The fate of the Palantíri became obscured as the sons of Fëanor wrought their havoc on Beleriand, but as each son in their turn was lost in the wickedness of the Kin-Slayings, their Palantir passed to Maedhros or Maglor, the two eldest sons. How seven of the stones came to Elros, son of Elwing and Ëarendil, keeper of the Silmaril, there was only one left on Middle-earth who knew the tale. There were many secrets Lord Elrond, twin brother of Elros, kept, even from those closest to him, even from Mithrandir and Lady Galadriel, secrets he did not feel were his to tell.
Elrond and Elros had been called back to their foster father’s home after Maedhros’s first attempt to persuade Maglor to demand the Silmaril from the victorious Valar after the War of Wrath, but they had been far away and had returned too late to prevent him from joining his brother in their final gambit. As they entered Maglor’s dwelling, hoping to find him there, they were greeted by Manwë’s herald, Eönwë, who related their woeful tale, but he had not sought them out to give them this unwelcome news alone.
The Elves were being bidden to return to Aman, although those who wished could choose to stay in what land remained from the wreckage of Beleriand. A new island, Númenor, was being raised in the ocean between Aman and the new coastline of Middle-earth and was to be given to those men who had fought so valiantly with the Elves and the Valar. As all those considered Half-Elven, like their parents before them, both Elrond and Elros were allowed to choose their fate: to be of Elven-kind and immortal; or of the race of men and granted the Gift of Men. Elros chose mortality, though he was given, as all his descendants, a far longer life span than ordinary men. He became the first King of Númenor, the first king of those who became known as the Dúnedain, a line which was unbroken unto Aragorn himself. Elrond chose to be of Elven kind, one of the last of the great princes of the Noldor on Middle-earth, and the most vigilant protector of his brother’s heirs.
They had both waited in vain for Maglor to return, hoping beyond hope, but they knew deep in their hearts he could not face the shame of his deeds. So they took with them his most prized possessions believing that one day they would be able to return them to their beloved foster father: his favourite lyre, which produced music of unequalled purity; and the Palantíri, which they found left in a room altogether, even that of Maedhros and his father Fëanor. Blessed as he was with the rare gift of foresight, Elrond kept only the lyre and the Master Stone of Fëanor for himself, insisting that the remaining seven went with Elros to Númenor.
However, over the centuries that followed as the heirs of Elros became arrogant and turned away from the Elves and the Valar, the value of the Palantíri became lost. Only the Lords of Andunië, Elros’s descendants through his great-granddaughter Silmariën, remained faithful to the Valar and the Elves, becoming the protectors of the stones. It was through the Palantíri that Elrond was able to warn Amandil, the last Lord of Andunië, of the visions he had seen of Númenor’s destruction and Amandil, father of Elendil ordered his people onto nine ships which survived the drowning of the island and destruction of the last King of Númenor, Ar-Pharazôn, who had dared to challenge the might of the Valar. Ar-Pharazôn, the Usurper, who forced his cousin Míriel the rightful heir of Númenor into marriage, had been so corrupted by Sauron, who had inveigled his way into the court in disguise, that he had turned to worship Morgoth with human sacrifice. On Sauron’s urging, Ar-Pharazôn had sealed the fate of Númenor when he set sail to attack the lands of Aman.
While Amandil’s fate remains unknown, Elendil and his ships carrying the Palantíri survived the roiling seas as Númenor drowned, killing the body of Sauron, although not his evil spirit. On reaching Middle-earth, Elendil became the High-King of the Two Kingdoms in Exile, Arnor in the north and Gondor in the south, and the Palantíri were set into towers across his realm to commune with his two sons, Isildur and Anarion. Three of the Palantíri were kept in the northern kingdom: the large stone of Maedhros, which only one of his strength and stature could have carried alone, was stored in the capital of Annúminas. The smallest but most versatile of the northern stones, that of Amras, was held in Amon Sûl or Weathertop as it was more commonly known. Celegorm’s stone was housed in the Tower Hills and eventually came into the care of Círdan in the Grey Havens, the wisest Elf on Middle-earth, who hid it from all except one.
