men of middle-earth ⧎ easterlings and southrons ⧎ headcanon disclaimer ⧎ @secondageweek day two ⧎ men ⧎ haradrim
When the Race of Men first Awoke in Hildórien upon the rising of the Sun, they soon divided into several distinct groups. Many remained in the East, while others traveled westward, but some took their journeys South to the vast lands of desert, jungle, and plains that the Men of the West would later call simply “Harad.” Before departing Hildórien, the influence of Túvon, an emissary of Melkor, had swayed a great number of these South-bound travelers to the service of his Master, but as they first established themselves as peoples, tribes, and kingdoms their loyalty to the Dark King was secondary at best. Melkor’s defeat in the West went largely unnoticed by his Southern servants, up until the arrival of Sar-Myrin, the Mage of the Deserts, Melkor’s chief lieutenant who had escaped to the East and now extended his influence over the South. With his sorcery and armies of orcs and Easterlings, he commanded many towns and walls of stone to be built, and supplied his Mannish subjects with weapons of iron, amassing an army and turning their hearts against the men of the North and West. Many of the South’s best warriors were pressed into Sar-Myrin’s legions in order to fight wars in the East, but the greater part of the Southern peoples were left alone as the Mage of the Deserts turned his focus to other lands. It was in this time that the Men of the West arrived, naming the land Harad and staking claim over its coasts. Initially the strange, tall Men with elven voices shared their knowledge with the Haradrim, the two cultures exchanging goods and information, and even helping the mariner-king Tar-Aldarion when he encountered troubles in his voyages. The kings of the seaside nation Rûvashû allowed these Númenóreans to establish the haven of Umbar within their borders, and for some years there was peace between the Men of the South and those of the West. Yet as the centuries passed, the Númenórean mariners grew hard-hearted and cruel. The fearsome Tar-Círyatan made forays from Umbar into Rûvashû and its surrounding territories, conquering those lands and demanding goods, wealth, and slaves. Word spread quickly to the inland kingdoms of the Westerlings’ cruelty, and many turned to the old legends of Sar-Myrin’s power and dominance, and above all his hatred of the West and its inhabitants. When Sar-Myrin at last returned, he carried with him many Rings of Power, which he granted to the chiefest of his mortal servants: Vekmû, the vizier of Rûvashû, and Sarnūsh, the queen of Yettafaz. With these Rings they became fierce and powerful magicians known as Nazgûl, instilling terror upon their subjects and bending them to Sar-Myrin’s will. Sarnūsh earned the title of High Sorcerer as she learned the dark art of necromancy from her Master, binding wraiths to her service and raising the dead to fight and die again in her endless wars, while Vekmû used his newfound power to rally all the might of a thousand leagues about Rûvashû to free them from Númenórean control, pushing their enemies back to their haven of Umbar, his plunderings so violent his own soldiers named him the Forsaken Reaver. Yet not every Man in the South succumbed to Sar-Myrin’s lordship. Many sought freedom from the terrors of the Nazgûl, fleeing into the woods and mountains to escape the death the Ringwraiths brought upon their homes. One such settlement of refugees was Tûl Póac, a jungle town hidden at the edges of the Miraz, where over time the people grew smaller and more adept at life among the trees. These folk revered the Evening Star, which they associated with hope and life, and though they mistrusted outsiders they would always welcome any person who made their way to the jungle in search of an existence free from Sar-Myrin’s evils. As Sar-Myrin grew more and more powerful in the South, two other beings of great magic and mystery arrived speaking words of freedom and light. Though the lands of Rûvashû and Yettafaz were firmly under the dominion of the Nazgûl, these wizards found a receptive populace in Sud Sicanna, the City of the Great Oasis. There they became known as the Veksari, building up a discipleship of devotees who named themselves the Sarazzin after the blue raiment of