This wikipedia article for the upcoming game Shadow of Mordor says that the game is set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It also says that, at this time, Mordor is not yet a barren wasteland.
Is that true to canon?
I thought it was a barren wasteland from the time of the Great War (before the Hobbit) on through the end of LOTR ?
Bad quote. The source article said “blasted hellscape” not “barren wasteland” - which sounds more probable.
I’m imagining that as a quote from a bitchy Yelp review of Hotel Mordor and giggling.
How could Mordor be a barren wasteland? Orcs have to eat too.
shrug
Most people would call the badlands in the Southwest US a barren wasteland, but it still supports plenty of life.
OTOH, when Mount Doom was spewing out enough ash to darken the skies at Gondor, I doubt Mordor was looking so hot.
Nurn, one of the bits of Mordor away from the barren wasteland parts, was supposed to be fertile I think.
You got that right. it was the Plain of Gorgoroth in the northwestern part of Mordor that was the blasted hellscape. The region between Cirith Ungol and Barad-Dûr, with Orodruin in the middle, which is the only part visited in the narrative. Also Udûn in the extreme northwest must have been hellscapy too, or anyhow barren. The southeast around Lake Núrnen was more normal and fertile/productive land, which was necessary, because all those armies of Sauron had to be fed somehow. I’ve never heard anything about the southwestern and northeastern quadrants, though.
Right, and that was about three quarters or more of the whole of Mordor, going by the maps. In LOTR none of the hobbits or other characters ever go there, so it is never described in any detail, and rarely even mentioned, but it is there. IIRC it is described as full of farmland worked by slave labor. Frodo and Sam only go to the plain of Gorgoroth (and the mountains edging it) which is just the north west quadrant of Mordor, where both Mt Doom and Barad-Dur are. That is a barren wasteland, but it is only a small part of Mordor.
ETA: I am not saying Johanna is wrong, but I thought Nurn was essentially the whole of Mordor outside Gorgoroth and the mountains.
Missed edit window.
This page seems to back me up. (Udûn aside, but that is very small.)
Yeah, you’re right. My attention was focused on the southeast, drawn by that body of water, Núrnen. Because in the sound of water is best preserved that music sung by the Ainur in pre-creation, conducted by Eru Ilúvatar. (Does anyone else read that last name as a compound of Akkadian ilu ‘god’ and Germanic Vater? JRRT letting a hint of his Catholic faith into the legendarium?)
Think how the baddies of Mordor must have been irritated by the sound of water in Núrnen, reminding them of those gods they hate.
Never liked that part.
“Ok, we defeated Sauron, smashed (most of) the Orc armies and defeated their allies. BUT, while the entire region is probably filled with scattered Orcs, bandits, small bands of soldiers and the like, we, um, want you slaves to stay HERE and farm this land (rather than coming back with us to repopulate Ithillien and provide for your safety). But remember, we’re just a couple of hundred miles away and over the mountains (and nursing our own grievous wounds) should you ever need us!”
I’d think a significant portion of the freed slaves would be going “Um, NO. We’re coming with you.”
Land reform. The big plantations in Nurn were subdivided. Every slave got 40 acres and a mule.
That’s why the old fortress towers faced inward.
Kind of. The old fortress towers were GONDORIAN, built after Sauron’s defeat by the Last Alliance, so they were built to keep the orcs and such of Mordor inside Mordor. They weren’t built by Sauron to keep the slaves of Nurn inside of Mordor, although I’m sure they were used for that purpose once Sauron retook the place.
Incidentally, how come Wikipedia is acting, in effect, as an advertising shill for yet to be released games?
Because it is properly sourced and is not written “like an advertisement” by Wikipedia standards. There doesn’t seem to be an actual rule against things that are most likely advertisements as long as they are written correctly.
The only counterargument would be a lack of notability, and the use of multiple sources invalidates that. I guess you could try an overarching “WP:NOT” argument, but the best possible result is the article being deleted until the actual game comes out.
In other words, it’s just not worth preventing.
That was all I meant. It was a quip…but it harks back to the purpose of the towers in the first place.
Sorry…I’m just this side of “obsessively pedantic” when it comes to Middle-Earth…
Grin! I’m cool with that!
(At a Mythcon, I read a paper comparing the siege of Minas Tirith with the siege of Constantinople of A.D. 1453. Kinda fun. Comparing the layout of the walls, and suggesting that “Grond” may have been inspired by the great cannon that did the walls in. Personally, I think Tolkien was consciously modeling his siege after the historical one, but, of course, that’s mighty difficult to prove. Tolkien scholarship is FUN!)