical bodies are only an avatar of a universal god-like entity who exists outside of reality. This is a rather drastic misrepresentation that most likely has been spread around due to word of mouth.

The truth is twofold. Prior to the existence of the universe, the Valar and Maiar existed as angelic spirits within the Timeless Halls, and when they were introduced into reality, they were required to take on physical form in order to interact with the world. In doing so, they “contained” and “bound” their power, preventing them from fully exerting their capabilities within the material universe. Their spirits, which inhabit their bodies like clothing, are able to survive independently of these bodies.

In other words, the “true form” of an Ainu is simply their spirit, and they should technically be more powerful to an unknown extent if they return to the Timeless Halls outside of Eä. Sauron’s spirit is relevant to the fight; his unique ability to act as a spirit and build new bodies for himself are essentially the primary reason why he won. However, within the material universe, he is no stronger as a spirit than he is with a body, he has no means of removing the limits that were placed on him when he entered reality, and his “unrestricted” state within the Timeless Halls - which is irrelevant to the fight, since he cannot take the battle there - has no real feats (see below for discussion on the Music of the Ainur).

It is not like a Super Saiyan transformation that Sauron can activate for a power boost, nor is his “true self”, his spirit, anything remotely comparable to something like True Darkseid. I would strongly encourage more people to please read the Silmarillion; most people I’ve seen who have actually done so tend to have a more accurate understanding of how it works.

How impressive is Ossë’s feat? Isn’t there no time-frame? Does Sauron even scale to it?

Firstly, Sauron should scale to Ossë. It is repeatedly established that Sauron is the strongest servant of Morgoth, and Ossë temporarily became a servant of Morgoth at one point, with no indication that he ever usurped Sauron’s spot as the top dog.

It is additionally worth mentioning that Gandalf and Saruman were both specifically chosen from among all of the Maiar by Eru, for the purpose of opposing Sauron. Though they were forbidden from challenging his power with their own, it was stated that “they must be mighty, peers of Sauron”. Despite power being a consideration in the decision, neither of them are strong enough to defeat him, or even in the same league of power as him. Gandalf in particular was increased to an entirely new level of power by Eru when he was resurrected as Gandalf the White, and yet admitted immediately upon his return that Sauron was still stronger than him regardless.

In other words, Gandalf was hand-picked out of all of the Maiar and then given a super-amp from God, and still did not compare to Sauron at a point when Sauron did not even have the One Ring. It would make absolutely no sense narratively for a less important Maia like Ossë to be above Sauron at his peak, if anything it should clearly be the opposite. The Ring was also said to be capable of putting Gandalf on Sauron’s level, despite the fact that Eru’s amp did not do so. Lending credence to the idea that Sauron, with said Ring amp, should be beyond what any normal Maia is capable of altogether. 

As for the feat, it is first worth emphasizing that Ossë’s feat and Gul’dan’s were both calculated using the exact same method: measuring the area of the island, multiplying by oceanic depth to get the volume, and solving for the potential energy to lift both islands out of the sea. While it would be possible to use many different methods, Ossë’s feat is always going to be twice as powerful no matter what, as long as you use the same method for both.

That said, potential energy is the most reasonable method. There is no established time-frame for Ossë’s feat, but potential energy does not require a time-frame to calculate, and regardless it must have been done all in one go, in order to create a stable landmass that wouldn’t just sink back to the bottom of the ocean as soon as Ossë let go of it. The result we got with this method was 19.6 teratons.

Additionally, it is established that the Maiar’s abilities function based on a finite energy reserve that does not replenish. When Sauron uses his abilities, most notably his body regeneration, it expends some of his spirit’s inherent energy, causing subsequent reformations to take longer and longer. Gandalf similarly expends all of his power over the course of his 10-day fight against Durin’s Bane, collapsing and dying at the end of it, and requiring a re-charge from Eru to return to life. It is a general theme throughout the series that the power which exists in the world diminishes over time; things in the First Age are generally more powerful and less mundane than those in the Second and so on. Considering this mechanic, regardless of time-frame, the total energy that Ossë exerted should be applicable to his overall power reserve at his peak, which would likewise apply to Sauron.

For the record, discarding both feats due to a lack of time-frame (or assuming that they took a long time), the stat comparison wouldn’t be terribly different. Lich King would scale to Illidan’s planet-wide earthquake, which got 308.9 gigatons to 9.77 teratons, while Sauron would scale to Ancalagon crushing Thangorodrim under his body, which got 479 gigatons to 12.8 teratons. Were these numbers used instead, the two would still be comparable with Sauron still maintaining a very slight advantage.

Why was the calc for Ancalagon’s feat so high?

The existing calc for the feat uses a number for Thangorodrim’s size from the Atlas of Middle-Earth, which was specifically measuring off of the earliest available sketch of the mountains that Tolkien created. It was not the “final” or “official” size of the mountains, especially since Tolkien changed his mind a lot. If you measure off of the map of the lands north of Beleriand in the Atlas, which is more recent and provides a specific size scale, the mountains’ size is much larger.

The number listed in the episode is also a low-end, which uses basic fragmentation. Since the mountains were crushed underneath Ancalagon’s body, it may be possible to use higher destruction values, which would put the results into the country level range, consistent with Ossë’s feat. We also know that Ancalagon’s fall destroyed some of the surrounding Iron Mountains, though this is difficult to account for since we don’t know exactly how far the destruction extended. Regardless, it would make the episode’s number a lowball.

Can Sauron really fight as a spirit or rebuild his body quickly? How does his immortality work?

I think this will probably “generally” be the biggest contention with Sauron’s side of the episode, so let’s break it down. Tolkien’s letters give fairly detailed explanations of how this regeneration works.

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“It was because of this pre-occupation with the Children of God that the spirits so often took the form and likeness of the Children, especially after their appearance. It was thus that Sauron appeared in this shape. It is mythologically supposed that when this shape was 'real', that is a physical actuality in the physical world and not a vision transferred from mind to mind, it took some time to build up. It was then destructible like other physical organisms. But that of course did not destroy the spirit, nor dismiss it from the world to which it was bound until the end. After the battle with Gilgalad and Elendil, Sauron took a long while to re-build, longer than he had done after the Downfall of Númenor (I suppose because each building-up used up some of the inherent energy of the spirit, which might be called the 'will' or the effective link between the indestructible mind and being and the realization of its imagination). The impossibility of re-building after the destruction of the Ring, is sufficiently clear 'mythologically' in the present book.”

-200 From a letter to Major R. Bowen 25 June 1957

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“Sauron was first defeated by a 'miracle': a direct action of God the Creator, changing the fashion of the world, when appealed to by Manwë: see III p. 317. Though reduced to 'a spirit of hatred borne on a dark wind', I do not think one need boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended. That Sauron was not himself destroyed in the anger of the One is not my fault: the problem of evil, and its apparent toleration, is a permanent one for all who concern themselves with our world. The indestructibility of spirits with free wills, even by the Creator of them, is also an inevitable feature, if one either believes in their existence, or feigns it in a story.

Sauron was, of course, 'confounded' by the disaster, and diminished (having expended enormous energy in the corruption of Númenor). He needed time for his own bodily rehabilitation, and for gaining control over his former subjects. He was attacked by Gil-galad and Elendil before his new domination was fully established.”