Four were kept in Gondor. The least used and least known was housed in Orthanc, the great black tower of Isengard, which had been built specifically for this purpose. This was Amrod’s stone and it was ever seeking its twin in the North. One each there was for Minas Anor, Anarion’s city and for Minas Ithil, the city of Isildur. The Anor stone had belonged to Curufin, the Ithil stone to Caranthir, but it was the stone of Maglor, housed in the famous Dome of Stars in the Royal City of Osgiliath, the joint capital of the Kings of Arnor and Gondor, which was the first to be lost.
Maglor’s Palantir perished in the Kin-strife, one of the many self-inflicted disasters to fall upon Elendil’s heirs. Civil war had divided the Kingdom of Arnor into three lesser kingdoms, leaving them vulnerable to the resurgent evil stirring in the northern wastes of Angmar, but Gondor had remained strong through the centuries that followed. The great King Romendacil II, conqueror of the Easterlings, sought alliances with the Northmen of Rhovanion and left his son, Valacar, to live amongst them at the court of their King, Vidugavia, and it was there that the seeds of the Kin-Strife were sown. For Valacar fell in love with King Vidugavia’s daughter, Vidumavi and married her, mixing his noble Númenórean blood with that deemed lesser, which many in Gondor found intolerable, none more so than Valacar’s cousin, Castamir, who had a strong claim to the throne. Rebelling when Valacar’s son, Eldacar, inherited the throne of Gondor from his father, Castamir raged a vicious war against his kin.
Eldacar reigned from Osgiliath for only five years before the forces of Castamir came in overwhelming strength, bolstered by new allies from the south, to take the Kingdom from him. As the eastern side of the city fell swiftly, King Eldacar arraigned his defenders on the western side destroying all other bridge crossings between the city except one, believing the great crossing under the Dome of Stars to be secure as none could breach the mighty mithril gates to the building which housed the Osgiliath Palantir, the Master-Stone of Gondor.
But news came to his eldest son, Ornendil, that there was a traitor within the Guard of the Dome and he took a small group of his best captains to prevent the gates being opened to the enemy from within. They came too late, as the enemy had intended; Ornendil was captured, his men slain or imprisoned with him. With the Dome breached, Castamir’s men swarmed into the western side, cutting off Eldacar’s retreat. But there were still those who fought on within the Dome. Explosions were heard throughout the city, fierce cries of fury and hate, and eventually the great Dome of the Stars collapsed under the weight of the battle that had raged within it, plunging the Palantir of Osgiliath into the River Anduin below.
And thus was the first of the seven Palantíri lost.
With much of his majestic city destroyed, the fight to flee the death trap of his capital was desperate, but with no further reinforcements able to arrive from the east he succeeded in making his escape, albeit with huge loss. Word came to Eldacar that his son had been captured by the Astari, who had been seen aiding Castamir’s forces in the Dome. The Astari had a brutal reputation and he feared for his son’s life. A fear that was justified when he learned that the Grand Master of the Astari had demanded of Castamir that those he blamed for the loss of the Palantir paid a blood price for Osgiliath’s destruction. And so Ornendil and those of his men who were captured with him were executed most cruelly on Castamir’s orders.
The Astari of Sennebar, a new force in the south, a sect of secrets and dark magic, one which had taken over the abandoned Fortress of Sennebar, further south than Umbar, built on a rocky outcrop on an island close to the cliffs inland from the sea a few leagues up the estuary of Falkir. Through powerful sorcery the mysterious Grand Master had made the Fortress impenetrable and unconquerable. Nothing was known of the Astari other than they were feared by those in the south and east. Clandestine warriors, always hooded, they had established themselves a hundred years before and had appeared to keep themselves out of the affairs of the northern states of Gondor and Arnor, focusing their malign skills on influencing the lands far to the south and east, interested only in becoming rich on the back of the largest slave market in Middle-earth, which grew into a town on the land across from the Fortress a league downstream closer to the open sea. But that perception had been challenged by their support of Castamir.
