Half-man half-orc men

[Angry Hill Troll]

Twilight One,

I agree that the chronology of Saruman raising an army of Orc-Human hybrids is a little complicated in terms of how he did it so fast. Tolkien does say in Myths Transformed that nevertheless, Saruman did exactly that:

It became clear in time that undoubtedly Men could under the domination of Morgoth or his agents be reduced almost to Orc-level of mind and habits; and then they would or could be made to mate with Orcs, producing new breeds, often larger and more cunning. There is no doubt that long afterwards, in the Third Age, Saruman rediscovered this, or learned of it in lore, and in his lust for mastery committed this, his wickedest deed: the interbreeding of Orcs and Men, producing both Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile.

Perhaps Saruman had his breeding program in place secretly for quite a while, whilst still keeping up appearances as one of the "good guys".

The larger point of this whole section of Myths Transformed is speculation of the origin of orcs (Tolkien kept changing his mind on this matter) and whether Orcs had fëa and free will (probably not, unless they were really corrupted Elves and/or Men, an idea which Tolkien seems to largely discard.

So, assuming Orcs are not corrupted Children of Ilúvatar and do not possess fëa or free will, what of Orc-human hybrids? Just thought this thread could use some more covtroversy

Well I stand corrected! It seems in that quote there are two seperate breeds of creature, men-orcs and orc-men. So for instance if orcs don't have free will, and obviously men do, the men-orcs would have free will while the orc-men didn't, being orc-dominant so to speak. More controversy indeed.