-211 To Rhona Beare

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To summarize, when Sauron’s physical body is destroyed, this does not destroy his spirit, which is bound to the world until the end. As a spirit, Sauron possesses the ability to carry the One Ring, and can still use his powers. Creating a new body for himself is an immediately obvious example of this, but he also uses his shapeshifting as a spirit in the Middle-Earth games (where it is very consistently shown that spirits can interact with the physical world, e.g. Celebrimbor). With this in mind, combat as a spirit is something that he is capable of.

The ability to create a new body is something that expends his spirit’s inherent energy, which causes subsequent regenerations to take longer and longer. Because of this, he cannot do this indefinitely, which explains some things from the books. In his fight with Huan, he was reluctant to allow his body to be destroyed, which makes sense if regenerating is not something he can do indefinitely. This is also showcased with his regeneration after the fall of Númenor, and later again after his defeat against Isildur, both of which took a very long time.

However, this does not mean that Sauron’s regeneration is not an asset in combat at all. Note the second quote above, where it says specifically that Sauron’s regeneration post-Númenor required time because he was already diminished, having expended a lot of energy toward dominating the minds of the Númenoreans. Considering the contrapositive of this statement, it stands to reason that it would not take time if he was not weakened. Corroborating this, it was stated explicitly in the Nature of Middle-Earth that Ainur spirits could shed their bodies to travel wherever they want immediately and then re-clothe themselves. Meaning that at his peak, prior to expending any inherent energy with regenerations, Sauron should be capable of quickly rebuilding his body at least once, especially when in possession of the One Ring, which enhances one’s natural abilities.

Why doesn’t Sauron scale to the Valar?

It is stated that the Maiar are weaker than the Valar in general. Though there is a statement in Morgoth’s Ring that says some of the Valar’s companions are “well-nigh as great” as they are, this statement isn’t qualified enough to draw conclusions from (What does “great” mean? Power, fame, influence? Which companions is it referring to?). Additionally, it is worth keeping in mind that the History of Middle-Earth books are a compilation of Tolkien’s notes over time that were put together by his son, Christopher Tolkien. They include things like incomplete manuscripts, footnotes and various other things that never made it into any of the main books. Not everything from these books can be considered accurate, since Tolkien changed his mind frequently about various things or abandoned concepts entirely. They should still obviously be usable as supporting evidence, but not when it is directly contradictory with statements from the main works, as is the case here.

What about tanking Manwë’s lightning bolt?

Sauron does tank a lightning bolt from the Vala Manwë at one point, shortly before the fall of Númenor, but this is made much less noteworthy by context. Manwë is not even physically present when this happens, he only sends a storm to Númenor. On top of this, Tolkien explicitly states in his letters that the Valar were not allowed to truly intervene in Sauron’s conquest of Númenor, and that they appealed to Eru because they lacked the power or permission to act, so Manwë could not have been exerting his full power in this instance.

What about scaling to Melkor/Morgoth?

There is a statement that Sauron is stronger at his peak than Morgoth is at his weakest, but this version of Morgoth is greatly weakened due to spreading his power across the world, to the point of struggling against the elf Fingolfin, and has no feats greater than what Sauron already scales to. Nothing relevant would apply to Morgoth at this stage, and the same passage states multiple times, very explicitly, that Sauron’s power is naturally much lesser and more limited compared to Morgoth’s.

Ungoliant scaling?

There is a primordial spider named Ungoliant in the Silmarillion who drains the power of the Two Trees. Fruit from these Trees was later taken by the Valar and used to create the Sun and Moon. While Ungoliant was empowered by the Trees, she challenges a weakened Morgoth and ensnares him in her webs, at which point he calls upon the Balrogs to help him. They arrive and free him from the webs, at which point Ungoliant flees. Since Sauron is Morgoth’s strongest servant, the argument goes that he scales beyond the Balrogs, whom Ungoliant was afraid of despite being empowered with star level energy.

There are a few issues with this that make it too shaky. To begin with, the Balrogs never actually fight Ungoliant, they only free Morgoth from her webs. Though Ungoliant does flee afterward, it was from Morgoth and the Balrogs together, and she is established to be a rather cowardly character, fleeing from the Valar and requiring coaxing from Morgoth in order to leave her lair to begin with, so running away from a fight is within her character, and does not necessarily mean that she was inferior to the Balrogs.

Additionally, some have tried to scale Sauron to Ungoliant based on the notion that she was a servant of Morgoth, but this is inaccurate. Ungoliant was an ally of Morgoth, and betrayed him soon after absorbing the Trees’ light; she was never his servant. It’s also unclear how much of the Sun and Moon’s creation can be attributed to the energy of the Trees rather than the Valar, so it would not be difficult to dispute Ungoliant being star level or higher in the first place.

Fëanor scaling?

There is an argument that Sauron scales to the Noldorin elf Fëanor, who created the Silmarils, three gems containing light taken from the Two Trees. One of these Silmarils was later sent into the sky and “set in heaven as the brightest star” by the Valar, so the argument posits that Sauron is star level because he is stronger than Fëanor.

However, not only do we have no context for how exactly Fëanor created the Silmarils, it’s obvious that the Silmaril itself, a small gem carried into the sky on the Vingilot by Eärendil (an elf), does not possess the size, mass, density, or heat as a normal star. Its ability to function as one should be attributable to either the Valar’s magic transforming it, or simply its light (the light of a star alone is not star level, its size and density are the main contributors to its GBE). The light of a Silmaril would still be pretty impressive, but once again there is no real method of attributing this to Fëanor or scaling it to Sauron. Some people have mistakenly interpreted “the Silmaril that Eärendil carried into the sky became a star” as “Eärendil became a star” based on a figuratively worded statement, but this is a misinterpretation that is cleared up by other descriptions of the event, which simply state that Eärendil carried it.

In short, creating the Silmarils is certainly not a star level feat for Fëanor, carrying it is not a star level feat for Eärendil, and anything the Valar might have done to alter the Silmaril (setting it in the sky as a star) does not scale to Sauron.

Is Sauron universal?

No. There are only two or maybe three real arguments for this, all of which are pretty weak.

The first is his contribution to the creation of the Music of the Ainur, which Eru used to create the universe. First of all, it’s unknown how much Sauron contributed to this; all of the Valar were involved, as were an unknown number of Maiar. Second of all, it’s not a universal feat in the first place. The music explicitly does not create anything physical on its own; after the music has been created, Eru creates a vision of the universe which is based on the music. The physical universe only comes to be after Eru makes the vision real. As such, the only universal feat in the sequence belongs to Eru alone, and Sauron obviously does not scale to Eru. Tolkien makes it clear through various other statements that nothing the Ainur did was physical until Eru created the universe, and that the role of the Valar in the universe’s inception was not to create anything. Think of it like the Music of the Ainur is the blueprint to a building that Eru and the Ainur collectively drew up, while the actual universe is the physical building Eru made by himself based on the blueprints.

On the topic of the Valar, they do help shape the universe after its creation over an unknown time-frame. It’s also stated that as a collective, they possess nearly complete control over the physical matter of the material universe. As previously covered, however, Sauron does not scale to the Valar, and although he might have had some vague role in this part of the universe’s creation, it is unknown how big his contribution might or might not have been. Trying to apply anything definitive here would ignore the complete lack of context or concrete information.

