In Valinor, the city of the Valar in the Undying Lands of Aman, before his fall into darkness, Sauron had been servant to the great craftsman, the Vala Aulë. It was Sauron’s craving of order and control over his craft that had led him to Melkor. It was not evil which attracted him, but dominion. With his Master defeated at the end of the First Age, Sauron had pleaded for mercy and falsely repented his hateful deeds. And thus did evil endure into the Second Age on Middle-earth. Rather than return humbled to the lands of the Valar, he fled east and remained hidden in the region of Mordor, biding his time. More patient than his former Master, he waited for centuries, hiding his true self, until in the Second Age he came to the Elves of Eregion, those who had survived the drowning of Beleriand after the War of Wrath, those who followed Celebrimbor, the son of Curufin, son of Fëanor into the lands east of what had been the most north-western region of Middle-earth, and had taken him as their Lord.
Of the line of Fëanor, only Celebrimbor had refused to follow his father and uncles in the Oath demanded by Fëanor to recapture the Great Jewels, the Silmarils, stolen by Melkor at the dawn of the First Age. Celebrimbor had repudiated the fell deeds of Fëanor and his seven sons: Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin and the twins, Amras and Amrod. He alone of the House of Fëanor stood away from the Oath, but he did not escape the ill-fate of his house. Sauron, the Deceiver, befriended the Elves of Eregion, claiming under the name of Annatar, to be an emissary of the Vala Aulë and he showed Celebrimbor, the greatest Elven craftsman since his grandfather Fëanor, techniques and magic beyond his imagination. But in his heart, Celebrimbor mistrusted this ‘Lord of Gifts’ and, although he learned from him how to make rings of power, he never allowed Sauron to see what he himself created.
Others in his Kingdom, however, greedy for knowledge, were less distrustful and while the great Elven smiths of Eregion made the Rings of Power, delighting in their artistry, Sauron imbibed each with his magic unbeknownst to their makers, giving him power over the rings and their bearers. Nine there were made for the kings of men, seven for the great dwarf lords, but three were made by Celebrimbor alone, untouched by Sauron and therefore free of his will. Nenya, the ring of water, Vilya, the ring of air and Narya, the ring of fire. But in secret, Sauron forged another ring, the master-ring, the Ring of Power, the One Ring, in which he filled all his power and spirit, indestructible unless cast into the fires which forged it, the inferno of Mount Doom, deep within his realm of Mordor.
Celebrimbor paid the price for his defiance. Captured, tortured and mutilated, he refused to divulge the names of the wearers of the three Elven Rings, the only ones who could defy Sauron. His broken body bearing the evils inflicted upon it to his death was hung as a banner at the siege of the Grey Havens to inspire such dread that those remaining elves who opposed Sauron would quail at the sight of it. Yet Sauron underestimated his enemies. A large force of men from the island of Númenor joined with the Elves of Middle-earth to face him in battle. Unexpectedly defeated Sauron fled back to Mordor where he lingered in the shadows rebuilding his power.
Númenor - the island created by the Valar at the dawn of the Second Age for the Dúnedain, those of the race of Men who had fought so valiantly beside the Elves in the First Age; those who took Elros the Half-Elven as their first king. Twin brother to Elrond, who chose to be of Elven kind, Elros had chosen the Fate of Men and his heirs ruled wisely for many centuries.
Yet, such is the nature of men that, without a common enemy, they turn on each other and the evil which lies in all men’s hearts began to fester and grow. Their restlessness led the Númenóreans from their island idyl to colonise and then conquer the lands of Middle-earth for their own. Sauron was willingly captured by the last King of Númenor, Al-Pharazôn and through him corrupted fully the growing dissatisfaction of the line of the King persuading them to wage war against the Valar themselves, in which all those men of Númenor who stood with their King were annihilated and their island drowned under the ocean.
However, not all the descendants of Elros had turned towards Man’s darker nature, there were those of the line of Elros who survived the destruction of Númenor, which had consumed the body of Sauron, leaving only a powerful spirit of spite which drew its hateful embodied life form from the One Ring.
Sauron retreated once more to Mordor, to rise again against the Elves of Middle-earth and the surviving Númenóreans, led by Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anarion, who had settled in the new kingdoms of Arnor in the North and Gondor in the South. Only when the One Ring was cut from Sauron’s hand by Isildur in the War of the Last Alliance was Sauron defeated at the end of the Second Age, but his spirit endured, ever searching into the Third Age for that through which he could regain all his power, the One Ring.
There were those remaining on Middle-earth who doubted Sauron’s destruction, yet through the many ages which followed Sauron’s apparent demise, the Ring’s true significance was lost. As his shadow rose again, one came from the last remnants of Númenor, a direct descendant of Elros, twin brother of Lord Elrond. A man who became King.
But that tale has been told.
This is the story of what happened after the battle was won at the dawn of the Fourth Age. This is the story of another King and his Lady.