Chapter Text
A map of Middle-earth and the Eastern Lands after the Changing of the World, adapted from the work of the Númenórean Cartographer’s Guild, updated with new information gleaned from several sources, including the following:
- the rediscovered journals of Zâinazimril (called Berúthiel in Gondor’s lore);
- interviews with King Elessar regarding his travels in the lands of the East and his conversations with the Wizard Mithrandir, known in the South as Incánus;
- the chronicles of the Moon-priests of Khand, now allies of the Reunited Kingdom;
- thralls out of far lands now freed from their service to the Shadow;
- elven-travellers of all their various factions, including Glorfindel Twice-Born;
- adventurers and scholars among our own kin;
- our own histories;
- and more.
This map presents the world in the last days of the Third Age, before the fall of Sauron. In but a few generations, this sketch will be grossly outdated; but we leave to our cherished descendants this labor of many years as a resource for their own cartographical pursuits.
Design of this map by Caleneth Leptafinya, unparalleled artist and cartographer. Research and commentary by her devoted husband, Barahir of Ithilien, traveler and loremaster.
Addendum by C.L.: My husband is far too modest of his own achievements. He is a great statesmen in the court of King Eldarion, and learned much of his grandfather Faramir, who also sparked within him a thirst for adventure, exploration, and most of all research and understanding of those who are unlike him. This project was his passion and his greatest work to date; I but lended my artistic talents to aid him. He is upfront about the limits of his own research; any faults in the visual representation are my own.
Here follows the commentary and explanation of the second map:
First it must be explained that while the “War of Lamentation” (known to us as the War of the Last Alliance) is known among some peoples of Rhûn and at least Near Harad, as they fought then under the thrall of Sauron, this conflict is not universal enough to mark the end of a “Second Age” for all Peoples of Arda. Indeed for those in the East of East, the First Age continued into the Second as one continuous time period. They record their histories as simply “Before the Change” and “After the Change,” or in periods dated by events of local significance.
The folk of Rhûn, at least, mark a similar period to us in the West between the First and Second Ages of the Sun. (No Men knew a time before the Sun, and all Elves and Dwarves found the rising of the Sun and Moon to be a significant and universal wonder befitting a new Age.) The War of Wrath (or as some of these folk call it, the War of Vengeance, referring to Morgoth’s anger against the Valar who defeated him in the War of the Powers) destroyed Beleriand utterly, and the aftershocks of such a great upheaval altered the landscape of Middle-earth significantly, even far from the source of the chaos. Thus Cuiviénen was shaken and diminished, the Sea of Helcar shrunken, and the Mountains of the Wind where the Ironfist and Stiffbeard Dwarves first awoke cast down, sundering the two clans.
But we Westerlings, if we are to acknowledge our strangeness by turning the othering language we apply to outsiders against ourselves—we are the odd ones for marking our calendars by the fall of Sauron to Elendil and Gil-galad. Yes, the Shadow was cast long upon all of Arda (save Aman only, and word of its ills brought even the Blessed Land a measure of grief, according to the words of Glorfindel Twice-Born and the Wizard Mithrandir). But even the waxing and waning of true Darkness and oppressive Evil pales in comparison to the universal catastrophe that was the Changing of the World.
Having learned much of the rest of Arda, and having delved deep into the writings of the survivors of the Akallabêth, I myself now wonder why it is that we, also, do not mark the end of the Second Age by the drowning of our ancestor-nation and the irreversible alteration of space itself. We are so accustomed to our own arrogant time-keeping, centered upon our own wars (significant as they might be) that we fail to consider the magnitude of the One’s sheer power and impact upon Arda.
To think: the world was once flat! Flat, and now it is round! That Change shook the very foundations of the earth, flooded continents, leveled mountains, raised seas! Yes, the water receded in most parts of the world, but it left an altered landscape everywhere it touched.
I say this not to undermine the significance of Sauron’s fall at the end of our Second Age and the renewal that followed, but rather to remind all who read this that we, Men and Elves and Dwarves of the West, are but humble ants to the vast, unknowable majesty of the One. That He loves us and made us is a marvel, and though I am not a theologian, all of history and indeed geography points to His awesome majesty.