When, after ten years of further struggle and with the help of his Rhovanion kin, Eldacar succeeded in casting Castamir the Usurper from his throne in battle, slaying his son’s murderer himself, it was to Umbar that Castamir’s sons fled by ship, to the protection of the Grand Master. All those of Númenórean blood who continued to oppose the rightful Kings of Gondor found refuge there, and they were styled the Black Númenóreans. Their own blood gradually became intermingled with that of lesser peoples and by the end of the Third Age, few remained who could claim to be pure Dúnedain, descendants of Númenor. Yet supported by Sennebar, Umbar remained ever a thorn in Gondor’s side as Castamir’s heirs continued to wage war on their distant cousins.
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For centuries after the Kin-strife, the three Kingdoms of Arnor limped on but one by one each was in their turn crushed by the forces of the Witch-king of Angmar who ruled the far northern wastelands. The last of the three kingdoms of Arnor to fall was that of Arthedain but not before the Kingdom of Gondor came close to defeat at the Disaster of the Morannon, in which King Ondoher of Gondor and all his male heirs fell. The fate of the Kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor balanced precariously on the issue of the fallen King’s successor. King Arvedui of Arthedain was the most rightful heir. His wife, Fíriel, was Ondoher’s only surviving child, and as Isildur’s heir, he had in his own right a good claim to reunite the houses of Elendil’s heirs, but this did not come to pass. The crown passed instead to the victorious general of the Southern Army, Ondoher’s distant cousin, a descendent of the warrior King Telumehtar of Gondor, Ëarnil, who avenged the Disaster of the Morannon. Thus the two kingdoms remained divided in face of a united threat.
When Arthedain was finally overrun, King Arvedui called to King Ëarnil of Gondor for aid. Although Ëarnil sent his son, Ëarnur, by ship with as large a force as he could muster to his northern kin, he could not save the King. Ignorant of Ëarnur’s imminent arrival, Arvedui disregarded the advice of those who lived on the shores of the Ice Bay of Forochel where he had fled and set sail for Gondor with two of the three Palantíri of Arnor, the great stone of Annúminas and that of Amon Sûl. Yet, the Witch-king’s power was far-reaching; he turned the waters of the Bay into crushing ice, splintering the ship and sinking it with no survivors. And so two more of the Seeing Stones were lost.
Too late though he may have been to save his distant kin, Ëarnur’s efforts were not in vain. His forces remained in the North and, together with a mighty host of the Elves of Lindon under Círdan and Rivendell under Glorfindel, the mightiest Elf still on Middle-earth, these men of Gondor overwhelmed the forces of Angmar. During the battle the Witch-king made a direct attack on Ëarnur, who had dared to challenge him. Although stout in his own heart, when Ëarnur faced his enemy, Ëarnur’s horse was unable to endure his darkness and shied away, leaving him open to the Witch-king’s mockery, mockery that was short-lived. The Witch-king himself could not withstand the elf lord Glorfindel as he galloped towards him and he, in his turn, quailed, fleeing the field of battle. Yet for having dared to challenge him, Ëarnur had forever earned the hatred of the Witch-king, a feeling that was reciprocated.
Some years later, after Ëarnur had become King of Gondor in his turn, the Witch-king and his fellow Ringwraiths, the nine Ringbearers of Men, besieged and captured Minas Ithil, putting all to the sword. And so, the Palantir of Minas Ithil, Caranthir’s stone, fell into the hands of the enemy and the beauty of the silver city and its Tower of the Moon was corrupted. Sauron took the Palantir for his own and held it in the Tower of Barad-dûr, deep within Mordor and revelled in this new power he could wield.
With the Ithil stone taken, Ëarnur wisely forbad the use of the Anor stone, kept in secret in the Citadel high above Minas Tirith, and it was not used again for centuries. But this did not save Ëarnur from himself. His pride could not forget the laughter of the Witch-king and in his pride, he succumbed to his enemy’s challenge to face him in single combat within the gates of the old Gondorian city of Minas Ithil, now renamed Minas Morgul, Tower of Sorcery. He was never to return, his fate unknown. His crown of Gondor lay unclaimed on his father’s tomb in the Houses of the Dead many centuries during which Gondor was ruled by the King’s Stewards, until Faramir, the new Prince of Ithilien, brought it forth for the coronation of Aragorn, King Elessar, High King of the Reunited Kingdoms.