Male and Female Orcs
 

I have long been a fan of Tolkiens work. I have also played MERP or Middle Earth Role Playing and there are no such things as female or male orcs for that matter.
Orcs were created by dark magics not typical sexual reproduction. Therefore any notions of ORCS having children and being social creatures is not true. They were created for the soul purpose of war and destruction nothing else. Various groups of ORCS were created to perform various tasks. Some were engineers crafting ugly but very sturdy machines of war. Others were armourers who job it was to create weapons of war for the Morgoth Horde. But they were all created to fight and kill anything that was against their masters (Sauron) wishes and desires of control.

The only notion that I see occuring here is so called Tolkien fans caught not by the true nature of the story itself but by social engineers attempt to label a group of real life people to fit the method of a fantasy story to make them feel liek the story is actually real when it is not.

.....One ring to rule them all.

So, how does the Orc population grow in, say, the Misty Mountains?

(Wrong section ;))

Dryson, I'm wondering what you're basing your assertion on? The only evidence I've found in the books has pointed towards normal reproduction. Although female Orcs are not mentioned, it doesn't mean they don't exist. In fact, Dwarf women were very nearly not mentioned at all, but we know they exist.

Orcs are accepted to be Elves who were captured and corrupted shortly after their "awakening". So says the Silmarillion.

I agree with what Beregond said, I'd like to see what you've based yours facts on.

We could probably have a lively discussion about trolls as well; since they were made as a mockery of the Onodrim, does that mean there were she-trolls? We just don't know!

Well, we know there were half-orcs and goblin-men, half-breeds in the service of Saruman, so it is apparent they had working sexual apparatuses. In addition, Bolg, the GoblinKing of the Hobbit, had a father named Azog who was king during the Orc and Dwarf War.

You have fallen into the 'Tolkien Trap', wherein you make a blanket statement about Tolkien's writing which will then be systematically picked apart by folks who have been discussing the nature of his works for decades (in my case, 30+ years). What you will learn is that you cannot necessarily make blanket statements about Tolkien's work, because there is much ambiguity, dissembling, fogginess, and changing perspectives on the part of the Professor. As Middle-earth grew, he became more muddled, often contradicting himself in an attempt to clarify his earlier work. This makes for great discussions, but not so much for precision and cardinal rules.

Indeed - I'm moving the thread to the Novices and Newcomers section of the forum. Please continue reading and discussing there - thanks!

Assuming orcs don't reproduce sexually is falling
into PJ's "mud orc creation" imagery, which I assume
he had to do because of his concept of "instant orc
armies" where you add water and create 10,000
nassty orcsees, as opposed to the book concept of
Saruman's hidden, slow expansion of his armies
(including wargs).

I prefer the Silmarillion concept of orcs as twisted elves,
although there are also arguments for orcs as
twisted men.

However, Morth, this is one area where Tolkien wasn't muddled; although he was all over the place as to Orcs' ultimate origin, he never contradicted his outright declaration that Orcs reproduced 'after the manner of the Children of Iluvatar.' WRT Saruman's hybrids he went so far as to assert that Men could be so debased as to be induced to "mate" with Orcs- which is about as close to sexual explicitness as the old man would ever come.

Dryson– welcome to the Downs– though this is perhaps not the best way to welcome you.;)

At the risk of sounding like a "me-too"– what you are asserting comes not from anything Tolkien wrote but from the film version of LotR and perhaps from some game or other.

Sorry, but what does that mean? It actually sounds like you're saying Orcs are "a group of real life people".

I just had a terrifying thought.

Orc blind dates.

What could be scarier?

Talk about nightmare fuel...

Orc honeymoons? Talk about 'bumping uglies!'

Orc birth? The witch-doctor slaps the mother.

Orc periods? Keep sharp objects away at that time of the month, or else unleash the amazons on Gondor.

Orc weddings?

"With this ring, I thee wed..."

"Ring? RING???"

"No, Honey! It's not THE...arrrgghhhhh......glug...

I'm surprised they could even GET to the honeymoon!

Orc weddings? Big deal.

You want ugly? How about orc divorces? :eek:

Orc divorces?

Hmmm...

I imagine they're quite uncomplicated, legally.
Everything's split right down the middle.

Probably with an axe.

Well, we know that Bolg is the son of Azog. Isn't that proof enough that orcs are born?

Orc spawning - a bit nasty!
 

Hi all, I came across this on another forum for a chap who claimed to have seen some of the unreleased Marquette papers, be aware it's fairly gory...

I can't really vouch for this, but what do you think?

