Lûrmsakun

The easternmost land of the true Haradrim, Lurmsakun is blessed by great wealth and cursed by its place in the world, on the borders of the violent realms of the Variags and Chey. The people of Lurmsakun speak Haruze, a language shared by their brethren living in cities and farming villages as far west as the Sundering Sea in distant Harondor. The Haruze, as they are fond of reminding their neighbors, were a sophisticated trading race even before the "Poganin," primarily the Númenóreans and Variags, came to trouble them in the mid-Second Age. Oft-conquered and ravaged Lurmsakun still cities of immense beauty, surrounded by lush, irrigated fields of grain, melons, wine-grapes, and dates. Three river basins are the center of Lurmsakun's life and trade: The Rill-basin of the Ode Pezar, the Arysis of the River Rysis, and Siakan, the vale of the Ode Siak. The Ode Pezar runs westward to the Sundering Sea, eventually becoming the River Harnen, the contested frontier between Gondor and Umbar. The Rysis and the Siak flow from the snow-touched peaks of the Ered Harmal southwestward to vanish into the lifeless salt marshes of the Kref Masar, one of the more hellish of the wastelands of the Haradwaith. The river valleys of Lurmsakun form a great contrast with the deserts, consisting of lush belts of greenery supporting teeming hordes of peasants and shrewd traders and merchants. Arysis lies south of Sturlurtsa, royal seat of Khand, and sits squarely astride the caravan routs connecting western and central Endor. Its largest city, Maresh, is the greatest city of the Endorian interior in any era in which the Variags are not draining its wealth into their own lands. Siakan, naming itself the Jewel of Mountain and Sun, controls trade between southern and western Endor. Its lords and kings, however, are oft conquered by the more warlike Variags, Chy, Chey, and Ahar peoples living just beyond its frontiers.