# What do the Nazgûl ride? Are they dragons?



## dgoof911

*Nazgul Transportation*

What are the flying, lizard-like creatures the Nazgul ride after their horses are washed away at the Ford?


----------



## zoulou

are they lizard like? i always remember them described as birdlike. Alan Lee's illustration (one in the harper collins hardback edition) depicts it as a birdlike creature. at any rate it is just another of the despicable creatures created by sauron


----------



## dgoof911

Ohhh, on my copies of the book, a paper cover shows a ringwraith flying on a birdlike creature, but, it looks like a dragon. Do you know what they are called?


----------



## Elfie

Pterodactyls  thats what I've always pictured them as.

BTW zoulou, Sauron didn't make them, he found them somewhere.


----------



## Beleg Strongbow

> _Originally posted by Elfie _
> *Pterodactyls  thats what I've always pictured them as.
> 
> BTW zoulou, Sauron didn't make them, he found them somewhere. *





I think melkor corrupted them and when he was tkaen in the battle of powers they fled 2 the east of M.E and Sauron found them later and ttok care of them. I think that they are abomination of the great eagles of manwe of Thorondor and Gwhair's breed. Otherwise i think that melkor corrupted them and didn't dare use them as Thorondor and his pals would eat them for breakfast. And when they went sauron he fed them and used them as the Birds lived a fair way from Mordor or Minas Morgul.


----------



## Hammersmith

I always pictured them as something akin to Morgoth's earlier dragons...not golden powerful beasts, but slimy, sinewy tortured creatures. Perhaps they had been in hiding like the Balrogs and utilised by Sauron. I'm fairly certain that neither Sauron nor Melkor could create new things, so I'm guessing that the dragons were spawn of fallen Maiar. So maybe...maybe these things (by my skipping logic) were actually sentient in themselves? The Witchking gives his own mount some fairly specific instructions (Feast on his flesh) and I don't think they're referred to as dumb animals anywhere else.


So anyway, I'll abandon my incoherent train of thought and leave this resurrected thread for somebody with a better understanding of life, the universe and fell beasts.


----------



## Wraithguard

My research on them turned up fruitless. Perhaps I will look into the research of others and find more information there.


----------



## Elendae

They could be similar to wyrms, creatures akin to dragons. Usualy scaly, two feet, no arms, and sometimes had feather-like wings. In any book that I have read, they were associated with evil, being messenger or mounts of evil forces.


----------



## Thorondor_

> it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was


This is the best I could find, at the battle of Pelennor fields. Btw, what could "older world" mean? Is it necessarily the past Arda? A long shot, I guess.


----------



## Maerbenn

An important passage concerning the steeds is quoted here.


----------



## ingolmo

It's given somewhere that the flying steeds were like 'carrion-fowl', but I don't remember where. It was in LotR, I'm sure.


----------



## Ingwë

It wasn't a dragon. Just an evil winged creature. Tolkien Himself didn't tell us what is it and we don't know. 
*'Older world' *... maybe the First age or the days before the Elves awake... The days when Melkor was in his fortress before the Dragons


----------



## Ithil-Elen

The only almost-name they were given, as far as I can remember, was "fell beasts". I like that "name". Suits them.


----------

