D&D 3.5 Orcs: back to Tolkien?

[Shazman]

If you want more LotR style orcs, you should take a look at Fury in the Wastelands: the orcs of Tellene from Kenzer & Co. It details five sub-races of orcs. Everything about the black orc sub-race screams uruk-kai. There look, and the way they are described and create(via magical mud pits) is exactly like the uruk-kai from the three movies.

 

[ruleslawyer]

No time to look through the text at the moment, but on my last read-through of TTT last year before seeing teh movie, I distinctly recall someone mentioning Saruman breeding orcs and goblin men. I don't think it's a misinterpretation.

Actually, the only relevant text I could find in TTT is the following:

"I saw endless lines of marching Orcs, and troops of them mounted on great wolves. And there were battalions of Men, too.... Most of them were ordinary men, rather tall and dark-haired, and grim but not evil-looking. But there were some others that were horrible: Man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed."

The quote regarding "half-orcs and goblin-men," incidentally, is from the Scouring of the Shire (RotK, Ch8), as it turns out.

Yeah, well, the Bestiary's all well and good, but you'll note that it is only Saruman's orcs at Helm's Deep who are ever heard to say "We are the fighting Uruk-hai!"

Well, uruk-hai are mentioned in RotK when the hobbits are in Mordor, which implies that not all of them are Isengarders. Moreover, JRRT himself does write in Appendix F to the trilogy (usually found at the back of RotK) that uruk-hai refers to "the great soldier-orcs that issued from Mordor and Isengard."

 

[NewJeffCT]

The WH orks, by the way, are not evoluted pigs, but mushrooms. It's one of the thing you learn in WH40K. And who cares if mushrooms are never green?

I believe Warhammer fantasy is different than Warhammer 40K on the origins of Orcs vs Orks. 40K Orks are mushroom derived, but I'm pretty sure fantasy orcs are not.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Been watching my Two Towers DVD, and I suddenly realized, looking at the Battle of Helm's deep: The Uruk-Hai and other Orcs reminded me of recent Orc-depicting art in Wizards of the Coast products.

The most flagrant exemple is the full-page battle illustration on page 125 of The Complete Warrior, showing a horde of orcs rushing a phalanx of dwarves. I couldn't help but note how much those orcs reminded me of the hordes of Helm's Deep's invaders.

And then there's the cover for "The Thousand Orcs"... If that's not a LOTR movie Rip, I don't know what is.

...I can only assume this means Wizards is pushing it's Orcs back to the Tolkien "Dark Hordes of Vicious Minions" Model, rather then the "Green Skinned Badasses" of things like Warhammer and Warcraft...

I think D&D is just taking advantage of the times. When 3.0 came out with the exotic weapon of the double-bladed sword, I remember people accusing the Wizards folks of ripping off the popularity of Darth Maul from 'Phantom Menace'. So, I do not see a big deal about making orcs look a bit more like the Lord of the Rings movies in the hopes that they bring in a few more gamers. If we have another media phenomenon is 5 years or so when 4.0 comes out, I imagine they will adapt or adopt a few things from that phenomenon.

 

[Storm Raven]

From my readings and personal interpretation, I have concluded thus:

-Orcs are specifically from Mordor, elves turned evil 'moriquendi', and then into an entirely seperate race, 'orc'.

The Moriquendi are not evil. They are simply elves who have not seen the light of Valinor, which is why they are "dark" elves. The term is more or less similar to "Sindar", or "Avari" (used to describe those elves who declined the invitation of the Valar, and hence became known as the "Unwilling").

-Goblins are orcs that got cut off from Mordor, and have adapted to their surroundings, i.e. 'moria-orcs'/'goblins'.

Goblins and orcs are the same thing. Tolkien says as much a number of times. There is no functional difference between something designated as an "orc" in the books, and something designated as a "goblin".

-Uruk-Hai are cross-breedings of orcs, goblins, and wicked men. Goblins being readily available in the surrounding area, as are the men, and Saruman having a steady supply of orcs from Mordor once he allied with Sauron.

The heritage of uruk-hai is not made entirely clear in the books. They may be orcs with mannish ancestry, or they may merely be orcs that have been affected by sorcery. This is left an open question.