their masters. Though the Veksari were a wandering pair, never staying in one place for long, the influence of the Sarazzin was great enough to delay the march of Sar-Myrin’s armies upon the Westlands as the folk of Sud Sicanna denied his captains entry to their city and refused to even trade with them for supplies. After this campaign, Sar-Myrin settled into his own kingdom of Mordor, leaving the South under the control of the Nazgûl. But soon the Veksari proved to hold greater sway over the Men of the South than their cruel overlords, and while Yettafaz and Rûvashû remained under the power of Sarnūsh and Vekmû, the Bozisha plains-folk of Lostladen were freed from Sar-Myrin’s dominion. But the weakening of the Nazgûl’s power also allowed for the Númenóreans to return in force, expanding Umbar and founding the inland kingdom of Abrakhân. Before long, the arrogant king Ar-Pharazôn arrived in all his golden glory to demand the surrender of Sar-Myrin himself, and to the astonishment of all Rûvashû he humbled himself and submitted to Pharazôn’s shackles, sailing away with him back to Númenor. In Sar-Myrin’s absence the Nazgûl only increased their cruelty, and it seemed that they and the Númenórean settlers began to work together to torment the people of the South. The brother-kings of Abrakhân, Herumor and Fuinur, built great temples to Sar-Myrin, enslaving the Haradrim and sacrificing any who protested their rule on their fiery altars. At this time the Harashin were established, an elite sect of assassins loyal directly to the Kings of Abrakhân and the Nazgûl. Their leader was the fearsome Dalamyr, who hunted down insurgents and tortured them for information before dragging them to be burned upon the altar; it was Dalamyr also who first developed the practice of enchanting darts and arrows with the deadly power of the Nazgûl’s Black Breath. When the world shook and broke open, great waves devastated much of the coastline, and even the Sarazzin were forced to supplicate themselves to the Nazgûl for aid in the resulting blight and famine. It was in the midst of this chaos that Sar-Myrin returned, warped and changed from his fair form but no less powerful, and raised up an army to defend him as a Last Alliance of his foes besieged Mordor. Yet despite the valour of the Men of the South, Sar-Myrin fell in battle and was lost, his Nazgûl lords fleeing. His defeated servants returned to their homes, released from Sar-Myrin’s tyranny, and slowly began to rebuild their lives. The cult of the Sarazzin grew in number and influence, spreading out across the land, and while Abrakhân endured under the leadership of Herumor’s son, it was diminished from its former glory and forced to pay tribute to Númenor’s daughter-kingdom of Gondor. This new nation would prove to be troublesome to the people of “Near Harad,” as the Dúnedain termed those southern kingdoms closest to them. Over the centuries, the Gondorians conquered the plains of Lostladen where the peaceful farmers of the Bozisha dwelt, and their marine expeditions earned the ire of Abrakhân and Rûvashû, whose people had mingled under a single banner since Sar-Myrin’s defeat. Their leader, King Karasalêth, feared the might of Gondor’s armies and offered the hand of his daughter Zâinazimril to King Tarannon Falastur, but the marriage was unhappy and short-lived, and Zâinazimril “Berúthiel” was exiled from her husband’s kingdom and sent out to sea with only her cats as a crew. Zâinazimril was rescued by the sailors of Umbar, the ship-haven once ruled by Númenóreans and now equally under the control of the Rûvashûrin, but word of her humiliation reached her father and brothers, who swore retribution against Gondor. Umbar soon fell to the navy of Tarannon’s nephew King Eärnil, and though under Zâinazimril’s direction the disgraced lords of the haven arranged for the king’s death at sea and organized several rebellions, they were unable to fully free themselves from Gondorian control. Eärnil’s son Círyandil lost his life besieging the haven, but his son Círyaher earned the name Hyarmendacil, “South-victor,” when he marched to war against Abrakhân-Rûvashû and forced its king to submit to Gondor’s supremacy. To ensure the Haradrim’s obedience, Hyarmendacil took the king’s sons as hostages and raised them in Gondor’s