# How would they manage to recover Fornost after the War of the Ring?



## Daerndir

It's your boy back with another spooky topic, I seem to be pretty obsessed with wights and all of that so I'm sorry if this is too similar to my former thread. Anyways I shall start with a bit of lore from the Lord of the Rings Online game:

_— Located in the north-west of the North Downs, where the Greenway leads, stands the city of Fornost, broken long ago by the armies of Angmar. It once served as the seat of kings. When it fell, so did the North Kingdom of the Dúnedain - Arnor.
Arnor was the northern kingdom of the noble-blooded Dúnedain, founded late in the Second Age by Elendil, who later died at the hands of Sauron. In those days, the capital of Arnor sat in the city of Annúminas, on Lake Evendim, west of the North Downs.
Generations later, in a dispute over succession, Arnor was broken into three realms, and the North Downs became the dominion of a new kingdom called Arthedain. Here Amlaith — the first king of Arthedain, and a direct descendant of Isildur and Elendil — made Fornost his capital.
For more than eleven hundred years, the Dúnedain kings of Arthedain ruled from Fornost. It was a king of Arthedain that bestowed the lands of the Shire to Hobbits from Bree. The Hobbits called Fornost the “King’s Norbury,” a translation of the city’s formal Elvish title of Fornost Erain (literally, “northern fortress of kings”). The folk of the North Downs use all these names today. Some Men also call the lands of Fornost “the Deadman’s Dike,” for today the city and its fields are a bleak ruin.
Almost a thousand years ago, the hordes of Angmar swept across Nan Amlug and overran Fornost as part of the Witch-king’s stratagem to conquer the North Kingdom. The city fell. (Some say that traitors bewitched by Amarthiel — a champion of Angmar — betrayed the proud city from within.) Routed Dúnedain lords fled the land and king Arvedui, escaped to the frozen north but was lost at sea. So ended the kingdom of Arthedain.
The Witch-king held the city of Fornost for a year, until an army made of Men from Gondor under Eärnur, the last king of Gondor, along with Elves from Lindon and Rivendell, and rallied remnants of the northern Dúnedain, arrived on the Fields of Fornost. The battle that followed ravaged the land and destroyed the army of Angmar. The Witch-king fled east to Carn Dûm, but his mark forever stained Fornost and its fields.
The ruined city of Fornost seems forever blighted by the treachery and brutality of its defeat. Once a place of kings, it is now befouled by Orcs and haunted by Oathbreakers and fell spirits. Do not venture here alone. —_
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Fornost

Now, the game pictures Fornost as a completely haunted and infested ruin, while the book doesen't exaggerate it that much. At the end of Return of the King Aragorn assures that he will return to Fornost, purge it from evil and restore it as capital of Arnor. And yes, the Witch King is dead and so are his spirits and thereby his wights, so the haunting should be pretty much over. Still, the game claims it to be infested by orcs, and even with the Witch King dead all this evil doesen't seem so easy to get rid of (Such is the case of Minas Morgul). This makes me come to the conclusion that it would take years of recovery and "exorcism" to restore the city of Fornost and the fields around it, especially with Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond vanished. Do you think Fornost will ever recover its splendour?


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## Ithilethiel

Well, we know remnants of the Northern Dûnedain still visited Fornost after the Battle of Fornost which led to the Witch-king and his minnions fleeing. 

_"Up away by Deadmen's Dike?" said Butterbur, looking even more dubious. 'That's haunted land, they say. None but a robber would go there.'"

"The Rangers go there, said Gandalf. Deadman's Dike, you say. So it has been called for long years; but its right name Barliman, is Fornost Erain. Norbory of the Kings. And the King will come there again one day, and then you'll have some fair folk riding through."
RoTK - Homeward Bound_

It appears that it was but the diminishment of the numbers of the Dûnedain that kept them from rebuilding Fornost not its being haunted by orcs and wraiths/wights. And Gandalf's foreseeing, as put forth in his words, portends that Fornost will once more be rebuilt to its former glory as King Elessar promised.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner

But, but, that eliminates all the fun fights with orcs and things! 