Of course JRRT never published anything like this, so its canonicity is effectively zero in comparison with 'Bolg son of Azog'.

PS. happy to edit or cut this if you reckon its too graphic for the Downs

Interesting...
 

It's possible that orcs used slave women to multiply. Or they could use the women of Khand, Harad, Rhun, and the other places that were under the dominion of Sauron. It could be part of their agreement that these countries would send a certain numer of women on a monthly basis, or something.

I find a few drawbacks to this theory, though.

a) How do they keep orc features? Crossing a human with an orc will give you something like Ferny's southener, or at least like the Uruk-hai. But if an orc is only 1/32 orc and the rest human - wouldn't he look human?
OK, so it says that they add filth to keep the appearance, but wouldn't the character also change? Become something more honourable?

b) How do they have enough women? I don't think there are enough slave women in either Mordor or Isengard to triple the army's size. And they'd have to depopulate the surrounding kingdoms of females if they get the women from aliances. All women die after giving birth to an orc, so they need thousands of women. Where do they get them?

There was something else, but I can't remember.

The argument I have for Bolg son of Azog is that they were goblins. I think that goblins have a different origin than orcs, and they might breed differently.

The Tolkien Trap Redux!
 

No evidence for that, as far as I'm aware, but anyway "Bolg son of Azog" appears in a completed text published in Tolkien's lifetime– as "canonical" as it gets. (Meanwhile, "Azog the father of Bolg" shows up in the LoTR appendices.)

This, if not simply a hoax, as for all we know it may be, is merely one of Tolkien's numerous abortive retcons. He was given to sketching out radical changes to be made to his Legendarium, then abandoning them after a paragraph or two– often, no doubt, because it became clear they were unworkable. The many contradictory versions of the origin and nature of Orcs are a case in point.

Because of all this the "last known version is always the 'true' one" approach is very problematic indeed when applied to Tolkien's writing. The man was quite capable of suddenly jotting down on the back of an envelope:

I'm sure it's been posted at the BarrowDowns already, but a letter came up for sale at an auction on 11 and 12 July, 2002. It's dated 21 October 1963, and is addressed to a Mrs Munby in response to a number of questions posed by her son Stephen about The Lord of the Rings. The letter is long, but in one place it reads as follows:

As William Hicklin noted, once Tolkien decided that Morgoth could not 'create' but must pervert something into orcs, he seemed pretty consistent that orcs reproduced sexually, despite that he waffled about stock. For myself, I would need more proof than this person's description (quoted by Rumil above) -- noting that we would here have an unpublished paper (or notes) that Hammond and Scull for example, had yet to see.

And for those who give great weight to 'latest if unpublished' these notes (if truly extant) should also date to after 1963-ish, considering the letter above.

This is a nomenclature issue though. Not only is 'goblin' said to be used as a translation for orc (same things, two different words), but Azog himself is referred to as an orc in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings.


By the way, from what other forum does Rumil's quote come from?

Go not to the internets for they will say both no and yes
 

Hi all,

I find myself agreeing with Nerwen and Galin that this is either a bit made up or a rejected idea. And of course that orcs=goblins (in pretty much every respect save size perhaps).

Here's the link to the thread http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=199809 from TMP, a site about wargaming.

The keen-eyed will spot that I am Timbo W ;)

Apropos of almost nothing–

I keep returning to this last sentence and vainly trying to work out what on earth the original poster was trying to say:
Both troubling and strangely fascinating– it looks like it means something, but what?:confused:

Also, I'm curious as to the source of the detailed yet seemingly non-Tolkienien statements he makes with such assurance. A game? A fan-fic? One of the dodgier wikis?

Thanks for the link Rumil. One quibble however...

Many people seem to think goblins are smaller than orcs, but there are large goblins in The Hobbit for example: 'Out jumped the goblins, big goblins, great ugly-looking goblins, lots of goblins, before you can say rocks and blocks.' (Over Hill And Under Hill), and even in The Lord of the Rings, Saruman's Uruks are referred to as goblin-soldiers.


But even without these examples (others could be raised) the real difficulty with the idea that 'goblin' has been reserved for smaller kinds is the matter of translation: I often use hund and 'dog' in illustration because there are all kinds of dogs, large, small, (whatever), and various kinds of orcs as well... and if one has two texts for example, one German one English, where the original German word hund has been translated with English 'dog' -- why would anything think that a 'dog' is smaller or larger than a hund?

