Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-29212138-20170526182111/@comment-26633547-20170527141318

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.