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Title: The Ruins Of Barad-dur (#2272)
Author: Ottis413
Chapters: 1

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Archive: Tolkien
Category: Lord of the Rings
Description: Set about 1000 years after the end of the LOTR books, an unnamed man enters Modor in search of power and loot only to find something unexpected.. Sort of a ghost story, good for Halloween..... And chapter two starts a mystery of sorts about 200 years later...
Published: 01 Oct 2005
Updated: 15 Oct 2005
Warnings:
Type: General
Characters: The unnamed man


Chapter 1 - The Unnamed Man

The Ruins Of Barad-dur

Adapted By Ottis413, Edited by Shell68

Note; This story was adapted from a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, titled "The Nameless City",� Place and character names are of course by Tolkien, This story, The Ruins of Barad-Dur�, was perpetrated by me, Ottis413, and edited by my ol' lady, Shell68.
The only thing I claim is the Idea and effort to do this..



Chapter One; The Unnamed Man. (about 1000 years into the 4th age)

When I drew nigh the lands of Mordor, I knew it was a land accursed. I was traveling in the parched and terrible valley of Udun under the moon, and after passing through the gap of Isenmouthe, afar I saw the remains of the dark tower rising uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the end of the third age, this great-grandson of the eldest evil, and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man need see, and no living man had ever dared to see.

Remote in the desert plateau of Gorgoroth lies the ruins of Barad-dur, crumbling and inarticulate, its broken walls nearly hidden by countless sandstorms. It must have been thus before my great-grandfather first walked. There is no legend so old as to tell of any man setting foot here since it was thrown down over a thousand years ago, or to recall what became of the creatures that abode here in its might, but it is told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by grandams in the tents of herdsman as well as the houses of the rich, so that all the tribes and travelers alike avoid it without wholly knowing why.

This unexplainable couplet was chiseled on the remains of the Black Gate of the Morannon in the common tongue:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.�

I should have known after reading this that the men of the mountains and plains alike had good reason for shunning this accursed place, the land told of in strange tales but seen by no living man for over a millennia, yet I defied them and, feeling I had nothing to loose, went into the untrodden waste with my horse and pack mule. I, a former member of the discredited and shunned cult of Suron, alone have seen it, and that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine, why no other man shivers so horribly when the night wind stirs.

When I came upon it in the ghastly stillness of unending sleep it looked at me, chilled from the rays of a cold moon amidst the nights uneasy wind. And as I returned its look I forgot my triumph at finally reaching it, and stopped still with my horse to wait for the dawn.

For hours I waited, till the east grew gray and the stars faded, and the gray turned to rosette light edged with gold. I heard a whistling wind and saw a storm of sand stirring among the antique stones though the sky was clear and the vast reaches of desert now still. Then suddenly above the mountains of Ered Lithui, which borders Mordor to the north and east, came the blazing edge of the sun, seen through the tiny sandstorm which was passing away, and in my fevered state I fancied that from some remote depth there came a crash of musical metal to hail the fiery discs rise above the rotting teeth of the towers ruin. My ears rang and my imagination seethed as I led my horse slowly across the sand to that unvocal place; that place which I alone of living men have seen.

In and out amongst the broken foundations of the immense tower and places I wandered, finding never a carving or inscription to tell of any human presence, what creatures were they, who built this tower and surrounding structures and dwelt therein so long ago, surely orcs and goblins had not the skill and craft to build such as this, if it were they, then Saurons will upon them must have been mighty indeed.

The antiquity of the spot was unwholesome, and I longed to encounter some sign or device to give me some bearing. There were certain proportions and dimensions in the ruins which suggests orcs or gobblins were the main inhabitants, I had with me many tools, and dug much within the walls of the obliterated edifices, but progress was slow, and nothing significant was revealed. When night and the moon returned I felt a chill wind which brought new fear, so that I did not dare to remain in the ruins. And as I went outside the decaying stones to sleep, a small sighing sandstorm gathered behind me, blowing over the gray stones though the moon was bright and most of the desert still.

I fell asleep thinking of the riches I would have if I was lucky enough to find the Dark Lords seeing stone. All legends told of his having at least one of the Palantir, of which all others save one are lost. And surely many secrets of power were buried here, which might rise me above other men and end the dark stares and sneers from those whom I meet in the known lands.