The idea in theory (Appendix F 'On Translation') is that the above statement from The Hobbit ('Out jumped the goblins...') is a fully English translation of something in Westron -- but we know one of the original words here, because we know 'goblin' has been used to translate orc. The arguably confusing thing is: in The Hobbit the word orc has usually been translated with 'goblin', while in The Lord of the Rings, there are probably many more instances of orc than goblin (I never counted instances of orc! but I'm guessing they outweigh instances of goblin).

In theory this is due to the translator, and would be like Tolkien saying that he preferred the word 'hund' and so used it even in the English account along with dog. This is 'perfectly Tolkien' as an explanation too, as we know he was a lover of languages and like to create languages -- someone who is finely attuned to words, how they sound, and 'sound-sense'.

So whatever the numbers of 'goblin' or orc in both books, the explanation JRRT landed on was that one is an original word (Quendi), the other is an English translation ('Elves'). I note that JRRT published this explanation in a later edition of The Hobbit, only after Appendix F had appeared in print, thus after he had fully landed on the conceit that these tales had been translated from an original Westron.

This finally provided the answer to explain 'goblin' in both books, and is in accord with the examples from both stories.

This is a bit similar to the confusion I get when some ME related sources, including possibly the Appendix itself (it's been a while since I read it som I'm not 100% sure) equate the Uruk-Hai with the term "Hobgoblin". This seems counter intuitive since the Hobgoblins are usually described as smaller and less dangerous than goblins whereas the Uruk-hai are of course bigger and more dangerous (I not that even Wikipedia makes not of this inconsistency). If you believe that 1. Hob means something along the lines of "half" and 2. the Uruk-hai are actually Orc-Human Hybrids, it would make lingustic sense, but it still seem counter intuitive.

That's curious, I wonder if that text is from the same collection that I stumbled upon when digging through the vaults of Oxford University last spring. This little gem contained some pretty revolutionary stuff regarding the relationship of Morgoth and Hurin:

Tolkien actually never equates these terms (that I'm aware of), but you may be noting this on certain websites. The reason for this would seem to be: in the same explanation (published in later editions of The Hobbit, as noted) that reveals 'goblin' has been used to translate orc, Tolkien adds: or hobgoblin for the larger kinds.

Somewhere (in a letter I believe) I think Tolkien noted that 'hobgoblin' should probably refer to smaller kinds! but he had already published this in any case, to explain the use of this word in The Hobbit, which I think only occurs once. Thus some are equating hobgoblin or 'large goblin' with Saruman's 'larger' goblin soldiers.

And the statement (currently on Wikipedia): 'Tolkien then renamed them [Hobgoblins] as Uruks or Uruk-hai in an attempt to correct his mistake' is someone's opinion, the 'mistake' referring to Tolkien's statement in a letter. To my mind this really needs no correcting in any case, despite any external factors. If 'Hobgoblin' refers to larger kinds within the context of Middle-earth then so be it (in my opinion).


Note again that, despite this explanatory note appearing in The Hobbit it was added to a later edition, so JRRT had not published 'hobgoblin' for 'large goblin' until after he had published a tale in which the Uruk-hai appear. Tolkien would hardly rename Hobgoblins Uruk-hai to correct a 'mistake' he had yet to make.



What the Uruk-hai really are is quite the debate, but anyway if you are thinking of the word Hobbit (and you need not be of course): internally, yet with reference to an invented translation, Hobbit comes from 'holbytla', so the altered beginning of 'Hobbit' relates to the meaning 'hole'.

Even though a Hobbit (a kuduk) is a halfling (banakil)!

It's nicely confusing :)

Pretty convincing, though if you assume the "hob" is from the same root as hobbit, it actually makes a stronger case for the little unimproved ones to be the Hobgoblins; the "gobins of the hole" or "who live in holes" i.e. the ones who are still affected by/afraid of light.

I usually interpret the "hai" suffix as being something along the lines of "great", "fierce", or "improved". After all we do have at least one other name with the same suffix, Olog-Hai (the souped up, can't be turned to stone as long as the power is there, trolls Sauron makes use of). Off the top of my head I can;t think of a case where "Olog" is used on it's own for a non-souped up troll (then again once you get past the Hobbit, where these terms haven't been used yet, you don't meet a lot of non-souped up trolls) but presumably that is what they are called. The Orcs also call the Drunedain "Oghor-Hai" despite the fact they are smaller than most men, but given how good the Drunedain are at killing Orcs this could be "hai" being used in the context of "fierce". Presumably, in Black speech, Wargs are likely referred to as "(whatever the Black Speech word for "wolf" is)"-"Hai" as well.

