Nurn

South of the ash-plateau of Gorgoroth the land of Mordor sloped down into a wide lowland around a dark inland lake, the Sea of Núrnen, whose waters were bitter and undrinkable. Streams from the surrounding mountains fed the sea, and their valleys held the only fertile ground in Mordor. Here Sauron kept the farms that supplied the Orcs and Men of his garrisons, for an army as large as his could not have lived on plunder from outside. The fields were worked by slaves, men and women taken from the Easterlings and Haradrim and from the lands Sauron's servants conquered, and their lot was misery. Sam, looking south from the Morgai, guessed the truth: that the desert of Gorgoroth could not feed such multitudes, and that somewhere in the south Mordor must have fields and slaves.

Nurn was open to the south-east, where roads ran out to Khand and the lands of the tributary Easterlings, so that supplies and levies could come in without passing the western gates.

Nurn was farmed under Sauron's lordship in both his occupations of Mordor, and by the time of the War of the Ring its slave-population was large. When the Dark Tower fell on March 25, 3019 the slaves were left without masters. King Elessar, making his settlement of the East and South, freed them all and gave them the lands around the Sea of Núrnen to hold as their own, so that the one part of Mordor fit to live in became a free country. What became of them in later ages the histories do not record.

Nurn lay in southern Mordor, below the plateau of Gorgoroth, with the Ephel Dúath curving around its western and southern edges and the open lands towards Khand and Rhûn on its east. The Sea of Núrnen filled its centre.