Seriously, though, if you're going to be involved in LOTRO, I wouldn't worry too much about how closely it adheres to Tolkien. I doubt going around (in the game) yelling "Wait! Wait! This couldn't happen!" would get you very far. If the monsters didn't chop you up, the rest of your band probably would.


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## Ithilethiel

_"Just the facts. Just the facts."_
Det. Friday - Dragnet (2003)

The game is fun...it would be boring without the ghosts, orcs, wraiths, etc. But the question as I read it was to the literature not the game SES


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## Squint-eyed Southerner

Well, in that case. . .

King Elessar came and lived at Annuminas, about 35 years after the fall of Sauron, so I'd assume Fornost had been cleared of any ghoulies by then.

I believe the game is set during that time, so plenty of opportunities for orc and troll hunting.


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## Ithilethiel

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Well, in that case. . .
> 
> King Elessar came and lived at Annuminas, about 35 years after the fall of Sauron, so I'd assume Fornost had been cleared of any ghoulies by then.
> 
> I believe the game is set during that time, so plenty of opportunities for orc and troll hunting.



Aha! A meeting of the minds...


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## Squint-eyed Southerner

Or at least the storylines!


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## Ithilethiel

_Baw! _


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## BountyHunter

I wish I could get LoTRO to run on my laptop. Keep getting some stupid 'cannot load patch client library' error or something like that. Can't fix it for the life of me. ☹️


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## Alcuin

BountyHunter said:


> I wish I could get LoTRO to run on my laptop. Keep getting some stupid 'cannot load patch client library' error or something like that. Can't fix it for the life of me. ☹️


Not a gamer, but a geek. LoTRO and Dungeons & Dragons are both produced by the same group. Google 'cannot load patch client library'. What works for one will work for the other. Try appending your operating system (Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Android, MAC, whatever) to the query if you cannot find a solution on the first couple of pages. 

The books are different from the movies, and the movies and books are different from the games. Squint-eyed Southerner and Ithilethiel are correct: the game is about entertaining the people who play them so that they will pay the people who develop and market (sell) them. 

Inside Tolkien’s story, though, there were still trolls in the east of Eriador (north of Rivendell: they killed Aragorn’s grandfather about ninety years before _The Lord of the Rings_ quest takes place, only 12 years before _The Hobbit_. Aragorn was 10 years old and living in Rivendell when Bilbo and the Dwarves of Thorin & Co. passed through Rivendell going east with Gandalf; he was 11 when Gandalf and Bilbo returned going west). There were Orcs in the Misty Mountains, perhaps even in the High Pass above Rivendell. There were the bandits, the ruffians, living in the Wild and perhaps raiding the borders of the Shire and along the roads to and from the Shire. The Rangers of Arnor returned about the same time as Frodo and his friends, Gandalf told Barliman Butterbur at the _Prancing Pony_ in Bree. And in the unpublished Epilogue (which I really like! Someone among the Inklings deplored it, so Tolkien cut it from the final copy; you can find it in _Sauron Defeated_), Sam tells his daughter Elanor on her fifteenth birthday that the King, Aragorn was coming north, and that the Gardner family – Sam’s surname became “Gardner” in place of “Gamgee” after Frodo’s departure, probably a Hobbit reference to his planting trees all over the Shire to replace those Sharkey’s Men cut down – would meet him at his command at Brandywine Bridge in a week. That was seventeen years following the Downfall of Sauron and the destruction of the Ring. He also tells her that it was Aragorn’s first visit to the North “since [she] was a mite,” so he had visited once before; Christopher Tolkien says in his commentary that he is unaware of any other reference to this visit in his father’s work. 

The Númenórean capital was moved from Annúminas to Fornost around the year 700 in the Third Age when Arnor was divided into three kingdoms. Annúminas was capital to united Arnor and before that to the united Númenórean Exile kingdom of Arnor and Gondor under Elendil; Isildur was returning to Annúminas by way of Rivendell when he and his entourage were attacked and killed near the Gladden. 

