Mount Doom ~ Dark History of Orodruin ~ The Cracks of Doom

 

Orodruin ~ the Mountain of Fire!

“Gorgoroth, the valley of terror in the Land of Mordor. Darkness lay there under the sun.
Fire glowed amid the smoke. Mount Doom was burning, and a great reek rising.”

 LOTR: FOTR, B2, C10

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Sauron chose Mordor as his dwelling place not only because it was fortified with mountains on three sides, but mainly because within it’s borders lay the fires of Orodruin. It was here in the forges of Sammath Naur that the One Ring was made!

In the year 3429 of the Second Age the mountain erupted as a signal of Sauron’s attack on Gondor and ever after it was called ‘Amon Amarth’ by the people of Gondor which translate to ‘Mount Doom’ in the common speech. The mountain stood alone upon the Plateau of Gorgoroth, in the land of Terror. Sauron’s Road stretched between the furnaces of Sammath Naur and the Iron Bridge of Barad-dûr.  and a deep trench of molten fire flowed between them feeding the furnaces of the Dark Tower.

Orodruin pushed upward 4,500 feet from its base upon Gorgoroth, with the massive cone itself rising 3000 feet above the plain. Its massive base was many miles around and its jagged crest likely measured at least a hundred feet across.

Sam and Frodo crept north along the path of the Morgai, the last fence of Mordor. Then turning east, they climbed a 100 feet of torturous rock to its summit and peering out between a cleft between two sharp crags, they looked down upon the inner plain of Mordor.

“Mount Doom, it’s feet founded in ashen ruin, it’s huge cone rising to a great height, where it’s reeking head was swathed in cloud. It’s fires were now dimmed, and it stood in smoldering slumber, as threatening and dangerous as a sleeping beast. Behind it hung a vast shadow, ominous as a thunder-cloud, the veils of Barad-dûr that was reared up far away upon a long spur of the Ashen Mountains thrust down from the North.”

From The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in the chapter ‘The Land of Shadow’

 

The great mountain of fire reared its jagged crown out of the Plateau of Gorgoroth. Its summit was now ringed with molten fire, sending forth an endless plume of smoke and ash into the the sky, filling every corner of Mordor with Shadow.

“Orodruin, the Mountain of Fire; ever and anon the furnaces far below its ashen cone would grow hot and with a great surging and throbbing pour forth rivers of molten rock from chasms in its sides.

Some would flow blazing towards Barad-dûr down great channels; some would wind their way into the stony plain, until they and cooled and lay like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth.”

From The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in the chapter ‘Mount Doom’

 

As Frodo and Sam crept across Gorgoroth, on the last leg of their journey through Mordor, they experienced a torment beyond anything they thought they could have endure. Lack of water and the air filled with poisonous fumes, made each step an agony. The vast mountain loomed up before them, spewing forth it’s endless smoke and fire.

“The Mountain crept up ever nearer, until, if they lifted their heavy heads, it filled all their sight, looming vast before them: a huge mass of ash and slag and burned stone, out of which a sheer-sided cone was raised into the clouds.

The confused and tumbled shoulders of it’s great base rose maybe three thousand feet above the plain, and above them was reared half as high again it’s tall central cone, like a vast oast or chimney capped with a jagged crater.

There was a road… Sauron’s Road from Barad-dûr to the Sammath Naur, the chamber of fire. Out from the Dark Tower’s huge western gate it came over a deep abyss by a vast bridge of iron, and then passing into the plain it ran for a league between two smoking chasms, and so reached a long sloping causeway that led up on the the Mountain’s eastern side.”

From The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in the chapter ‘Mount Doom’

 

Sauron’s road ran to the very feet of Mount Doom, where it began to circle the massive base of the mountain, moving up to the cone which stood 3000 feet above the plain and finally ending at the door of Sammath Naur which faced the Window of the Eye in the Dark Tower.

“Thence, turning and encircling all it’s wide girth from north to south, it climbed at last, high in the upper cone, but still far from the reeking summit, to a dark entrance that gazed back east straight to the Window of the Eye in Sauron’s shadow-mantled fortress. Often blocked or destroyed by the tumults of the Mountain’s Furnaces, always that road was repaired and cleared again by the labors of countless orcs.

Here was the heart of the realm of Sauron and the forges of his ancient might, greatest in Middle-earth; all other powers were here subdued.”

From The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in the chapter ‘Mount Doom’

 

The great Naur Trench ran from the feet of Mount Doom to the vast furnaces of Barad-dûr!