Finally, there’s the justification that VS wiki currently provides, which is pretty vague and doesn’t really mean anything: “The Ainur exist outside of time and reality being completely unbound to Eä, initially viewing reality as a mere drama prior to their descent into it.” Though this might sound impressive, there aren’t any actual feats here, and it should go without saying that existing outside the universe on its own does not require you to be capable of busting a universe. The vision of the universe that they witnessed, as already discussed, actually wasn’t anything physical yet at the point when they viewed it, so seeing the universe in the form of a drama likewise doesn’t mean anything.

Is anything higher than country level for Sauron legit? (feat. Arien and Tilion)

Mmmmmmaybe. There is a feat in which two Maiar, Arien and Tilion, are tasked with controlling the movements of the Sun and Moon, which orbit Arda (the planet) in LotR’s cosmology. We did do a calc for this, though it wasn’t included in the episode, which got 9.17 exatons for Tilion, and 248 yottatons - 1.2 FOE for Arien (the low-end assuming the Sun was moved at the orbital speed of the Moon, and the high-end calcing the speed required for the Sun to orbit the Earth in a day).

The reason that this wasn’t applied to Sauron in the episode is because we know almost nothing about these Maiar, outside of the fact that they performed this feat. It’s implied that Arien may have had to shed her physical form to do it, though it’s possible Sauron could replicate this. More than anything, we just don’t really know how he compares to them, though it does make some sense to scale him, since they are Maiar, and he is stronger than some of the strongest Maiar like Gandalf the White, on top of being the strongest servant of Morgoth.

That said, we didn’t really want to give Sauron cosmic levels of power in the episode based on nothing but a bunch of assumptions. It would be hard to justify reasonably, and likely garner a lot of skepticism from many people who are familiar with the character. In contrast, the Ossë and Ancalagon feats are a lot more narratively congruent with what Sauron himself has shown to be capable of, and are more easily justifiable scaling-wise.

Of note, however, if you were to scale Sauron to Arien (which would have roughly the same logic behind it as Eredar scaling would, that being “same species” - see Lich King section for discussion of Eredar scaling), even the low-end of the calc would comfortably eclipse any of the planet level arguments for Lich King.

How fast is Sauron?

The Balrogs’ flight from Angband to Lammoth to save Morgoth gets Mach 30 on the high-end, which is reasonable enough. If you scale him to Arien, her feat of moving the Sun around the Earth within a day would get over 3% the speed of light. Most other feats that people try to argue aren’t really legit. 

Gandalf lightning timing?

Gandalf does technically move in-tandem with lightning in the Two Towers movie, but he only moves his sword a few centimeters in the time it takes for the lightning to come all the way down from the clouds. We calc’d it and got results lower than Mach 1.

Talion’s arrows?

In the Middle-Earth games, there is a character named Talion who can slow down time to such an extent that explosions appear frozen to him. His arrows can travel large distances in a single frame while this time slow is active, which some have calc’d to be thousands of times faster than sound.

However, the games do describe the slowing effect as actually slowing down time, rather than simply slowing Talion’s perception of it, so most likely, the arrows simply weren’t slowed due to being his own weaponry. Additionally, the explosion feat occurs in the second game and the arrow movements are taken from the first, which is relevant because Talion has his own Ring of Power in the second game, and as such all of his powers are enhanced. As such, applying the explosion time-frames from the second game to the first game’s time slow is questionable. There are explosions in the first game, but they cannot be seen in slow motion with the time slow the way that they can in the second game.

Vingilot?

A lot of people will probably be surprised to see this go unmentioned in the episode, since it came up as an argument a lot in the waiting period and the page for it was on Sauron’s media guide. However, something being on the media guide does not necessarily mean that it was accepted, it just means that it is worth looking at and/or making note of.

In the Silmarillion there’s a boat called the Vingilot which belongs to Eärendil. The Valar enchant this ship, allowing it to sail into the void beyond Arda, traveling beyond the stars and returning back every once in a while during the morning. This would require the boat to be MFTL+, and later in the Silmarillion, Eärendil sails it into battle during the War of Wrath, using it to battle against Ancalagon and the dragons. The argument is thus that Ancalagon matched the ship’s speed, and thus Sauron would scale to it via superiority to Ancalagon.

However, we are given no indication that Eärendil rode the ship into battle at top speed, and are given no details about the battle other than just the fact that it occurred. The Vingilot could have been stationary while Eärendil and Ancalagon fought, for all we know about it. So Ancalagon scaling to its MFTL+ capabilities would be too much of an assumption. Vehicles do not always travel at one constant speed; dodging a car moving 10 mph in a parking lot is not the same as keeping up with a car moving 80 mph on the interstate. Eärendil also never steers the ship around obstacles while moving at MFTL+ speed, so scaling it to his reactions based on “piloting” it is also a no-go. It could arguably apply to the Valar since they enchanted the ship in the first place (and would be consistent with other Valar feats, like Varda placing new stars in the sky), but as already established, Sauron does not scale to the Valar.

Immeasurable Ainur?

There is a statement in the Nature of Middle-Earth that all of the Valar and Maiar can instantly go to any place in the universe where they desire, which some have interpreted as an immeasurable speed feat, but is obviously just teleportation.

Existing in the Timeless Halls has also been argued as an immeasurable speed feat since the Maiar were able to technically exist before the dawn of time, but realistically this kind of feat is almost always heavily extrapolating something that isn’t actually implied, as is the case here. At best you could say that Sauron would be able to operate normally in the absence of time, which could be a useful hax resistance in some circumstances, but there is nothing suggesting that this allows him to literally move infinitely fast.

As an aside, however, if you were to take these kinds of “timeless area” feats seriously for some reason, both Sauron and Lich King have (or scale to) instances of doing so, and as a result it would cancel out anyway.

Why did you composite Sauron’s abilities between different ages?

This is a very bizarre complaint. Some people have taken issue with the idea of using “First Age powers” for “Second Age Sauron” which is just… a complete misunderstanding of how his powers work. Nothing he demonstrated during the First Age is unavailable to him in the Second Age; for instance, he uses his shapeshifting all the time, to deceive the elves. He does temporarily lose the ability to shapeshift into a fair form after the fall of Númenor, but this is likely because he was weakened. He uses his shapeshifting in the Middle-Earth games, which take place in the Third Age. It’s established that the One Ring enhances all of the wearer’s natural powers, so if anything, his powers demonstrated during the First Age should be stronger in the Second Age. Likewise, anything he can do in the Third Age, when he was greatly weakened, should be accessible to him at the peak of his power in the Second Age. We used Sauron at his strongest, as we do all characters, and the different Ages are not different “versions” of the character.

Can the Ring be destroyed by anything other than Mount Doom?

Reasonably yes. Within the context of the story it can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, because those are the fires in which it was made. Obviously, this is because if the fires of Mount Doom are hot enough to melt the Ring into a ring in the first place, it is also hot enough to melt it down again. It would be an obvious no-limits fallacy to assume from this that nothing could destroy the Ring, no matter how strong.

In terms of “how much is enough”, Gandalf has a line about this early in Fellowship of the Ring.

"...but there is not now any dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot enough; nor was there ever any dragon, not even Ancalagon the Black, who could have harmed the One Ring, the Ruling Ring, for that was made by Sauron himself."

