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DarkLord153
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Post The Fellbeasts
on: February 06, 2017 09:05
As seen in the movie,after the Ringwraiths losr their horses,they start riding Fellbeasts.What are these things excactly,i know that they are bred by Sauron for this purpose,but i don't know what they are and where they come from.Explaining wouldbe appreciated ^^
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tarcolan
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on: February 08, 2017 02:20
No idea. Tolkien doesn't explain what sort of creature they are. In an early draft he describes them as birds and then as Vultures but he drops that idea and has them as beasts, so probably not birds. In the Elder days Melkor breeds the dragons so the same starting stock could have been used by Sauron. They seem to be some kind of reptile rather than bats.
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DarkLord153
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on: February 08, 2017 02:36
Thank you for answering!
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Gandolorin
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on: February 08, 2017 05:24
I believe JRRT himself was asked (long before PJ's films) if one should imagine them to be pterodactyls (or pterosaurs?), winged reptile living during the dinosaur era and often described as flying dinosaurs (which may be scientifically inaccurate - flying dinosaurs are still among us, namely birds). And if I remember correctly, JRRT did not repudiate the notion, in some letter (if sent of not) collected in Humphrey Carpenter's book "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien", so maybe PJ was not far off the mark with his rendition of the flying fell beasts.
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Evil~Shieldmaiden
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on: February 08, 2017 09:30
The website, The One Wiki to Rule Them All, has a nice article on fell beasts. I have extracted the following two paragraphs of the article.

The first quote is a description of the beasts, and their possible origin:

The fell beasts were described as large, winged creatures without feathers. Its pinions were in between horned fingers; and its body gave off a stench. It is possible that fell beasts came from "an older world". The dark lord Sauron bred these fell beasts and gave them to his servants.
This second paragraph should clear up issues with what they are actually named:
Tolkien did not use fell beast as a proper name, merely describing the animals as "fell." Fell, a Middle English adjective (from the Old French fel "cruel, dreadful" ) has come to mean, in Modern English, "ferocious, fierce, terrible, cruel, dreadful", and implies an underlying malevolence or hostility that make the noun described all the worse for the ill-will that drives its suddenness and intensity. Given the rarity of fell (which had all but disappeared from Modern English until Tolkien's work revived it), the animals having no other name, Tolkien's fans often, if not quite correctly, have dubbed them "fellbeasts"--although philologists in general, and students of Tolkien's oeuvre in particular, look askance at such usage. (Cf, e.g., "fell light in his eyes" and "fell meats." )


I hope this helps.
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