Awaked just at dawn from a pageant of horrible dreams, my ears ringing as from some metallic peal. I saw the sun peering redly through the last gusts of a little sandstorm that hovered over the ruins, and marked the quietness of the rest of the landscape. Once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand like a mountain troll under a coverlet, and again dug vainly for relics of the ancient might. At noon I rested, and in the afternoon I spent much time tracing the ruins trying to get some bearing on the lay of the fallen tower, and the outlines of the nearly vanished buildings. I saw that the compound had been vast indeed and surrounded the base of the tower itself, and wondered at the sources of its inhabitants. To myself I pictured all the chaos of unnumbered orcs, trolls goblins, and men as well, all fighting for the destruction of the west. And also thought of Sauron, the Dark Lord, that ruled in the lands of Mordor those long years ago, and fancied what it might be like to have even a small measure of his former power at my command.

After searching the entire day, I came upon a place where the bedrock rose stark through the sand and formed a low cliff near the base of the tower itself, and here I saw with joy what seemed to promise further traces of the inhabitants. Hewn rudely on the face of the cliff were the unmistakable facades of several artificial caves, and nearby were small, squat rock houses or storage spaces, whose interiors might preserve some secrets of ages past. though sandstorms had long since effaced any carvings which may have identified them, Very low and sand-choked were all the dark apertures near me, but I cleared several with my spade and crawled through them, carrying a torch to reveal whatever mysteries they might hold. When I was inside I saw that the caverns was indeed storehouses, and beheld plain signs of the race that had lived and worked here before the desert took over from the living.

Primitive stone tables, pillars, and niches, all curiously low, were there, and though I saw no sculptures or carven images, there were many singular stones clearly shaped into unknown tools by crude means. The lowness of the chiseled chambers was very telling, for I could only kneel upright, suggesting goblins or small orcs, but the area was so great that my torch showed only part of it at a time. I shuddered oddly in some of the far corners; for certain oddly cupped tables and stones suggested uses of terrible, revolting, and inexplicable nature and made me wonder what manner of use could have made such a place as this, and to what purpose the tools were put. When I had seen all that the place contained, I crawled out again and wrapped myself in a blanket to await the dawn, avid to find what the other storehouses might yield.

Sun rise now approached, yet the things I had seen made curiosity stronger than fear or the need of sleep, so I did not fear the long mooncast shadows that had daunted me when first I saw the sand choked ruins. In the twilight I arose and cleared another aperture and with a new torch crawled into it, finding more odd stones and tools, and a few rusted pieces of armor and sword hilts, though nothing more useful or valuable than the other rooms had contained. The room was just as low, but much less broad, ending in a very narrow passage crowded with obscure and cryptical objects. About these things I was prying when the noise of a wind and my horse outside broke through the stillness and drew me forth to see what could have frightened the beast.

The setting moon was gleaming vividly over the rotting ruins, lighting a dense cloud of sand that seemed stirred by a strong but decreasing wind from some point in the ruins of the tower its self. I knew it was this chilly, sandy wind which had disturbed my horse and was about to lead him to a place of better shelter when I chanced to glance up and saw that there was no wind atop the cliff. This astonished me and made me fearful again, but I immediately recalled the sudden local winds that I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and judged it was a normal thing. I decided it came from some passage that escaped the collapse, and the odd winds had perhaps kept it cleared of sand.

I watched the troubled sand and traced it to its source, soon perceiving that it came from the large black orifice of a door nearly hidden in the ruins a short distance south of me, almost out of sight. Against the swirling sand-cloud I plodded toward this opening over the stone choked chasm that once circled the base of the tower. As I neared, it loomed before me, revealing a doorway far less clogged with caked with sand then I would have thought. I would have entered had not the terrific force of the in rushing wind almost quenched my torch and threatened to pull it from my hand . It pushed madly into the dark, strangely carven door, sighing uncannily as it ruffled the sand that spread among the weird ruins. Soon it grew fainter and the sand grew more and more still, till finally all was at rest again, but a presence seemed stalking among the spectral stones, and when I glanced toward the rising sun it seemed to quiver as though mirrored in unquiet waters. I was more afraid than I could explain, but not enough to dull my thirst for wonder, so as soon as the wind was quite gone I crossed into the dark chamber from which it had come.

