Mordor
the Dark Tower; the Eye is sleepless
The Story
Mordor is the country Sauron made. He chose it in the Second Age for its iron walls and its volcano that would forge his Ring. He raised Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, on its eastern plain. He built the Black Gate at its northwestern entrance. He made of Mordor a kingdom of slaves and orcs and a watching Eye.
The One Ring was forged here, in the fire of Orodruin. The One Ring was unmade here, in the fire of Orodruin. That is the only story Mordor truly knows. Frodo crawled across Gorgoroth in the heat of his exhaustion. Sam carried him on his back when he could not walk. Mount Doom took the Ring and Sauron's body together, and the Dark Tower fell, and the country Sauron made was unmade with him.
The Land
A walled rectangle in the southeast of Middle-earth, ringed by mountains on three sides, the Ash Mountains on the north, the Mountains of Shadow on the west and south. The land is shaped like a fortress because it was meant to be one.
- The Black Gate (Morannon), at the northwestern angle where the two ranges meet.
- Gorgoroth, the burnt high plain of the northwest, where Mount Doom smokes alone.
- Mount Doom (Orodruin), the solitary volcano whose fire forged and unmade the One Ring.
- Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, east of Mount Doom on a spur of the Ash Mountains.
- Cirith Ungol, Shelob's high pass in the western wall above Minas Morgul.
- Nurn, the country of slaves around the dark inland Sea of Núrnen.