Because the Ring is imbued with Sauron’s magic, and Sauron’s magic is far more powerful than anything else at this point in the story, nothing but Mount Doom (which was erupted by Sauron himself) would be able to destroy it, nor would Ancalagon, whom we also know to be weaker than Sauron. The implication being that something stronger than Sauron, capable of equaling or overcoming his power, would be able to do the trick. 

Notably, as explained in the episode and further clarified below, Lich King is almost as strong as Sauron, but not quite. Whether or not he could manage to destroy the Ring is thus debatable, neither impossible nor definitively possible. Regardless, he would not win the fight even if he can do it.

But wasn’t Sauron defeated by Isildur, a human, and then by a couple Hobbits? There’s no way he’s that powerful, and Lich King is way stronger than those people.

Isildur cut the Ring off of Sauron’s finger using Narsil, a magic sword forged by the dwarf Telchar, among the most renowned smiths in Middle-Earth’s history, who also forged Angrist, a knife that was able to cut a Silmaril from Morgoth’s iron crown. It was stated that Narsil in particular shines with the light of the Sun and Moon and that “none could withstand” it. In other words, it is very much not an ordinary sword, and being able to cut Sauron is just a showcase of how impressive it is.

Additionally, though the movies depict Sauron exploding immediately after having the Ring cut from his hand, this was not the case in the books, which are the primary material. There, removing the Ring from Sauron alone explicitly does not diminish him. It was stated that Isildur took the Ring for his own, and that Sauron “forsook” his body, in other words abandoning it willingly. Tolkien’s letters clarify this, stating that a sufficiently heroic and great individual would be able to take the Ring and gain all of Sauron’s own power, with which they would be able to defeat him. The implication of this is that Isildur taking up the Ring allowed him to gain the power to destroy Sauron, and so Sauron chose to give up his body in order to avoid this. Once again, context is key. Sauron lost to a human… who was in possession of Sauron’s greatest weapon and could access Sauron’s own power to defeat him. Sauron was also still weakened from the fall of Númenor at the time.

As an aside, it is pretty unlikely that Arthas would be able to gain Sauron’s power in the same manner. Tolkien specifically cites “heroism” as a required trait to do so, and Arthas has no easy way to realize what the Ring is or how it works or that taking it would be beneficial in the first place. Even if he did, destroying it would be an easier path to victory anyway.

As for Sauron being defeated by Hobbits… I mean, come on now. They “defeated” him by sneaking past all his forces and throwing the Ring into the fires of his own volcano, exploiting a weakness rather than face him directly. Tolkien says specifically in his letters that Frodo would have gotten annihilated if he had confronted Sauron directly, which should be obvious to anyone who is familiar with the story and not being deliberately disingenuous. In a direct confrontation between Sauron and the Lich King, such tactics are not relevant at all.

Isn’t the Void 5-dimensional, and don’t all the Ainur scale above it?

(image is from The Atlas of Middle-Earth)

This is definitely a “fringe” argument that most people don’t push for, but no. The Void is a part of Eä (the universe) which exists within the same plane as Arda (the planet), it is not a higher plane of existence. The basic structure of the cosmology is as follows:

• Arda: The planet on which the story takes place.

• Vista: Area of air, this is where you can find things like clouds and birds, the planet’s atmosphere essentially.

• Ilmen: Region above Vista in which the stars, as well as the Sun and Moon exist. Though it appears small in the image above, it is probably not drawn to scale for obvious reasons.

• Vaiya/Ekkaia: Dark “sea” encircling the world which “flows” around everything beneath it.

• The Void/Kúma/Avakúma: Void of nothingness within which the World is contained (the universe in context).

• Though it isn’t in any of the above diagrams, the Timeless Halls exist outside all of this.

Based on how everything is structured, you might be able to argue that Eä is larger than a normal universe, since Ekkaia and the Void are areas beyond Ilmen, which is where all the stars exist (and it is indicated that galaxies do as well). That said, these areas are still physically connected to the other parts of Eä. At certain places, Ekkaia is in contact with portions of Arda, intersecting with the ocean Belegaer, which is what caused the existence of the Helcaraxë. Likewise, the Void is not disconnected either. Eärendil is able to physically travel from within Arda, through the Door of Night and out into the Void while sailing on Vingilot, so the idea that it transcends reality or anything like that is incorrect.

Additionally, this is irrelevant to Sauron since he does not scale to the cosmology.

Didn’t the Balrogs kill the god who made the stars?

No. Varda created the stars. The Balrogs never fought her and she never died. No idea where this came from.

Didn’t Sauron break a sword containing a Silmaril, which contains “an unknown amount of stars”?

No? Another bizarre one, I think this might have come from him breaking Narsil, which was said to shine with the light of the Sun and Moon? But this is not literal, the sword does not actually contain any of the three Silmarils. One was carried by Eärendil into the sky, the second fell into a fiery pit along with Maedhros, and the third was thrown by Maglor into the ocean. None of them were destroyed, let alone by Sauron. Silmarils also do not contain stars, that quote isn’t real. They contain light from the Two Trees.

If TRUE FORM Sauron is defeated in battle, his soul is grabbed by Morgoth and taken into Morgoth’s realm, which exists OUTSIDE of the UNIVERSE! Sauron’s physical forms are MERE ILLUSIONS concealing his TRUE POWER due to him being so INCOMPREHENSIBLY EVIL!!!

None of this is right.

Lich King Questions

Is anything higher than country level for the Lich King legit? (feat. Nameless Eredar and Mongrethod)

Mmmmmmaybe. There’s a vision of a character named Velen where an unnamed Eredar wipes the surface of a planet (Page 3). Eredar are Dranai that have let the titan Sargeras corrupt them to become demons. Two of the most well-known Eredar are Archimonde and Kil’jaeden. During the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the player characters fight an Eredar by the name of Lord Jaraxxus, who is summoned into a tournament to prove the player character’s mettle.

A few issues come with this though. One, the Eredar in Velen's vision is never specified or named. All we know is that an Eredar showed up to an unnamed planet, wiped its surface and left. This becomes a problem because Eredar vary wildly in power. This is made abundantly clear with Kil’jaeden and Archimonde. 

In order to summon Archimonde into Azeroth, Kel’thuzad was instructed by Archimonde to use the Book of Medivh, a really powerful spellbook. Only the incantations from the book were powerful enough to bring Archimonde into Azeroth. They also had to create a circle of power to harness the summoning, with the process taking the entire length of an extensive battle. The chronicle details this process even more on how summoning Archimonde was a big undertaking and required a ton of power, prep and instruction to pull off (Page 55 of chronicle volume 3, 57 on the printed page). In order to defeat Archimonde it took a huge trap that completely obliterated him and took tons of prep from Malfurion and his druids (Page 78 of chronicle volume 3, 80 on the printed page). Countless incorporeal wisps took down Archimonde, but no one could stand up to his power before he was caught in this trap. 

For Kil’jaeden, it took the cosmic energies of the sunwell to forge a circle of power that just barely allowed Kil’jaeden the ability to slip into Azeroth. This was performed by Kael’thas who used the energies from the avatar of the sunwell to bring it to life (Page 152 of the chronicle, 159 on the printed page). The player characters fight against Kil’jaeden at the sunwell and in-lore stood no chance, and the tide of battle only changed from the sacrifice of Anveena Teague, who was embodied by the powers of the very sunwell energy used to summon Kil’jaeden in the first place. Once she died, the well closed. 

