Everyone thought with the destruction of the one ring, so all would be over. Yet evil never truly dies, and evil never truly has one particular focus. The one ring had held such captive, made evil a slave to its whims, and upon its destruction, all that energy, all that power, all that need to make chaos out of that which was created was poured out, it stayed captured in the molten lava for a good few months, and then it was unleashed. It seeped into the very land, and it wound its way in the soil in the dust and ashes that it found there, and it coiled around ancient bones, and particles of beings that had once lived. Giving them life, giving them energy, making them flesh, making them live. Not many would live due to how deep they were in the ground, how long they had laid there and the amount of soil that covered their newly forming carcasses would not allow them to ever be set free once more.
Yet others would be unleashed, at first they would be captured in Mordor, needing to stay there till they gathered their strength, till they fought amongst one another and decided upon who and which should lead. For there was no longer a ‘master’ that could command them on a whim, and who truly was the master? Sauron for making the ring? Or the ring that drew and drank and fed off of others evil? As surely it was Sauron himself who had been led astray but another, whom he too at one time had to call master.
It was no longer the Age of Man, it was no longer the rebirth of peace and tranquillity through the lands, it was the Age of Chaos, the beginning of something new. Creatures of darkness, being flung from the ground, creatures that were no longer bound to another, creatures that were full of hate and the need to destroy everything the Valar had created, and creatures that were beyond and out of their control.
Who would dominate the others? Which would become the new Dark Lord?