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...
Quote:
Tolkien was not happy with the Orc creation stories because they all took him to places that he felt that no sane person should ever consider, and he remarked to himself once "How can I ever have allowed myself to consider this." on the side of a page that was remarking on how Orc Farming might be accomplished.
He did eventually rule out the breeding of Orcs by natural means (that means no female Orcs, ever), and stated that no Elven woman would allow herself to conceive such a monstrosity, and that humans who had been successfully impregnated by Orcs would usually die of the pregnancy (there is a crossed out bit that looks to read "Except in cases where the woman…"). I speculate that he might have suggested that very corrupted and evil human women might survive a pregnancy from an Orc fertilization, but the really awful part is that any such offspring would only be chopped up to be used as seed or fertilizer for other Orcs being grown in the pits of filth where they are farmed (with various other ingredients added during the gestation in their womb of filth in order to specialize the crop). This is where the addition of human remains would be important to the creation of your "Man-Orc" or Uruk-Hai, but even this would take many generations. Maybe 20 years for five to ten generations, depending upon the quality of Orc wanted, the longer the time, the better the quality of Orc. So, Uruks would probably be four to five years per generation. That is still a very short time to breed Orcs, as a HUGE Army could be raised in relatively short times.
Also, many of the Orcs in a batch might not make it, or they might be cannibalized as food by those "Hatching" early.
So, yes, Tolkien thought that it was best left to the Imagination. PJ in the movies did use the same passages that I read to show the "birthing pits" beneath Isengard when he was raising the Uruk-Hai
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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