The Desolation of the Anointed Plain

Before the rising of the Sun and the Moon, when the world was yet young and the shadow of Morgoth had not yet fully withered the northern reaches of Beleriand, the expanse known as Anfauglith was a land of verdant promise. It was then called Ard-galen, the Green Province, a vast and rolling grassland that stretched beneath the shadow of the Ered Engrin. There, the Noldor, newly returned from the Uttermost West, looked upon the horizon with hope, establishing their watch over the dark fortress of Angband. It was a place of light and wind, where the horses of the princes of the Eldar ran free, and the air was sweet with the scent of untainted earth.

The fate of this fair land was irrevocably sundered during the cataclysm of the Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame. As the rivers of fire poured forth from the iron mountains, the green grasses were consumed in a single night of terror. The earth was scorched and blackened, choked by the ash and soot that descended from the volcanic fury of Thangorodrim. Thus was the name transformed; the Green Province became Anfauglith, the Gasping Dust, a barren and featureless waste where no blade of grass could take root, and the very soil seemed to thirst for the blood of those who dared cross its expanse.

In the long years of the First Age, Anfauglith served as the grim stage for the final, desperate defiance of the Elves and the Edain. It was across this desolate floor that the host of the Union of Maedhros marched toward their doom in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. The dust of the plain rose to meet the feet of the warriors, obscuring the sun and muffling the cries of the fallen. It was here that the strength of the Noldor was broken, and the hope of Beleriand was scattered like the grey ash that carpeted the ground. The plain became a vast sepulcher, drinking the lifeblood of kings and commoners alike, marking the site where the light of the Elder Days was extinguished by the malice of the Enemy.

The significance of Anfauglith remains etched in the memory of the Wise as the ultimate monument to the ruin wrought by pride and the unrelenting cruelty of the Dark Lord. It was not merely a geographic expanse, but a testament to the transience of beauty in a world marred by strife. When the Valar finally descended to wage the War of Wrath, the earth itself was so rent and shattered by the conflict that the sea broke through the western defenses, and the plain of Anfauglith was swallowed by the encroaching tides. It vanished beneath the waves of the Great Sea, leaving behind only the echoes of lamentation and the bitter dust of a history that would never again be trodden by mortal or immortal feet.