Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-27200931-20170404182839/@comment-31907131-20170408000132

Dragonovith wrote: Gandalfthegreatestwizard- EpicMithrandir wrote: Dragonovith wrote: Special Elf Friend wrote: Dragonovith wrote: High King Ithilion wrote: I don't complain about them being overpowered. I complain about them being non-canon, per usual ;P

Ithilion, Discussions Moderator (Auta i lómë) 00:03, April 6, 2017 (UTC) Saruman had bombs and wargs at his disposal, right? So technically he could put a bomb on a warg, and that's a pretty good idea if you think on it. But it would make more sense if there was a suicidal Orc riding the warg, to guide it. Where do people get the idea that Saruman had lots of bombs? The books only record him using one and if you look at real history, when gunpowder was invented, there weren't people(much less sucidal wargs) running around with bombs and torches. One bomb was enough to breach the Deeping Wall, why would he use more? If he wanted, I bet he could've landscaped the whole valley with explosives, but then he would've lost a huge fortress and strategic location. By the way, are we 100% sure that Saruman's blasting fire was gunpowder and not some other kind of sorcery? Saruman would have to have been present to use magic. No, it was undoubtedly some device he created in Orthanc, of which he alone knew the secret. How, then, could he mass produce such an item? The armies of Orthanc did have other such devilry-

"Blasts of fire leaped up from below shaking the stones.'

-Helm's Deep

Flamethrowers? Cannon? Certainly not bombs. Blasting powder, as in Ithilion's suggestion? I cannot ascertain what they were. For someone who spent its entire life riding horses and farming, suddenly seeing a huge fire rising up to the skies as the thick wall of that famous fortress he always heard about gets torn apart, he would probably call that 'sorcery'. Anyway, I used the word 'sorcery' as a wide term that comprises 'devices' too.

It was certainly a bomb, yes, but since Middle-earth is a fantasy world, it could've been made of a thousand different things. Also, Mevans once pointed out a quote in the book where some kind of device or machine under Isengard was used to attack the Ents, and the way it worked resembled too much a flamethrower. Well, a sizeable hole was made in the less strong Deeping Wall, at its weakest point. The wall was not 'torn apart'. That is the exaggeration of the movies. There was no 'huge fire', just a 'flash of flame and smoke'.

Who's to say it had to be a bomb? The quotes cannot directly identify the weapon used, though it was an explosive of some kind. The 'blasts if fire' quote points to a flamethrower, though.