In the second era, Middle-earth was the darkest and Nu was the most glorious.
Númenor, a kingdom founded by the three heroic families of Edain on the land given to them by the Valar. It rises from the sea, is beautiful and fertile, and has many names and titles in different languages: the Great Island, the Isle of Kings, the Land of the West, the Land of Gifts, and the Land of Stars.
A powerful and beautiful country was destroyed by its own greed and sin, and changed the shape of the world in one fell swoop.
Before the fall of Númenor, the world was flat; after the fall of Númenor, the world became round.
The path of humanity leads from here to loss.
As an important part of the connection between the setting of the world of Middle-earth and the history of Middle-earth, the stories and history of the Kingdom of Númenor in the Second Age have never entered the reader's field of vision in a complete narrative form. Instead, they are scattered in works such as "The Silmarillion", "Unfinished Legends", "The History of Middle-earth", "The Nature and Essence of Middle-earth", and "Tolkien's Letters".
Tolkien scholar Brian Sibley has compiled various published texts about the Second Age into a single narrative chronicle based on the timeline of the appendix to The Lord of the Rings, with the editor's introduction and comments. This allows readers to focus on the founding and fall of the island nation of Númenor, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the construction of Barad-dûr, and many other details.
