On the drive this morning, I came up with something appropriate to Going Outside the Village, but since the thread is old, I started a new one.

My Life with Sauron

The master: Sauron, the lidless eye wreathed in flame

The minions:
The Lord of the Nazghul
Gollum
The Mouth of Sauron
Saruman
Wormtongue
Frodo??

The townsfolk: The fellowship; The free peoples of Middle-Earth

The Outsiders: Elrond, Galadriel, Aragorn: The leaders of the Free Peoples. Rather than coveting their esteem, Sauron seeks their fear and death.

You forgot Gothmog. Everybody forgets Gothmog. No, the half-troll Lieutenant, not the Balrog for which he's named.

I'm tempted to say that Sauron's memory of his master Morgoth is the Outsider. Basically it's all a revenge thing. But then, indeed the expression would be to wreak vengeance on the lines of men and elves who helped cause his master's downfall. So I buy it.

The townspeople, have to be clarified. What he wants from them is his ring. So, he sends the minions not to bring the townspeople back to him, but to get information out of so that he can get the ring back from them.

Yep, that should work.

Mike

Hmm...the Witch-king of Angmar, Gollum, the Mouth of Sauron, Saruman, Grima Wormtongue, Gothmog...what does an Overture look like for one of these guys? Do they have Connections? Do they even buy into "the desperate struggle to be decidedly human in the face of monsterizing forces"?

Paul

Gollum, maybe. No, strike that - Gollum, yes. He loses in the end, but he's in the struggle.

The rest . . . not so much.

Gordon

True dat. Frodo, tho. That has some potential. Frodo is Weary, while Gollum has Self-Loathing.

Mike

In the extended version of The Two Towers, there's an amazing scene at the end of disk 1 where Faramir ponders the reasons a man would join Sauron's army. It's the most morally ambigious and interesting point of the story (and I'm relatively certain it wasn't in the book.)

Using this, and the story of Gollum, I think you could make this work for non-canon minions of Sauron. Even Grima fits (if you make him a minion of Sauron instead of Saruman.) His connections to Eowyn do not avail him, but could in an alternate retelling.

----

An alternate idea: what if the Ring is the Master? I know we're abstracting a lot here, but don't both Frodo and Gollum's connections help them destroy the Master?

Holy cow, Saruman fits. Hadn't thought of that.

But it's a good point. Probably best to play the non-canon minions, and leave the wraiths and all to be just extensions of Sauron's will.

Mike