Herumor was born, as all the firstborn of the Line of Elros are born, in the all-white Swan Room of the royal palace in Armenelos. His birth, like birth of his mother and the births of all his brothers and all his sons, is recorded in the ancient Scroll of Kings, which is held in a great tower of polished brass in the city of Nindamos. It is written in those brittle pages that the day of his birth fell precisely two thousand four hundred and eighty-four years after the first landing of the Edain on the shores of the Blessed Isle. It is recorded there also that he was born on the Yuletide, the very final day of the year, and that his father was Dorion the firstborn son of Zibraphel who was herself the eldest child of Tar-Telemmaitë the Ruling King.
As such, by a line of descent unbroken for two thousand years, he was a trueborn heir to the throne and scepter of Elros -- one of the Princes of the Star.
This too is written in the Scroll of Kings, as are all his names and his deeds.
Of the reign of Tar-Telemmaitë his grandfather, the scroll says little save that it was prosperous and fruitful. At the old king's direction, the coffers of the Númenóreans had swelled with riches from the far shores of Middle-Earth. During his life and after men called him the Silver Hand, for he gathered to himself great quantities of gold and gems and lastly silver, which are not naturally to be found in Númenor, and so in those days all were pulled in vast amounts from the mines of distant Umbar to quench his desire. Above all treasures of earth or sea the old king loved mithril, the truesilver, and amassed to himself a hoard to wake the envy of dragons.
So it was that the prince Herumor was born at the waxing of an age of indolence and splendor unimagined by the fathers of the Houses. Though the Númenóreans bore then and now fewer children than mortal men, by his time the House of Elros had nevertheless multiplied in great number, filling the long centuries of peace with countless sons and daughters who crowded the court of the old king. These latter-day princes were a fickle race, glad-handed and quick to smile, fond of laughter and fonder of song, who entertained themselves with feasts and hunts and feats of sport. No man ever wore a sword in the land of Númenor in all her long history, but in those days of the Silver Hand even the art of war and it's making were forgotten, or scorned, and held as the province of sell-swords and exiles, not the stuff or duty of princes. They drank bright wine and swam in silver pools and declaimed great songs of the heroes of old. If thought ever crossed their minds of the world beyond their shores, it was only as shadow crosses a midday sun — briefly and without consequence. Death they thought of even less, save that the old feasted and drank even more than the young, as if by imbibing in the excess of youth they might banish the end of life.
It was amid this splendor that the young prince arose and grew to manhood. He grew rapidly, lithe of limb and strong of arm, clear-eyed and sure of self, a victor in all feats of strength and skill of the body. He loved to scale the great cliffs in the north of the island, or to leap from their heights into the tossing waves and so test the might of his flesh against the naked sea. By his twenty-first year, he was famed as a hunter of sure arm, a swimmer unmatched, a prince among princes. By the time he entered his full adulthood at twenty-five, Herumor was held by all to be the finest of all the living heirs of Elros. That same year, Tar-Telemmaitë died in his sleep, to be succeeded by his daughter Zibraphel, who took the scepter under the name of Tar-Vanimeldë. Like most of the royal court in her time, she scorned the rude tedium of ruling, and busied herself instead with the holding of great balls and dances to which all the lords and ladies of the land were invited, the music of which rolled nightly across the hills.
But the full vigor of his youth had taken her son, as it takes all men of Númenor in their prime, and Herumor grew more and more restless. The luster of gold and the pleasures of those idle days could no longer hold him. Something had seized his heart, a mood which fouled his feasting and made tasteless the glories he had enjoyed in childhood. It was in these days, driven on by his restless spirit, that the prince first ascended the high steps of the Tower of the Stones, long disused, and without the knowledge of his grandmother the queen gained secret access to the ancient Palantiri.
The Palantir! The Seeing-Stones of the ancient elves they were, famed even then in song and story. Their light was kindled across the sea in Valinor, where they had been wrought by the greatest of the elf-smiths of Elder Days, made with old magic and clever craft, and they had been brought as gift to the first fathers of the Edain, to allow them to communicate with distant Valinor. They had sat long abandoned by the days of Tar-Vanimeldë, for the High Men in their splendor had no need for the witcheries of Elves. But their true power, long forgotten, was greater than any magic of men, for they allowed the user to cast his sight afar, and with great strength of will to see even things and days long past.
