Black Númenóreans

Origins

As the Númenóreans grew proud and turned against the Ban of the Valar, they came to Middle-earth no longer as teachers but as lords. The King's Men, the party opposed to the Elves and the Valar, built harbours and fortresses far to the south of the old friendly havens, of which Umbar was the greatest. From these they taxed and ruled the lesser Men of the coasts. When Ar-Pharazôn took Sauron captive in S.A. 3262, it was among these colonies that the Dark Lord's teaching spread most easily, and after the Downfall of Númenor it was these settlers who survived, cut off from the drowned homeland and with no reason to love the Faithful exiles who had founded Gondor.

Servants of Sauron

The Silmarillion records that in the years after the Downfall, when Sauron returned to Mordor, many of the Númenóreans of the south had already fallen under his shadow. Two of them, Herumor and Fuinur, became powerful lords among the Haradrim. These Men, called Black Númenóreans because they had joined the darkness, were valued by Sauron for their Númenórean lore, stature and skill in war, and they served him as captains and sorcerers. It has often been supposed that some of the Nazgûl were of this stock, since three of the Nine are said to have been great lords of Númenórean race, though the texts do not name them.

The Black Númenóreans made the southern coasts hostile to Gondor for its whole history. Umbar remained their stronghold until Ciryaher of Gondor, afterward called Hyarmendacil, conquered it in T.A. 1050, and even then the Númenóreans of Umbar remembered that they were of the same race as their conquerors and hated them the more. After the Kin-strife of Gondor, the rebels of Castamir fled to Umbar in T.A. 1448 and mingled with its people, and the Corsairs of Umbar became the inheritors of the Black Númenórean tradition of enmity.

Dwindling

Unlike the Dúnedain of Gondor, the Black Númenóreans did not keep their blood apart. They intermarried with the Men of Harad and the coasts, and their long life and great stature dwindled quickly. By the later Third Age they were no longer a distinct people. What remained was a memory and a title held by a few servants of Mordor who traced descent from them, and who were taught in the dark lore of Sauron.

The Mouth of Sauron

The last of the Black Númenóreans to appear in the histories was the lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr, who came to parley with the Captains of the West at the Black Gate in March of T.A. 3019. He called himself the Mouth of Sauron, and it was said that he had entered Sauron's service when the Dark Tower was first rebuilt, that he had learned much sorcery, and that he had forgotten his own name. He is described as a renegade of Númenórean race who had come to love his master. His humiliation before Aragorn and the destruction of the Ring the same day ended the last Black Númenórean power.

Fate

With the fall of Sauron the Black Númenóreans passed out of history. Their descendants among the Haradrim and the Corsairs came in the Fourth Age under the peace of King Elessar, but no distinct people of that name survived.

In the Second Age the Black Númenóreans were true Númenóreans, tall, dark-haired and long-lived. Through intermarriage with the Men of the south their stature and span diminished, and by the end of the Third Age they were scarcely distinguishable from the peoples among whom they lived except in the dark lore and pride they inherited. The Mouth of Sauron is described as tall and lordly but with no name of his own left to him.

The Black Númenóreans preserved the Adûnaic speech, the seafaring and stonecraft of Númenor, and the arrogance of the King's Men, but they abandoned the reverence for Eru and the Valar that the Faithful kept. They worshipped Sauron or the Darkness he taught, practised sorcery, and served as the officers and sorcerers of his empire. Their hostility to Gondor was sharpened by the knowledge that Gondor's founders had been the Faithful whom the King's Men had once persecuted.

The Black Númenóreans were not a separate stock but a political and religious faction of the Númenóreans, the King's Men who settled the southern coasts of Middle-earth as conquerors and who after the Downfall gave themselves to Sauron.

Absorbed into the Haradrim and the Corsairs of Umbar, they ceased to exist as a people; their last notable member, the Mouth of Sauron, fled at the fall of Barad-dûr.