La Taverne des Hobbits
Le Cardolan comprend toutes les terres comprises entre les deux grands fleuves d'Eriador, le Baranduin et le Gwathló / Mitheithel, s'étendant vers l'En Eredoriath, la grande plaine centrale. La limite nord traditionnelle du Cardolan est la Men Rhrinen, la Grande Route Est. Bien que le climat y soit clément, seule une petite partie des terres est réputée être fertile. Le Cardolan prospère grâce au Gwathló, encore appelé Ramsir (S. "Route Fluviale"), qui se trouve être la voie de communications la plus facile entre l'Eriador et le reste des Terres du Milieu.
Le Cardolan est un royaume plongé dans l'agitation. Sa famille royale est morte dans les guerres contre l'Angmar deux cents ans auparavant, ne laissant que des princes dùnedain rivaux pour revendiquer le trône. Des parvenus, comme le roi dunéen de Saralainn et les villages rebelles de Feotar, ont pu établir leur indépendance dans le chaos qui suivit les guerres. La peste a ajouté un autre élément aux problèmes du Cardolan. Elle a déclenché une série de migrations, la plus importante étant l'intrusion d'une grande troupe de Trolls dans les plaines centrales du Minhiriath. Ainsi le royaume du Cardolan est en fait un ensemble de petits royaumes, chacun en conflit permanent avec les autres.
Principautés rivales.
Pellendur, Hir Tyrn Gorthad.
Eärnil, Régent de Dol Girithlin.
Finduilas III, Hirien Dol Calantir.
Hallas, Hir Dol Tinarë.
Imlach, Canotar de Tharbad.
Princes héréditaires, Canotar nommé, officiers mineurs nommés, Maîtres de guildes élus; tout le pays appartient en titre aux Princes, donné en fief à des petits exploitants.
48.000 Cardolains (sans compter la population de Saralainn ou des Cantons).
Chaque prince dirige environ 100 guerriers dans une suite personnelle et peut lever 200 à 800 hommes en 2 à 3 semaines. Le plus souvent, toutefois, les Seigneurs s'en remettent à des bandes mercenaires et aux tribus dunéennes de la région. Le Gondor et l'Arthedain entretiennent aussi des garnisons en Cardolan pour assurer la sécurité des voies de commerce.
Laine, textiles, commerce, mercenaires.
Le cardolan faisait jadis partie du grand Royaume d'Arnor. Après 861 du Troisième Âge, année de la division, il semblait promis à un brillant avenir. Des trois fragments de l'Arnor, le Cardolan avait le sol le plus fertile, le plus grand territoire, les plus grandes villes et les liens les plus étroits avec le Gondor et le passé nùmenòréen des Dùnedain. Malheureusement, la grande plaine d'Eriador agit comme une voie de communication pour tous les peuples en migration d'Endor occidental; les rois de Cardolan assistèrent à des siècles de lutte pour les ressources entre les Eriadoriens d'origine, les Dùnedain dirigeants et les tribus migrantes de Hobbits et de Dunéens.
Le Roi-Sorcier d'Angmar trouvait également tentantes les plaines fertiles du Cardolan; après avoir encouragé les conflits entre le royaume et ses voisins pendant des siècles, il l'envahit en 1409 du Troisième Âge. Son attaque précipita les défenseurs dans la fuite le long de la Grande Route de l'Est. Le Roi Ostoher tomba en défendant les Tyrn Gorthad et la mort de sa fille, sa seule héritière, quelques années plus tard apporta un long règne de troubles au Cardolan.
La guerre civile est désormais une circonstance régulière : les héritiers des grandes maisons nobles du Cardolan luttent pour le pouvoir. La force du royaume a beaucoup diminué, et les seigneurs mènent leurs guerres avec des intrigues et des petites bandes de mercenaires.
