West Upper Vales

The green meadows of the West Upper Vales seem lush and inviting. Mountain-cold streams flow merrily through gently rolling countryside. Each step seems to open up new vistas, as though your eyes were the first to ever look upon this land, or you had somehow stepped back in time to when the world was young and Arda was Unmarred. But in the tongue of the Vales of Anduin, this land is named Sceadudene, the Vale of Shadow…
The northern border of this land is marked by the Langwell River. To the west, by the Misty Mountains, to the east Anduin, and to the south the river Rushdown that tumbles off the mountains over the Eagles’ Falls. Above the falls, the Rushdown receives the waters of another stream, sometimes called the Serpent River.
Most of the Vales consist of green valleys of heather and grass, marked by the occasional thicket. Still, the going is surprisingly hard in places, with many concealed holes, jagged stones, tangled roots and sudden drops to slow travellers.
The western hills are steep and virtually impassable; in places, sheer cliffs rise from the green land like great waves of stone, and seem about to crash down on the heads of travellers. The largest of these cliffs, Fram’s Wall, runs for more than five miles without any breaks, and is said to be unscalable.
The southern folds of the land, along the Rushdown, are thickly wooded with grey pine forests that stretch from the Anduin into the foothills of the mountains. The southern forests are called the Wyrmholt on certain old maps, although they are usually called the Rushdown Woods in the Common Tongue.
This is a wild, trackless land. Outside the settled region in the northeast, there are no settlements or paths in this area. This is the primordial wild, as untamed and dangerous as it was at the dawn of time.

Wildelife

A traveller in the West Upper Vales can expect to see traces of animals such as wild sheep and goats, foxes and wolves. Deer and boars may be found in the wooded regions, with the mountain slopes being home to bears. At night, swarms of bats emerge to hunt insects over the streams.
Wolves and Wargs are regrettably common in this region. Huge packs come down out of the north to hunt prey, on four legs or two. A dangerous breed of great lizards hides in the forests and hills along the Rushdown River. Ill-tempered and aggressive, these creatures are known by the Elves as Sarnlug, or Basilisks; the Elves claim that the Enemy bred these monsters long ago and unleashed them in the mountains to impede the Elves’ journeys to the West. Legends of the Beornings say that a Basilisk can kill just by gazing at its victims — a rumour that no hunter can confirm or deny.

Location under

Vales of Anduin