Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-29212138-20170526182111/@comment-26633547-20170527191859

LOTRMod wrote: Kvesir wrote: LOTRMod wrote: Lord Eldacar wrote: I think the greater travesty here than claiming some Umbarim had Numenorean Blood is that the assumption that Umbar was a functioning society with a government. 'Cities and even coalitions run by pirates are tumultuous, chaotic, and largely impotent. You may claim that they sent ships Northward with the aim of participating in Pelennor Fields, but what is far more likely and far 'more realistic is that these ships aren't an organized expeditionary force, but a loose coalition of raiders siezing the chance to pillage Gondor while it was occupied, while themselves taking momentary courage in Sauron's summons.

If the mod team goes down the route of making Umbar some sort of "Pirate Kingdom" with a functioning government and a Black Numenorean population, rather than the chaotic, backwards harbour of only loosely cooperating raiders it is said to be in Lore(With real world examples backing this up), I will be sorely disheartened.

(Edit): Oh, and having pirates and corsairs that can go toe-to-toe with any military institution of an established Kingdom is a fallacy. No, I don't think that's right. Umbar is described in the book by an Ithilien Ranger as 'the nearest of their realms' [of the Harad]; this strongly implies that Umbar is a functioning kingdom, ruled by the Men of Harad. The nearest such kingdom. A chaotic, anarchic, unstable Umbar is certainly not how I envisage it at the time of the War of the Ring.

I am not going to to step into the Black Númenórean debate on either side right now, but Umbar in the mod will definitely be a functioning kingdom, on the level of Gondor, Rohan, Dale, Rhúdel, etc. In fact, once we rework Near Harad into a variety of 'subfactions' and tribes, Umbar will be pre-eminent among those. I believe this befits a society significant enough to be called a 'realm of the Harad' and also named alone among such 'realms of the Harad'.

Edit: and to clarify the implications of the above, we do not plan for Umbar to be a separate faction in the mod. Rather, Umbar will be pre-eminent among the 'subfactions' of Near Harad. There seems to be a popular conception of Umbar as somehow distinct from 'Near Harad', and that was how I imagined it too for a long while, but as I recently reread the book I noticed that quote, and realised that Umbar is very much a realm of 'Near Harad' - and not only that, it's the only named realm. When will such changes be made?

And I assume Umbar still will have its own banner and units? The Corsairs weren't simply Haradrim on boats. It is one of the planned focal points for updates in the near to mid future. Perhaps within the next year.

Umbar will probably have its own banner, and equipment, which of course necessitates them having their own units. We also have detailed plans to completely revise the geography of Near Harad, getting rid of the strange 'fertile valley' which makes little sense, and repositioning that biome to the fief-lands around Umbar (and elsewhere). Other areas of Near Harad will also change, particularly in the north. There will be several sub-factions, including desert nomads, 'cruel and fierce' tribesfolk, the Umbarrim, the current 'civilised Haradrim', and some kind of eastern kingdom around the Gulf. But most of these will differ primarily in location, armour/weapon usage, and architecture. It won't be on the level of Gondor fiefdoms where they're all named with their own distinctive banners and armour sets. The aim is to make Near Harad as a faction more realistic and diverse, not to create separate factions.

(Boats, pirates, corsairs, sailors, and so on, are not likely to be part of this until some time later.)

These ideas have been in the works for a long time, which may surprise some of you given that Near Harad has remained mostly unchanged for years, but remember that almost everything in the mod is a work in progress.

Oh, and another thing: there will in the future be other former Númenórean haven-realms in the further South. Yes, that is canonical. Some of these may be more isolated and thus it might make sense for them have significant 'pure' Black Númenórean populations. Actually having Black Numenorean settlements south of Umbar, in Haradwaith somewhere, would be a fascinating and lore-friendly idea, as it was said that the Numenoreans settled the entire coast of Haradwaith (south Harad), not just Umbar.

I'd like to remind all the numenorphobes in this thread about the queen Beruthiel, who was a Black Numenorean queen of Gondor who was stated by Tolkein to be from an "inland city" of Black Numenoreans in Harad. After Beruthiel was exiled from Gondor she was put on a ship that sailed her south to her homeland, and it was said that her ship was "last seen past Umbar"''. ''Not at Umbar, past Umbar. So most likely her inland city was a part of a Black Numenorean settlement south of Umbar in Harad. Tolkein himself said that she was returning to her inland city: "Well, Berúthiel went back to live in the inland city, and went to the bad (or returned to it she was a Black Númenórean in origin, I guess)".

So, after Gondor conquered Umbar the Black Numenoreans arranged a massive siege on Umbar which lasted 35 years, and failed (around T.A. 990). Their army was explicitly said to be Black Numenorean, not Haradric, so it most likely came from the same southern cities that Beruthiel came from. And even though it was said that Umbar was taken by Gondor, later fell to Harad etc etc, and the Black Numenoreans "dwindled and mingled" - but that quote refers to those Black Numenoreans that lived in Umbar! We don't know what was the fate of those Black Numenorean settlements in Haradwaith, and since they were fairly big (they raised an army) and secluded, and it wasn't stated that they were destroyed by anyone, we could assume that they still exist in WoTR.