With that aside on time-keeping concluded, I continue now to a review of the differences between the flat and round world, and how the peoples of Middle-earth changed and migrated in the centuries after the Change. (Of course this is not comprehensive, as none but the One and perhaps the Elder King know the truth of all the world’s history, but I have done my best to make sense of what we have learned from our studies and relations with those beyond our borders.)
As the Cartographers’ Guild of Rómenna did in their original commentary, I shall not provide more than passing mentions to the events of the West, which are well-chronicled elsewhere. Frequent references to the Guild’s seminal work are included, and one would be wise to familiarize one’s self to best comprehend the following notes.
We begin as our predecessors did in the North. The land of the Forodwaith became desolate throughout the Third Age, with only the sub-population of the Lumi-väki enduring, and they in a much diminished form in small settlements near the Ice-bay of Forochel. They entered into the chronicles of the West as the saviors of Arvedui Last-King of Arnor, and the preservers of his heirlooms, later delivered to his heir.
Mentioned by the Guild only briefly are the Cuind tribe of Avari. It has now been learned, by the Longbeard and Stiffbeard Dwarves as well as a few enterprising individuals of their own kind, that indeed there are small groups of this people who even now remain in this northern tundra, living off the land. To us of the fertile south it may seem impossible, but they are well-adapted to their ancestral land, and have no desire to abandon it for warmer climes. They call themselves the Hrízind, meaning “Snow-people” in their tongue.
In the original map, the Guild referenced a rumor of more Cuind Avari living in the caves of Emyn Engren, the Iron Hills. Recent excavations by the ever-expanding Longbeard Dwarves who reside there (and indeed have in small numbers since the First Age) have confirmed this legend. Whilst delving deeper and wider to make room for a growing population, several caverns were discovered with evidence of an ancient civilization of Elves, including tools, writing upon stone, and even a few burial sites.
Evidence suggests this small Cuind tribe lived there as recently as the early Third Age! A few Hrízind Cuind have come to pay respects to their now-extinct kin, and translated their writings to reveal this tribe called themselves the Anguind and had split off from the Hrízind some time in the First Age while Morgoth still threatened their kin. These are the only known elven group to dwell exclusively underground, and it has been hypothesized by Dwarven scholars that their own kin’s increased activity eventually drove the Anguind to either flee or dwindle into nothingness.
Research is still being done by the Longbeards, the Hrízind, and interested scholars of other lands (including myself!) into constructing a better picture of their life, culture, and ultimate fate. (I have chosen to mark the Anguind on our first map, the reconstruction of the Second Age of Middle-earth, as they would have been more active in that time than in the Third Age, which this second map depicts.)
While the Iron Hills have a continuous, ancient presence of Longbeard Dwarves, their main kingdoms in the Third Age remained Khazad-dûm in the Hithaeglir, the Misty Mountains, and Erebor, the Lonely Mountain. When a Balrog destroyed Khazad-dûm, the Longbeards fled first to Erebor before relocating to the Ered Mithrin, the Grey Mountains in the north. Their settlements there were destroyed by dragons after a few centuries, forcing them to return to Erebor; they were briefly ousted by another dragon from this kingdom, but later returned to reclaim and resettle it. (The tale of this quest is one of the great stories of recent years, and is recorded as a prequel to the Fall of Sauron in our histories.)
In Erebor’s shadow is the city-state of Dale and Esgaroth, the Lake-town of the Long Lake. Both are populated by Northmen, who played a role in the aforementioned tale of Erebor’s reclamation. To the west of the Lake is Eryn Lasgalen, the Wood of Green Leaves, though ti was for much of the Third Age known as Mirkwood due to the influence of Sauron in his disguise as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur (once Amon Lanc) in its southern regions. In Mirkwood dwell as they ever have the Silvan elves, and across the Anduin to the west live their kin the Nandor in the wood of Lórinand or Lothlórien.