Le peuple du Cardolan ne désire qu'être oublié par ses suzerains et continuer à cultiver la terre. Bien que des vents rudes fouettent les hautes terres de l'Eriador - où l'élevage fournit l'essentiel des revenus - les basses terres sont connues pour leur fertilité. Grâce à un sol généreux et au climat le plus tempéré au nord des Montagnes Blanches, l'agricultre dans la vallée du Gwanthlò est beaucoup moins ardue dans dans d'autres régions. Cependant, une importante pénurie de population empêche le Cardolan de revenir à sa position de prééminence. Même avant la Peste, un brusque déclin démographique avait entamé le royaume, car de nombreux roturiers avaient fui vers la stabilité du Gondor ou de l'Arhtedain.
Les seigneurs du Cardolan intriguent les uns contre les autres; ils utilisent des forces aussi bien internes qu'extérieures, telles le Seigneur de Guerre et le Roi de Saralainn, contre leurs rivaux. L'Arthedain comme le Gondor souhaitent que la région soit stable ou au moins que la Vieille Route du Nord soit sûre. Le Gondor nomme le Canotar de Tharbad - un officier qui possède l'autorité en titre sur tout le Cardolan - dans l'espoir de contrôler la violence à Tharbad même. Cependant, les Canotars récents ont été débordés par la compétition entre les guildes de la ville qui se liguent fréquemment avec les Princes Dùnedain. Ainsi, le Canotar est devenu encore un autre joueur dans la lutte de puissance du Cardolan. Le Roi de Gondor voudrait amener le royaume sous son autorité directe, mais il n'a pas la force de réprimer les inévitables réactions violentes qui font désormais partie de la politique cardolaine.
Les problèmes du Cardolan ne se limitent pas à de minables rivalités politiques. Peu d'autres pays ont autant été pertubés par la Peste, et un nombre important de villages a été déserté dans son sillage. Pire, un flot de réfugiés du Pays de Dun et du Gondor occidental est venu à Tharbad, espérant commencer une nouvelle vie dans cette cité. Les Seigneurs de Cardolan doivent importer des tonnes de nourriture pour empêcher la population de mourir de faim. Un quartier de taudis de bonne taille atteste au nord-ouest de la ville de l'incapacité du Canotar à maîtriser la situation. Les troubles grandissent chaque jour parmi les pauvres de la cité, et le pouvoir des guildes augmente en proportion avec le niveau de mécontentement. Pour rendre les chises pires encore, une bande de Trolls - de grande taille et exceptionnellement bien organisée - conduite par un personnage connu seulement sous le nom de Seigneur de Guerre, s'est installée loin à l'intérieur du Cardolan pendant la Peste pour s'y établir de façon semble-t-il permanente.
Fédération de villages indépendants.
Bemakind, un général à la retraite qui a jadis uni les Cantons contre les armées de Dol Girithlin et Dol Tinarë.
Chacun des dix-sept Cantons élit ses propres officiers pour organiser les affaires quotidiennes. Le mandat ne dure généralement que quelques mois, et tous les hommes au-dessus de 12 ans peuvent voter. La terre est possédée à titre privé par chacun, mais chaque Canton possède collectivement les charrues et les autres outils de grande taille ou coûteux.
10.000 Cardolains
Une force permanente d'environ 500 Nordiques, des soldats professionnels, est déployée sur plusieurs fermes stratégiques. Si on leur laisse de l'ordre de six semaines, les villages peuvent lever une milice d'environ 4.000 hommes.
Laine, cuivre, céréales.
Après la mort du roi du Cardolan Ostoher sur les Hauts des Galgals, la puissante noblesse cardolaine revendiqua un pouvoir quasi absolu sur ses propres terres. Les mauvais traitements étaient courants, mais aucun plus flagrant ou violent que ceux de Gaertil le Mauvais, seigneur de Feotar et Canotar de tout le Cardolan.
