#minas morgul

[peasant-player]

@lyragoth so a attempt was made it didn't went as planned but its still pretty cool looking right ;-;

[arofili]

@gondorweek day one | the line of kings | the towers of the kings

          Other strong places they built also upon either hand: Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Rising Moon, eastward upon a shoulder of the Mountains of Shadow as a threat to Mordor; and to the westward Minas Anor, the Tower of the Setting Sun, at the feet of Mount Mindolluin, as a shield against the wild men of the dales. In Minas Ithil was the house of Isildur, and in Minas Anor the house of Anárion, but they shared the realm between them and their thrones were set side by side in the Great Hall of Osgiliath.           [...] And in the days of Eärnil they [the Nazgûl] made their first stroke, and they came by night out of Mordor over the passes of the Mountains of Shadow, and took Minas Ithil for their abode; and they made it a place of such dread that none dared to look upon it. Thereafter it was called Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery; and Minas Morgul was ever at war with Minas Anor in the west. Then Osgiliath, which in the waning of the people had long been deserted, became a place of ruins and a city of ghosts. But Minas Anor endured, and it was named anew Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard; for there the kings caused to be built in the citadel a white tower, very tall and fair, and its eye was upon many lands. Proud still and strong was that city, and in it the White Tree still flowered for a while before the house of the Kings; and there the remnant of the Númenóreans still defended the passage of the River against the terrors of Minas Morgul and against all the enemies of the West, Orcs and monsters and evil Men; and thus the lands behind them, west of Anduin, were protected from war and destruction.

—The Silmarillion, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”

Minas Anor art by Volodymyr Ivanitsky | Minas Morgul art by Ted Nasmith Iron Crown of Angmar from LOTR Fanon

[baheuldey]

Minas Morgul (Tolktober 2025, jour 6), 2025, plume, pinceau, encre de Chine sur papier, 21 x 14,8 cm

[torchwood-99]

I just...I just...Eowyn slew the Witch King of Angmar.

Eowyn married Faramir.

Faramir was made Prince of Ithilien. One of his duties was rehabilitating Minas Morgul.

Minas Morgul which was once ruled by the bloody Witch King of Angmar.

There's just too many thoughts there. Like, was Aragorn thinking, Eowyn did a bloody good job destroying the Witch King, let's see her get rid of the remains of his evil.

Eowyn riding into Minas Morgul, knowing that the monster who ruled there had died at her hands. The land itself, the remnants of the Witch King and the life that is choked by it, responding to her presence, the Maiden of the Shield Arm. Eowyn's wounds affected by riding into the land where the Witch King's evil still lingered. Eowyn fighting to see the land torn down and rebuilt, healing herself by healing the city.

Eowyn's endgame, her married life, fighting to reclaim the land from the hands of the monster who killed her uncle, but couldn't kill her.

[straberry-frog]

Old sketch with Sauron in Mordor. Tried in anime style

[helgean]

The Nine have already left Minas Morgul

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

"Upon the further side, some way within the valley’s arms, high on a rocky seat upon the black knees of the Ephel Dúath, stood the walls and tower of Minas Morgul. All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with light. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing. In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night." - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol"

@tolkienhorrorweek day 2 ⇢ MINAS MORGUL

[ID: a moodboard comprised of nine images in shades of black, dark grey and brown, and green.

1: The interior of a stone, domed building, sparely carved. Light comes in through two small windows / 2: A small stream running amid grassy banks / 3: Domes and a tower against a greenish night sky / 4: A metal statue's hand on the hilt of a sword / 5: A drooping white flower in the dark / 6: Stacked skulls / 7: Gothic towers lit from within with green light, looming against a dark sky / 8: A rough stone stairway leading down into darkness / 9: An avenue of columns rising from a floor covered in water //End ID]

[mask131]

Since "In Deep Geek" jut released a video about how Minas Ithil, The Tower of the Moon, became Minas Morgul, The Tower of Sorcery, in Tolkien's Middle-Earth, I just want to briefly talk about something I loved when reading Lord of the Rings, but that I do not see people speak about?

Reading "The Lord of the Rings", the original text, is quite fascinating because you see the big gap between the original material and the big adaptations-that-became-pop-culture, aka the Jackson movie trilogy. Not "bad" or "significant" gaps, but still very noticeable gaps. And the passage by Minas Morgul is one.

In the movie there is the famous deleted scene, added in the extended version of the movies, where we see Minas Morgul and I was always disappointed by this scene because it lacked one of the features I enjoyed about the land of the Nazgul. It was the "ghostly garden" feel of it. In the movie it is just harsh metal spikes and lot of rocks and brutal stuff in the middle of desolate cliffs and all that... But in the books, when you get to Minas Morgul and its vale, you actually find a creepy distortion of the countryside-ideal that Tolkien expressed with The Shire, for example. You arrive by this pleasant meadow-like landscape that is however deeply, deeply wrong. There's light of course, but it is the "corpse-light" bathing everything ; and there are pretty flowers but they have this off-color and weird smell, and there's a babbling brook but it is very obviously poisoned, all of this creating this spectral, eerie countryside that seems to be a mockery of the "nature paradises" Tolkien wrote about earlier.

And it is quite a nice variation on this idea of "land of evil" that Tolkien himself created. It is not all just frozen wastelands or volcanic desolations. Reading this scene immediately brought be back to whatever the heck happened in "The Haunting of Hill House" when they went out in the hills at night - the picnic scene.