Of the Nandor and Silvan Elves, and their Sindarin kin, much has since been recorded elsewhere, for they have joined in the histories of the West in the time since the Guild constructed their original map. Thus, I do not speak much of them here, except to say that in discussions with Legolas of Ithilien, originally a Silvan-Sinda Elf of Eryn Lasgalen, I have confirmed that his mother’s people indeed called themselves Silpanni after the shining Sun.
From written correspondence with Lord Celeborn of East Lórien, I have likewise verified that the names Nanyar and Nandor arose independently, or at least through back-translation by the Eldar prejudiced against their Nanyar kin. Nandor was at one point considered insulting, but the integration of that people with the Sindar over the millenia has softened that wound, and now the two terms are practically interchangeable as different dialects of the same word.
It is tempting to continue further west on our journey through Middle-earth, but I restrain myself, for many tales tell of those lands, and the purpose of this map is to explore Rhûn, Harad, and the Lands Beyond. Therefore from Lórinand and Eryn Lasgalen we turn east again, this time to Dorwinion. Now that the Shadow has fallen, the Elves of Dorwinion (and they are indeed Elves!) have opened their gates to travelers, and we have learned some of their history.
The Dorwini Elves are a group of Hisildi, an ancient name that the Avari took for themselves. These Hisildi were composed largely of Elves from the Penni and Cuind tribes, though all six Hisildi-Avari tribes are represented in their kingdom. Dorwinion was established as the first great Elven-kingdom of the East, at the same time the Eldar of Aman and Beleriand were constructing their own realms. Their King was Bladorthin, said to be the son of the Avarin leaders Morwë and Nurwë. For many long Ages the Dorwini prospered, but when Sauron built up his kingdom in nearby Mordor they built gates, forts, and walls, largely cutting themselves off from the folk of the West, though their goods still traveled throughout Rhûn and sometimes made their way to the Westlands.
East of Dorwinion is the Sea of Tavukhor. Though this theory is greatly contested, this sea is believed by many to be the remnants of the Sea of Helcar, the western shores of which were called Cuiviénen, where the first Elves awoke. The alternate theory is that the Sea of Helcar was utterly destroyed amid the Changing of the World, and the Sea of Tavukhor is a different body of water, a little to the west, that received some of the Helcar’s flooding waters at that time and thus became vast enough to appear on maps around the same time Cuiviénen disappeared. In the construction of our maps, I chose to depict the first theory, as I find it more convincing given the evidence we have, but as most people dwelling in this approximate location were killed by the great floods, this topic remains a matter of debate.
Regardless, it is true that the Sea of Tavukhor (called by some in the West simply “the Sea of Rhûn”) is now present in the region where the Helcar once stood, with its surrounding landscape greatly changed. The Jangovar, an Easterling tribe that once dwelt on the banks of the River Celduin in the south, migrated in great numbers to the shores of the Tavukhor. They were always sailors, but innovated and grew with the widening of their territory, becoming now true seafarers. Some of their kin had dwelt near the Helcar’s borders before, but they were destroyed in the Changing of the World, leaving the Jangovar to take their place.
West of the Tavukhor is the Land of Palisor. Here dwell two great tribes of Men, the sister-tribes of the Khundolar and the Chayasír. The Khundolar are faithful followers of the Wizard Thû, who was once thought to be a thane of Sauron, but has since been revealed to be yet another face of that dreadful Úmaia. The Chayasír never willingly served Thû, but many were made his slaves and thralls. Thû himself built up a Dark Castle between the territories of the sister-tribes, from which he (and his Nazgûl) gave their cruel commands.
(In the days after Sauron’s final defeat, Thû’s castle crumbled as the sorcery holding it together was vanquished. But while most of the East-men returned home in shame to rebuild their lives, the land of the Chayasír was destroyed by Thû’s last curse, forcing them to flee westward to the lands that had just faced war against their kinsmen. The Chayasír remnants now live in fractured groups, some near Dale and Erebor and some to hard lands south of the Tavukhor.)
