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Flipping around my LOTR DVDs, I'm wondering: Why is it the fresh Orcs are pulled out of the ground? Where do they come from and how did they get there?

Robert Walper wrote:Flipping around my LOTR DVDs, I'm wondering: Why is it the fresh Orcs are pulled out of the ground? Where do they come from and how did they get there?

Orcs are fungi. Maybe they grow underground :P
Seriously, I have no clue. Maybe they were buried because they need the heat/humidity/darkness/whatever for maturing?

That's their version of a Bath.

Although Bats version seems to make slightly more sense.

that's only according to warhammer where they're plants. They're seeds that float around, find dark dank places, sprout, grow a little orcy boy or girl and then the magical orcy child farmer yanks them up by their topknot to go fight for the horde and kill da 'ummies.

The Orcs you see coming out of the ground are Uruk Hai, a melding of Orcs(half Troll half Elves) and Humans.
So its some weird alchemy thing. Tortoise probebly knows more.

Ace Pace wrote:The Orcs you see coming out of the ground are Uruk Hai, a melding of Orcs(half Troll half Elves) and Humans.So its some weird alchemy thing.

Ra told me that Saruman created Uruk Hai by crossbreeding Orcs and Men. How *exactly* Saruman did it still escapes me, and Ra claimed he does not know about the details either. However, I could come up with some hypothetical explanations if you don't mind. :P

That was what Gandalf said in TTT. He said something to the effect of "Saruman has been crossing Orcs with 'goblin' Men."
- Ra

Ra wrote:That was what Gandalf said in TTT. He said something to the effect of "Saruman has been crossing Orcs with 'goblin' Men."
- Ra

Wait, was it Goblins or Humans?

Either way, Saruman is one sick puppy... Oh, wait. Look who's talking

It was Men, but the "goblin" part makes no damned sense. After all, an Orc and a Goblin are the same thing.
- Ra

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:Ra told me that Saruman created Uruk Hai by crossbreeding Orcs and Men. How *exactly* Saruman did it still escapes me, and Ra claimed he does not know about the details either. However, I could come up with some hypothetical explanations if you don't mind.

Careful KAN. My question has not yet been answered, and I still await one. Thus, I shall be watching this thread carefully. Don't make me flaunt my SM powers...

I fail to see the orc/men crossbreeding problem. I know KAN is going to protest but 'men' in this context doesn't refer to males but humans.
Thusly, the terms you're looking for are
a) rape, and
b) really strange sexual preferences (which brings us around to KAN aggain).
Given that Saruman didn't spend decades coming up with those dudes one may assume that some magigenetical engineering was involved, but the crossbreeding as such can be explained by plain old biology.

1) In the book, Uruk-hai are uber orcs, not half orcs. They have human traits in the sense they are taller, smarter, and can tolerate sunlight. Half orcs are actual crossbreeds and are skipped over in the movie but used as spies and thugs in the books.

2) Orc reproduction is deliberately murky. Spawning pits are alluded to and the scenes in the movies are reasonable interpretations of this.

3) Reproduction is something Tolkien really didn't cover. It happens, no details are really provided for anyone or anything. The observant will note that he has few female characters and most of them have only a brief appearance and are fairly two dimensional.

Half-orcs are indeed seperate from Uruk-Hai. I beleive the original line is 'Breeding Orcs with Gondor men..' which may imply some method of introducing Numenorian blood into the spawning pits.

Perhaps we are looking at the magical verison of a artifical womb in the case of LOTR Urak Hai?

One should remember that Orcs in LOTRs are the desentences of elves that were captured, broken and twisted into a new form and race. We have seen that elves can breed secuessfully with elves, and that the cross breeds (Elrond amoung them) do carry postive traits from both parents.

Perhaps the Urak Hai are an attempt at creating something akin to Elrond, who has been an able commander and leader for the elves and men alike.

Additional thought that came out in conservation with Nitram, the pits may serve several functions. In addition to pumping out troops quickly and ensuring a quick maturation rate, they may also serve to ensure that orcs do not develop family bonds via attachments to mates or offspring. This would keep them has savage and brutal has indocration could make them without any reason to question it.

