Rhunquest: The Mysterious East of Middle-Earth

 "Wide uncharted lands, nameless plains, and forests explored". This is the description we get of Middle-Earth's mysterious east, when Frodo looks that way from the Seat of Seeing at the end of FOTR.

The East and South of Middle-Earth are some of the most mysterious and least-developed of Tolkien's world, but we've had bits and pieces trickle in, and with the recent publication of The Nature of Middle-Earth, we've gotten some new information that allows us to make some inferences.

While it is interesting for comparison, Tolkien's earlier works on the world, the Ambarkanta, were developed prior to LOTR and it is clear there are a number of incompatibilities, so we'll put that aside for now.

The Near East isn't so mysterious; we have the Sea of Rhun near the edge of the map, with its highlands to the southwest and forests to the northeast; at one point, Gondor's armies under Romendacil destroyed Easterling camps and settlements to the east of the sea.  

The Silmarillion gave us a number of locations in the far east, at indeterminate locations; the Inland Sea of Helcar, from where the elves first appeared on its eastern shores, and Orocarni, the Red Mountains, that ran north-south immediately to the east of the sea.  In the far east, laid Hildorien, the birthplace of mankind.   While later sources did not explicitly place it upon the eastern shores of Middle-Earth, that the post-LOTR text mentions humanity spreading in all directions from it except east implies this was still true.  

During the course of the writing of The History of Middle-Earth, Christopher Tolkien once speculated that the Sea of Rhun was the 'vastly shrunken' remnant of the Sea of Helcar; however, the short piece "Cirdan" in The Peoples of Middle-Earth indicated that the Sea of Rhun actually existed during the First Age as a separate located encountered on the journey west from the Sea of Helcar.

The Nature of Middle-Earth finally cleared up the geography.  An essay "The March of the Quendi" has Tolkien making some calculations - Cuivienen, the birthplace of the elves, was east/southeast of the Sea of Rhun; and with the Sea of Rhun about 1800 miles from the coast of Beleriand, Cuivienen was 2000 miles.  This would place the Sea of Helcar just off the map to the east; additionally, we have the Orocarni - the Red Mountains - immediately to the east of that!

Can we go a bit further here?  Well, the essay "Of Dwarves and Men" reveals the names of the seven houses of the dwarves, and that their were four 'birthplaces' of the dwarves, all with two houses (except the House of Durin, aka the Longbeards); a place in the Blue Mountains, and Mount Gundabad.  The other two are said to be at distances as great or greater than the distance between the first two.  I think we can agree that the nearest of these off the edge of the map to the east would almost have to be in the Red Mountains.  This would mean there was likely a third major north-south mountain range a distance to the east of that.

Lastly, we know from ROTK that there was a great road eastward from Mordor from which treasures and supplies flowed from 'tributary states' in the east.  Likely the road began within the bounds of Mordor itself, heading from the land of Nurn.

Beyond this, it is hard to say.  However, there is one small tidbit from The Hobbit of interest - Bilbo referring a legend of the hobbits of the 'were-worms of the Last Desert' located 'East of East'.  For all that the hobbits abandoned their lore of the past pre-Shire, they had many echoes throughout their mythology; Bilbo's own father was remembered by Bilbo as saying 'Every worm has its weak spot', an obvious dragon reference!  Since hobbits are simply an offshoot of humanity, there might be something to their legends, having to cross a wasteland at the start of their journey west; that originally Tolkien called it by the real-world 'Gobi Desert' might be a clue to its location.

Next, let's talk about the people of Rhun:

The people of the far east are often said to be various tribes that war with each other; their usage of wagons and horses indicate the vastness of the 'nameless plains' in the far east.  They are said to be tribes that had been corrupted by Morgoth of old - presumably whom the Three Houses had fled in the First Age, and Sauron recruited from them, especially during the period after the destruction of Barad-Dur when he fled into the east with the Ringwraiths.

One of the more fascinated bits of information from The Nature of Middle-Earth indicated that the orks of the far east were a different breed, stronger, and had preyed on men 'both good and bad'.  They were not under the control of Sauron, and represented a thorn in his side while assembling his armies during the Second Age.

There were four houses of dwarves in the east; Tolkien indicated that Men had encountered 'evil' dwarves, and speculated that the dwarves of the far east and maybe even some of the nearer houses had fallen under the Shadow of Morgoth.  However, much like the eastern orks, they likely were not under Sauron's control, or at least not as much as he would like; certainly they came to join the Longbeards in their war against the orks.  It is interesting to note that Sauron managed to retrieve two other of the Seven Rings besides the Ring of the Longbeards, but also that the other four were destroyed by dragons.  Did he use the other two rings to gain the allegiance of the far dwarves?  They certainly did not appear in his armies in the Third Age, but it is heavily implied that they did in the War of the Last Alliance (where it was mentioned that all of the kinds of people of the world were split on either side except the elves).

The Blue Wizards were sent to the far east; Tolkien lamented that they might have ended failing akin to Saruman in creating 'magical cults' that continued into the Fourth Age.  Did they still rule from castles or towers there, or had they been eliminated by Sauron with only their followers remaining?

And the last bit of information; Tolkien once speculated in a letter the possibility that some of the entwives did, in fact, still exist in the east, possibly enslaved in order to provide agricultural knowledge and expertise to the people there, and that they had become a bit more anarchic and rebellious as a result.