The Nazguls --- what sort of creature were they?

[orionsixwings]

Were they a kind of dragon? Or Wyvern? Or an entirely new magical species altogether? I don't recall (though I can be wrong since I haven't exactly finished reading the Sil) them being mentioned before the great war of the ring. Is it possible that Saruman may have created them? Probably a cross-breed like that Uruk-Hai?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The Nazgûl were originally men, seduced by Sauron, controlled by the rings of power that he gave them, and eventually reduced to wraiths.

But if you're thinking of the winged creatures the ringwraiths ride on when they take to the air, they always sounded a lot like pterodactyls to me. Tolkien never actually said what they were, however, so they might just as easily have been featherless birds as flying reptiles. Since there are dragons in LOTR, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion, it would be strange if Tolkien envisioned them as dragons without saying they were dragons.

 

[Nesacat]

The Nazgul or Ringwraiths were the nine Mortal Men given Rings of Power. In Fellowship of the Ring (Book I, Chapter 2) we see Gandalf explaining to Frodo:

"Nine he gave to Mortal Men, proud and great, and so ensnared them. Long ago they fell under the dominion of the One, and they became Ringwraiths, shadows under his great Shadow, his most terrible servants. Long ago. It is many a year since the Nine walked abroad. Yet who knows? As the Shadow grows once more, they too may walk again."

If you are talking about the winged creatures which the Nazgul rode, Tolkien had this to say ...

In book V, chapter 6 of The Lord of the Rings:

"...it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was...."

A few paragraphs later it is said to attack with "beak and claw". It and the others that served the Nazgul as steeds were taken by Sauron who raised them in such a way that they grew to an unnatural size.

 

[orionsixwings]

Okay, so I was referring to an entirely different creature -- no not the 9 --- I've always referred to them as RINGWRAITHS. I thought the Nazgul was the flying thing.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

"Ringwraith" and "nazgûl" are basically the same word, only in different languages.

 

[jof]

I think your thinking of Fell Beasts

Description and origin

In book V, chapter 6 of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien describes it thus:
"...it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was...." A few paragraphs later it is said to attack with "beak and claw". It and the others that served the Nazgûl as steeds were taken by Sauron who raised them in such a way that they grew to an unnatural size.
This most closely resembles a very large hairless pterosaur-like animal, although their wing structure is more like that of a bat. Tolkien once wrote that he "did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl'", while acknolwedging that it was "obviously ... pterodactylic and owes much" to the "new ... mythology of the 'Prehistoric'", and might even be "a last survivor of older geological eras." (Letters, 211) The differences in the beast's anatomy from pterodactyls or any other species of pterosaur makes it doubtful he intended the fell beast to belong to any group of real creatures.
The fact that this description resembles that of the fantasy dragon has led some to identify the fell beasts as such.[citation needed] This is incorrect as dragons are already well established in Tolkien's writings (see Smaug, Glaurung and Ancalagon), and if they had been dragons, it is likely he would have simply called them such.

 

[orionsixwings]

I think your thinking of Fell Beasts

This is by the way based on the description from the characters themselves and since according to that quote they are creatures from an older world -- can we assume safely that maybe they are products of Morgoth?

Sauron did raise them and thus they became gigantic. However, he was not the one who made them. Thanks for that.