When the world was Changed, Cuiviénen was utterly destroyed after many long trials. Whether the Sea of Tavukhor is the same as the Sea of Helcar or not, the eastern shore where the Elves awoke is no more; so also are the small ridge of mountains to the Sea’s west. The Avari Elves who once dwelt there were either destroyed or displaced. The Kindi of the mountains turned on one another, breaking into factions in a dreadful civil war. After much death and grief, the leaders of the largest three factions came together to end the war, and each led their followers far away where they could not fight again. As our journey continues, we shall learn more of each of these tribes of Kindi.
As for the Hwenti, who remained at Cuiviénen when even the other Avari migrated across Middle-earth, a new way of life was forced upon those few who survived the destruction of their ancient home. In truth, some Hwenti had already founded civilizations elsewhere, most prominently the Daureli of the Wild Wood. But the Thadrali, the Steadfast, who refused to abandon Cuiviénen, where mostly killed when the world was Changed. Yet a small number survived, fleeing east to the Wild Wood and seeking refuge with their kin among the Daureli.
The Daureli left Cuiviénen in the early Second Age, when their leader Morwë (or as they call her, Marvê) died. These Hwenti took Marvê’s daughter as their queen and crossed into the Wild Wood, where monsters once dwelt, and staked their own claim to the forest. There they built many fortresses, the mightiest of which is Eghyôsto, the Fortress of Thorns.
But some Hwenti were not satisfied, splitting off from the Daureli to explore further, beyond the southern range of the Orocarni. These are the Vauteli, the Wanderers, who even built ships to cross the Eastern Sea and arrive in the Land of the Sun. Their legends claim that when the world was made round, a fleet of Vauteli sailed even beyond the Lands of the Sun seeking Aman; but whether or not they arrived, none can say.
The Orocarni, the Red Mountains, stretch from the south of Middle-earth to the far reaches of the north. In the eastern foothills of the northern Orocarni live the Karrandi Elves, one of the three major Kindi factions. They dwell high in the mountains, where few animals can survive, and have traditions of ritual dragonslaying. They are secretive and few in number, and most of our knowledge of them comes from their northern neighbors, the Stiffbeard Dwarves.
The Stiffbeards built their fortress of Ironhold in the intersection of the Orocarni and the remnant of the Iron Mountains, which once surrounded Utumno, the lair of Morgoth in his earliest years of rebellion. Though they live far-removed from others of their race, they have in recent centuries built relationships with Men and Elves and even reconnected with their long-sundered sister-clan, the Ironfists whose fortress is in the south.
Returning to the Sea of Tavukhor, we come now to the lands of the Windan Elves. It is now known that the Amardan nomads are descended from this tribe, and that their travelers are not vague wanderings but part of a great cycle of migration that takes place over several centuries, leading them through plains, river valleys, and even the edge of the Miraz Desert.
South of the territory of the Amardan is the fair realm of Layavmá. Composed mostly of Windan, this was the second great Avarin realm in the East. They rule by representative councils and have never had a king. They are mostly farmers, growing fields and orchards of fruits.
Hildórien, the land where Men first woke when the Sun rose, is east across a river from Layavmá. Few Men still dwell there, for it was corrupted by some ancient darkness long ago. It is my dream to one day travel there and see the land of our forefathers myself. Perhaps then it can be learned what truly happened there to drive Men to the four corners of the world.
We shall return to the East again to discuss the Land of the Sun, but first, let us travel through Harad, the Southlands.
“Near Harad,” or the lands closest to Gondor, is a smaller region than “Far Harad,” and the land there is mostly desert. The Miraz Desert stretches around a narrow gulf, to the east of which are the Yellow Mountains. There dwell the Ironfist Dwarves in their stronghold of Ashūkkan, who battle Were-worms and delve for iron; and in the shadow of their mountains is a small fertile region which has no name.
In this land are the Ayar-neni, the Ocean-weepers. They are mostly Kindi Elves who rejected their people’s civil war and refused to join any of the three major factions. They traveled south, and finding the Yellow Mountains already inhabited by the Ironfists, crossed them and came to the Inner Sea. There these Kindi met the remnants of the Wiri-marilya, the People of the Pearls whose islands had been drowned when the world was Changed. They joined into one people, the Ayar-neni, refusing all war or conflict. In times of need, such as a notable invasion by Mannish pirates, the Ironfists have taken pity upon them and offer them shelter, leading to one of the most harmonious relationships between Elves and Dwarves in all the world.