Climbing down a short but broadening stair, I found myself in a immense cavern under the rubble, how it escaped the collapse of the tower I couldn't fathom. Its size brought to my mind the Dwarf mines of Moria, which I had never entered but heard much in legend and tales. (The dwarfs had allowed no other race to enter since it had been retaken after the fall of Sauron.)

The hall was larger than any of those I had visited in the ruins nearby, and was presumably linked to a natural cavern since it bore winds to and from some region beyond. Here I could stand quite upright as the ceiling was far overhead, and saw that the stones and altars were higher then those in the other rooms I had entered. On the walls and roof I beheld for the first time some traces of the script of whatever race carved the stone of this place. Curious curling shapes that had almost faded or crumbled away, and on two of the altars or tables I saw with rising excitement a maze of well-fashioned curvilinear carvings, some writing in a forgotten tongue, secrets held that I could only guess. As I held my torch aloft it seemed to me that the shape of the roof was perfectly domed, and I wondered what the forgotten cutters of stone had first worked upon. Their engineering skills must have been equal to any in Middle Earth.

Then a brighter flare of my torch flame showed that for which I had been seeking, the opening to those remoter abysses whence the sudden wind was blown and drawn like the breath of some sleeping giant. I grew faint when I saw that it was a tall door chiseled in the solid rock, no place of goblins or orcs was this. I thrust my torch within, beholding a black tunnel with the roof arching high over a flight of numerous and steeply descending steps. I shall always see those steps in my dreams, for I came to learn what they meant. At the time I hardly knew whether to call them steps or mere footholds in a precipitous descent. My mind was whirling with mad thoughts of the secrets and valuable relics I might find. The words and warnings of the lore masters seemed to float across the Mountains of Shadow from the lands that men know to the accursed ruins where men dare not go. Yet I hesitated only for a moment before advancing through the portal and commencing to climb cautiously down the steep passage, feet first, as though on a ladder.

It is only in the terrible phantasms of fevered delirium that any other man can have such a descent as mine. The narrow passage led infinitely down like some hideous haunted well, and the torch I held above my head could not light the unknown depths toward which I was crawling. I lost track of the hours and any knowledge of time, though I was frightened when I thought of the distance I must be traversing. There were changes of direction and of steepness; and once I came to a long, high, level passage where I had to hold my torch at arm's length above my head to see the roof, which had a number of rusted chains hanging from it with hideous hooks at the ends, for what reason these chains were used I tried not to imagine. But the walls were close enough to touch both sides with outstretched arms as I walked. After that were more of the steep steps, and I was still scrambling down interminably when my failing torch died out. I do not think I noticed it at the time, for when I did notice it I was still holding it above me as if it were ablaze.

I was quite unbalanced with that thirst for the strange and the unknown secrets which had made me an outcast, a wanderer upon middle earth and a haunter of far, ancient, and forbidding places. In the darkness there flashed before my mind fragments of my cherished treasury of lore; passages from records of the war against Morgoh of old, and Sauron when the world was yet young, paragraphs from various accounts of the wars of the ring, and infamous lines from the accounts of slaves escaped from this foul land after the defeat of the armies of Sauron, some quite mad from their experiences. I repeated queer extracts, and muttered of the horrors recounted by those slaves that floated across my fevered mind, later chanting over and over again a phrase from one of their tales, "The unreverberate blackness of the abyss." Once when the descent grew amazingly steep I recited something in sing-song from the mad slaves' account until I feared to recite more:

A reservoir of darkness, black
As witch kings' cauldrons are, when flll'd
With fear th' eclipse distill'd.
Leaning to look if foot might pass
Down thro' that chasm, I saw, beneath,
As far as vision could explore,
The chasm sides as smooth as glass,
Looking as if just varnish'd o'er
With that dark pitch the Seat of Death
Throws out upon its slimy shore.

I stopped only for a moment when the thought occurred to me that the unknown author was in all likelihood writhing about the passage in which I now descended.