 

[Ysgarran]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/main/classicshobbit

The original edition of D&D was quite open about its borrowings, until a cease-and-desist from the American company that owned the licensing and film rights resulted in the renaming of a goodly portion of the creatures in the original "Monsters and Treasure" book (1974; one of the three booklets that made up the 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons game): thus hobbits became "halflings", ents - "treants", balrogs - "balor", and Nazgul - "wraiths" and "spectres", while wights (i.e., barrow-wights) simply silently dropped the explicit Tolkien connection.

I have a question about Treants though. I heard on NPR that Ents were an original creation of Tolkiens. That Ents were a piece of his work that didn't find inspiration in mythology. Can anyone confirm this or not?

later,
Ysgarran.

 

[Desdichado]

i believe they're actually corrupted elves, which raises an interesting question: in Middle-Earth, what's the life expectancy of an orc? (assuming it doesn't die a violent death, which it most likely will.) are they immortal like the elves they were bred from?

I just typed this up in another thread, but it's a much more complicated story than this.

Although The Silmarillion does indeed state at one point that orcs are corrupted elves, this should hardly be seen as authoritative. The Silmarillion is a chimeric book put together by Tolkien's son Christopher and borrows from many periods of Tolkien's writing, some separated by as much as several decades. Christopher later regretted the presentation of The Silmarillion and that's one of the reasons he's been publishing the History of Middle-earth series, to put his father's writings about the Eldar Days in particular, back into their proper context. The evolution of the stories from The Book(s) of Lost Tales to something that much more closely resembles The Silmarillion is interesting. It seems quite clear that Tolkien was not convinced that orcs were debased elves, and in fact a whole series of late-ish essays found in Morgoth's Ring, recently published, he specifically denied that. Had he lived a few more years, in fact, that would have been abundantly clear, and Christopher likely never would have published The Silmarillion in the form that he did (although personally I believe he still wouldn't ever have published anything in his lifetime; he was too much of a tinkerer to ever give up and call it done.)

Some summary bullet-points from these later writings:

• Orcs are corrupted men, not elves, at least for the most part.
• The Awakening of Men is moved forward in the chronology; Tolkien himself wrote that the timing as it was formerly constituted didn't make sense, and with the idea that orcs are corrupted Men instead of Elves it makes even less sense.
• Some minor Maiar spirits took orc-like forms, and became baldogs -- something like a minor balrog in many ways.
• Orcs were much shorter in lifespan than the Numenoreans, although I have no idea where they fit relative to "regular" Men.
• The original breeding of the orcs was a project that Morgoth delegated to Sauron -- Morgoth had lots of great ideas, but very poor execution because he devolved into a being of almost pure rage and hatred and lacked patience or subtlety. Sauron, being formerly of the people of Aule, on the other hand, was uniquely talented for this type of work.
• Saruman's version of the Uruk-hai was a "rediscovering" of an earlier Sauronic secret -- Sauron had been breeding orcs to get different breeds for some time (note: the "black Uruks of Mordor" appeared much earlier than Saruman's defection, for instance.)
• Although the text of the Lord of the Rings itself talks about half-orc breeds, it actually only implies that the orcs Saruman uses have a Mannish strain in them. The "On Orcs" essay in Morgoth's Ring confirms this finally.

 

[Staffan]

I don't know where Jackson's goblin-men thing came from. Hmm, I wonder if he addresses the point in the FOTR commentary...

I think there's a misunderstanding here. The movie doesn't speak of "goblin-men", it speaks of "goblin men." "Goblin" is used as an adjective.

 

[Desdichado]

IIRC, the Tolkien-elf word for orc is "yrch". Ran into that coming from Legolas a couple times in my last read-through.

To nitpick: Sindarin word for 'orcs' is yrch. The Sindarin word for 'orc' singular is orch.

However, Tolkien even went so far as to develop a false linguistic history for the word, relating it back to a primitive elvish stem (IIRC) (o)rok. Thus orc, orch, uruk and even the second half of the word balrog are all descended from this same primitive elvish word.

 

[Mystery Man]

Great source for info on languages and just about everything else Tolkien and Middle Earth.


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