Just north of the desert is the Mannish realm of Khand. For many long centuries, all Gondor knew about this folk were their army, the Variags, but since Sauron’s defeat much has been learned about this rich and fascinating culture. The people of Khand call themselves the Veradi, and worship the Moon from the peak of their mountain-city, Zakhrad. Khand was founded by a group of disaffected Men from the South and East who rejected their leaders after the War of the Last Alliance, instead creating their own civilization which thrived for centuries until Sauron’s shadow returned and his Nazgûl infiltrated their priesthood and conquered them from within.
Even still, the Moon-priests and the commonfolk of Zakhrad resisted the Shadow as much as they could. But their warrior-class, the Variags, were an elite military group loyal only to themselves and willing to fight for anyone who paid them. Yet when the Shadow was at last destroyed, the Variags united with the Moon-priests and overthrew their corrupt leaders, renewing Khand to its former glory. They are now allies of Gondor and have provided much information about both Harad and Rhûn crucial to this report.
North of Khand and just to the south of Mordor itself are the plains of Lostladen. So close to Mordor, the Men who live there, the Bozisha, were under Sauron’s direct control, starving even as they produced vast amounts of grain for Sauron’s armies. Yet now that Sauron is defeated, they have begun to build a new society with the aid of their neighbors in Gondor and Khand.
Deep in the North Miraz Desert are the Yarqan Elves. They are few in number, but are hardy and enduring folk. The Veradi say that their travelers have sometimes been rescued by the Yarqan when lost in the desert, and that they call their sandy home Yarqilis.
The land of Harondor lies between Gondor and Umbar. Along with Umbar itself, Harondor was contested territory between the Men of Gondor and the Men of “Near Harad” for all of the Third Age. Though in the ancient past there were many kingdoms of Men in that region, by the mid-Second Age, the empire of Rûvashû had conquered them all beneath its banner.
Rûvashû defined its borders as Belegaer to the west, the River Poros in the north, the Sud Sicanna oasis in the south, and to the east they claimed their territory all through the North Miraz up to the Yellow Mountains; though the few Men who dwelt in the desert acknowledged their control, and in reality their influence stretched only to the river they name Yetarka. Upon the founding of Gondor, their lands between the Rivers Haren and Poros became the contested Harondor; but long before this, they dealt with Númenórean influence out of their havens of Pelargir and Umbar.
Pelargir was a haven of the Faithful, while Umbar fell swiftly to the corrupted Black Númenóreans. From their base in Umbar, these cruel Men expanded their reach into Rûvashû, founding their own kingdom of Abrakhân under the rule of the brother-kings Herumor and Fuinur. Throughout the Second Age, Abrakhân remained hostile to both Rûvashû (under the influence of Sauron and his Nazgûl) and Pelargir; but after the War of the Last Alliance, Rûvashû was defeated and greatly diminished, allowing Abrakhân to snatch away more and more territory and control. Yet both realms were forced to pay tribute to Gondor in its early days.
Eventually, through the mingling of their peoples and the alliances of their kings, Rûvashû and Abrakhân merged into a single nation. It is from this realm, Abrakhân-Rûvashû, that came Queen Berúthiel, the Black Númenórean wife of King Tarannon Falastur. Her journals, recently rediscovered, gave much insight into not only another side of her much-maligned character but also the origins, history, and culture of Abrakhân-Rûvashû. Her true name was Zâinazimril, pointing to the strong influence of Adûnaic in the upper classes of her father’s kingdom and the enduring legacy of Númenor in both Gondor to the north and Harad to the south.
While Pelargir was absorbed into Gondor in the late Third Age, Umbar has been claimed and conquered so many times that its people are a truly cosmopolitan mix of many kindreds. In general, their sympathies lie more with the Haradrim, but are even more strongly tied to Númenor than Abrakhân-Rûvashû. Thus while Umbar was once the center and capital of Abrakhân in its ancient days, it is now a city-state in its own right, ruled by a Council of Lords (unless Gondor has ousted them, in which case they flee inland to plot the reclamation of their city).