Time had quite ceased to exist for me when my feet again felt a level floor, and I found myself in a place slightly higher than the chamber now so incalculably far above my head. Having relit my torch with some difficulty I could not quite see the roof overhead, but could stand upright which was a great relief, and in the dim light of my torch I shuffled and crept hither and thither at random. I soon knew that I was in a narrow passage whose walls were lined with cases of iron having glass fronts, the glass having a cold frost covering them from top to floor. As in that abysmal place I felt of such things as polished metal and glass I shuddered at the possible implications. The cases were apparently arranged along each side of the passage at regular intervals, and were oblong and horizontal, hideously like coffins in shape and size. When I tried to move two or three for further examination, I found that they were firmly fastened to the walls.

Holding my sputtering torch close and wiping at the frozen glass, I could finely make out inside a shape much like a man, powerful of build, but dark and with the facial features of an orc. The next two were the same but for small features. Revolted, I left them, and looking on I saw that the passage was a long one, so I floundered ahead rapidly, my torch flickering a moment and then dying. In a creeping run that would have seemed horrible had any eye watched me in the blackness, crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my surroundings and be sure the walls and rows of cases still stretched on. Man is so used to thinking visually that I almost forgot the darkness and pictured the endless corridor of steel and glass as though I saw it. And then in a moment of indescribable emotion I did see it.

Just when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell, I had not slept for two days or more, but there came a gradual glow ahead, and all at once I knew that I saw the dim outlines of the corridor and the cases, revealed by some unknown subterranean phosphorescence. For a little while all was exactly as I had seen it before, since the glow was very faint, but as I mechanically kept stumbling ahead into the stronger light I realized that my fancy had been but feeble.

This hall was no relic of crudity like the storehouses and rooms in the ruins above, but a monument of the most magnificent and exotic craftsmanship. Rich, vivid, and daringly fantastic designs whose lines and carvings were beyond description covered the wall to my left, and to the right were the cases made of a strange shining metal with no signs of rust or decay, with fronts of exquisite glass, but not frosted as the earlier ones were, and containing the mummified forms of creatures outreaching in grotesqueness the most chaotic dreams of man. They were orc-like in kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the shapes of land animals, sometimes the sea, but more often nothing of which either the sailor of landsman had seen or heard. In size they approximated a small man, and their legs bore large clawed feet curiously like a humans. But strangest of all were their heads, which presented a contour resembling a mans but horribly twisted to evil smirks. To nothing but the slaves and minions of Sauron can such things be well compared, as I'm sure these things were designed to be just that. I thought of comparisons as varied as the mountain cats, the wolf, and the human being. None had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet the small horns, the fangs and the powerful jaw placed the things outside all established categories. I debated for a time on the reality of the mummies, half suspecting they were artificial, but soon decided they were indeed varyous species which had been twisted and corrupted by Sauron to carry out his will, To crown their grotesqueness, most of them were enrobed in the skins of animals, and lavishly laden with ornaments of bone, claws, and fangs of great beasts and symbols of the lidless eye made of iron.

The importance of these creatures must have been vast, for they held first place among the wild designs carven on the walls and ceiling. With matchless skill had the artist drawn them in a world of their own, wherein they had cities fashioned to suit their dimensions, and I could not help but think that their pictured history was unreal, perhaps showing the creatures the reward of good service. These creatures, I thought to myself, were to Sauron the end result of his meddling and twisting of natures creatures to his own evil ends.

Holding this view, I could, in the carvings on the walls, trace roughly a mind numbing epic of his efforts to corrupt nature to the evil no man could imagine. It was all vividly weird but realistic, and its connection with the awesome descent I had made was unmistakable. I even recognized the passages in which I stood.

As I crept along the corridor toward the brighter light I saw later stages of the carved epic, the leave-taking of the races that had been created in these depths, unleashed upon the whole of Middle-Earth, the soulless creatures who never shrank from war for the love of killing. Now that the light was better I studied the carvings more closely and, remembering that the strange figures must represent the fearsome creatures incased here, pondered upon the what might have happened had the dark lord not been defeated.