Meanwhile Jaraxxus was just… summoned with little casting time by one person extremely casually, and was soundly taken care of by the player characters. We don’t know anything about him other than he is an Eredar. It wouldn’t be too fair to assume he scales to that other unknown Eredar just because they’re the same species, because by the same logic, he would scale to the likes of Kil’jaeden and Archimonde, which is very clearly not the case. 

The next character people scale the Lich King to is Mongrethod. Mongrethod is one of many Pit Lords, a powerful race of demons that act as the Burning Legion's military commanders. The goal of the Burning Legion is to completely take over planets and weaken them enough so that they can use them as hub worlds to add demons to. 

When the player characters face off against Mongrethod he is titled “The Destroyer of Xandros.” Xandros is a planet that the player characters go to and where they fight him, with Xandros being left almost completely destroyed when the player characters show up.

Now the argument being made here is that because Mongrethod is titled “The Destroyer of Xandros”, he destroyed the planet. An issue that arises from this is that the means of how he did so are not explained. We are never given a timeframe of how long this destruction may have taken, if there was prep involved, if it was Mongrethod on his own, etc.

On top of this, the argument for scaling it to Arthas is dubious. The idea is that Pit Lord’s are weaker than Eredar, with the player characters chronologically having fought one (Jaraxxus) before their fight with the Lich King. Another point that’s been made is that the fel energy (demonic energy) that Pit Lords power up from only results in a single all-at-once attack, so the destruction should have happened all at once. However… that doesn’t really follow logically.

When the Eredar destroyed the planet in Velen’s vision, all it did was wipe its surface; it did not break the planet into chunks. This is an Eredar, a demon of the Burning Legion that should be above Pit Lords in power, and yet it did not destroy the planet entirely with one attack. If Mongrethod really did destroy Xandros, going off of Velen’s Eredar, it would have taken much more than a single explosion to result in the destroyed planet we see once you face Mongrethod. With no known time-frame or method, even if each attack was all-at-once, there is no reason why Mongrethod could not have simply charged up repeatedly and destroyed the planet over time.

Another case made for why Mongrethod destroyed the planet is because there is a rune on the ground that’s hypothesized to be the very fel seal he used to destroy Xandros. However, this is incorrect. It’s made explicitly clear that Gul’dan placed the circle there to summon Mongrethod, with him even remarking that a ritual was taking place. The rune circle on the ground is a circle of power, very common circles of fel energy put down to summon demons from the twisting nether. Just like the one used to summon Archimonde in Warcraft 3 or the makeshift portal from the sunwell to summon Kil’jaeden, but much less powerful.

While it’s not totally impossible to make a case for these planet level arguments, they’re all very tenuous and murky, and similarly to how we handled Sauron, we did not want to make too many assumptions or (without very good reason) scale beyond what is congruent with the characters’ portrayal. If we had moved forward with the “same species” argument, using Eredar and Arien scaling instead of the island feats, the power gap would only widen in Sauron’s favor. Mongrethod’s feat, assuming he performed it all at once, would be within the zettaton range, while Arien’s feat reaches well into the yottatons even on the low-end.

Is the Lich King Universal?

No. The most common argument made for Arthas scaling to universal levels of power is that the player characters do end up fighting God level threats like in later expansions Argus, who uses an attack called the End of All Things, which is described as Argus ending all of creation. 

The big issue here though is there is no way to back scale that to Arthas reasonably. The Argus boss fight takes place in the Legion expansion, a whole 4 expansions after the death of Arthas in Wrath of the Lich King. To put it into perspective, Wrath came out in 2008 while Legion came out in 2016, and characters do get stronger in-lore the further along WoW’s narrative goes on. 

An example of this is Sylvanas Windrunner not standing a chance against Arthas in the original Lich King expansion, and then being able to go toe to toe with Bolvar when he had ownership of the Lich King’s Helm of Domination. Even if you attribute that to her getting a boost in power from the Jailer, Illidan (who stood no chance against Arthas when he was a Death Knight in Warcraft 3) ends up fighting Kil’jaeden in later expansions. Jaina Proudmoore stood no chance against Arthas in Wrath, but also faced greater threats in later expansions. Bolvar should have also gotten stronger during his time as the Lich King. The way the Lich King works is with each additional death at his hands the more powerful he becomes. (Page 17 of the chronicle) This is why Arthas was getting stronger and stronger during wrath, because with each additional death to his army the stronger he became. This was either with his plague, army or Frostmourne, which the player characters also end up fixing into a new dual weapon for Bolvar. He even states that the new frostmourne bred weapon will feed on the souls of his enemies. There’s no reason to think Bolvar would have been weaker after wrath.

An argument that has been made for Arthas being in the ballpark of any feats post-Wrath is because Arthas does end up killing the entire 25-man raid team in the game’s story with little difficulty, but in-lore it’s not as though he’s completely beyond everyone at this point in the timeline; Arthas was given tough fights during Wrath’s storyline. The battle of the Wrath Gate was a huge war between the Scourge and the Alliance, and the entire battle would have resulted in the Lich King losing as stated by the chronicle (Page 172 of the chronicle, 180 on the printed page) before it was interrupted by Sylvanas. This was Wrath-era Lich King on the brink of a loss. 

At the battle for Light’s Hope Chapel, the Lich King was fought off by Tirion who used the Ashbringer blade, which had just been cleansed of the Lich King’s corruption moments prior. You would be quick to write off this as the Lich King being weak to this magic, but the armor that Arthas wears is made of saronite, a metal that even in unpolished forms is capable of reflecting holy magic. So light magic is just as susceptible to shadow magic as it is the other way around. 

Additionally, though Twitter isn’t exactly the best place for feats and lore drops (we’ll get into that more later), former lead writer for WoW, David Kosak, did state that the Lich King would lose in a 1-on-1 with Thunder King Lei Shen, an antagonist present in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, which takes place 2 expansions after Wrath. This lends consistency to the notion that Arthas does not really scale past Wrath level feats, much less the universal ones. 

Another source of universe level power comes from Xavius, a minion of the Old Gods who was threatening to merge the Emerald Nightmare into the main universe. Except it wasn’t just Xavius, and it wasn’t a universal merge in the way people think it is. Multiple Old Gods had been slowly corrupting the Emerald Dream for over millennia (Page 119 of the chronicle, 123 on the printed page) (Page 182 of the chronicle, 190 on the printed page), before Xavius even entered the picture as their minion. The corruption of the Emerald Dream thus isn’t something Xavius remotely did on his own. This is further confirmed after beating Xavius in his boss fight, when it’s stated that the corruption had been around for a while. 

The corruption Xavius was pervading throughout the Emerald Dream as the Emerald Nightmare was slowly whittling away at the barriers between the dream realm and Azeroth, but as the chronicle explains, this took thousands of years and was kickstarted by beings much more powerful than Xavius. And the corruption was at most going to result in the destruction of Azeroth, but just like the Emerald Nightmare, said destruction would have taken time and isn’t really “destruction” per se, more akin to an evil corruption infecting the land and turning everything into a dark and twisted version of itself. This makes it overall difficult to scale, and wouldn’t really apply to the Lich King anyway. 

Doesn’t Arthas scale to present day feats because his soul was used to power Kingsmourne which was a threat to modern day players?