It was this true purpose which Herumor the Prince remembered, or discovered, or divined through long study. The study of the stones soon consumed him, and many a sleepless night he ascended with violent impulse to the Seeing-Chamber and the cobwebbed stones within. A peerless strength of will he had, and a mind to match any among the whole race of men, and so he learned after a long and slow effort the art of mastering the stones, and casting his vision across all the lands of Middle-Earth. At first, he merely looked with satisfaction upon that which his eyes had never seen: the great halls and high towers of Umbar and Pelargir, the cities of his people across the sea. Then, for amusement, he looked on the sallow and witch-haunted towers of the Elves, and the simple barbarisms of the Middle-Men. But with time, his eyes soon turned to other pursuits. Long years he spent then, casting his eyes east and west and north, across frozen waste and golden plain, over darkling forest and silver dale.
And as he watched with a wizard's eye the wide world, the restlessness in his heart kindled to new desire -- love, if such a thing might be called love. Much that he saw was strange and wondrous to him, but above all unfamiliar, and he -- who had never lived and looked upon any thing which was not his, or which he could not have if he wished -- desired them as few have desired any things before or since. The lust which was born in him then was kin perhaps to that silver-lust which had driven his forefather the old king, but greater and vaster then in thought and scale. As the Silver Hand had looked upon mithril and wished to hold it's beauty for always, now his heir by many generations looked upon Middle-Earth and dreamt of it's mastery.
And when at last he turned his all-seeing eye east, Herumor saw for the first time what no King of Men had ever before seen with his own living eyes: Mordor, the Dark Land itself. He beheld the dark mines yawning tall pillars of smoke underneath a red and bleeding sky and he saw the naked slaves toiling without rest in the deep trenches like old wounds in the world, and he watched unblinking the dull and endless marching of those fetid legions in their long rows moving always like monstrous ants in the shadows of the black cliffs. All these horrors and more he saw then, but the mightiest and worst of all came when he looked — first perhaps of all free and mortal men — toward the lonely spine of the Barad-Dur where it stands on the belly of the black Mount Doom. He saw then the face of the Wizard.
Many have opined in later years that he felt fear then.
There is no truth in this.
Herumor looked upon the eyes of Sauron, and he knew then his rival.
The year after, he abandoned the Blessed Isle. He was the first Prince of the Star to do so in seven generations. He gathered to himself those most like him, the most restless and hungry for glory of all the children of the West, young men with fire in their hearts and in their eyes. They hung on his words as those of a prophet, and they rallied to him in many numbers. Swords and garbs of war they had made, and they went openly armed as the High Men had not in many long years, and their voices grew fell and fey, and they spoke ceaselessly of war and glory, as boys speak of sport.
The Host of Herumor, as they would be called in later days, made their first landing at the city of Umbar. The men of that city rejoiced at the coming of their Prince, who in short order had won their hearts and minds. He came as a figure out of Elder Days, tall and unbending, easy to laugh, with an anger that passed as stormclouds pass, and men loved him as they loved their fathers. Here, it was said, was a true Prince of the elder line. Men fell to his banner as shadows fall to the sun. From Umbar they made their first great forays into the dominions of Mordor, and where they went the armies of the Enemy were scattered and put to the wind.
Long years those conquests stretched, the full lifetime of a lesser man and more, yet Herumor never returned to the Blessed Isle. He grew to his full strength as a warrior without equal, a battler and a slayer and a master of men, a captain without peer. The armies of the west marched under his banner, and victories unnumbered were laid to his name, so that the orcs came to fear him above all their enemies, and name him in their tongue with more terror than even their dark master. He walked in the wild lands that he had seen only through the stones, and led shining armies across rivers whose winding courses he had charted long years before. Wherever he went all the glory of Númenor was with him, even as the Isle herself lay unstirring.