Many things were peculiar and inexplicable. The creatures, were seemingly risen to a higher order than other fell creatures used by Sauron, yet there were curious omissions. I could, for example, find no pictures to represent deaths or funeral customs, save such as were related to wars and violence, and I wondered at the reticence shown concerning natural death. It was as though an idea of a natural death was not to be considered,. immortality being presented as a cherished illusion, death in battle the only acceptable alternative.

Still nearer the end of the passage the carvings were less skillful, and much more bizarre than even the wildest of the earlier scenes. They seemed to record a decline of the earlier stock, coupled with a growing ferocity toward the outside world, no longer driven by the promise of reward, but destruction and bloodletting for its own sake, to which they were driven ever onward by the dark lords evil will.

As I viewed the carvings, I had approached very closely the end of the hall, here I spied at last images of men, but being hideously devoured and torn asunder by the creatures seen earlier, I quickly looked away.

At length I was aware of a gate through which came all of the illuminating phosphorescence. Creeping up to it, I cried aloud in amazement at what lay beyond; for instead of other and brighter chambers there was only an illimitable void of a sickly gray-green radiance, such as one might find when gazing seaward into a building storm. Behind me was a passage so strange that I could not bear the thought of it, and before me was an infinity of subterranean light, tho of a sickly hue, still wondrous after the long blackness of the passage.

Reaching down from the passage into the abyss was the head of a steep flight of steps, large numerous steps like those of black passages I had traversed, but after a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything. Swung back open against the left-hand wall of the passage was a massive door of brass, incredibly thick and decorated with fantastic bas-reliefs showing cloaked riders on winged creatures, this door which could if closed shut the whole inner world of gray light away from the vaults and passages of rock above. I looked at the steps, and for the nonce dared not try them. I touched the open brass door, and could not move it. Then I sank prone to the stone floor, my mind aflame with prodigious reflections which not even a death-like exhaustion could banish.

As I lay still with closed eyes I must have slept. My mind free to ponder many things I had lightly noted in the carvings, wich came back to me with new and terrible significance in my dreams. Scenes presenting Barad-dur in its might, the armies arrayed in the valley around it, and the distant lands with which its forces fought. The carvings of the creatures puzzled me by its almost universal lack of any human figures in positions of power, and I wondered that it would be so, Sauron must have hinted thus to these creatures that they would rule Middle Earth after the fall of the West. As I drempt of these creatures, whose hideous mummified forms were so close to me, as well as the seemingly frozen ones in the cold passage beyond, I felt a new throb of fear. Mental associations are curious, and I shrank from the idea that except for the poor men torn to pieces in the last carving, mine was the only human form amidst the many relics and symbols of this hideous cavern.

Shortly I awoke, and as always in my strange and roving existence, wonder soon drove out fear, for the luminous abyss and what it might contain presented a problem worthy of the greatest explorer. That a weird world of mystery lay far down that flight of peculiarly large steps I could not doubt, and I hoped to find there those riches and secrets which the strange corridor had failed to give. The carvings had pictured unbelievable evils, but my mind dwelt on the colossal ruins that awaited me.

My thoughts, indeed, had concerned the past rather than the future. Now the physical horror of my position in that horrid corridor of dead creatures and mind numbing carvings came to me, miles below the world I knew and faced by another world of eery light and mist, nothing could match the lethal dread I now felt at the abysmal meaning of the scene and what it implied. An evil intent so vast that measurement is feeble seemed to leer down from the primal stones and rock-hewn buildings of the ruins above, while the astounding maps in the carvings showed a world where man was slaves at best. What could Saurons plans have been for a world where he ruled unopposed, no man might say. Men had no place in these caverns and in the luminous realm beyond, now I saw the folly of calling myself a follower of the cult of Sauron in my lust for the secrets and tokens of his power. I was now alone with these vivid images, and I trembled to think of the ages through which these relics had kept a silent deserted vigil.

