Seregost is a place in Mordor that appears in several adaptations. It is Sindarin for "blood fortress", from sereg ("blood") + ost ("fortress").
Chronology and Creation
The name was originally created by cartographer and calligrapher Daniel Reeve while working on licensed map assets for the film trilogy and related merchandise.
Its first appearance is in the Maps of Middle-earth map set for Decipher's The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, where it appears as a minor label on the map of Mordor without further exposition.[1] Reeve subsequently used the Decipher map as a template when tasked with designing the expanded merchandise map for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.[2][3]
In further adaptations
The Lord of the Rings Online
In The Lord of the Rings Online: Mordor, Seregost appears as a fortress in the swamps of the Agarnaith region. In the game's narrative, it served as the primary stronghold of Lhaereth, a poison brewer who engineered the Great Plague.[4][5] Given the appropriateness of the name, it is possible that the developers coined the name independently from Reeve.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War
In Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Seregost is adapted as a snow-covered mountain region in Mordor, centred around the fortress Khargukor.[6] The developers likely followed the merchandise map, also adapting Nan Ungol.
Fan works
The fansite Thelandofshadow.com took on several of the names introduced by Reeve, and expanded on them. Seregost was described as follows:[7]
Seregost was a place of lava and red rocks. Named for the 'Blood Stone' flower of ancient tales, it was the eastern gate to Lilithlad in a gap in the Mithram Spur. It has been said that the Black Uruks of Barad-dúr came from this forsaken place, hiding there after the ruin of their Master in the Second Age, awaiting his return. Seregost was a place of Dark Sorcery and upon its molten foundations a great fortress stood that guarded the Eastern Road.
The fansite being more easily accessible than Decipher's sourcebooks, as well as being cited by Middle-earth Role Playing fans for the fan-made Mordor Gazetteer, likely caused it to be mistakenly thought of as the original source of Seregost and other new names.[8][9]
Gallery
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Seregost as it first appeared on the 2002 Decipher RPG map.
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The expanded 2003 merchandise map layout.
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References
- ↑ John Rateliff, The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game: Maps of Middle-earth (Decipher, 2002)
- ↑ . "The Lord of the Rings: Maps". Daniel Reeve, artist
- ↑ Daniel Reeve, personal correspondence (June 2026):
the Decipher maps pre-dated the ROTK merchandising map (Mordor). I created the set of maps for Decipher in 2002, and the ROTK merchandising map in 2003. So the Decipher Mordor map served as a kind of template when I later made the merchandising map of Mordor – at which time I expanded upon it, adding a lot more invented detail and names. […] I created the places and names myself.
- ↑ "Seregost". The Lord of the Rings Online Wiki
- ↑ "Lhaereth". The Lord of the Rings Online Wiki
- ↑ "Seregost". IGN
- ↑ "Seregost", archived from the original. Thelandofshadow.com
- ↑ "Where in Tolkien's writing does Seregost from?". Reddit
- ↑ "Seregost". The Tolkien Forum