Part One: Tolkien, the Red Book, and the Krimok Haimog

Many people have read the work of Tolkien based on the accounts of history given in the Red Book recorded by Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and edited by Samwise Gamgee. What follows is an account immediately following the events of the of the sixth book, beginning in the chapter entitled, “The Scouring of the Shire”. This work stands in contrast, however, with the historic information appearing only in the Appendixes of Tolkien’s work, (i.e. the notes about how everyone lives happily ever after following the close of the last chapter).

The account below is instead based on the Krimok Haimog, an account generally contemporary to the Red Book which was not used by Tolkien, but which provides a stark contrast to the history of the fourth age. For sake of conformity and continuity, many conflicting elements of the Krimok Haimog have been supplanted with their Red Book counterparts, i.e. the names of the king of Gondor and the land of Rohan, the locations of Moria and Fangorn Forest, and several minor details, all are used here in complete conformity to their representation in Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”.

Part Two: Morsul, The Dark Wind

The story begins just over one hundred years before the crowning of Aragorn. It would have been Arathorn, the father of Aragorn II, who may have heard of a group of wood elves lost to a large band of orcs where the Gladden issues from the Misty Mountains. Of those who were lost, a young elf maiden was taken alive and brought to the chieftain where she incomprehensibly offered her full submissions. While such a thing is unthinkable to some, this elvish maiden was joined with this chieftain and even bore a child. Some will be able to name the maiden, and could perhaps guess her motives, and some have even suggested that she was guided by some twisted foresight or prophecy, but she was young – and did not live to return to her people.

The elf maiden was given an orc name of Prakhat and was allowed to raise her son, Morsul, as an acknowledged son of the chieftain. Morsul grew quickly, more of an elf than an orc both physically and mentally, and something entirely different emotionally – too dark for an elf, and too silent for an orc. He was taller, quicker, and stronger than his peers – his body marking him as a heavy elf, with only his powerful jaws and goblin’s eyes to mark him as an orc. Morsul walked and fought among them like a wolf among dogs. Prakhat watched in cold appreciation as her young wolf grew. She taught him the importance of knowledge, skill, and patience, and it is thus that she wove steel into his soul.

Morsul was still young when the call came from Bolg, a great mustering of orcs was called to fight for the dwarf hoard of the dragon Smaug and Morsul’s clan was answering. Morsul was only fifteen years old when he fought in the Battle of Five Armies. It was his first time to encounter other elves – fierce and bloody, with dwarves and men. Morsul and a few others from his clan survived the defeat at the Lonely Mountain to return home with their battle scars and spoils.

When the following spring came, Morsul’s tribe migrated across Gladden Fields, through Southern Mirkwood for Dol Guldur. But elves have long patience, and a certain group of wood elves learned of the tribe’s movements – they attacked the clan, fired by an enduring lust for revenge and intent on freeing Morsul’s mother. Without hesitation Morsul saw what was happening, and lost not a moment in decision. He slaughtered his own father to aid his mother’s escape, and was immediately attacked by his full-orc brothers. Prakhat escaped to her kin with a torn spirit. She watched her son killing both orcs and elves, and she knew he was lost to her, marked for quick death, or worse - long life alone as an orc. Prakhat did not survive her escape – her party being cut down that night, but Morsul knew only that she had cleared the camp.

Young Morsul fled his clan, turning back West and hunting in the mountains until he located a nearby clan and carved his way in among them. Morsul lived there the next several years, growing to full size and taking a wife, as well as a place with the war leaders. He quickly earned their respect for his strategic prowness, grew powerful and skillful in combat. He both survived and prospered, but he found himself alone - his elven mind and darkened spirit rejected this world of unmitigated chaos. Without his mother’s contrasting spirit of stillness and sanity his inner stresses took on a volcanic nature. He became darker and more sullen, but given to sudden outbursts of bloody rage before which all fled.

Morsul had always held others in contempt, but now robbed of stillness and contrast, his violent disdain festered and grew until loathing contempt became a unmitigated hatred. Eventually he could no longer live as an orc, and could no longer endure their presence. Morsul struck out without mercy in a cold fury. He killed every orc in the clan, including his wife, and struck a vow with the earth. He vowed to live to destroy orc kind, and to feed the earth with their blood.

His first resolve took him back into Mirkwood to Dol Guldor and the clan where he was born. There were over 200 warriors, and as many again in their families. Morsul poisoned their water for three days, then when they were all sickened, he came among them like a thunderbolt, slaughtering the warrior leaders first, and then fighting a guerilla warfare game of continuous assassination by arrow, fire, poison dart, or silent knife, attacking always the weary or careless and disappearing again. It took only six days and nights to annihilate his home clan. He was 23.

