North-end

A term used to describe the internal arrangement of the Dwarf-city of Khazad-dûm. At least in its eastern reaches, behind its Great Gates, the city was built around a series of vast halls carved into the Mountains of Moria, and of those halls, the ones that lay northward of the gates were described as being 'of the North-end'.

Of particular note to later history was the Twenty-first Hall of the North-end. When Balin led a company of Dwarves to reclaim Khazad-dûm in III 2989, he chose that hall as his main base of operations. Balin's attempt to reestablish the Dwarf-city ended in disaster: he was slain, and his body entombed in the Chamber of Mazarbul directly northward of the Twenty-first Hall. There it was found more than twenty years later by the Company of the Ring as they passed through the Twenty-first Hall of the North-end on their journey through Moria.¹

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The term 'North-end' was also used in a quite different context by Gollum, discussing the secret ways for travelling from the North-end to the South-end of the Dead Marshes. Since Gollum was the only one to know this path, it seems that the 'North-end' of the marshes was simply a name that he had devised for his own use, rather than a general geographic term.