Nah, it's more than just an object. It has intent and purpose within it.
If inanimate is a word that's a problem, then how about inert. Subjected to a strong enough magical suppression or negation effect the One Ring would be rendered inert, unable to take any measures either active or passive to tempt anyone.
I mean, if that suppression/negation has feats for rendering something like the One Ring inert/blocking its connection, then yeah. Just calling something an antimagic field shouldn't cut it based on the two concepts being nebulously similar though.
I am a mighty wizard from magic lands
This makes me wonder about how several Xanth abilities might interact with the Ring. Not only do they have a Null Magician that can just turn things of magic off with his disbelief (Grey Murphy), but they have one immune to magical harm (Bink), and Sherlock who's a Reverse Magician like their Reverse Wood only he can control what gets reversed specifically, allowing him to teleport to things and summon them to him (reversing There to Here), turn magical curses to blessings by reversing their affects, affect personalities/powers/bodily attributes of beings with exposure to magic, affect the physical properties of objects (hard to soft, rigid to malleable), and more.
What I'm saying is I think they could nullify it, or warp it to "One Ring to Serve Them All" . . . that sort of thing.
I mean there isn't an AI in it. It does not literally whisper. It doesn't communicate with people. There's no intelligence there. There's a ton of magic bound up in it, but it requires somebody wearing it and using it for it to come out. It does not exert any magical corruption, just regular plain human nature corruption.
It's always inert.
Bink might be immune. Even if he starts to do something corrupt, circumstances will contrive to make them work in his favor or stop the effects if they would harm him. It all depends because his magic is very literal. The key words are "Magic cannot harm him" but that doesn't mean that the ring can't corrupt him. It just cannot do so in a way that would lead to his harm and the corruption itself wouldn't count. At the same time, his magic seems capable of reaching back through time to contrive things so that the eventual outcome does not harm him.
The guy who reverses how magic works is interesting. It could change how the ring works so it makes someone a better person.
Power with Girl is better.
He might not go full Gollum or Wraith, but he could be corrupted only for his talent to contrive to clear him of the ring's influence later like when he was affected by a permanent love spell.
If it will corrupt someone through their desire to do good, there's nothing mundane about those emotions.
The Ring is sort of a little piece of Sauron but also kind of Iago with a capacity to manipulate that not only borders on but steps into a level that is almost telepathic. At the very least, it takes any corrupt desire and fans it. It works through a person's real emotions by enhancing certain corrupt desires. It is a magical McGuffin but it doesn't create the corruption. It enhances it.
I realize that, for story purposes, we want to keep it mysterious and unexplainable and neckhairs standing out mystical. Trying to define it in gaming terms like what spell would it be in D&D kind of ruins it and I get that. But the very fact that it somehow effects a person and enhances certain things within them clearly means it works in a way that is not mundane since, as stated, it doesn't do it by talking to them. If someone doesn't want to use the word "magic" but prefers "mystical" or "unexplained", fine. Some people prefer "Terminate with extreme prejudice" to "kill" or "Post-Traumatic stress disorder" to "Shell shock". But somebody once said something about a rose.
Power with Girl is better.
I agree, mostly. The ring does sort of have a will, but it's really just Sauron's will. It does exhibit SOME self determination though, just in terms of getting heavier at times, falling off at others, and so forth. It seems to have some faint grasp of the right time to act in some minor way. But yeah I feel like it's regularly missed that the ring's corruption is just that it's a source of power to do what you want, and it's designed to work as a convenient slippery slope. You can't just put it on, get what you want, and take it off forever. You have to learn to send your will into it and use it.
But it certainly has an effect on the person carrying it too, and it seems as though it's functionally impossible (in-universe) for someone to just throw it into Mount Doom. It may just be a matter of expanding awareness in ways that aren't entirely healthy, but there's something there. Otherwise, there was no reason for Frodo to carry the ring in the first place and they or he CLEARLY should have given it to Sam.
The simplest piece of evidence I can think of, of its corruptive effects, is Bilbo. Bilbo barely even used the damn thing, and mainly just had it sitting on his mantle for decades, and he's still got a clear dependency on it.
Last edited by BitVyper; 02-13-2018 at 09:35 PM.
I am a mighty wizard from magic lands
This might be a dumb question, but could someone who's capable of purifying and purging the evil influence from things, potentualy do the same to the ring?
Well again, a big part of how the ring corrupts is just by being totally awesome and doing what you want it to do, but requiring enough effort on your part that you have to get at least moderately invested in it. Like Galadriel could probably have wrested control of it away from Sauron just fine. The implication is that handing anyone the ring's nebulously absolute power, that person eventually becomes a law unto themselves and that in itself is evil and ultimately serves Morgoth's designs. So I mean, yeah someone like say Kikyo could probably purge it of Sauron's influence, but that doesn't really make it any less dangerous, because it's the concept of absolute power that it represents, that's corruptive. Really, I think a lot of characters would be "immune" by virtue of being so powerful that it has nothing to offer them.
Basically, the only way to really "purify" it, is to completely annihilate all its power and make it just an ordinary ring, effectively destroying it. It's like the Death Note.
Last edited by BitVyper; 02-14-2018 at 07:04 AM.
I am a mighty wizard from magic lands