The Monsters of Urth

Mantis said: <You were trying to remember the name of the beast whose mouth is a cave--the name is "Uroboros" (II, ch. 27).> To which Dan Parmenter responded: <Just how many evil giants are there swimming around anyway? Erebus and Abaia seem to function like Sauron in LotR, often mentioned but never actually portrayed. An entire underwater civilization is hinted at but not directly depicted at any length.> The monsters we hear about are Erebus, Abaia, Uroborous, and Scylla (the last mentioned, I believe, only once). I used to believe that the monsters, besides Abaia perhaps, did not really exist, but rather were creations of the laypeople to explain the encroaching ice. But, the last few volumes seem to imply that an underwater civilisation is actually present. Your comparison to Sauron is interesting. Sauron was actually portrayed in The Return of the King as the weak shadow that came from Barad-dur after the destruction of the Ring, and also as the terrible Eye in that little orb that you could see far away places in, but I guess those don't really count. In Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion, Sauron is a little bit more noticable. Christopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com> http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html

There's also Arioch (IV, ch. 1). =mantis=