Isengard

Ominous and glorious at the same time. It had the potential to become the Soul Plane.

“I got the tower. I got the orcs. I got the robes and a wizard's staff. I got my Palantír. I'll cut down all the trees, try to talk to Sauron about sharing the wealth and all I need is the One Ring to accomplish all of this. I know Gandalf escaped his imprisonment from here, went off to Rivendell to tell Elrond everything and now he's heading east with some hobbits. What devilry is this? Still I have Gríma Wormtongue holding the king of Rohan hostage. What could go wrong?”

~ Saruman

Isengard is a watchtower where the wizard Saruman spies on anyone crossing the Gap of Rohan. It is the only place in Middle Earth to feature a gigantic turntable. Saruman was the only DJ in Isengard. But his record collection was pathetic. He rarely played any tunes, and when he did, it attracted all plant life to come around and perch somewhere just to listen to the calming sounds of the Mordor Bandits from Hell playing Where There's A Whip, There's A Way. Every animal and bird would also come and perch to listen to the music blaring out from Saruman's tower, which was named to sound as if he were thanking the orcs. Orcthank. As in thanks to the orcs. But cows loved the wild rhythms of the album and they, too, would perch and listen to it all day.

The story goes that Isengard was a patch of land with a large valley that overlooked the massive fields going into Rohan, and that a tower was carved out of the sides of the mountains that the valley narrowed into. But the entire area maintained its original title as Isengard due to the fact that Saruman, who was the property owner, couldn't use the name the Black Tower without risking copyright infringement by the Dark Lord. Saruman considered Sauron a neighbor a couple of countries over, and a military presence of greater value than the Rohirrim. Isengard had no military, just Saruman as its sole landlord. But that quickly changed when the wizard started cutting down trees to get to the roots in order to make an army of root-based orc-faced trolls to match that of Sauron's army.

During the Great War, War of the Worlds, and The War of the Ring Saruman sought to defeat the closer neighbor, Rohan. But in his haste to be a major douchebag, he had a militant force right next to Isengard; Fangorn Forest, which he should not have pissed off. A minor nation of its own, it was governed by extremely angry trees, Ents, and shrubbery. Fangorn took offense to Saruman using tree roots to create orcs for the sole purpose to attack Rohan, so they hunted Saruman's army down to Helm's Deep and squashed them. They came to Isengard to turn that into a lake front, and indicted Saruman for crimes against humanity. Isengard was annexed by Mordor until the nation was overthrown by hobbits, and was eventually given to Tom Bombadil and his wife Goldberry. They redecorated Isengard as a Christmas themed vacation spot and used the tower as a giant Christmas Tree. They swapped out Saruman's record collection with Christmas music that played on the giant turn table at least once a day, all year round. They were pretty much left alone and in no danger of enemy combatants seeking to take it over.

One Tower, Two Tower

Many Middle-Earthers weren't too familiar with Barad-dûr, which basically translated into Black Tower. But Isengard and more precisely Orcthanc was more well known. When anyone brought up the subject of the Two Towers, it was usually Time Bandits who made reference to them. The wizard Gandalf knew about the two towering inferno death traps, but it became more apparent when Pippin started telling everyone that there were, indeed, two damned towers. Not just one, but two sinister watch towers of doom. Pippin sourced the Palantir for his sudden knowledge of the situation.

Extinguishers obsolete after Ents flooded everything.

As there were no deep wells in which to throw rocks into, Pippin used the Palantir to tell his companions all about the Black Tower and its devices, how they were building an even bigger army, and using the volcano nearby for resources to build giant battering rams and catapults.

The deep well thing was fun and all, but the Palantir proved to be extremely addictive and super fun until Gandalf took it away. Pippin was back to square one. By the time Pippin arrived in the capitol city of Gondor, everyone knew about the two towers and the military there had already obtained blueprints of Sauron's black volcanic monstrosity. When Pippin met Denethor, he saw another opportunity to have a laugh or two. He got on Denethor's good side immediately. He sang him some songs, became a squire from the Shire (a position invented just for him), and served as his head host and greeter. He watched as Denethor lost his mind and tried to kill both himself and his son, Faramir. Pippin was a great practical joker, and summoning a Balrog was brilliant, but he never had ill intentions and never wanted anyone to die. He managed to save an unconscious Faramir from the flames Denethor had set to a pile of wood and the shattered bones of a messenger who worked as his Fortuneteller. Pippin could not save Denethor from his fate as he wasn't well done when he decided to jump out of the fire and into a sheer drop off. Just as he could not rescue Saruman from the Ents when he and Merry showed up riding an Ent and talking the tree herder into waging war against Isengard. Just as he could not save Gandalf from the Balrog due to his carelessness. But he did watch as all these events unfolded, having a small part in what caused them in the first place. To be fair, Pippin did inform everyone he could about there being two towers, instead of one. That alone is what made him a legend until that part of the story was omitted by Tolkien. Just as Tolkien left out the chapter about Pippin teasing the Balrog all the way through Moria. Detailing how he was trying to get the Balrog to torment Saruman by whispering in the echoes of dark chambers to Get the Wizard. It was to be payback for the snowstorm Saruman flung at him and his traveling companions. He had forgotten that Gandalf was a wizard, too. Mistaken identity can be a real bummer.

