A terminal MUD client from the shadows of Mordor
Written in Rust · Runs in your terminal · No X required
"Durthang (Sauron's castle) loomed dark and tall before them." — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Lore
Durthang is a fortress of Sauron in the south-western reaches of Mordor, set into the slopes of the Ephel Dúath — the Mountains of Shadow — overlooking the great plateau of Gorgoroth. It is one of three dark towers that guard the western approaches to Sauron's realm, and it looms in the background as Frodo and Sam make their desperate crossing toward Mount Doom.
Tolkien derived Durthang from his invented Black Speech or from the language of the Orcs, consistent with other Mordor place-names. The most widely accepted analysis breaks the word into two Sindarin-influenced roots common to the dark kingdoms:
Together: "Dark Iron" or "Gloomy Fortress of Iron" — an apt name for a Rust-based terminal client that holds firm, refuses to crash, and runs everywhere without a graphical interface.
Frodo and Sam pass beneath the fortress walls in The Return of the King (Book VI, Chapter 2: "The Land of Shadow"). It is described as a place of soldiers and Dark Riders, one of the garrison towers that Sauron maintained to prevent escape from Mordor — not the grand centrepiece of his realm, but a brooding, ever-watchful sentinel at the edge of shadow.
The choice of name for this MUD client is deliberate: like the fortress, Durthang the application stands watch — connecting you to the text-based worlds of the internet, reliably and without ceremony, from the comfort of your terminal.
Capabilities
Connect securely with system root certificates via rustls, or plain TCP — your choice.
Real-time ASCII minimap built from GMCP Room.Info or heuristic
Exits: parsing. Persisted per server.
Per-character command aliases and regex-based triggers with colour highlighting and auto-send, stored in TOML.
Passwords live in the OS keyring (Secret Service / macOS Keychain / Windows Credential Manager) — never in the config file.
256-colour and truecolour rendering via ratatui. Works in any modern terminal emulator.
A personal scratchpad attached to each character, saved automatically in the sidebar config.
Full Telnet IAC negotiation; ECHO, NAWS, and GMCP supported. Extensible for additional modules.
Statically linked. No runtime dependencies. Drop it in your PATH and go.
Rolling-average round-trip time shown in the status bar, updated from active probes and user commands.
Getting Started
Minimum Rust version: 1.85 (edition 2024).
On headless or minimal Linux installations you need a running Secret Service daemon for password storage:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Enter | Send input line |
| ↑ / ↓ | Input history |
| PgUp / PgDn | Scroll the output buffer |
| Ctrl+End | Jump to live view |
| F3 | Toggle right sidebar |
| F4 | Cycle sidebar focus |
| Ctrl+C | Enter copy mode |
| Ctrl+Q | Disconnect / quit |
Externe Links
Die vollständige Rust-Dokumentation aller öffentlichen Typen, Traits und Funktionen ist auf docs.rs verfügbar und wird bei jedem Release automatisch generiert.
docs.rs/durthang ↗Informationen zum Entwickler, seiner weiteren Projekte und Inhalte sind auf der persönlichen Homepage des Autorszu finden.
geisel-web.de ↗