Blue Mountains Battle of Five Armies & The Third Age of Middle-Earth The current year for our Middle-Earth campaign is set during the year of 2946 of the Third Age. Inspired By J.R.R. Tolkien

The Blue Mountains or 'Ered Luin', also known as Ered Lindon, was a mountain range situated in the far west of Eriador. The Sindarin name for the mountains, Ered Luin, is translated as the words ered ('Mountains') and luin ('Blue').

During the Third Age
During the Third Age, its forests, besides that of Mirkwood, were the largest in Middle-earth. In the latter part of the Third Age, the Dwarves settled the Blue Mountains again when Thráin II and his son Thorin and the Dwarven survivors of the Sack of Erebor moved from Dunland and delved a prosperous settlement there. After the War of the Ring and the defeat of Sauron, Elves continued to travel west to Lindon through the gap in the mountains by way of the Gulf of Lune, where they eventually intended to set sail on the Straight Road to the Undying Lands of Aman.

Inhabitants
Dwarves
While Morgoth was imprisoned in Mandos, and Middle-earth still lay under starlight, the first Dwarves came west over the Blue Mountains that bordered Beleriand. The origins of these Dwarves are unclear, but they seem to have arisen from two of the Fathers of their race, placed beneath the Mountains by their maker Aulë. These two Fathers gave rise to two clans, each of which had made a great city in the eastern side of the Blue Mountains. In the Dwarf-tongue these cities were known as Gabilgathol and Tumunzahar, but history remembers them by their Elvish names: Belegost and Nogrod.

From their mountain-cities, the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains came down into Beleriand to trade with the Elves. They played a great part in the making of Thingol's halls at Menegroth, and later aided in the delving of Nargothrond beside Narog. In Nogrod during this period, the master craftsman Telchar forged weapons and armour that would be famed through Middle-earth's history, including Narsil, the sword that would be broken and reforged for Aragorn far in the future.

After Morgoth's return to Middle-earth, the Dwarves were loosely allied with the Elves in the Wars of Beleriand that followed. They fought in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, where Azaghâl of Belegost drove Glaurung from the field, but was himself slain. After the Nirnaeth, relations between the Elves and Dwarves cooled: Dwarves of Nogrod slew Thingol and stole the Nauglamír, and after this time enmity and mistrust grew between the two peoples.

At the end of the First Age, the War of Wrath caused the destruction of much of Beleriand and its neighbouring lands. The Dwarves of the Blue Mountains did not escape: Nogrod and Belegost were destroyed by the inrushing Sea, and their people fled eastwards. Many came to Khazad-dûm and joined with the Longbeards there, but the time of the first Dwarves of the Blue Mountains had come to the end.

As the millennia passed, the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm that had welcomed the refugees from Nogrod and Belegost were themselves driven from their home, and wandered widely in Middle-earth. More than six thousand years after the old citadels of the Dwarves had been lost, these wandering Dwarves of Durins' Folk, under King Thráin II, returned to the Ered Luin. The seat of their Kings only remained there for a generation - Thráin's son Thorin set out to recover the Lonely Mountain in the distant east - but for a time the hammers of the Dwarves rang again among the Blue Mountains, as they had in ancient days. So a much smaller group of Durin's folk lived in the Ered Luin, if any. However the Firebeards and Broadbeams continued to live there through the Fourth Age, and probably till the diminishing of the race of Dwarves (There were and always will be Dwarves on the eastern side of the Blue Mountains).

Elves
It is shown in several maps made of Middle-earth that vast ancient forests flanked both sides of the Blue Mountains, even after the gargantuan slaughter of Eriador's great forests by the men of Númenor and their incessant appetite for lumber. These forests, alongside the fertile coastal plain, would prove to be hotspots for Elven migration and inhabitation.

It is stated at the very beginning of The Hobbit that the High Elves lived within the vales and forests of the Blue Mountains, presumably sharing the land with the Dwarves. To this number would be added Sindar, Wood-elves, and maybe even a few Avari.

The influx of new Elven settlers soared after the end of the First Age who lived under the Ñoldor High King Gil-galad in the Second Age. After the fall of Gil-galad in the Third Age, the foot of the Blue Mountains became part of Lindon where Elves lived temporarily until they left for the Undying Lands, due to the Elves desiring to escape the woes and predicaments of Middle-earth.

Although the Blue Mountains were little described (owing to their location on the fringes of all of Tolkien's tales), we can assume a bit of their geology. The outer layers of the mountains seem to have been underlaid by metamorphic rocks formed in contact with numerous igneous intrusions. This environment is often necessary to produce veins of ore such as those mined by the Dwarves from the beginning of time. This environment produced the trove of Gold, Silver, Iron, Gems, and other materials that made the Dwarf kingdoms incredibly wealthy.

The Blue mountains were shorter than the Misty Mountains, and not as high; their altitude was probably around 3000-4000 meters, on average.