Khand was an independent Kingdom of Men to the southeast of Mordor. Their people were ancestrally related to both the Easterlings and the Haradrim, but in the aftermath of Sauron’s defeat in the War of the Last Alliance, a group of dissatisfied warriors deserted their commanders and settled around Zakhrad, the Mountain of Light, upon which they built the capital city of their new nation.
With their neighbors to the east and south weakened by war, Khand rose to prosperity without much competition, trading occasionally with Gondor to the west and developing their own culture and customs. Their dialect of the eastern tongue became known as Veradja, and they called themselves the Veradi, the People of the Moon, for they venerated the Moon in their religion adapted from the Sun-worship of Rhûn.
Highly prized were maps and scrolls embossed with ithildin, an elvish-dwarvish substance that remained hidden from view unless viewed under the light of the Moon and stars, and sometimes even then until a magic word was spoken. Those scholars and priests who possessed scripts written with such Moon-letters were seen as mystical leaders, and held close counsel with the King of Khand.
As the tribes and kingdoms of Rhûn and Harad regained their strength, Khand was forced to develop a military defense of their small kingdom. Chiefest among these warriors were the Variags, highly-trained mercenaries loyal not to the crown in Zakhrad but to whomever could pay them most. As Khand and the Khundolar of Rhûn clashed with one another over the centuries, the Variags proved to be dangerous to their kingdom of origin, willing to turn against their fellow Veradi for the right price.
At the end of the second millennium of the Third Age, the King of Khand attempted to dismantle the elite order of Variags as the Khundolar once again pushed at his borders. In response, the Variags joined forces with their historic enemies to topple the government in Zakhrad, leading a military coup and usurping the rule of the King. In return for their aid in pulling off this coup, the Variags rallied a great army to fight alongside the Khundolar’s force of Wainriders as they attacked Gondor to the west, and together they succeeded in ending the Line of Kings in the Dúnedain’s South-kingdom.
Upon returning to Khand, the Variags were faced with an unexpected surprise: a new ruler had ascended to the throne of Zakhrad, not another King but a shadowy figure who called himself the Chancellor. Any who dare opposed him either vanished or turned to his service, and within only a few years all of Khand was under his complete control. In time it was revealed that this Chancellor was none other than the Nazgûl Lord Gûrban, the last of the Nine to be given his Ring. Though clearly an Easterling in origin, Gûrban’s exact origins remain unclear, and some suspect that Sauron stole him away as a child to craft the perfect servant, but none can say for certain.
Though the Veradi held no special hatred for the Dúnedain, and indeed feared and resented their demonic Chancellor, they were held for a thousand years under the iron fist of Sauron’s influence. Aiming to quash the hopes of his subjects, Gûrban summoned a thick fog atop the Mountain of Light, blocking the Moon’s rays from shining upon Zakhrad and demoralizing the populace. Yet despite his power, efforts at resisting Chancellor Gûrban never fully ceased, and underground networks of spies and priests held tightly to their old traditions of Moon-worship, preserving their ithildin-embossed artifacts and smuggling contraband items of elvish origin in and out of Zakhrad.
Throughout the rule of the Stewards in Gondor and in the War of the Ring, the Chancellor attempted to turn the Variags into his personal army, but their loyalty was to money first of all things, and not even sorcery could sway them. Gûrban and his Master were forced to pay exorbitant wages to prevent the Variags from attempting another coup in Zakhrad, and even then small regiments would sell their services to Sauron’s enemies in other lands.
Thus it was that Sauron’s defeat and the final end of the Nazgûl Gûrban were met with much celebration in the streets of Zakhrad and the surrounding fields in Khand. Long had the Veradi suffered under the Chancellor’s rule, and the Variags wasted no time in returning home to cement their power atop the Mountain of Light, setting up a stratocracy in place of a single, all-powerful ruler, a significant change to their previous strictly mercenarial ways.
While King Elessar of the Reunited Kingdom busied himself subduing the Easterlings and Southrons who survived Sauron’s fall, the Veradi ousted those among them who were still loyal to the old regime and regained their independence. When at last Elessar turned his attention to Khand, he was shocked to find a functioning, self-governing nation on its way back to prosperity without any of the Dúnedain’s “aid.” Though he was at first wary to deal with the Variags who had fought at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, tentative trade agreements were soon struck between Gondor and Khand, promising a future of cooperation between the two kingdoms so long as the Dúnedain respected Khand’s sovereignty.
Upon the peak of the Mountain of Light, the priests returned to their temples and prayed ceaselessly for the return of their god’s favor. Though Gûrban’s power lingered o’er the mount, their spells and chanting eventually dispersed the terrible black fog as the Fourth Age dawned, and at last the Moon’s light shone down once more upon the Veradi, symbolizing a new era of peace and plenty for Khand and its people.
