I think that Durins bane would take the ring for himself and become strong, stronger than anybody else in middle earth in the third age. he would go to mordor and sauron would decieve him into thinking he wanted to be his servant, then sauron would become "counselor" and eventually use the balrog to destroy his enemies. after he did that he would steal the ring back and become the godlike ruler of middle earth.

i supose if Durin's Bane managed to get hold of The One Ring he or she would have become an extremely powerful Maia. Things could have turned out pretty differently if this had indeed happened.

I shudder at the thought.

The balrog would have the ring, and Sauron would not be able to sway him as easily as he swayed the kings of numenor, but if he had the ring then that would be enough motivation to stay with Sauron. I think one possibility we have not talked about is the possibility that the balrog notices that Sauron will backstab him cleverly and kills him as soon as he gets the ring. So if the balrog had the ring do you think he would be able to defeat Sauron in barad-dur?

Hm...

Well looking at the full picture here, one must ask if Durin's Bane would even know what the ring of power is. He escaped into Moria before the second age and so would have never heard of the rings of power. So, SHOULD the fellowship have been defeated, and assuming he checked their bodies, it's very possible he would've done nothing with it. Tossed it aside. Maybe he disposed of the corpses by throwing them down the same pit he fell into without closely examining them. This seems a bit more likely to me than him taking the ring and using it. Also I wouldn't say he didn't "help" Sauron, I just highly doubt he even knew what was going on. He wasn't king of the mountain or anything, with lots of servants to do his bidding. He was in hiding, buried as deep in the earth as the mountain would allow. Even the orcs didn't want anything to do with him. I do not doubt for a second that if Sauron knew where he was, he would have approached him for help, and more likely than not DB would've agreed. Obviously there'd be some arrangement, he rules the north, Saruman the south west, and Sauron the east. Something like that.

Of course the catch here is the ring of power has a will of its own. So we must ask would it have some way to "urge" DB to take the ring, or put it on or look at it or whatever. Certainly not impossible. On the other hand, if anyone's power was comparable to Sauron, it would've been a balrog (though Sauron would still be more powerful). So I don't think his will would bend as easily as a mortal man or elf.

Another scenario is a possible connection between two dark maia. What if DB did put the ring on and was able to "alert" Sauron of his presence. Upon Sauron finding him, they (they probably meaning the witch king as ambassador) would make a compromise that the balrog would get lots of power if he returned the ring and helped Sauron defeat the powers of the west.

I don't think it likely a balrog wouldn't be willing to help Sauron. I truly believe that had Sauron known of his existence, he would make any attempt to get him on his side. We have no record of Sauron even wanting the help of a balrog, much less trying to find him, so I would assume he doesn't even know it's an option. Now I don't think a dragon would help him unless LOTS of money and jewels were involved, but a balrog would do it just to cause fire and destruction. Balrogs are genuinely evil, dragons are just greedy bastards.

So thats my take. I don't think he'd know what the ring was. If he did decide to keep it, I don't believe it would wear him down like a mortal man, at least not for a long, long, long, long time, but more likely communicate through him to bring Sauron in. Honestly it seems more likely an orc would find it before the balrog. Once the fellowship was done, DB would go back into hiding. He's not interested in loot....

Hm, I don't recall anything that says Durin's Bane sent out any minions. I don't think he even had minions, since all the orcs scattered when he approached. And it was actually the dwarves who woke him up and he did make himself known when he ran them out for the first time. In fact thats where his name comes from, since nobody knows anything about him other than he was a balrog and he killed King Durin. Hence, Durin's bane. And that was in the third age, so he was already awake when the fellowship entered. Then when he heard all the commotion from the goblins/fellowship, he probably had to look for himself.

I don't doubt he might have had a sense that something....unusual was near. But there's no way he could've known about the rings of power, thus telling himself he could sense Narya. He was in complete isolation for thousands of years, his power was probably less than half of what it used to be. Kinda like me when I first wake up in the morning! So maybe he perked his ears up, but he didn't know what he heard.

Just as expansion...

We've all commented on the fact that Durins Bane might not have been able to sense the ring or that even if he did it would be more like an intuitive feeling of something foreign to him and that he wouldn't know what exactly it was 

But....

We know that Balrogs are Maia (corrupted by Morgoth nonetheless), of which, some sources say are comparable to Sauron. So i guess my expansion is what if DB got hold of the ring but didn't know exactly what it was but knew it was a 'thing of power' and could use it to his advantage, what would his next move be? take out the competition, namely Sauron? Head for the good guys (elves, men etc) Maybe ally with Sauron?

Actually Glorfindel of Gondolin is Glorfindel of Rivendell. Tolkien decided so in two late texts published in Last Writings, The Peoples Of Middle-Earth.

It's in my contract to post about Glorfindel whenever I realize someone has mentioned this golden paragon.

Fantastic input everyone.

Ill add that Tolkien also states that the Orcs hate but fear Sauron as much as they do anyone else, but I guess they respect their master through fear and the knowledge of what he will do to them if they do not obey....

No problem Valandil. And thanks for the trust too. I realize you weren't asking, but for my own fun and maybe for other readers who might need or want a quote or two: with the publication of The Return of the Shadow in 1988, Christopher Tolkien spilled the beans. With respect to a draft text for The Lord of the Rings, he explained:

'Also very notable is 'Glorfindel tells of his ancestry in Gondolin'. Years later, long after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, my father gave a great deal of thought to the matter of Glorfindel (...) He came to the conclusion that Glorfindel of Gondolin, who fell to his death in combat with a Balrog after the sack of the city (II. 192-4, IV. 145), and Glorfindel of Rivendell were one and the same: he was released from Mandos and returned to Middle-earth in the Second Age.'

I cut out a part of that quote where CJRT notes that his father also said that the name 'escaped reconsideration' into the final, published form of The Lord of the Rings.

In any case the name was published in The Lord of the Rings of course; and the story goes as Christopher Tolkien briefly describes here. CJRT published the actual texts later too.

I don't know why some websites seemingly have a problem with these two Glorfindel texts never being published by JRRT himself. Generally speaking at least, the same goes for The Silmarillion, where one finds out about Glorfindel of Gondolin in the first place.

Anyway, my two more cents on that side topic 

Late in life Tolkien noted that his re-use of the name Glorfindel (a name borrowed from his own earlier work, as was Legolas for another example) was 'somewhat random'.

'Its use in The Lord of the Rings is one of the cases of the somewhat random use of the names found in the older legends, now referred to as The Silmarillion, which escaped reconsideration in the final published form of The Lord of the Rings. This is unfortunate, since the name is now difficult to fit into Sindarin, and cannot possibly be Quenyarin. (...)'

JRRT, early 1970s, possibly 1972-73, The Peoples of Middle-Earth

His words despite having once mused, at least at one point in 1938, about the possibility of having Glorfindel 'tell of his ancestry in Gondolin' within The Lord of the Rings itself.

It was more than 30 years later that Tolkien certainly decided that the repetition of the 'striking' name Glorfindel would not be credible (his more specific reasoning seems given in Glorfindel text II according to Christopher Tolkien).  

Glorfindel had been invented in a language called Gnomish [a tongue ultimately abandoned by JRRT) not Sindarin, but Tolkien seemingly characterized Glorfindel as archaic in the new scenario.