Isengard
Orthanc Tower & Grounds

I need to be honest about what happened here, because I have been avoiding this conversation with myself for quite some time.

Isengard used to be beautiful. The tower of Orthanc — obsidian black, 500 feet tall, indestructible — stood at the center of a ring of ancient gardens. Fruit trees. Herb gardens. Flowing streams. Songbirds. It was the most serene location in Middle-earth. I hosted garden parties. Gandalf came once and commented on my rosemary. "Excellent rosemary, Saruman," he said. That was the last nice thing he said to me.

Then I looked into the Palantir and Sauron showed me a PowerPoint about world domination and I thought, "Yes, I should pivot to industrial manufacturing." So I tore down every tree. Ripped up every garden. Dug pits hundreds of feet deep. Built furnaces. Bred 10,000 Uruk-hai in mud vats. Installed machinery so loud that you could hear it from Rohan.

The property value went from "priceless ancient wizard sanctuary" to "condemned industrial wasteland" in approximately six months. If I had listed it on Zillow before the renovations, I could have retired to the Undying Lands. Now it is not even worth the stone it is built from, because I ripped most of the stone out to forge weapons.

And then the TREES came. Not metaphorically. The actual trees. The Ents — living, walking, very angry trees — broke the dam, flooded the entire complex, and destroyed everything I had built. My orc army: drowned. My furnaces: extinguished. My underground breeding pits: swimming pools for fish. They left me trapped at the top of my own tower, standing in three feet of water, watching the wreckage of my ambition float past my window. Two stars. One for the tower, which is indestructible. One because I still have the Palantir and I use it to watch the Home & Garden channel from other realms.

Hoom. Hm. One... star. This review... will take... some time. I am not a hasty Ent. But I will say this: a wizard... should know better... than to chop down TREES. We are not... "resources." We are not... "building materials." We are ENTS. We have FEELINGS. Slow feelings, yes. But DEEP feelings.

When we saw... what Saruman had done... to the forest... the little Ents... the Entwives would have wept... if we could find any Entwives... which we cannot... that is a separate issue. One star. We flooded him. I do not regret it. Hoom.

One star. I visited Isengard to discuss the growing darkness in Middle-earth and Saruman imprisoned me on the roof of his tower. The roof. No food. No water. No bathroom. Just a 500-foot drop and a wizard who kept shouting up at me about "the power of industry."

The rosemary was exceptional in its day. I stand by that compliment. Everything else about this visit was unacceptable. I had to be rescued by a giant eagle, which is embarrassing for a wizard of my stature. One star. Also, Saruman, you had the finest garden in Middle-earth and you paved it. For ORCS. I will never forgive you for the rosemary.

One star. I am trapped in a tower with a wizard who spends all day watching home improvement shows through a magic ball and muttering about how he "should have kept the herb garden." YES, SARUMAN. YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT THE HERB GARDEN. I TOLD YOU THAT BEFORE YOU TORE IT UP TO BUILD AN ORC PIT. But did you listen to Wormtongue? No. Nobody ever listens to Wormtongue.

The pantry is almost empty. We are eating stale bread and old cheese. Saruman won't let me leave. He says he needs someone to talk to. I am not a companion. I am a prisoner with good listening skills.