Eh, it’s more complicated than that. First off, the Jailer (As he did Sylvanas and just about anyone under his control) granted everyone a boost in power under his control or on his side. This includes Anduin, who the Jailer used as an avatar every so often during Shadowland’s story. Frostmourne is also a blade made explicitly more powerful called Shalamayne, which was returned to its original form after the Jailer’s domination was severed from Anduin.

The portion of Arthas’ soul used is nothing more than what is remarked as a flicker of himself. The Jailer used it as a conduit to keep Anduin under control, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it powered the blade, moreso kept Anduin in a controlled state. Especially with how little of Arthas’ soul was actually used. Even Sylvanas remarks there’s not even enough of Arthas to even be considered a soul from the blade. It makes more sense to attribute all the blade's powers and abilities to the Jailer himself rather than Arthas.

You fight echoes of Arthas and Ner’zhul in Legion, shouldn’t they scale in that era?

The Echoes of Ner’zhul and Arthas are explicitly past versions of themselves from earlier points in their lives. These echoes were from before Arthas ever claimed Frostmourne and when Ner’zhul was stuck in the frozen throne (in fact, the scene that’s playing out in front of the player character’s here is from Warcraft 3), both being explicitly weaker before having fused together into the much more powerful Lich King persona. It wouldn’t make sense for Warcraft 3 era Arthas and Ner’zhul to be on par with Post-Wrath level characters.

Luckily, there’s an explanation. Before the player characters fight these echoes, they end up charging their energies into the blade, making it more powerful as a result. Meaning you fight an amped Arthas and Ner’zhul from your own power. As such, it would not apply to them when they were alive.

What about Illidan’s planet-shaking feat? How impressive is that?

During Warcraft 3, Illidan used a powerful spell powered by the Eye of Sargeras to fire a beam at the Lich King’s frozen prison. This caused the entire world to shake from the spell, yet the Lich King’s frozen prison would not break. In the chronicle it is said that it would have taken a few more waves of the spell to break the prison, but Illidan was stopped before the spell’s completion. Keep in mind just one wave of this energy was powerful enough to shake Azeroth. 

When Arthas finally reached the Frozen Throne, it took one sword swing to break an ice prison that still would’ve taken a few more planet shaking blasts to break. Calcing the energy needed to create such a massive earthquake, we got around 308.9 gigatons to 9.77 teratons. Consistent with Gul’dan’s feat, but not a buff, and would not put him above Sauron’s highest feats. Still impressive all the same.

Wasn’t Gul’dan raising the Broken Isles retconned? 

Gul’dan was stated to lift volcanic islands back in Warcraft II. This was kept consistent both in Warcraft 3 (2002) and the 2007 Tides of Darkness novel (Chapter 17).

There was a tweet by former lead narrative designer David Kosak back in 2016 that made it seem as though the islands were not raised by Gul’dan, but that some were already still present. However, the 2020 reimagining of Warcraft III retconned his retcon back into being what the original lore was, which was that Gul’dan raised the islands. There are civilizations on these islands, but it's shown in WoW that parts of the other islands were protected by an ancient barrier, meaning that other parts of the islands were protected from being flooded for 10,000 years. There is also confirmation that Gul’dan visited these other islands in a 2016 audio book reading, which would not have happened if he only raised the Broken Shore. So in the same year Kosak stated the other islands were always present, an audio book alluded to the other islands having been raised. 

Not to mention the Warcraft 3 Reforged Website states that Reforged is:

“A complete reimagining of a real-time strategy classic. Experience the epic origin stories of Warcraft, now more stunning and evocative than ever before.” 

So this game and its story should be treated as the current canon. Especially between three games, an audiobook and a novel that outlines it as such. Raising the island chain from the ocean floor (with potential energy) would be about 64.77 teratons. However, both chronicle volume 2 (Page 165 of the chronicle, 169 on the printed page) and Tides of Darkness novel (Chapter 17) remark that Gul’dan had help during the raising of these islands, though it’s never stated how many warlocks assist him in this process. Going by how many warlocks are present with Gul’dan during a flashback sequence of the events around the Broken Isles, there are seven other warlocks with him at minimum. So splitting the power between the eight of them, each one must have exerted over 8.1 teratons of TNT to raise the islands. 

What about Ner’zhul destroying Draenor? Isn’t that a planet level feat?

Not at all. During the time this occurred, Ner’zhul had performed a spell to create a portal to go through to escape Kil’jaeden’s wrath and to have a fresh start after serving his people to the burning legion. In order to perform this spell he needed the Book of Medivh, which contained the powers of Medivh who was essentially an avatar of the Titan Sargeras and also had the powers of the Guardian Aegwynn. The Eye of Dalaran, meant to focus and amplify magical energies. And lastly, the Scepter of Sargeras, a powerful artifact already meant to open gates to allow travel between worlds. (Page 177 of the chronicle, 182 on the printed page)

In order for the spell to be performed, Ner’zhul had assistance from a number of his closest followers, consisting of both Death Knights and Shadowmoon orcs. This was in concert to the three artifacts he had collected in preparation for the portal's creation. He also tapped into the ley lines beneath the Black Temple he was harnessing the spell inside of, to harness more power, which caused the energies to sporadically cascade all over the planet. (Page 190 of the chronicle, 195 on the printed page)

This caused a number of rifts to open all across Draenor, and with each new rift opened, the planet would start to slowly tear itself apart. None of this can be applicable to Ner’zhul, since it was not his own power and took a number of other individuals and power sources to pull it off. Not to mention the destruction was explicitly described as a chain reaction of the spell going haywire, which slowly but surely ended with the planet's destruction. 

What about Lich King’s ocean freezing feat?

Arthas does end up freezing an ocean channel between Silvermoon and the isle of Quel’Danas, which is rather impressive, though he only froze it thick enough to grant him and his army passageway through the ocean. Once Arthas and his army crossed, the Elf King Anasterian blasted and destroyed the bridge with his fiery magics. 

Though it should be noted the gap between Silvermoon and the Isle of Quel’Danas uh… varies in distance from other games and their maps. Regardless, we used favorable maps for both Arthas and Sauron when calcing their feats, but since Arthas freezing the channel doesn’t extend to the bottom of the ocean, and likely doesn’t extend the entire width of the channel, the feat would reasonably be lower than a lot of the higher-end arguments for both characters. Prior calcs for the feat also assume a larger planet size based on characters taking a month to trek across the Barrens in Kalimdor, but this assumes that they were walking for the entire month with no breaks whatsoever for food, sleep, or rest. Which obviously doesn’t make sense.

Here’s the calc we did for it, accounting for the discrepancies in planet size, width, and depth.

Red: 4584px = 12742000 m

Green: 93px = 258509.162 m

Assuming the bridge is 20 meters wide, and that he froze 1 meter deep (minimum thickness to walk on is about 5 inches so that’s relatively generous),

Volume: 258509.162 * 20 * 1 = 5170183.24 m^3

Density (seawater): 1027 kg/m^3

Mass: 5.30977819e9 kg

Freezing point of ocean water is around -2 degrees Celsius, average temperature is 20 degrees, so temp change is 22. Specific heat capacity is 3900 j/kg*C.

Q = 3900 * 5.30977819e9 * 22 = 4.55578969e14 joules

Fusion of ice: 333550 J/kg.

5.30977819e9 * 333550 = 1.77107652e15 joules

Total energy = 1.77107652e15 + 4.55578969e14 = 2.22665549e15 joules

532.18 kilotons of TNT

Does the Lich King scale to Deathwing?

