Immortal/Magical Orcs?

[Raisins]

So on a continuation of one of the other threads here with the marring of arda and if animals etc were immortal...

Orcs. Some of them are elves, or more correctly were elves - as such WOULD such orcs retain their immortality? Obviously those that were men would very much not be immortal. Would Orcs that were formerly elves if they bred (since they can reproduce in the manner of the children of Illuvatar)have immortal children?

Would there be possibly more powerful orcs with magic? I know it's not fully canon as it was HoME but there were 'Maiar' that took the form of orcs so if they cross bred would that make a more powerful orc along the lines of say Luthien for the elves?

[Elenhir]

Orcs being mortal is one of the problems Tolkien lists when he starts to reject the brief idea of Orcs from Elves, arguing that Melkor shouldn't have the power to alter that aspect of a people and make it a heritable condition. While never stated, it implies that he always conceived of them as mortal in the ideas that stood before the Elven idea. So while it might make more sense, taken alone in the void, for any Elf-derived Orcs to be immortal, it is more consistent with the decades of writing to reject their Elvenness before granting them immortality.

Melian was not a pushover when it came to Maiar. She's given several superlatives among Lorien's people in 'Of Thingol and Melian'. Conversely, the orc-formed Maiar are described in 'Myths Trasnformed' as 'the least of the Maiar' that served Melkor. I do not expect we would find any descendants of the boldogs throwing about any appreciable magic. No Ugluthiens, no.

[Androthelm]

Elenhir is on the money here. The issues you're raising are all part of a broader conflict in the creation of Middle-Earth -- the tension between Tolkien's own cosmology for his secondary world, and the folklore he was adapting to fit. The shift from Orcs as corrupted Elves to Orcs as corrupted Men was one of the places in which he modified things in an effort to make it work together.

Additionally, on the topic of Magic Orcs -- I suspect that even if there were Half-Orcs of Boldog descent (I'm not sure there would be, given how unique Thingol and Melian's relationship is, but if there were) they, like Morgoth, would find themselves increasingly tied to the physical world. So, while they might be more powerful in traditional orkish ways -- tougher, capable of enduring for pain -- I doubt the kind of magic we see Melian or Galadriel weaving around their domain would be within their grasp.

Then again, we do have plenty of examples of dark "magic" from mortals -- the Witch-King among them. So perhaps we might see a magic like Sam experiences with the "watchers" of Cirith Ungol? It's unclear.

[Raisins]

Excellent point on the fact that most of the writing was away from orcs being elves, however with Morgoths in ability to create life on his own they did have to come from somewhere - So if they weren't at least partially elves (as I said any elf derived orc allowing for men and other creatures to have been made into orcs as well. Meaning not all orcs would be immortal, unless the opinion is that all orcs are men now? I mean I haven't had decent discussions for lore in a very very long time Tolkien wise, so admittedly I have lost a lot of my memories when it comes to the lesser known part of it (my HoME memories are almost completely toast I'll admit and haven't overly seen where he moved from elves to men as the source of orcs)

No I don't suppose it would be amazing amounts of magic from a cross, I was figuring more along the lines of 'bigger/scarier' than standard orcs maybe have some abilities with fears was more the magical I am meaning. I do like Androthelms comment on that there are examples of dark magic from mortals. Wasn't thinking they were casting fireball or magic missile admittedly.

And certainly not in terms of holding entire realms under sway and protected would not be what I would think would be in their grasp, perhaps any immediate vacinity enemies being frightened or cowed, or perhaps those that are allies being bolstered type deal.

[Androthelm]

@Fuin Elda I'm not entirely sure (@Elenhir would probably be able to answer better) but my understanding was that initially, Tolkien envisioned the Orcs as wholly descended from corrupted Elves. Later, he envisioned the Orcs as wholly descended from corrupted Men -- having struggled with the very issues of long-life and the afterlife which we're discussing in this thread.