court, returning them to their father only when they had been fully brought to heel as his loyal servants. For centuries Umbar would remain under Gondorian control, until the sons of Castamir fled their father’s failed usurpation of the throne and stirred up the haven in rebellion once more. A few generations later, their descendants Angamaitë and Sangahyando slew King Minardil and freed the city from the overlordship of Gondor, but there was little time to celebrate their victory as the Great Plague swept over all the land. Though a class of roguish Corsairs rose to dominance, their was no central leadership and Umbar was still weak when Minardil’s descendant Telumehtar returned to ravage the haven in revenge for his great-grandfather’s murder. As the Age marched on, the kingdoms of “Far Harad,” as the Gondorians termed, rose once more to great heights independent of any mystical overlords. This included the Veksari, whose followers the Sarazzin lost control of Sud Sicanna and were exiled into a nomadic lifestyle, wandering the deserts and jungles of the south. When the Veksari’s kinsman the Grey Pilgrim wandered into their lands, he was met with great suspicion and dubbed Inkā-nūsh, the North-spy, and failed to influence the Haradrim to favor the Veksari once more. With Gondor under the rule of Stewards, the South-lands grew in strength, occasionally sending raiding parties northward to harry their ancient enemies but mostly minding to their own people. It was not until the fires of Mordor were reawoken and Sar-Myrin returned to his old dwellings that the Men of the South began to prepare for a true war against the Westerlings. Along with Sar-Myrin, his mightiest servants began to haunt their old kingdoms once more: Vekmû and Sarnūsh, now only wraiths, marshalled their ancestral kindred for battle. Sarnūsh’s magics warped the fiercest warriors of Yettafaz into troll-like creatures known as Mahûd men, swelling them to the size of her Master’s Olog-hai and arming them with cursed weapons. From Sud Sicanna, Vekmû selected the warlord Suladân as his captain, training him to lead the cavalry of mûmakil-riders against the Men of the West. At the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the people of Yettafaz, Rûvashû, Sud Sicanna, and Abrakhân fought alongside Sar-Myrin’s orcs and trolls, the Variags of Khand, and the the Easterling warriors of the Sûhalar and Khundolar tribes. They laid siege to Minas Tirith, where Suladân under his banner of a Black Serpent was slain by King Théoden of Rohan, and many Haradrim fought to their deaths, last to surrender of all their allies. The Corsairs of Umbar were defeated before they even set sail, their ships commandeered by the Army of the Dead, and they brought no succor to their kin. It took the combined might of all the Free-peoples of the West to drive Sar-Myrin’s forces back to Mordor, where their overlord gathered his armies and prepared for a final assault to pour forth from the Black Gate. Yet the Men of the West brought the fight to him, marching to Morannon with a challenge, and once more the Southern armies fought against their Western kin. But this battle did not last long: near as soon as it began, it ended, for Sar-Myrin’s tower fell and the land of Mordor crumbled beneath their feet as his power was ended in Middle-earth at long last, his Ring melted down in the fires of its making. The Men of the South and East fled, and in time were subdued by King Elessar of the Reunited Kingdom and King Éomer of Rohan, forced to pay tribute to the West until they could prove they would no longer harm their kingdoms. With Sar-Myrin utterly defeated, never to rise again, the Men of the South were at last utterly free of the dominion of evil. Without their Nazgûl leaders, the kingdoms of Yettafaz and Rûvashû were embroiled in revolts and rebellions that eventually led to a council of commonfolk gaining control of Yettafaz, and the final and utter collapse of Rûvashû, now fully subsumed into the Kingdom of Abrakhân, which now sent embassies to Elessar’s court in Gondor in hope of striking up trade. Sud Sicanna returned to their old worship of the Veksari, who walked now amongst them once more, and for love of their people the Blue Wizards lingered in the South, refusing the call back to their home in the West.