That's fairly reasonable speculation.

But still doesn't explain the goblins of the misty mountains.

frigidmagi wrote:But still doesn't explain the goblins of the misty mountains.

What needs explaining about them?

They dwell free of domation by either Mordor or Saruman. Hell one goblin is refered to has the son of the great goblin slain by Gandalf. So it appears that the goblins have formed some type of family ties and are still savage, brutal xenophobic slavers and murders.

Orcs are an old race (as I am sure you know). Sauron is rebuilding his power and the orcs of the Misty Mountains are a long way from his power and are free. They are also a respectable distance from Isengard and Saruman is only a dark lord wannabee.

Yes, they are nasty, vicious, and cruel. The true horror is that they have been so monstrously twisted that they are unredemable as a race. Aragorn spares all the men who fought in Sauron's armies and comes to a just peace with the kingdoms of the South and East. The orcs and trolls are harried and killed.

Hrm... Anyone know how long the goblins were free?

Well, they've been there for centuries. Long established by the time of The Hobbit.

Probably from one of Sauron or Melkor's defeats.

Well if orcs inherented elvish immortality it could be the influence of the ones who did live under Saron's control...

No, its the whole race. Return of the King makes this clear.

And they were bred by Melkor.

Orcs. Well. The first thing to note is that Tolkien never made his mind up entirely on orcs. Their origins are shrouded in mystery to the elves, and consequently the other races: "For who has endured the dread counsels of Melkor?"

Some things that are known about the orcs.

1- They were not originally made by Melkor, but simply corrupted.
2- They often seem to have free will, after a fashion, but when under the influence of Dark Lords, operate almost like ants. The same is true of humans and other creatures in the service of the Dark Lords,
3- Melkor may have designed the orc concept, but the excecution was mostly Sauron's. Melkor did not have the patience or mindset for such a project.

There are numerous contradictory theories on the origin of orcs, and in all honesty, the idea that the Wise of Eressëa were right in their morbid fears of Orcs coming from Elves, seems to be one of the least favourable, though not impossible interpretations.

Some of the various theories Tolkien presented, many of which can be assumed to exist simultaneously, (for there are many breeds of orc) are as follows.

• Lesser Maiar in Morgoth's service took on orc-forms to act as commanders and leaders. These maia-orcs, however, were universally far superior to their kindred, and also more demonic in appearance and prescence. They would have bred (See Melian, for a far more wholesome equivalent) with some of the lesser orcs, and so, in the same way as Ainur 'blood' entered the elvish, and ultimately men, it entered the orcish gene pool.
• Beasts. We know that beasts can be given a certain intelligence, see, for example, Saurman's crows. It is suggested that some part of the orcs could have originally been anthropomorphised - but still ultimately without the kind of free will found in humans, elves and true orcs - beasts.
• Men. Orcs, to some degree, almost certainly come from men.
• Elves - It remains 'terribly possible' that some elves would have been corrupted into orcs.
• Springing up whole - Perhaps my favourite, is that the orcs, as a race, were created not by the design of Melkor, but as an unintended side effect of his discord with Eru's 'music.' At which point Eru granted them souls, and they were later corrupted by Melkor when he had entered Arda.

It's interesting to note that it's suggested that the better form of Trolls (as opposed to the stone-trolls, which are stictly a Melkorish mockery) are distinctly human in origin, and possibly made from near-human species such as the Ardan equivalent of the Neaderthals.

Aanyway. Goblin-men. This is an insult. It reffers to the men in Sauron's domination who behave exactly like the goblins, namely, moving around like puppet when under his 'eye' and committing the same acts of extreme-cruelty without anything resembling remorse. In this state, humans have been known to breed with Orcs, producing at least two strains of crossbreeds. "Men-orcs, large and cunning, and Orc-men, treacherous and vile." One would imagine that perhaps the former had more elvish or Ainur ancestry than the latter.