A Wizard of Many Colors

Before Saruman was overthrown, quite literally in the film adaptations, he captured Gandalf after fighting over a ring that neither of them possessed. After Gandalf escaped the clutches of the four-pronged rooftop, Saruman rode around for days on a Flying Cow wondering how anyone could get away from his tower and not be noticed. He figured Gandalf would see him coming from a mile away being dressed in blinding white wizard regalia.

Colorful Cursed Wizard, Rainbow of Doom.

The yards and yards of white linen and polyester was like waving a white flag wherever he went. And the tower was in black tones and dark, dark grays. So he made plans to change things and remodel the place. He ordered new clothes from Kmart and bought more albums from Tower Records.

The remodeling was going well with the clearing of trees and the addition of clanky and dangerous scaffolding, to make way for an army of orcs and things. Trolls and troglodytes. But he fancied himself in more colorful tones and ditched the white cloak and pointy hat and went with a lovely red velvet robe, a purple cloak accented with bright turquoise sequints, and a bright yellow hat. But in Isengard it was typical attire. One could dress up for Halloween any time of the year. It was always a place that could be the very destination for anyone wanting the haunted experience. The tower was the main attraction for just this sort of thing. The only problem was, Saruman would trap folks up on the roof and they could never get down once they were up there. They could jump, but they would die. Too many disturbing stories flowed out of Isengard. In time, travel agents would have parachutes on hand for anyone booking any tours.

The colorful wizard was the very visual of what it was like in Isengard, in his time. This was the leader of the new gay orc army heading to Rohan to blow shit up. They all bore the symbol of Saruman the White's hand print. Later he tried to explain that he accidentally put his hand in a tray of paint and was just using their helmets and faces to wipe it off. It just sounds wrong and gross.

The Two Colors of Towers in Off-White

At some point during the war, both Isengard and Barad-dûr got repainted by order of Middle Earth's ordinances. While Barad-dûr was painted in a bright creamy white gloss finish, Orcthanc got a nice ivory tone with sprinkles of fairy dust. Of course the Dark Lord and Saruman were extremely pissed and immediately tried to change them back to their original colors. For Saruman, he used a professional painter from the Dead Marshes to come and slime and slather the exterior with the endless supply or orc, men, and elf fossil fuels that he hauled around with him.

Welcome to what's left of Orcthanc!

For Barad-dûr, Sauron dismounted his fiery eyeball and eyed his tower from top to bottom, and side to side all around until his flaming, irritated eye charred the place back to its original color. Saruman was envious as Sauron got the job done quicker than he ever could. Isengard was closed until the tower was finished. It took a while. Sauron may have laughed at Isengard but as a rule, he had no sense of humor and had scouts looking for whoever it was that painted his tower in white. The culprit was never caught. Obsession overtook the brooding Dark Lord and he could never pinpoint the Ring's whereabouts as he now had to worry about all kinds of mischief. This would soon be resolved when his precious Ring was eventually chewed off of a finger and ended up deep fried to death in a volcano. A chain reaction of that event caused his tower to fall to pieces, and there was nothing left to paint, so that resolved itself, as well.

As the legends of Isengard grew into cautionary tales and urban legends of how living in a dark tower can contribute to mental illness due to the insane asylum vibe of the place, anyone visiting would expect the dark forests surroundings to be haunted. Not many would visit after its downfall, and any curious paranormal researcher booking any stays there, would have had to deal with not only a haunted towering asylum, but a forest that casually moved around on its own. Sometimes the Ents would show up just to make sure all the new saplings of trees taking root were going to turn out looking all menacing and scary in the night. For any tree that appeared normal, they decorated them with skeletons of the orcs they'd found conveniently scattered all over the grounds of Isengard's exit ramps. An information center was at one time available for tourists, but it was repeatedly moved due to mudslides from the still-unsettled grounds from the dam collapsing years prior. The information center was buried up to its roof within 50 miles of the zone where it originally stood, so they turned it into a parking space.

The Lord of the Rings