Annúminas - Jaco-Daan/Realms-In-Exile-Wiki GitHub Wiki

Fair Annúminas, the Tower of the West, built by Elendil to be the capital of his Realm in Exile.

The greatest of his great works, Annúminas was built as a memory of lost Andúnië in Númenor. Its tall walls, tiered streets and proud towers were built of pale stone that caught the sunset, and the city was set upon the shore of Lake Nennuial like an amber gem in a brooch of sapphire. In the great dome of the Elerrínarondo, chief of the many halls and seat of the king, was kept the Palantír of Annúminas.

Annúminas was built in a province already well-populated after a centuries of numenorean settlement, and in places the winding streets of its lower levels revealed traces of the earlier villages that it supplanted and amalgamated. But its upper levels, halls and great boulevards were a masterpiece of Númenórean planning and architecture rivalling any other city in Middle-Earth, even those founded before the Downfall.

Arnor never recovered from the terrible losses of the War of the Last Alliance, and there were soon too few people to populate all of the great works of Elendil. Even in the early centuries of the Third Age many of the mansions of Annúminas were shuttered, and by the time of the Division of Arnor it was falling into ruin.

The Kings of Arthedain moved the capital to Fornost Erain on the North Downs, and what remained of Annúminas and its environs was joined to the fief of Tarmëa. By the time that Arnor finally fell to the Witch King, Annúminas was once again little more than a series of hamlets connected by overgrown ruins, and the remaining inhabitants joined Arathain in the wild.

For the remainder of the Third Age only the Dúnedain Rangers visited the old city, keeping a camp here from which they kept the watch on the Shire and visited their kin in the Emyn Uial.

A dream long hoped for - Annúminas renewed. Mounds of grass and fallen stone have been cleared away to reveal unshakable numenorean foundations. Upon these new halls and towers have been raised - not with quite the same skill and elegance as in the time of Elendil, perhaps, but glorious nonetheless.

The jewel of the North Kingdom once again shines as a symbol of the noble history - and miraculous renewal - of the Dúnedain.