The lands of Cardolan, like its people, are quite diverse. Within its borders one can find deep and ancient forests, rocky coasts, rolling hills arrayed like lines of massive, ruddy warriors, and some of the richest farmland in ail of Eriador. However, most of the landscape is dominated by slowly rolling, treeless grassland, a bleakness offset only by the teeming city of Tharbad, the Queen of the North. The Kingdom of Cardolan encompassed, when it was still one nation, ail of the lands between the Rivers Brandywine, Greyflood, and Hoarwell (ail known by their Elven names: Baranduin, Gwathlò, and Mitheithel) as far as the Great East Road as it passed south of Bree and Weathertop on its way into the Oiolad. This forms an area roughly six hundred miles long by one hundred and fifty across. The Iaur Men Formen (S/Q. "Old North Road") cuts down across Cardolan from Fornost, turning southeast to reach Tharbad. The Men Garan(S. "Redway") enters Cardolan at Sam Ford and joins the Old North Road at Metraith. Taking the road from sarn Ford to Tharbad one actually follows the edge of the Eriadorian upland, barely discernible here as it merges with the coastal hills and river flood plains. It divides Cardolan fairly neatly into two geographic zones: Minhiriath to the southwest and Mindornath (S. "Between the Oowns") to the northeast.
In the Eider Days, Cardolan was covered by the Taur Enyd, the primordial forest that then spread over all of southern Eriador and beyond. The Eriadorian coastal plain extended considerably farther to the south and west to become the southernmost extension of ancient Beleriand. When these lands sank beneath the ocean at the end of the Eider Days, all that was left of this mysterious, magic haunted region were the Rast Yom (S."Dark Cape") and its Eryn Yom (S. "Dark Wood"), the Taur Iaur (S."Old Forest") on the middle Baranduin, and the Jess enchanted woods that still spread over most of Minhiriath .The great forests of Minhiriath were destroyed during the Eriadorian Numenorean wars of the mid-Second Age, and the sub sequent erosion turned the land into much blacker silvan woodland and moors. The most fertile areas of Cardolan in later years were those that were regularly renewed by the annual flooding of its great rivers, and it is there that most of the population came to live.
On the whole the geography of Cardolan is dominated by the great river valleys on its borders. The Brandywine traces a lazy path down from Arthedain to the sea, forming much of the northwestern border of Cardolan. It gets its color, and hence its name, from the rich earth along its banks. The Baranduin is an old river, wide and slow; but it is a1so shallow, so there is little commerce on its waters and no major ports of note. The Mitheithel on Cardolan's eastern frontier is born in the snows and springs of the highlands of Rhudaur. A raging narrow torrent, it is only partially subdued when it is joined by the river Bruinen at the apex of the Angle in southern Rhudaur, where both rivers leave the highlands. It continues on down to the Nîn-in-Eilph (S. "Swan fleet Marshes"), just above Tharbad. There the Mitheithel join s the River Glanduin coming out of Eregion, giving birth to the Gwathlò.
The Mitheithel can be navigated with difficulty from Tharbad to the Angle, but it is virtually unfordable for its entire course. The Gwathlò, on the other hand, is a broad and slow river like the Baranduin except during the spring floods. It is deep and can be navigated by ocean-going ships as far as Tharbad. The winds on the Gwathlò are predominantly westerly, and the river is full of ever shifting mud-banks, so smaller ships and barges ply most of the trade. This trade is considerable, for the sea route to Gondor is much faster than the land route. Tt has made Tharbad the center of most of the mercantile traffic coming out of the North. The smaller port of Suduri, much closer to the sea, is the primary city of the Kingdom of Saralainn and the hub of local trade in southern Cardolan. The annual flooding on the Gwathl6 is much more serious than that of Cardolan's other rivers, especially along its northern bank. After a severe winter, Tharbad may become a virtual island for several weeks during the spring.
Minhiriath, the southwestern half of Cardolan, receives its name for its myriad streams and miner rivers that empty into the Baranduin, the Gwathlò, and the sea. Minhiriath can be further divided into four geographic districts: the Eryn Yom the central plain of Saralainn, the Girithlin highlands that parallel the south bank of the Baranduin to form the northern rim of the Saralainn, and the Gwathlò basin. The Eryn Yom covers the Rast Yom , a large peninsula lying to the south of the mouth of the Baranduin. The wood is an ancient forest; the trees themselves seem to share the malice of its aboriginal inhabitants, the Beffraen, both anachronistic survivors of the Eider Days. The Eryn Yom has remained relatively unexplored throughout the history of Arnor.
