[Gwaihir the Windlord]

Mmmm, seems rather harsh though. Of course all this can never be more than speculation, and every suggestion (well, except for stupid ones) is a distinct possibility.

Hroa are just molocules and cannot be evil. Fea are from Eru, and cannot be evil.

The phrase about Hroa is true. The actual evil of a person itself could not exist in, as you say, 'just molecules'. I think the point that Nils is trying to make, though -- at least as I percieve it -- is that the physical manifestation upon earth can affect the fëa. Either way it does seem an unlikely possibility.

Concerning fëar, though. It is true that a fëa comes only from Eru himself, and thus, in its original form, was not in fact made evil. We can take Melkor as an example of this. His mind, as the concept for it existed very much with Illuvatar and had to emerge as an Ainur (don’t take me up on this, please, Nils – we’re supposed to have finished with that argument [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]), was built with the capability to tend towards darkness, but did not necessarily do so. (I think it probable that it was inevitable that he did, in the end, fall to evil in his innately-set quest for highness/terribleness (&#8230 [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] and power, but nonetheless. I'll touch on this issue again in a moment.)

However, under Morgoth’s influences, the fëa of Orcs were apparently corrupted to evil inherently as they were as a race. What methods he used for this is unclear, but it is clear that he managed it somehow. Perhaps, with Illuvatar, these fëar are freed and again able to decide for themselves without the presence of Morgoth’s stain, but in Arda, their fëar are from the moment of an Orc’s birth evil. They were not designed that way by Illuvatar, but they have been corrupted to be that way.

Tying in to what I said about the seeming inevitability of Melkor’s Fall, there is another explanation for the nature of Orcish fëar. Were Orcs also this way? Orcs were not like Melkor, clearly, but in the same way that his turning to evil might have been, as I say, inevitable, so might the Orc’s have been in the nature of their spirit. It is a possibility. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] In this case, redemption may not have been for them; as they would be evil unchangeably. I recognise this does not apparently fit in with the ‘almost irredeemable’ line, but it may do if you consider that Orcs did not originally have to be that way – until the evil in their fëar was introduced to them by Morgoth.

To introduce another point that is slightly off topic, which may explain why Orcs existed in the world. The stain of Melkor was innately put upon everything in Arda's beginning; Orcs may have been unremovably there because of this.