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Tharbad Bridge (Ruined)

Tharbad Bridge (Ruined)

Located on the river Gwatho, or the Greyflood if you ask the locals, the city of Tharbad was constructed as a major trade centre, located between the Kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. Great was the wealth that moved between through this port-city. Great trade fleets weighed down their anchors in the ford of Tharbad. Countless caravans crossed the mighty bridge that spanned between the two halves of the city, before departing on the well guarded Royal Road that lead to the North. Even from the South, goods and merchants entered the city, for while the river provided easier methods of transport, the land route was not neglected either.

But that was long ago, and the once glorious bridge is now nothing but a wrecked ruin. Few dare to cross it, for the footing is treacherous and more than one traveller has met his gruesome end after a long fall down. As Tharbad was abandoned in 2912, TA, decay slowly began to take hold of the city. The waystations fell in disrepair. The bridge no longer was maintained. Still it was used, if more sparingly now that the once proud garrison of the city no longer patrolled and protected the paths. Entirely abandoned it never was, for the route was too practical and the alternatives too few. Even when the bridge itself could no longer support caravans and only permitted small parties to pass through, it still saw use. The facilities that had once promoted trade still existed, if often buried under rubble, pillaged by bandits, raiders or the locals themselves, or reduced to rust by the hand of time itself.

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It now stands as a monument of ages past. Of splendour long gone. A memory of what the might of Arnor once held. And perhaps, to the ambitious, a relic to be restored...