Nine Rings

Nine potent Rings of Power, each mounted with a gem, made by the Jewel-smiths of Eregion under the guidance of Sauron in his guise as Annatar. When the One Ring was forged, the other Rings of Power fell under its power as Sauron had intended, including the Nine. Celebrimbor and his people became aware of this and sought to withhold the Rings from Sauron. Their resistance led to the vicious War of the Elves and Sauron, in which Eregion came to an end, and Sauron captured most of the Rings of Power, including the Nine.

Sauron gained the Nine Rings in II 1697, and spent the next few centuries using them to draw nine powerful Men to his service. We know little about these Men, except that three of them were Númenóreans, and at least one, named Khamûl, was an Easterling lord. Each of these Men was given one of the Nine Rings, and through those Rings each was drawn into the Wraith-world, and their wills were completely enslaved by Sauron. So they were transformed into the Nazgûl, the Nine Ringwraiths.

The Ringwraiths first emerged in the middle of the twenty-third century of the Second Age. Given unending life by their Rings, they remained a terror in Middle-earth to the end of that Age and throughout the next, haunting the world for more than four thousand years. It was their leader, as the Witch-king of Angmar, who swept away the North-kingdom of the Dúnedain. In the later Third Age, the Ringwraiths paved the way for Sauron's return when they re-entered Mordor. In the years that followed, they captured Minas Ithil, and brought the line of the Kings of Gondor to an end.

The Nazgûl did not keep their own Rings, but rather Sauron held them (for more on this point, see Who Held the Nine Rings? below). At the end of the Third Age, they were almost certainly in Barad-dûr when it fell, and thus presumably destroyed. Even if they had somehow survived the destruction of the Dark Tower, the loss of the One Ring would have rendered them powerless.