In his 121st year, Tar-Vanimeldë the Queen died. Her son, his father, should have ascended the throne, but he was weak of will and ill-loved, and her husband, who had long run the kingdom in her stead, took the crown with the assent of the Ruling Council. So began the years of the Usurper.
Many urged Herumor then to return and fight for his father's crown, but he paid them no heed. He warred long in the dark continents beyond Harad, throwing up towers and cities which shone in the darkness of the age as stars in the night, and though Sauron sent many armies against them, they persevered and persisted. Only dim echoes of these glories returned to the Blessed Isle, but they won him many followers among the young. The restless spirit he had sparked had in the century since spread to all the young men of Númenor, and great boats left almost monthly to join the wars of the Prince. The hunger which had been born in the Tower of the Stone a hundred years past had never been sated, though many lands and peoples bowed to his banner, and filled the Prince's heart as a flame fills a hearth.
After twenty years of stolen rule, the Usurper passed in the night. He had forsaken many things which should not have been forsaken, and filled all the halls of power with his servants and his sons. Some among these dared to dream of continuing the ignominy which he had begun, and taking the scepter in further usurpation of the rightful line of Elros.
Two days later, the Host of Herumor landed at the haven of Romenna. How the Prince knew of the Usurper's passing before it occurred, how he and his armies timed their journey of many months to arrive before the corpse was even cold in the Halls of the Dead, and what terrible chance allowed their landing at the penultimate moment -- all are questions not asked aloud in the Blessed Isle.
The Prince of the Star had returned home after one hundred and twenty years, unseen and unsought for, and his enemies wept at his coming. The treacherous advisors were put to the sword, and their sons were exiled or thrown into the dungeons of Armenelos. His father was crowned as Tar-Alcarin, and the Usurper's name was struck from every record and list, forbidden even from speech.
But though Tar-Alcarin the King sat the throne in Armenelos, he was no less indolent and weak of will than he had been during the reign of the Usurper, and he gave way to his son as the shore to the tide. When he spoke, it was with his son's voice, and when his hand moved, it was his son's will that guided it. Through him, Herumor, ever farsighted, marshalled the resources of the whole kingdom of the Númenoreans to preserve and expand the gains he had made during his wars. The great feasts and flights of fancy were brought to an end, the mighty shipyards thrown into full production, and the ancient forges woken with new fire. Five sons Herumor fathered in this time, one after the other, born in the Swan Room as he himself had been, and they grew to full manhood as mirrors of their sire, strong of arm and fierce of spirit, and it was said in these days that the House of Elros began now to rouse itself as if from a long and dark sleep.
When Tar-Alcarin the King passed in his old age as his father the Usurper had passed before him, Herumor his son took up at long last the scepter and the crown that had for so long been his birthright. He was one hundred and ninety-seven years of age, a lord in the full sternness of his manhood, and the old hunger burned still in his heart. Every morning he still climbed the many steps to the high tower to gaze upon the dusted stones, and still his eyes burned with a cold and star-sharp hunger to see the world spread naked below him.
When his ruling name was writ in the elvish tongue in the Scroll of Kings, it was one chosen in honor of his great conquests of his youth, that had in a century's span given new life to the empire of the Númenoreans: Tar-Calmacil, the Shining Sword, warrior unmatched. But among those veterans who had marched by his side across distant deserts and far hills, who rallied to his name as moths to a flame, who loved him still and for always, he was Ar-Belzagar -- the Conqueror, so named by them in the tongue of the Men of the West.
Even now, his long hand stretches out across the world. Wherever rolls the sea or tide, he has declared, there also is Númenor. There shall be nowhere the sea sounds where there are not also the High Men. Yet the whole will and force of his terrible mind is bent more and more with every passing day, it is said, towards his oldest and bitterest enemy, the sole creature which might challenge his claim to mastery of all the world: the Wizard, Sauron of Mordor.
But the Eye in Mordor has not been idle, these long centuries. It knows it's enemy, has seen his gaze, felt his all-consuming will. It watches the glory unending of the Kings of Númenor, which seems only to grow with every passing day.
And it waits.