Suddenly there came another burst of that acute fear which had intermittently seized me ever since I first saw the terrible valley and the corpse of the tower of Barad-dur under a cold moon, and despite my exhaustion I found myself starting frantically to a sitting posture and gazing back along the black corridor toward the tunnels that rose to the outer world. My sensations were like those which had made me shun the ruins at night, and were as inexplicable as they were poignant. In another moment, however, I received a still greater shock in the form of a definite sound; the first which had broken the utter silence of these tomb-like depths. It was a deep, low moaning, as of a distant throng of condemned spirits, and came from the direction from which I had came. Its volume rapidly grew, till it soon reverberated frightfully through the low passage, and at the same time I became conscious of an increasing drought of cold air, likewise flowing down the tunnels from the ruins above. The touch of this air seemed to restore my balance, for I instantly recalled the sudden winds which had risen around the mouth of the abyss each sunrise, one of which had indeed revealed the hidden tunnels to me. I realized that sunrise must be near, so braced myself to resist the gale that was sweeping down to its cavern home as it had swept forth at times. My fear again waned low, since a natural phenomenon tends to dispel brooding over the unknown.

More and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night wind into the gulf of the inner earth. I dropped prone again and clutched vainly at the floor for fear of being swept bodily through the open gate into the phosphorescent abyss. Such fury I had not expected, and as I grew aware of an actual slipping of my form toward the abyss I was beset by a thousand new terrors of apprehension and imagination. The malignancy of the blast awakened incredible fancies, once more I compared myself shudderingly to the only human images in that frightful corridor, the men who were torn to pieces by the evil race, for in the fiendish clawing of the swirling currents there seemed to abide a vindictive rage all there own. I think I screamed frantically near the last, I was almost mad, but if I did so my cries were lost in the hell-born babel of the howling winds. I tried to crawl against the murderous invisible torrent, but I could not even hold my own as I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the unknown world below. Thoughts of my foolishness at thinking I could find Saurons Palantir, his seeing-stone, and secrets of power and the wealth they could bring, left me in my fight for survival. Looking over my shoulder while holding madly onto the door leading into the abyss, the sight witch greeted my eyes filled me with such shock and horror that thought crashed to a halt and all sanity fled.

Finally reason must have somewhat returned, for I found myself babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet carven on the remains of the Black Gate;
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Only the grim brooding ruins know what really took place, what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the dark I endured or what Abandon guided me back to life, where I must always remember and shiver in the night wind till death, or worse, claims me. Unnatural, cold, were the things, too far beyond the memories of any living man to be believed except in the silent, damnable small hours of the morning when one cannot sleep.

I have said that the fury of the rushing blast was infernal, and that its voices were hideous with the pent-up viciousness of desolate entities. Presently these voices, while still chaotic before me, seemed to my beating brain to take articulate form behind me; and down there in the grave of unnumbered dead, leagues below the dawn-lit world of men, I heard the ghastly cursing and snarling tongue of the Black Speech. Turning, I saw outlined against the luminous aether of the abyss that which could not believed, a nightmare of dread, half transparent shades of creatures from legends known to all men of the west, things no man, elf or dwarf might mistake, the tall and pale shades of the once great Nazgul.

Nine tall figures slowly climbed the stairs from the abyss below, not clothed in mantels of black as they were in legend, but wearing long gray robes, and in their unseen faces burned keen and merciless eyes, upon their heads were helms of silver, and in their pale hands swords of dark steel. More out of reflex then hope of defending myself I pulled my short sword from its scabbard, and had it instantly snatched from my finger as if struck by a hammer blow, vanishing into the depths below.

And as the wind began to die away, with all my strength I pulled myself back through the great door and into the corridor from whence I had came, and into the ghoul-lined darkness of the passage beyond. For behind me and in front of the creatures the great brazen door clanged shut with a deafening peal of metallic music whose reverberations swelled out to the distant world to hail the rising sun.

*********************************
If this is well received I plan to make this part of a longer story (or someone else can give it a try) about the Knights of Gondor trying to thwart the plans of the Cult of Sauron, some 1200 years into the 4th age, and some 200 years after this story.



Credits;
This story was adapted from a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, (1890-1937) titled "The Nameless City"� (originally published 1921) Today published as part of the compilation "The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft, Dreams of Terror and Death"� (Copyright 1995, by Arkham House Publishers, Inc.)
Place names are of course by Tolkien, and are copyrighted by the J. R. R. Tolkien Estate Ltd.
This story 'The Ruins of Barad-Dur�', was perpetrated by me, Ottis413, and edited by my ol' lady, Shell68.
Look here for the full text of The Nameless City ; http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thenamelesscity.htm
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