Orcs mortality

Here I go again...

Hello Ulairi, nice to meet you, and thank you for reading my post and for your thoughts.
As you had wrote:
"I am really curious as to wether orcs ever even had a chance to die of old age."

Well, that is something I have thought too. The only answer I have for that is the same text that I had already copied. In Morgoth´s Ring we can read that orcs should die, and that their lives are not so long as the quendis, or humans.

There is no doubt that many orcs had been killed by enemies or by themselves, but, you're right, I can't remember (in this moment) if in the HoME exists some refferences about the natural diseases of the orcs.

Whatever, I think that orcs are an independent race. You can read this in one of Tolkien's Letters:

"I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them" (Letters, J.R.R. Tolkien)

There were male and female orcs, and they had little orcs, too [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
Like a race, they could born, growth and die. Why not? And pre-existing really doesn't means that they were elves or humans... It could mean too only that, other race. What do you think about that?

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Hello Aldagrim Proudfoot, nice to meet you too, and thank you for your welcome.

I don´t think that orc's mortality can be the same as the elve´s. Why? because I believe what Tolkien had wrote about that in Morgoth's Ring (is my favourite book, after the Silmarillion, of course [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] )

"They could be slain, and they were subject to disease; but apart from hese ills they died and were not immortal, even according to the manner of the Quendi; indeed they appear to have been by nature short-lived compared with the span of Men of higher race, such as the Edain." (Morgoth's Ring)

Maybe I'm wrong? I don´t know, but it's my opinnion, (and I think that Tolkien's too [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] , well, maybe not the only opinnion, but surely one of them. And I think, too, after reading of HoME, that the latest opinnion that Tolkien had was that the orcs were surely not elven, nor human...
What about a independent race? (I like very much this theory, it's clear [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] )

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Greetings for everybody and excuses, again, for my bad english (It's so difficult to express your ideas and thoughts in other language which you don´t domain... but I'm trying)

Elfa Arwena