After the destruction of both orc tribes, Morsul encountered the first period of solitude he had ever known. In the dark southern reaches of Mirkwood he dedicated many days and nights to searching his thoughts and waiting on spirits. He was unsatisfied with his victories, without direction, and found neither peace nor rest in his solitude. He thought of his mother, of the elvish people – the other half of his heritage. Morsul’s next journey was a personal quest to discover if he could find a place with elven kind. He first moved North through Mirkwood, but the elves he encountered only traded arrows with him and would not parley. Next, he moved into the Misty Mountains searching for elves of Rivendell. Eventually he encountered a pair of elves which allowed him into their camp. The three of them spoke throughout the long winter night. Naming himself, but never mentioning Prakhat, he asked vague and seemingly pointless questions about their way of life, about their warfare with the orcs, and about their dealings with men. They answered his questions, asking few of their own, but he was treated with pity and disdain, and left before daybreak knowing that there would never be a place for him among the elves.

The next day, Morsul declared himself neither orc or elf and renamed himself Ash Fauthuk, the hidden one. With no place in the world but his own, he would still strive to destroy the orcs. He became a lone renegade, an assassin of orc chieftains, and a destroyer of whole clans. He honed his tracking skills to near perfection and became ever more powerful and experienced in battle. By the time he was 30 he had already outstripped most orcs or men in his weapon skills and had destroyed a dozen orc tribes based in the Misty Mountains.

But Morsul was truly alone. By the time he reached the age of 40, he had abandoned all restraints, no longer hesitating to fight against men or elves – and no longer making any distinction between the races. He began to live for slaughter and battle, pursuing the taking of lives regardless of any reason, except that he still reserved his greatest contempt for orcs, the only race he could live among. It was about this time that Morsul began working as a mercenary - first with men, and then with dwarves and finally even with orcs - usually serving as a scout or assassin.

Part Three: The Legacy of Saruman

Before the great war of the ring, Saruman began mustering orcs and men at Isengard. Morsul was brought in as a scout. He held a captain’s rank and wages, but operated primarily as a courier among Saruman’s troops and the orcs of Mordor. It was here that Morsul first heard of the great ring which Mordor sought. It was when Gandalf first came and was imprisoned that Morsul heard Saruman’s claim of being “the ring maker”. It did not take Morsul long to understand that the ring which Mordor sought was on the white hand, the hand of many colors.

Morsul did not march on Helm’s Deep with the masses, but having carried messages and tokens to Minas Morgul, joined the forces which assaulted Gondor. From the defeat at Gondor, Morsul fled through Rohan and soon learned of the Ents and the overthrow of Isengard. Avoiding the ominous forest which had eaten Saruman’s armies, Morsul raced to a cache of gold and arms in the mountains near Edoras. The cache had been broken and looted, but while he was there he was astonished to see Saruman and Wormtounge come up to the cavern. Saruman’s wrath was unprecedented and so Morsul did not reveal himself, but instead he followed and watched.

So it was that Morsul came to discover other buried hoards of Saruman, and also how it was that he later watched from the near shadows as both Saruman and Wormtounge died violently in the Shire of the halflings. It was the same night that Morsul searched through the grave of his former master to recover the ring, the ring which Saruman made, the ring which Mordor had sought with wraiths and armies, the ring which neither Saruman or Mordor could now claim – the ring of Ash Fauthuk.

The ring was of a hard black metal set with a stone which looked like a black opal, with mountings matching the horns of Orthanc. Of the ring of Saruman this has been written;

Now the greatest treasure of Saruman was his ring, not truly of the magnitude of the rings of power which passed away in the third age, the ring was indeed a work of high skill and power in its own right. And if Ash Fauthuk never learned that this ring was not the same as the one which Sauron had sought and lost, neither did those who followed after learn that the ring of Ash Fauthuk was made by Saruman, indeed beside himself, all that knew of this ring died or left Middle Earth within the next few years.

It is known that Saruman used the power of his ring to create his Uruk Hai, and to command his armies. It is also known that Saruman used his ring in the corruptions of Theoden and Wormtounge, and as the source for his supernatural charisma.

The actual powers of any such ring would be based on the possessor, but would certainly include a dualistic spiritual awareness and generally act to strengthen the mind and the will of an individual.

It is now known that the character of this particular ring was such as to create physical reality drawn from the willpower of the possessor. It is thus, and not by breeding with men, that Saruman created the Uruk Hai from fresh born mountain orcs, and also it is thus that Ash Fauthuk attained his unnatural size and strength, as well as his incredible healing powers often observed in the very heat of battle. It is undisputed that the ring of Ash Fauthuk was the key to his mastery of the hoards with which he swept through Rohan and Gondor.