This SimCity 4 city contains four locations on a medium-sized map. Dagorlad, the ancient Battle Plain upon which the hosts of Gilgalad and Elendil fought Sauron's forces outside the Black Gate in the second age, is now the Dead Marshes, while Udûn is the area enclosed by arms thrust out from the Mountains of Shadow and the Ash Mountains. Its only mention in the movies, as you may remember, was Gandalf saying to the Balrog, "The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn." I believe Udûn was important in some way to Morgoth, but I haven't read the Silmarillion yet. And the Emyl Muil are outside both of these areas, but their other half has its own small city file, so it is not listed in this one's title.

It is strongly recommended that you have either Rush Hour or SC4 Deluxe installed if you wish to view it in your game. To do so, download and extract the file, then move the city file (Dagorlad and Udûn.sc4) to ...\My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\Downloads, and move the rest of the files to ...\My Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins. Now run the game, select a blank medium-sized city slot, click "Import City," and select "Dagorlad and Udûn" from the Downloads directory.

Download Dagorlad and Udûn Version I

The Emyn Muil is a large area of barren stone hills, covered in mazelike rocks, described by Gimli in the FotR movie as being "razor-sharp," but appearing more like large lumps of foam in the next film. The second screenshot shows the crevice in the eastern cliff, which is where Sam and Frodo used their Elven rope to climb down (and shortly after met Gollum) in the book. I've added the gully with the stream, which is in the book, and an Orc-road, which may or may not be supposed to be there; at any rate there is no mention of a bridge across the gorge, but SC4 roads are built for cars, and cars don't ford streams very well.

Thousands of Men and Elves and Orcs[es] died here in a battle that wore on for many months, and more still died inside Mordor and were buried here. Though they rotted away long ago, Sauron uses evil sorcery to make it appear that they are still here, lying under the water. According to the Dead Marshes concept image gallery commentaries on Disk 3 of the TTT SEE, the movie features no Orcs because it was feared moviegoers would think there were live Orcs swimming around underwater trying to catch Frodo. My version features no bodies because there is no way I know to do that. It does feature the lights.

Originally built by the Numenoreans to keep evil inside Mordor, the Black Gate was long ago taken by the enemy, who in the movies operate it with trolls. How Men could operate it, no one knows. Bad huorns, perhaps.

According to The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare by Chris Smith, the wall is supposed to be 250 feet wide and 60 feet high, while the gates take up a total of 180 feet. Obviously, my version is either too narrow or too tall. I prefer to think of it as being too tall. ;)

Durthang was an old Orc-castle located at the point at which the Mountains of Shadow branced into two ranges. In the books, Frodo and Sam, in order to get to Mount Doom, must travel either north and then east, which would take them close to Durthang, or east and then north, as they do. I couldn't find any artists' impressions of it, so I just threw up a lump with a spike on the side and put a few stones on it.