“Glóin sighed. `Moria! Moria! Wonder of the Northern world! Too deep we delved there, and woke the nameless fear. Long have its vast mansions lain empty since the children of Durin fled.”
“‘Dark is the water of Kheled-zâram, and cold are the springs of Kibil-nâla, and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dûm in Elder Days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone.’ Galadriel looked upon Gimli, who sat glowering and sad, and she smiled. And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding…”
Moria is being planned out on freebuild at a 1:10 scale at /warp moriaplanning. @Soap887 and I have planned out the lore path and west end (which Soap will lead).
Once the west end is built, I will then open the hubs for application. The hub leads will plan out their own section in the 1:10 plan and then build it. This will mean Moria will not have a single set of leaders throughout, which will reduce workload.
All updates concerning the Moria project overall will be posted in this thread.
Forn msged me this morning, he had a thought about Moria but couldn’t post it on the forums himself with his internet there, so here we go:
So both Gandalf and Aragorn have been through Moria before - both of them going westward. That explains why neither of them knew the word to open the western doors.
However, their recollections fail them on two occasions. Firstly, and most significantly, at the crossroads. Gandalf spends a good six hours pondering the best way to take whilst the rest of the group sleeps. In the end he guesses, and takes the right hand passage because it goes upward.
This happens again at the other end of the long road in the 21st Hall. Gandalf is aware that they are in the “habitable parts” of Moria - probably just because they’re in a big hall - and has a sense that they are both above and to the north of the Second Hall. His reasoning for this second part is not explained. However he’s not sure what the best way to take down to the Second Hall is.
If the long and winding road really is the only east-west connection then this doesn’t make sense. You could imagine Gandalf getting lost in the western end before reaching the crossroads, or perhaps after leaving the 21st Hall. But a 20 mile long passage with no side passages leading off it would surely stick in the mind. Even if Gandalf forgot it, Aragorn would surely remember it. They spend at least a third of their total travelling time in Moria in that passage.
Therefore there must be other east-west connections in Moria.
I totally agree with the idea that there should be other roads connecting Moria east-west. I believe that when the kingdom was fully populated, the traffic of people and goods with the mining areas on the west end would have been quite sizable, and having a single narrow road connecting them doesn’t seem too realistic. Atm the first part of the road barely allows the passage of a large cart. So since we cannot turn the road taken by the fellowship into a highway, I think that a couple more passages connecting east-west really are necessary.