The central plain, Saralainn, is rolling and relatively featureless, save for its countless rivulets. Areas near streams are reasonably fertile, but most of the country is moorland, fit only for raising sheep. The name Saralainn is attributed in folklore to a particularly glib Hunnish bard who was promoting settlement in the area and named the land "exalted" as one might name an icy wasteland "green."
The highlands of Girithlin rise several hundred feet above Saralainn and the Baranduin valley in a series of gently rolling ridge lines, but aside from sharply sculpted erosion features that seem strangely reminiscent of desert landscapes, they are not distinguishable from the plains. The Gwathlò basin comprises the region that is subject to flooding by that river. It is very narrow nigh to the sea and irregularly spreads until it is almost eighty miles across near Tharbad. The floods are an inconvenience to the region's inhabitants, but the silt endows the floodplain with the richest farmlands in the North. The Gwathlò basin serves as the breadbasket of Eriador, though most of its surplus goes to feed Tharbad.
Mindornath is technically the highland portion of Cardolan. Its most populated region is nonetheless a part of the river valleys around which life in Cardolan has always centered. A substantial chunk of the Gwathlò basin extends upriver from Tharbad, where the Mitheithel has carved a narrow floodplain out of the southern edge of the Eriadorian upland. This arable stretch of valley, known to soldiers as the Marches or, more formally, as the Hoarwell Marches, extends up into Rhudaur; it is the traditional path of travel and warfare between the two countries.
Above the valley and on the edge of the upland, there is an extensive series of massive, south-facing, rocky bluffs, the Tyrn Hyarmen (S/Q. "South Downs"). The outer rim of the Eriadorian upland, the South Downs were never heavily populated and have been almost uninhabited since the fall of Rhudaur; beyond them eastern Cardolan merges into the Oiolad. Including the dry downs and hills around its edges, the Oiolad is more properly known as the Eredoriath (S. "Lone-lands"), and it was once ruled by a Cardolanian baron under that name. The western extension of the South Downs, beyond where the Old North Road runs through the Gap of Andrath towards Bree, are the Tyrn Hodhath (S. "Barrow-downs"), sacred to the Dunedain as the burial place of the Arnorian kings and their Adanic ancestors of the First Age. In the time of the Great Plague, the barrows were cursed and taken over by evil spirits summoned by the magic of Angmar. The shepherds and religious communes that once flourished here have almost ail fled.
Along the Baranduin just upriver from Sam Ford lies the hilly plateau of the Pinnath Ceren, the red hills that give Cardolan its name, an ancient mining center still a stronghold of Eriadorian independence. Upriver from the Pinnath Ceren, tucked into the northwest corner of Cardolan between the Barrow-downs, the Great East Road, and the Baranduin, is the Old Forest. Like the Eryn Vorn, this is a dark and dangerous place where the trees seem to remember and hate those who destroyed their once innumerable cousins. The home of the mysterious spirit known as Tom Bombadil lies within these woods. He is more commonly known as Urald to the Northmen of Cardolan, though he plays small part in their affairs. The coast of Cardolan around the mouth of the Baranduin is generally rocky, with a kind of rugged beauty recognized only by its inhabitants. There are few harbors of any sort, but the area is fairly well protected from storms, and its resources, primarily shellfish and small whales, are extensively utilized.
The coasts of Rast Yom, on the other hand, are the most treacherous known to Dunadan mariners. There are innumerable shoals and reefs here, often shrouded in thick banks of fog. The exposed northern and western shores are steep and offer few places to land at need. The southeastern shore is covered by reedy marshes and said to be inhabited by fouling unnatural creatures. The native Bcffraen often attack those who do manage to find shelter on these coasts.
In contrast, the shores of Saralainn are notable for their broad beaches and dunes. The natives have taken little interest though, perhaps because of the storms that strike the beaches roughly every decade, devastating these lowlying areas. Trade goes upriver to Suduri, for the most part. The city's location solves most of these problems that defeated the millennia-long Numenorean effort to construct a port at Lond Daer.