Now the city-state of Sud Sicanna, a marvelous metropolis built around a fertile desert oasis, is unique in all of Harad for its complete independence from the surrounding nations. Umbar may have its own government, but they are still irrevocably tied to Abrakhân-Rûvashû; not so for Sud Sicanna. There the people worship the Veksari, or the Blue Mages, who are certainly of the order of the Istari to which the Wizard Mithrandir belongs. Both Rûvashû to the north and Yettafaz to the south claim Sud Sicanna as their own, and besieged the city in their days of greatest power; but the magics of the Veksari defended it for centuries, only failing in the waning days of the Third Age when Sauron united all nine of his Nazgûl to pull down its walls.
Yettafaz is the “heartland” of “Far Harad.” Like Abrakhân-Rûvashû, it was conquered long ago by Sauron’s Nazgûl and led by one known as the “High Sorcerer.” Its borders are from Sud Sicanna in the north, the Inner Sea in the east, the Purple Mountains in the west, and the Great River in the south. They claim the jungles north of that river as their own, also, but have failed to penetrate far into its depths.
Only recently discovered is the town of Tûl Póac, deep within the trees of this northern jungle. They are refugees from Sauron and his Nazgûl who fled from Yettafaz in the early Second Age. Almost completely isolated from any other Men, these folk have adapted greatly to their environment, becoming smaller in size and living almost exclusively in the tree-tops. In a marvelous synchronicity, and perhaps pointing to the universal power of the One, they worship the Evening Star—Eärendil our ancestor himself! The discovery of Tûl Póac is credited to the Wizard Mithrandir the White, who traveled deep into Harad on several occasions; only by his suggestion were Gondor’s own venturers able to find and make contact with this fascinating people.
In the Purple Mountains of Harad dwell the Nallemi Elves, another of the three great factions of Kindi Avari. They are fierce folk, the bloodiest fighters in Kindi civil war, and traveled furthest from their original home in their self-exile. They are suspicious of outsiders, and most of our knowledge of them is from the Men of Yettafaz with whom they often clash. Indeed, the conflicts between Yettafaz and the Nallemi engendered an elf-hatred within those Haradrim that made them more susceptible to Sauron’s trickeries when he first encountered them.
Aside from the Nallemi Kindi, most of the Elves of Harad dwell in the deepest south of that subcontinent, in and around the Great Jungle. These are the Kinn-lai, a tribe of Avari who left Cuiviénen not long after the Eldar embarked on the Great Journey and traveled until they reached the southern seas. There they split into three sub-groups: the Kalassula, the Ann-kaiyala, and the Bolikinn-lai.
The Kalassula are a confederacy of jungle-dwellers, living in many scattered tribes throughout the Great Jungle. They name their clans after trees, and meet only infrequently at a Great Council that comes together but once a century. They have waged war but once, uniting under a single banner to hinder the Shadow’s vassal-kingdoms of Yettafaz and Rûvashû while the Last Alliance battled Sauron’s forces in the north. We did not know it then, but we were indebted to the Kalassula Elves, for without their efforts perhaps the West would have then been overrun. As to why they did this then and only then, Glorfindel Twice-Born claims that he had a Kalassu companion who was likewise re-embodied by the Valar and returned to her people to rally them against the Shadow. Perhaps, like him, she dwells among her kin still today.
The Ann-kaiyala are the Elves of the Uttermost South. (In truth, the Dark Lands stretch even further southward, but they did not know this when they first took their name; and they do indeed dwell the furthest south of all kindreds upon the continent of Middle-earth.) Their realms were created by two founding sisters who loved the sea, and were later joined by a group of Kalassula who emerged from the jungles and joined them. Thus the Ann-kaiyala have three great queendoms: Lo-varath upon the gentle shores of Belegaer; Îvollo amid the sheer cliffs the far south; and Rinassa-lo, the “Land of the Singing Trees,” where the former Kalassula live in the jungle bordering the Inner Sea.
