The Restored Archives of Barad-Dûr
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NAVIGATION AND NOTES
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The works that are found within this archive are a vast compendium of texts, by many different authors, concerning the Elder Days up until the end of the Third Age. They originally came in countless languages, dialects and scripts, bound in all manners from stone tablets, to scrolls, to volumes. Many, however, were written or annotated in the same hand, of an elegant style of Tengwar in the Sindarin mode, or in what appears to be the same author in the even-older Cirth script. A vast majority of the texts appear to have been contemporary records, and those concerning older events, those of the First Age and before, were written by one with what seemed indeed to be a close, personal knowledge of these things. For those texts dated from the Third Age, a different handwriting is used, one that I have been able to match to that of the former Loremaster of Barad-Dûr, whose words concerning these texts I have translated and transcribed here.
The texts compiled in this archive were discovered in an excavation of a mountainous area not far from the ancient ruins of Minas Tirith, and a few of them were delivered to me and my students to decipher the ancient texts. Once we found that these texts were of some significance, and that indeed some of them were also found in the later volumes of the Red Book of Westmarch (Thain’s Book), though heavily annotated, an excavation began in earnest, and we have spent many years now deciphering them and compiling them. As the texts in themselves are far too vast and varied to present in their entirety, even in this digital archive, for the most part these will be summaries of specific events and persons of note, gleaned from the texts excavated from the ruins of Barad-Dûr, and compared to the writings found in the Thain’s Book. Though some of the smaller texts, I hope, will someday be shared here in full, with annotations and notes intact.
LOREMASTER’S NOTE (Translated in the entirety from Late Ghashnum-Burz)
This Great Library of Barad-Dûr is intended as a storehouse for all of the knowledge of Arda, at least as much as can be gathered. The task has fallen to me to organize and, where needed for contemporary events, to inscribe this knowledge myself. The texts within the Library contain only the absolute, unbiased truths of Eä, Arda, and Middle-Earth, or have had their inaccuracies noted and corrected. All those texts describing current events, written by myself, are to be kept to this same standard under pain of death or worse.
Though this archive is to contain all of the knowledge in the world, there is to be no admittance to anyone but the Lord of the Earth and myself. I know not why such a law is in place, but though I have my theories, it is not my place to question-- only to obey.
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