Deathwing is one of the original five dragon aspects, Titan-empowered dragons meant to protect Azeroth, but Deathwing was corrupted by the Old Gods and turned evil. He is stated to be second in power only to Alexstrasza herself (Page 88 of the Warcraft II manual) but even that is contestable since he is also stated to be the most powerful servant of the Old Gods (Page 124 of the chronicle, 127 on the printed page). Deathwing just entering Azeroth created a slew of natural disasters across the planet, from shifting tectonic plates to causing floods and earthquakes all over the world which became known as the Cataclysm. 

He also survived being in the Maelstrom, which was the former Well of Eternity that collapsed on itself during what became known as the Great Sundering 10,000 years prior. Deathwing was not responsible or present for the sundering, but its energies are still present in the middle of Azeroth and that is what Deathwing survived being inside of. It’s located in the very center of all post-sundering maps. In fact it’s from the energies of the sunwell he was on the brink of tearing the planet apart, causing a world ending cataclysm. To give you an idea of how big a feat this is, this was Azeroth before and after the Great Sundering from the same sunwell Deathwing is inside of.

No, Lich King doesn’t scale to Deathwing. Deathwing is in a league of his own, and the two have never crossed paths. 

Is the Lich King relativistic?

There are several attacks in WoW that are made of light, but all of them in-game are either one-frame or have explosive effects, so none of them can be used as a speed feat. 

Attacks such as Moonfire and Sunfire are one-frame. Starfall, while referred to as starlight, is also stated to be solidified light that explodes on enemies, so it does not meet the necessary properties to be considered light-speed. 

Solar Beam in particular has gotten the most attention, because there is a notable trail within the beam that is summoned down during the spell, but the spell itself travels its full length within one frame. The trail/energy surge would not provably need to be light-speed, so it cannot be used for feats. Additionally, once that surge of energy occurs, it leads to an explosive effect on the ground.

Is the Lich King Massively Faster Than Light?

No. The character used here to get to these MFTL levels (Other than Titan scaling which doesn’t work for the reasons listed above) is Algalon, a constellar. The player characters fight Algalon before fighting the Lich King. Constellar are mysterious celestial beings that we… don’t really know much about, but they essentially observe worlds for the Titans, and if needed they would activate “fail-safe” procedures to essentially reset a planet if there is any hint of the Old Gods’ influence infecting said world, referred to as Re-Origination. 

In the fight with the player characters, Algalon states the following:

I have seen worlds bathed in the Makers' flames, their denizens fading without so much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and razed in the time that it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart devoid of emotion... of empathy. I. Have. Felt. Nothing. A million-million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity? Had they all loved life as you do?

The issue here is that Algalon’s speech here is about the time it takes for the fail-safe process to accomplish its task. The planetary systems he’s seen born and razed happen within the time it takes a human’s heart to beat, but this is not something that he has ever reacted to, so using it as a speed feat is impossible. Whether or not the planetary systems’ destruction happened all at once or one-by-one is also not really clear. Especially since Azeroth’s own Re-Origination fail-safe process is just for one planet. It’s supposed to reset all life on a planet, a process that would’ve also killed everything on Azeroth at the time, Lich King included (Page 176 of the chronicle, 184 on the printed page). It’s also revealed that Algalon stopped fighting the player characters because he was moved by their efforts to stop him, despite the fact there were no odds where they got out of the process alive. And obviously, Algalon simply witnessing a planetary system’s destruction is not a speed feat, given he does not need to react to anything, and would presumably be seeing it from a long distance away. 

What about MHS+ dragons?

This stems from the Dragonflight announcement trailer where dragons fly down to save a stone golem that falls off a tower, with dragons coming from all over to the location he is at during the time the golem is falling. 

This one’s a little odd all things considered, because it assumes that the dragons only began flying once the guy falls off the tower, when it’s more than likely all the dragons made the trip over to the location once the stone golem wakes up to an earthquake in the trailer. Not to mention, the golem’s journey to the top of the tower is also exceedingly slow, and would give the dragon’s more than enough time to journey to his location.

So how fast is Lich King?

There’s a plethora of meteor timing feats strewn about the WoW series during Arthas’ time as the Lich King. Orcs have dodged meteors in cutscenes. Other characters have summoned Infernals during combat, which are giant, mindless flaming rocks that fall down to the earth as meteorites. (Page 41) Dreadlords are also capable of summoning meteors in combat which the player characters can dodge and move in-tandem with. Meteors on average reenter the atmosphere at Mach 33.

In some cases Arthas would be slightly faster, in others Sauron would be slightly faster, but overall speed was not a deciding factor in this fight as neither of the two would be blitzing the other. The only semi-reasonable argument otherwise being Arien’s star moving feat, at 3% the speed of light.

Comparisons

Can the Lich King destroy, manipulate, corrupt, scar or steal Sauron’s soul?

No. Sauron has pretty solid counters across the board to any of Lich King’s soul alterations, varied though they may be.

To begin with, he was able to resist Celebrimbor’s mind/soul domination and later match his soul directly, resisting indefinitely instead of being overcome. Celebrimbor himself was also able to resist Saruman’s soul absorption, as well as Sauron’s own, and Sauron’s soul is comparably powerful. As such, any attempt to absorb or dominate his soul with Frostmourne would be ineffective, as he can resist.

During the fall of Númenor, Sauron’s spirit also survived the island’s sinking, caused by Eru. Though it may be tempting to just write this off as Eru not targeting Sauron’s soul, Tolkien’s letters say otherwise, stating that Sauron’s spirit survived because it is indestructible, even against the one who created it. Lich King is capable of harming/destroying souls, or ripping off pieces from a target’s soul, but against a spirit so resilient that even God cannot destroy it, it is unlikely that he would be able to inflict any damage.

As an aside, though some might point to the destruction of the Ring as evidence that Sauron’s spirit isn’t indestructible, they would be wrong. It’s explicitly stated that destroying the Ring did not destroy Sauron’s soul, merely diminish it to the point where he would never be able to return. Even that is also only achievable specifically by destroying the Ring, due to how it was created and how it is tied to Sauron’s being. More general soul manipulation would likely not be able to replicate the same effect.

Lastly, though the Lich King does have an ability that allows him to manipulate the shape of souls, transforming them into crystals, Sauron has shown to be capable of using his shapeshifting as a spirit, altering the form of his soul at will, and as such would be capable of shifting his spirit back to its normal state. The idea that the Lich King would be able to successfully alter his soul in the first place is also questionable, due to the aforementioned instances with Eru and Celebrimbor.

What about Lich King’s summons? Wouldn’t those be a huge deal?

Probably not actually. Sauron’s necromancy allows him to control the spirits of the dead, and the One Ring allows him to mind control people by the millions, even passively and constantly asserting his will over his entire army at the same time while still operating on his own unimpeded. In Shadow of Mordor, he is able to free Uruks from Celebrimbor’s mental domination and cause them to turn on him. It is highly likely that he could do the same to the summons under the Lich King’s control.

While it is questionable whether Sauron could completely overcome Arthas’ command over his forces, these abilities would allow him to bend large portions of their number to his will, turning them against each other or lessening Arthas’ own control. The Lich King may be able to resist Sauron’s mind control, but his average undead subordinates are much more susceptible, and as a result the summons are a problem that would only end up solving itself.