Cardolan abucs Arthedain on the north, the Eredoriath on the northeast, Rhudaur along the river corridors leading up into the Trollshaws, and Eregion and Enedhwaith on the southern banks of the Mitheithel and Gwachlò. Eregion is broken country like the fells of Rhudaur; it is troubled by Elvish "haunts" as well. Few Eriadorians go there, although both Men and Hobbits dwell close along the banks of the river. Enedhwaith, with only a narrow strip of flood plain on its side of the Gwathlò, is perpetually impoverished, the domain of Dunnish clansmen and Trolls, both of whom trouble the Cardolandrim who live along the shore or eat timber inland in the still extensive forests.
Cardolan has, overall, far more agriculture and far fewer other resources than its sister-realm of Arthedain. One redeeming feature is the set of amber beds found along the south bank of the Baranduin near its mouth. They have provided the ruling house of Girithlin with a steady income for centuries. The Girithlin highlands, where they fade into the Eriadorian upland along the Redway, include a major ridge line called the Pinnon Niphren (S. "White Ridge"), named for its many exposed marble faces. It is the best source of quality building stone in southern Eriador. A more important resource is found in the Pinnath Ceren (S."Red Ridges").Along with providing the paving stones for the Redway, the various ores that provide this color were extensively used for metals by the Northmen who inhabited the woods of Eriador before the return of the Numenoreans. It became a center of resistance to Numenorean colonization efforts because the Pinnath Ceren were the only source of a rare (and now mined out) alloy of tin and cobalt that could be used in the relatively primitive smelters of the Northmen to make Cardolan brass, a red metal chat could almost stand up to the high steel of Numenor.
Although the landscapes of Cardolan may seem mo notonous at rimes, the weather provides plenty of variety. Cardolan has a humid mid-latitude climate which is mild on the average, but which is subject to some of the most severe weather in ail of Endor. Minhiriath and Mindornath have distinguishable weather patterns, however. As a general mie, Mindornath runs about five degrees cooler. Both regions have cool. wet springs, summers that are usually dry and moderately hot, cool wet autumns, and cold winters.
The weather patterns arc dominated by warm, wet air coming off the ocean, and the cold, dry air of the Misty Mountains and Forochel. In the late spring and early summer these air masses arc prone to collide with often disastrous results. Most of the damage is done by severe thunderstorms, but these can very easily escalate into hail and tornadoes. The latter are most prevalent in central Cardolan, particularly during the month of Nòrui. Less frequent, but more devastating, are the hurricanes that spin out of the equatorial seas and strike the coasts. In the early fa.li of every third year, fierce gales hit the shores; about one storm per decade will wreak widespread havoc; and one per century will be a monster. Old folk might still speak, for instance, of the "Ireful Storm of 1081." The predominant normal wind direction in Cardolan is a strong westerly (wind out of the West) that tends to complicate navigation of the Gwathlò.
With its limited forest cover, temperature tends to increase sharply in Cardolan during the day and drop just as quickly at night. It is not unusual for the temperature to vary thirty-five degrees in a twenty-four hour period , especially during the summer and at higher elevations. The average temperature in Cardolan has been dropping very slightly over the past two centuries; this change has made more difficult the cask of Cardolan's farmers, who cannot easily afford to battle the late killer frosts in spring or to lose a few days off their growing season in the fall. The superstitious attribute this to the malice of the Witch-king of Angmar. Indeed this trend will worsen until his departure in T.A. 1975, and then gradually improve.
Au cours des Années Pestilentielles, le Seigneur de Guerre mena une armée d'Orques, de Chauves-Souris, de Wargs et de Trolls des Collines depuis le Rhudaur. Ils établirent une base dans un complexe de cavernes de gypse au sud de la partie centrale du Haut Plateau de Girithlin et malheureusement s'installèrent pour rester. Plusieurs villages proches paient un tribut au Seigneur de Guerre; il détient aussi plusieurs esclaves qui cultivent les terres près de Logeband (S. "Prison du Serpent"), le nouveau nom des cavernes venant du serpent blanc arboré sur le bouclier du Seigneur de Guerre. Plusieurs tentatives d'écraser son "Empire" ont été faites mais il s'est révélé être un général compétent et Logeband est approvisionnée pour soutenir un long siège.
Sites