Orrostar

The East-cape

The Orrostar was the eastern promontory of Númenor, the arm of the star that pointed back toward Middle-earth. It was a cooler country than the southern regions, for the wind came in off the eastern sea; but highlands along its north-eastern edge sheltered the inner parts, and there the ground was good.

The grain-lands

Corn was the wealth of the Orrostar. Its inland fields, above all toward the borders of Arandor and the Mittalmar, grew much of the grain that fed the island, and the region was a country of farms, barns and granaries rather than of harbours or forests. The great haven of Rómenna lay just to the west of it, at the long firth that ran up toward Armenelos, so that the harvest of the east-cape had a short road to both the capital and the ships. What is known of the region's climate and its shelter comes wholly from the Description of the Island of Númenor in Unfinished Tales.

The eastern quarter

The importance of the Orrostar to the realm was quiet and constant: it fed the Kingsland. As Númenor grew and its fleets multiplied, the grain of the east victualled them, and the road between the east-cape and Rómenna was among the busiest on the island.

The region's other significance came at the very end. Rómenna on its western border was the haven to which Ar-Gimilzôr removed the Faithful out of the west, so that many of the Elf-friends of the last centuries lived in or near the eastern lands, watched by the King's Men. It was from that coast that Amandil set out west alone, and there that his son Elendil gathered the nine ships in which the survivors of Númenor escaped, laden with the heirlooms of Andúnië and a seedling of the White Tree. When the Great Armament sailed and the world was changed, the fields and granaries of the Orrostar were drowned with the rest of the island in S.A. 3319.

The Orrostar formed the eastern arm of the star-shaped island, between the Forostar to the north-west and the Hyarrostar to the south. Its outer parts were cool and wind-swept, but a belt of higher ground on the north-east sheltered the interior, which sloped west toward Arandor and the Mittalmar and carried the island's chief grain-fields. The Bay and firth of Rómenna lay on its western flank.