Can Sauron corrupt Arthas with the Ring or manipulate his soul? 

Not really. To start, the Lich King persona when it was just Ner’zhul was able to break himself free from Kil’jaeden’s will, which is already a remarkable feat of will when considering the fact Kil’jaeden controls legions of demons across planetary systems thanks to the Burning Legion. 

Despite this, once Arthas entered the picture he ended up rendering Ner’zhul so impotent that he ended up being absorbed and locked up within the mind of the Lich King. This is made even more impressive when considering that the Lich King armor is made of Saronite. This ore passively makes people go insane over time, and these side effects are resisted constantly by Arthas during his time as the Lich King.

While it wasn’t mentioned in the episode (to keep things simple storywise and also fuck Shadowlands), Arthas very much was also resisting mental manipulation and influence from the Jailer, the Arbiter who created the very Lich King armor Ner’zhul’s soul was mended to. 

That said, as shown in the end of Wrath, once Frostmourne is broken, the Lich King’s mental control over souls can be overwhelmed. To be fair, the same can also be said for Sauron if Arthas can take out the One Ring, but as mentioned in the episode and in this blog, the Ring is much less noticeable in comparison to a huge glowing sword that’s constantly getting waved around.

Wouldn’t Sauron be immune to the Lich King’s plague by virtue of being a shapeshifter? And couldn’t Sauron transform into an undead to not be affected by the plague?

Sauron does have the ability to transform into undead beings, such as a vampire. On top of being able to alter his biology in essentially any manner he chooses. We discussed a bit whether his ability to shapeshift could allow him to counter the plague’s biological effects.

The answer however is “probably not”. It’s important to note that the Lich King’s plague can infect druids, which are capable of transforming their bodies into Stags, Bears, Whales, Panthers, Birds, Tree people, an assortment of magical creatures and other animals and the plague can still be attached to them. Another interesting thing to note is that the Lich King is also capable of attaching the plague onto Death Knights, which are undead soldiers formally under the control of the Lich King. As such, it stands to reason that Sauron shapeshifting to avoid the effects of the plague would not work. He would need to abandon his body to continue the fight, which is an inconvenience for him, but would not be a win for the Lich King.

Why wouldn’t the Eye of Acherus be able to easily deduce how the One Ring works? Why was it used as an ability the Lich King has?

The Eye of Acherus is only really used in one quest during WoW. It’s used to siphon tactical and analytical data on anything it looks at, and this should be a pretty good way for the Lich King to analyze his opponents. The only issue is in the way it’s used. 

Analyzing data with the eye takes time, which is why the eye offers the ability to summon ghouls to distract enemies from seeing the eye and attacking it. It’s also never spied on something so advanced as the One Ring. While it could probably figure it out given enough time, there is nothing stopping Sauron from simply teleporting, turning invisible, moving away from its gaze or just destroying it outright. 

Also it was given to Arthas as a power he has because it’s pretty clear that the eye and the Lich King are pretty intrinsically linked, with the Lich King stating that the eye's abilities are attributed as his own. The eye is available on his necropolis, the likes of which the Lich King back in his Ner’zhul days was stated to charge with his magic. 

You could maybe make the argument for Arthas not really having or needing it because of its one-time use in the game, but we take everything into consideration, and it’s clear the eye offers a useful ability during combat. Also, it offered a great chance to have the icy Eye of Acherus go up against the fiery Eye of Sauron during the climax of the battle. Which was obviously too cool to pass up.

Could Fury of Frostmourne prevent Sauron from creating new bodies, since it prevents resurrection?

No. Sauron’s ability to create new bodies isn’t resurrection, and destroying his body is not killing him. The bodies of the Ainur are explicitly described as being functionally similar to clothing, and can be removed or replaced with ease - though the time it takes gets longer each time Sauron does so. The angelic spirit housed within his body is his “true” being and until it is destroyed, Sauron is not dead. Creating a new body would be more akin to something like putting on a new suit of armor, very different from the kind of thing that Fury of Frostmourne would be able to preclude him from.

Could Arthas telekinetically strangle Sauron to death with Asphyxiate?

Asphyxiate is a Death Knight power that Arthas should potentially have, but has never personally used. Even if he did for whatever reason, Sauron should be fine. The Ainur all survive in space for an extended period when the universe was first starting out, and as such have no need to breathe. Ungoliant also attempts to strangle Melkor during their altercation, but is unsuccessful, as he is able to call to the Balrogs for help (despite supposedly being strangled at the time) and survive her attempt until the Balrogs arrive to interrupt her. Even supposing it would work, there would be nothing preventing Sauron from teleporting away to escape, or replicating the ability with his own telekinesis.

Would Sauron really be able to break Frostmourne if the two are fairly close in power? Wouldn’t he need to be much stronger than Arthas to do so?

It should be possible. There is no reason to believe that Frostmourne is massively more powerful than Arthas or more durable than his armor, and Sauron was capable of breaking Narsil, a magic sword powerful enough to harm Sauron himself. Meaning that he is able to break similarly enchanted swords that are comparable in power to himself.

Summary

To be honest the fight is extremely close, even more than most of our “extremely close fights”. The “AP gap”, if you even want to call it that, is only 2x excluding higher-end arguments, which is well within a margin of error by VS standards, and you could pretty reasonably argue that Arthas upscales enough from Gul’dan to make it a non-issue (though in fairness, Sauron with the Ring would reasonably upscale quite a bit from Ossë as well). Speed-wise, they both hit around Mach 30 being conservative, so they probably aren’t blitzing each other.

In terms of abilities, they’re likewise very evenly matched. They both have elemental attacks, shadow magic, flight, teleportation, necromancy, life absorption, mind and soul attacks. Sauron’s showings against Eru and Celebrimbor give him the resistances to shut down any of Frostmourne’s assaults on his mind or soul, but likewise, Arthas’ ability to resist and overcome domination from Ner’zhul, Kil’jaeden and the Jailer means that Sauron could not take his soul or corrupt his mind. Arthas’ summons would be counteracted by Sauron’s necromancy and the One Ring’s mental domination, and the Plague of Undeath, while physically devastating, would be unable to finish off Sauron’s soul.

Once you get past their many counters, however, most of the remaining advantages align in Sauron’s favor. He’s a 50,000 year old warlord fighting an opponent in his late 20’s, and his ability to survive as a spirit and rebuild his body means that even if he can’t keep coming back indefinitely, he has much more room for error and would be harder to permanently eliminate than Arthas would be. This is definitely the biggest advantage either of them have in this fight; if Lich King suffers enough physical damage to die then the fight is over, while if Sauron’s body dies then that’s just the start of phase 2. In a fight between near-equals, that’s a very big deal.

Additionally, though they both have weak points that will end the fight immediately if destroyed, Frostmourne is a giant, glowing sword that will be getting swung around constantly, and is visibly an important conduit for many of Arthas’ abilities. The One Ring, on the other hand, is much more unassuming, and the Lich King would have no reason to directly target it without prior knowledge. The Eye of Acherus could help with this, but its ability to analyze weaknesses takes time, and there would be nothing stopping Sauron from destroying it before it finishes its work. It is thus much more likely that Frostmourne would be destroyed in the fight compared to the Ring.

Ultimately the two are evenly matched in almost every regard, with the handful of remaining advantages pushing the fight into Sauron’s favor.