Celebrimbor

The house of Fëanor

Celebrimbor was the son of Curufin, fifth son of Fëanor, and the only grandson of Fëanor named in the published texts. He inherited the skill of his grandfather's hands without his grandfather's pride, and though he came to Middle-earth with the Fëanorians he did not share the Oath. When Curufin and Celegorm lived in Nargothrond and turned its people against Finrod, and were then driven out for their treatment of Lúthien, Celebrimbor repudiated his father's deeds and stayed behind in the city. What became of him at the fall of Nargothrond is not told, but he survived the First Age, and he went east with those Noldor who chose to remain in Middle-earth after the War of Wrath.

Eregion and the Elven-smiths

About S.A. 750 the Noldor founded Eregion, the land of holly, by the western gate of Moria, drawn by the friendship of the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm and the mithril they mined. Celebrimbor was the master of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the People of the Jewel-smiths, in the city of Ost-in-Edhil, and his friendship with the Dwarf Narvi was the closest ever known between the two kindreds. Together they made the Doors of Durin, the west-gate of Moria, whose ithildin inscription Celebrimbor drew and Narvi cut; the door still bore both names when Gandalf opened it at the end of the Third Age. Unfinished Tales tells that Eregion was first ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn, and that Celebrimbor, with the smiths behind him, took the lordship of the land from them; the published Silmarillion says only that he was chief among the smiths and the greatest of them.

Annatar

Around S.A. 1200 a stranger came to Eregion calling himself Annatar, Lord of Gifts, and claiming to be an emissary of the Valar. Gil-galad and Elrond refused him admittance to Lindon, and Galadriel distrusted him, but the smiths of Eregion welcomed him. He was Sauron, fair of form in those days, and he taught the Mírdain secrets of craft they did not possess. Under his guidance Celebrimbor and his people began the forging of the Rings of Power about S.A. 1500: rings to slow decay, to preserve what was loved, and to strengthen the will of the wearer. In S.A. 1590 Celebrimbor made the Three, Narya, Nenya and Vilya, alone and without Sauron's hand on them; they were the most powerful of all the rings and were never touched by the Enemy.

The One Ring

In S.A. 1600 Sauron forged the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom to rule all the others. The moment he put it on and spoke the words of the Ring-spell, Celebrimbor perceived him and understood the whole design. The Elves took off their rings and would not use them. Celebrimbor hid the Three and sent them away: Vilya and Narya to Gil-galad in Lindon, and Nenya to Galadriel. Sauron, enraged that his purpose was undone, demanded all the rings and made open war.

The fall of Eregion

Sauron's armies came over the Misty Mountains in S.A. 1695, and Gil-galad sent Elrond with a force from Lindon. Ost-in-Edhil was stormed in 1697. Celebrimbor fought at the doors of the House of the Mírdain and was taken alive. Under torment he revealed where the Seven and the Nine were kept, and Sauron took them; but he would not tell what had become of the Three, and Sauron killed him. Unfinished Tales records that his body, pierced with arrows, was hung on a pole and carried as a banner before Sauron's host when it marched against Elrond. The Dwarves of Moria shut their doors, Elrond retreated north and founded Rivendell, and Eregion was never resettled; the hollow ruins on the road to the west-gate were all that remained when the Fellowship passed through Hollin.

Legacy

Celebrimbor's rings shaped the whole of the later history of Middle-earth: the Nine made the Nazgûl, the Seven fed the greed of the Dwarf-kings, and the Three kept Rivendell and Lórien alive through the Third Age. He is the one member of Fëanor's house whose craft brought preservation rather than destruction, and yet, deceived, he gave Sauron the instrument of his greatest power. Unfinished Tales also preserves a variant in which the Elessar, the green stone that Galadriel gave to Aragorn, was made by Celebrimbor in Eregion for her, in memory of an earlier stone from Gondolin.

Captured at the sack of Ost-in-Edhil in S.A. 1697, tortured, and slain by Sauron when he would not reveal the hiding of the Three; his body was carried as a banner before the enemy.