14 of those Ainur-guys (those are called the Valar [sing.: Vala] with Manwe being their foreman or even the boss) and a couple of sub-ordinates (called the Maiar [sing.: Maia] were ordered to do the rough work of preparing Arda - and Middle-Earth in particular - for Ilúvatar's children (Elves and Men) so they would find everything nice and cozy on their arrival. Some of those jobs were really tough like creating light, sea, rising the mountains (can You imagine what a crazy job that one must be?), trees, rivers and later even the sun and the moon, short: anything and everything.

Still Melkor wanted to have everything his way and destroyed a lot that they had made and kept hindering and offending Valar and especially poor Maiar who were working their hineys off to fulfil the orders of Manwe, their slavedriver who had them working overtime and underpaid on behalf of Ilúvatar. The latter also being the reason that Melkor had an easy play to do some headhunting and hire a few of Manwe's Maiar (probably he was paying better or they changed employance because of the "fringe-benefits" Melkor could offer). Sauron was one of those and a few other ones that got new jobs as Balrogs and their main job back then was it to scare the hell outta the poor innocent Children of Ilúvatar or the dwarves (I'm not quite sure though what exactly a job-description for a Balrog looks like or Gothmog would've already gotten my application-letter...) and hence annoy Valar and Maiar even more.

And of course there was anotherone of the Maiar we must not forget: Melian the most beautiful of their kindred that dwelled in Middle-Earth, having created a small garden of eden in Doriath with her beloved husband Thingol the multi named (also known as Greymantle, Greycloak, Elwe Sindacollo, Elwe Singollo or the hidden king...) and they would have "lived happily ever after..." there, had not Thingol tried to get hold of an apple from the forbidden tree (in this case one of the Silmarils that at this time unfortunately was part of Melkor's crown). He finally got it due to his brave daughter and son in law (wish my mother in law would read that story...) but on the long run that of course could not end well and so - after a while - he lost wife, silmaril and life...

And even much later in the 3rd age - Melkor had been fired long before and Sauron had taken over Melkor's job as CEO of the "Dark Forces Inc." - another handful of the Maiar (well, at least sorta) have been sent over from the almighty west to meddle in the competition between "Children of Ilúvatar Inc." also known as "Elves/Men-Alliance" vs. the "Dark Forces Inc." - something like the fight between Unix/Linux vs. Microsoft (Apple probably playing the role of the Dwarves) nowadays, but anyway, I am getting side-drawn - to side with the Elves and the Men. Those guys were called the Istari (Gandalf, Saruman or Radagast were of their kind).

-- Walter Charzewski --