Why no Half-elf/Half-orcs?

[Griffith Dragonlake]

The elves and orcs tried it awhile back, resulting in an abomination they called "human". The child was so ugly that they never tried it again.

ROTFLMAO

 

[Desdichado]

Wait. As Orcs in Tolkien's Middle-Earth are nothing more than some kind of freak Elves tortured by some freak angel-god or so, wouldn't the Elf-Orc-Child simply be an uglier Elf/prettier Orc?

That's the movie talking. That's not (necessarily) true about actual Tolkien, although there are hints that at least at one point that was one (of many) orc origins that Tolkien entertained.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

That's the movie talking. That's not (necessarily) true about actual Tolkien, although there are hints that at least at one point that was one (of many) orc origins that Tolkien entertained.

I think Treebeard mentions something along these lines in the LotR books, and IIRC the Silmarillion also stated it, though I have to admit that it has been some time since I read it.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I think Treebeard mentions something along these lines in the LotR books, and IIRC the Silmarillion also stated it, though I have to admit that it has been some time since I read it.

Yes. Treebeard mentions it when he says that trolls are just aped ents - just like orcs are aped elves, and the Silmarillion also tells how Morgoth managed to get to the elves first, made some of them afraid of the Valar, and later tortured them for half an eternity, eventually transforming them into orcs.

 

[Scribble]

because orc-elf sounds stupid.

 

[Desdichado]

I think Treebeard mentions something along these lines in the LotR books, and IIRC the Silmarillion also stated it, though I have to admit that it has been some time since I read it.

Treebeard says merely that Sauron the orcs were a mockery of the elves, not that they were ruined elves. The Silmarillion does hypothesize that, but the Silmarilion is not what Tolkien would have published himself. Indeed, it's not even clear how much Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay write as opposed to JRR Tolkien.

In any case, Christopher later had a change of heart, regretted how the Silmarillion was done, and published new stuff instead which was more complete and shows all the ideas his father had rather than the ones that he and Kay picked out. In the Morgoth's Ring essay "Myths Transformed" he proposed many different origin stories in a kind of stream of thought "arguing with himself" type narrative, where he also described problems with each. There is no definitive answer given.

If anything, most orcs as corrupted men seems to have been the one he was most likely to have settled on if he'd lived longer and worked on the problem longer, although that would have meant some shuffling around of timing and dates of when things happened in order to work.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

because orc-elf sounds stupid.

It's not orc-elf. Or elforc

It's one of those:

erc
elc
olf
orf

I vote Elc.

My sister was once bitten by an elc. Unless it was a moose. (Modron/Orc/Horse. A tauric half-golem monstrousity)

 

[Kahuna Burger]

More seriously, I'm not sure why everybody assumes half-orcs are the result of rape. Orcs in Eberron are a perfect example of socially acceptable orcs. Similarly, any city-living orcs, if such exist in a campaign, are likely to become more civilized.

I've asked this question before and it ended badly. :\ I agree though, and would go farther - even with uncivilized orcs, the player of any given half orc can choose from a variety of plausible explanations for his or her birth. I won't begrudge anyone the choice of a "child of rape" explanation, but neither will I take seriously the position that it is the background of half orcs in all games and for all characters.

 

[Gez]

Unless it was a moose.

A moouse (plural: moice) would have been much worse.

Why no half-orc/half-elf? I suppose in a 2e sourcebook it's revealed that elven gonads are blessed by Corellon so that they would never give birth to a ugly baby.

Probably explains the low elven birth rate as well.

 

[Zzyzx]

The explanation for my setting is that elves and orcs are too distant from each other. Humans are a middle ground, distantly related to both species -- they're sort of a missing link between orcs and elves.

This is the reasoning that I have used in my campaigns. Humans stand in the middle of many other races, the average that all are measured against, and the physical norm from which other humanoids are straying to a greater or lesser extent.

But since that is the humans' perspective, and it has rarely come up, I haven't ever needed to flesh out the biology more than that. I like having unexplored mysteries that we can delve into later if it comes up.