The Bolikinn-lai are the final group of Kinn-lai, those who embraced the title of “Dark Elves” given to all Avari in disdain by the Eldar who embarked upon the Great Journey. Unsatisfied by life in the Great Jungle or upon the seashore, the Bolikinn-lai built ships and sailed to the Dark Lands. A traveler of their kindred occasionally returns to the other Kinn-lai, but this is infrequent, and little is known of their fate across the Inner Sea.
The Dark Lands are a vague name for so great a continent, but while we have learned some of their geography (presented with the original map), still little is known of their inhabitants. There are the Bolikinn-lai, mentioned above; and also the Tažathi, the last of the three great Kindi factions. Much like their kin the Nallemi, they are insular and hostile to outsiders, even other elves. They dwell in the Green Mountains in the north of the Dark Land.
Perhaps the greatest change wrought by the Rounding of the World (aside from the calamitous drowning of islands like Númenor and the Pearl Archipelago) was the collision of the northernmost strip of the Dark Lands into both Hildórien in Middle-earth and the coast of the Land of the Sun. This massive upheaval could have been devastating and civilization-ending, but thankfully, those areas were sparsely inhabited. But the same cannot be said of this region today!
The force of the Dark Lands colliding into the coast of Hildórien formed a new and massive mountain. For some centuries, this was a dangerous place to be, but as the mountain cooled and settled, it came to be inhabited by the Blacklock Dwarves. Their first home of Banzakh in the Walls of the Sun had diminished greatly through the greed and treachery of the Sorcerer Túvon (an Úmaia in the service of Sauron), and now that their lands were connected to Middle-earth, a great company of Blacklocks marched to this new mountain, naming it Parzakh and founding a realm that would grow to rival their ancient homeland. Banzakh is yet inhabited, but Parzakh is the center of Blacklock power.
The Dwarves of the Walls of the Sun had long been sundered from the other five clans of their kindred. Dwarves, as a rule, do not trust the sea or the ships that travel across it, and so only a small few adventurers made their way from the Land of the Sun to Middle-earth. But now both the Blacklocks and their sister-clan the Stonefoots are frequent travelers in the East of Middle-earth, their jewels and gold flowing freely even into the Westlands.
The Stonefoots live still in their stronghold of Tagamand in the South, but have spread out northward through the Walls of the Sun. This was done somewhat under duress, as Túvon attempted to weaken them by scattering them, but instead it has only brought them greater wealth through mining new veins of ore beneath new mountains. They do not have a permanent settlement outside of the Land of the Sun, but are frequent guests of the Blacklocks in Parzakh.
The Men known as the Sûhalar are stout axe-wielders, and said by some to be descended from the dwarves. But their own legends say they were the last Men to remain in Hildórien (even keeping a small settlement there to this day), and only came to the Land of the Sun under the influence of Túvon, who promised them fertile land and freedom, only to snatch it away from them and make them his thralls. They have settlements in many regions of eastern Middle-earth, all of the Land of the Sun, and even a few in the north of the Dark Lands. When Sauron called upon Túvon for aid, it was the Sûhalar whom he sent to die for his hated master, and thus many have been left stranded in the West upon the destruction of the Shadow.
Of Túvon himself little is known, save that he is wily, greedy, and faithless even to his master Sauron. He dwells upon Kalormë, the second-highest mountain in all the world, and may dwell there still, even after Sauron’s fall. Perhaps his defeat shall be the next great story in the liberation of all the speaking-peoples of Arda; but that shall be the campaign of those who live beneath his shadow, the Stonefoots and the Blacklocks and the Sûhalar.
What kingdoms, realms, and peoples shall arise in the Ages to come, I know not; and moreover, there remains much to be learned of Arda as it was and is today. But this is the end of my knowledge, and so I present this map and its commentary with a bold challenge: Travel, study, and learn for yourself, that all our knowledge may be enriched, all peoples made free, and all of the Children of the One brought together in harmony in our shared quest for knowledge and for peace!
Signed:
Caleneth Leptafinya, artist;
& Barahir of Ithilien, researcher.Gondor, Fourth Age 162