Fornost seems to have been pretty safe (in Tolkien’s world, not the game), but deserted. The name “Deadmen’s Dike”, as Butterbur calls it, indicates there was either a moat around the walls, or else the walls had decayed until they were no longer recognizable as walls. My bet is on the former: there was a similar dike south of the Great East Road between the Shire and Bree that Frodo and his friends crossed in the company of Tom Bombadil after he rescued them from the Barrow-wight. 

Now in the game, were I a game developer, I’d be _sure_ to litter the place with Barrow-wights, spooks, ghosts, goblins, orcs, trolls, traps, treasure, and just about anything else I could concoct or conceive. The point for a game developer is to _sell games_. And I’d have some crazy old Dúnadan hanging around telling people, “When I was young…” and dropping clues. Anything to keep the players involved, curious, and looking for the next installment! And add-ons and extensions and expansions in the meantime.


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## BountyHunter

Hey Alcuin. I've tried that already. And some of the fixes. Nothing is working.


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## Kolbitar

BountyHunter said:


> I wish I could get LoTRO to run on my laptop. Keep getting some stupid 'cannot load patch client library' error or something like that. Can't fix it for the life of me. ☹️



A solution which has worked for some: uninstall the game, delete every file affiliated with it, and then re-install the game.


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## Halasían

I missed this nice discussion as well. Part booklore, part gamelore, part LOTRO tech-support.
Can't believe it's been fifteen years since I was hanging around on the MEO site where this game was being developed. I remember one of the original developers had an opinion that Arnor needed to be well covered since he was pissed the PJ movies totally dissed the whole of the Dunedain north.

I remember they had to change the name from Middle Earth Online to Lord Of The Rings Online and I got in at the start, but the 'guild' I was a part of quickly disintegrated and I didn't have time to invest in actively playing it. I hear it's 'freeplay' now.


Getting back to the topic ... I would suspect that Fornost Erain and The Barrows would have some sort of 'exorcism' done to rid the places of evil wights? I suppose this is another discussion...


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## Olorgando

How much infestation would need to gotten rid of? Perhaps comparisons to other places infested by the Witch-king (or all of the Nazgûl) can give pointers.
Minas Morgul has been mentioned. "Historically", this was "only" conquered by the Nazgûl over a quarter of a century after Fornost, 2002 Third Age v. 1974 TA respectively. But Minas Morgul was infested by the Nazgûl for over 1000 years, while Fornost was retaken from the W-k (he appears to have operated alone against the North Kingdom) one year after it had fallen to him, in 1975 TA. That's a big difference.
By comparison, those wights in the Barrow-downs near Tom Bombadil's lodgings could have infested the graves there as early as 1409 TA, when Cardolan, still allied with Arthedain, fell to the combined forces of already corrupted Rhudaur and Angmar. That would give over 500 years of potential corruption efforts. But I'd guess that the W-k would have been satisfied with Cardolan's downfall and an almost cursory infestation, as he still had to deal with Arthedain.
But then the description of the W-k's defeat in Appendix A in RoTK: Angmar's forces were already retreating towards Fornost when Eärnur's cavalry fell on them after a sort of encircling movement, "and scattered them in a great rout." The final disaster befell Angmar's forces when Glorfindel led a force against them out of Rivendell, leading to their utter annihilation. The W-k did appear, trying his scare tactics with a bit of success, but when Glorfindel rode up to challenge him, he turned tail and got the Angband out of there. A scene that would be repeated at the Fords of Bruinen in Fellowship, where Glorfindel attacking *on foot* so scared the willies out of the Nazgûl that they rode into the flood released by Elrond (with some curlicues from Gandalf) that swept them miles downstream, and reduced them to hiking back to Mordor.
So even if the Northern Dúnedain, now reduced to the status of chieftains, were not able to resettle Fornost, the combined forces that drove the W-k away would have had little trouble in doing a serious mopping-up of any remnants of Angmar's rabble left in Fornost.


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