[Formendacil]

“The might of Hyarmendacil no enemy dared to contest during the remainder of his long reign. He was king for one hundred and thirty-four years, the longest reign but one of all the Line of Anárion. In his days Gondor reached the summit of its power. The realm then extended north to Celebrant and the southern eaves of Mirkwood; west to the Greyflood; east to the inland Sea of Rhûn; south to the River Harnen, and thence along the coast to the peninsula and haven of Umbar.”
-Appendix A iv: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion

“Stirred up, as was afterwards seen, by enemies of Sauron, [the Wainriders] made a sudden assault upon Gondor, and King Narmacil II was slain in battle with them beyond Anduin in 1856. The people of eastern and southern Rhovanion were enslaved; and the frontiers of Gondor were for that time withdrawn to Anduin and the Emyn Muil. (At this time it is thought that Ringwraiths re-entered Mordor.)”
-Appendix A iv: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion

“1856 Gondor loses its eastern territories and Narmacil II falls in battle.”
-Appendix B: The Third Age

“Calimehtar, son of Narmacil II, helped by a revolt in Rhovanion, avenged his father wit a great victory over the Easterlings upon Dagorlad in 1899, and for a while peril was averted.”
- Appendix A iv: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion

The year is 1900 of the Third Age. A weakened Gondor under King Calimehtar has withdrawn beyond the Anduin, leaving its territories in Rhovanion to fend for itself until a day when the realm would again be able to exert its rule across the plains. Such a day would be long in coming.

But indeed, there were few people left in Rhovanion who yet claimed the King in Minas Anor as their lord and sovereign. Only a few of the Dúnedain of the South had ever settled beyond the Anduin and north of the Ered Lithui, and only a few of the non-Dúnedain of Gondor had ever settled there with them.

The lands of Rhovanion had, since the days of Narmacil I, before the Kinslaying, been mostly populated by the Northmen, men of Edainic descent, akin at a great distance to the Gondorians, and trusted by them. And indeed, since the days of Narmacil I, Rhovanion had been mostly left to their cares, though some few Dúnedain remained hither and thither among the plains.

But the invasion of the Wainriders in 1856 spelled the end for the Gondorian pretensions of ruling Rhovanion, for they swept right through it, killing Gondorian and Northman alike, until they were halted at last before the Emyn Muil. Those loyal to Gondor that remained in Rhovanion fled, died, or were enslaved.

In 1899, King Calimehtar drove the Easterlings out of Rhovanion for a while. But those who had fled to Gondor or to the emerging Northman kingdom of Dale were unwilling to return to lands they had once dwelt in, where protection from invasion was scarce to be found, and it was only a few people who returned from hiding and a few brave souls that returned from Gondor that attempted to resettle Rhovanion.

Among those few villages to which people returned, one is remembered to history as Dol-in-Gaurhoth- the Hill of Werewolves. It was a small village indeed, no more than twenty villagers in the year 1900. Guarded by wooden palisade, it sat on a small hill nestled in the mountainous range of hills that guarded the southeastern side of the inland Sea of Rhûn.

As for why it was called Dol-in-Gaurhoth, well, that is the story that you are about to hear….