As for Hobgoblin I just think Tolkien chose an existing 'goblin word' from the Primary World and used it -- however 'wrongly' he thought he had applied it, after publication. Plus I don't know (I'm not a trained linguist myself) how accurate it is to say 'hob-' means 'hole' based on hobbit.

Holbytla means 'Hole-builder', and hobbit is a theoretical worn-down form of this word. Someone on line (elsewhere) posted that this type of assimilation (l becoming b, as it appears has occured at least) is common enough in languages, but I haven't really had time to look into this myself.


Anyway as far as -hai goes we now know it means 'folk' due to Words, Phrases, and Passages.

So Uruk-hai means 'orc-folk' -- but since uruk 'orc' became distinguished from snaga it means 'great-soldier orc-folk'

So in that case, it may not be proper to use "Uruk-Hai" to describe a single big orc (The phrase "an Uruk-hai" may be incorrect Actually now that I look at it Tolkein never does use it that way, singularly they are "an Uruk") In that case please disregard my latter statements under those circumstances a single souped up troll would be "an Olog" a singe Wose would be an Oghor and a warg would be whatever a Warg was (though it is likey Orcish has a different word for Wargs than ordinary wolves)

Very nice one skip! ;)

Alfirin, no disagreement from me re orcs and goblins.

'Hob' appears in all sorts of folklore monster-type names etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hob_(folklore) (also see disambiguation page), and 'hobbledehoy' http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-hob1.htm for an ungraceful man, also 'Old Hob' referring to the devil.

I'm surprised JRRT never analysed the philology, maybe he did!

I did know that, actually, and it's one of the reasons I'm sceptical of this fellow Rumil quotes–
Now, while Uglúk & Co. call themselves "Uruk-hai", the word does not mean "Man-Orc hybrid" (and is a plural). So– failing some evidence that Tolkien changed his mind about that one too– I'd say even if this person has come upon some previously unknown document, he's embellished the contents pretty heavily.

Hi Nerwen,

I'm rather hoping that you're right, it would be terrible to think that PJ was one-up on the Downer concensus regarding orc-spawning canonicity ;).

Good catch Nerwen!

I would also add that The Drúedain belongs to the very late period of Tolkien's writing, and a note to that text reads...

Sure one can note that this 'origin' is a statement or belief of internal characters in any event... but anyway... we could possibly be into the early 1970s with this one (basically the idea published in the 1977 Silmarillion comes from internal characters as well, who didn't certainly know the true origin of Orcs, despite that it was the Wise of Eressea who believed that captured Elves were the original stock).


Another note from the 1960s reads...

'The Council seems to have been unaware, since for many years Isengard had been closely guarded, of what went on within its Ring. The use, and possibly special breeding, of Orcs was kept secret, and cannot have begun much before 2990 at earliest. The Orc-troops seem never to have been used beyond the territory of Isengard before the attack on Rohan.' UT, The Palantiri, endnote 7

Hmm.

Oh, but we've surely misjudged PJ anyway–

Nerwen, please tell me that's not really there!:eek: We've spent years accusing PJ of "over-creativeness", and now you say that JRRT planned all that stuff?!

By the way what is this intended to mean? that Jackson used 'the same passages' that this person read... meaning the Marquette papers in question? If so, Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, authorized by the Tolkien Estate to (recently) write and publish three highly detailed volumes about Tolkien's life and work... somehow missed these papers and notes on 'Orc-farming'?

But Peter Jackson or someone from the films saw them, and Jackson himself never noted this in any of the DVD commentary to explain his 'birthing pits'?

Well, I don't see what else it can mean. Odd, isn't it?

Possibly that cross-breeds are sterile?:rolleyes:

THANK YOU! Now I remember! - Ok, so lets pretend that an orc gets a human woman pregnant. And she has a girl orc (it's a 50-50 thing, unless its some misshapen creature who isn't developed enough to be either gender). Paradoxical, aint it?

I asked a friend of mine who's a doctor if it's possible to somehow change the genes of a person to make it impossible for girls to be born. This is what she told me:
Women have X+X chromosomes; men have X+Y chromosomes. An embrio always gets an X chromosome from its mother. It could get either a Y or an X from its father. The chromosome it gets from the father determines the gender. There is no known way to controll which chromosome will be given. Also, you cannot completely eliminate the X chromosome - you'd get a 'vegetable' person (such orcs are useless).

Conclusion: there must have been orc-girls, and therefore orc-women.

As William Cloud Hicklin said above, since it is said that the Orcs "had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar", I would think the existence of females in their population a foregone conclusion.