Gandalf vs Balrog

Gandalf had definitely fucked up many balrog before but he had help

Magic

So why didnt he use magic to get the fellowship to mordor

Inner earth is real

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Gandalf never faced a Balrog before then. The Istari were chilling in Valinor while Morgoth rampaged Arda.

istari deez nuts

The balrog was the one running away. It was technically capable of killing gandalf, but gandalf had the clear upper hand and the balrog knew it.
It's not made clear actually, gandalf in his original form could have been part of the final battle against morgoth where vala and maiar faced off against dragons and balrogs but he's not specifically mentioned.

Durin's Bane was hiding in the Misty Mountains after Morgoth's defeat. It hid there, biding it's time, not venturing out or conquering the world for itself in fear of the Valar who fucked their shit up. So it stayed there for millennium, wondering when the day of reckoning comes and the Valar arrive to tear it a new one. Then some dwarves fuck with its sleep schedule and decides to teach them a lesson.
and then OH SHIT a fucking Istari shows up and he realizes he's fucked, the Valar have found him.

Balrigs were very rare in the third age the balrig of morgoth was one of the last surviving ones so probs not

the depths of the world contain horrors older than the miar and not even sauron was knowledgeable about them. when they fell the balrog got the fuck out of there ASAP, and he took the nameless stair, a lost and legendary construction that goes right from the depths of the earth to the top of the mountain. the balrog had obviously found it while living in the mountain for so many years, and Gandalf perused him knowing full well it was his only chance to find a way out .

My theory is that the nameless things were not direct creations of either eru or the other ainur OR melkor, but actually inadvertent creations caused by the dissonance between melkors themes and those of eru and the other ainur during Ainulindalë. this would also explain where the alien Ungoliant came from, which was so powerful it overwhelmed melkor is is somewhat more weakened state

>Out of the discords of the Music, not directly out of either of the themes, Eru’s or Melkor’s, but of their dissonance with regard one to another – evil things appeared in Arda, which did not descend from any direct plan or vision of Melkor,”

time is convoluted in middle earth

Yeah I always figured they were outer gods, beings outside of Eru's creation of influence that can roam the realms.

>If you read the books it was called "the highest peak of the lowest depths"
‘Deep is the abyss that is spanned by Durin’s Bridge, and none has measured it,’ said Gimli.

‘Yet it has a bottom, beyond light and knowledge,’ said Gandalf. ‘Thither I came at last, to the uttermost foundations of stone. He was with me still. His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake.

‘We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted. Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him, till at last he fled into dark tunnels. They were not made by Durin’s folk, Gimli son of Glóin. Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day. In that despair my enemy was my only hope, and I pursued him, clutching at his heel. Thus he brought me back at last to the secret ways of Khazad-dûm: too well he knew them all. Ever up now we went, until we came to the Endless Stair.’

‘Long has that been lost,’ said Gimli. ‘Many have said that it was never made save in legend, but others say that it was destroyed.’

‘It was made, and it had not been destroyed,’ said Gandalf.

>‘From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak

it climbed, ascending in unbroken spiral in many thousand steps, until it issued at last in Durin’s Tower carved in the living rock of Zirak-zigil, the pinnacle of the Silvertine.

someone did a crude illustration showing roughly what Tolkien was talking about

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