[Hoglorfen]

I see a major issue with having the Orcs originate solely from Men, and that is the racist implications that it has, especially when coupled with Tolkien's infamous "least lovely Mongol types" quote regarding their appearance. But that my personal opinion, not anchored in lore.

In "Laws And Customs Of The Eldar" he writes that Elven fëar that reject the summon of Mandos after death could easily be swayed into evil service instead (thus creating many of the wraiths that gathered in corrupted places). With enough time, I don't see why Morgoth could not do the same to the living, even to Elves. Even Maeglin showed a change that others noticed in the short time he spent in Angband after willingly submitting to Morgoth's influence. They're not immune to poison and disease either, only highly resistant. Morgoth only needed to grow what little weakness was already there.

Orcs can obviously live a long time; Gorbag and Shagrat reveals much in their conversation about "the good old times" when there were no big bosses (that is, before Sauron rose again and before the Nazgûl returned, at least a thousand years before the events of LOTR), even mentioning "the Great Siege" which at least I interpret as the siege of the Last Alliance. That means that they were either eye witnesses to the event or had met others who were. Same with the goblins' reaction to Orcrist in "The Hobbit"; considering how Orcs in general live, could they have such an advanced spoken-word tradition that they would recognise a certain weapon at first glance, thousands of years after it was last used?

The "short lives of Orcs" could be true at the same time. Orcs are violent and prone to betrayal; perhaps most Orcs meet an early death not of old age but from illness, disease or at the hands of other Orcs?

[Androthelm]

Jumping much too late back into a dead thread -- @Hoglorfen, I just happened to reread the passages with Gorbag and Shagrat, and I was wondering about that. The reference to the Great Siege especially is strange -- it's hard to imagine such long-lived orcs, but it does seem that they either were there or have a much more substantial cultural tradition of passing these histories down than they're usually given credit for.

[Raisins]

Excellent point @Hoglorfen I remember the Hobbit portion the best out of those (probably due to the library work atm) and it always made me question if they would recognize the swords by how they look unless the swords look SUPER unique, or if there is some sort of DNA/Crow/Raven sort of memory on such things which is not very plausible really.

I need to read the passages with Gorbag and Shagrat. It's an interesting point towards immortal/long lived orcs. Though one would very much have to be fairly dangerous to live that long so that nobody would try to kill you (I imagine deaths by getting stabbed by fellow orcs and goblins are probably fairly high, and the same thing would kill an elf)

[Androthelm]

@Fuin Elda there's some degree to which the weapon thing is probably a mark of the myths which inspired Tolkien, many of which are full of special or legendary weapons. So maybe it is unique -- or, who knows? maybe some of those goblins of the Hobbit really have been around since Gondolin.

I mean, for that matter, maybe Gorbag and Shagrat's "Great Siege" isn't the Last Alliance... but the Siege of Angband itself!

[Raisins]

@Androthelm That's the thing though - Gandalf and Thorin didn't know what blades they were. It took an elf from the First Age to be able to identify them if I remember right, and one would think that the Dwarves would know weapons reasonably well even if they were not dwarven weapons

And it's true it COULD be the Siege of Angband but for an orc that's still a reasonably long time because they would have been full grown to be part of that they way they were talking about it. After all Bilbo really wasn't doing so well with the exception of the ring for keeping him alive longer (it's what kept him from aging overly) So they'd have to be over 100 years old would be my guess?

So at the very least you're looking at a Dunedain type thing where they have SOME elvish blood in them but it's been diluted and now they are just long lived.

[Androthelm]

You know what? We're all forgetting something important. Bolg, who lead the goblins to the Battle of the Five Armies, was the son of Azog, who was killed at the Battle of Azanulbizar. There's almost a one hundred and fifty year gap between those. So yes, @Fuin Elda -- the orcs are long-lived at the very least.

[Raisins]

Very as they are still actively FIGHTING at this time they aren't geriatric orcs fighting (I mean they could be but if you look at Aragorn he is not some old weak man wandering around using a sword as a cane) so at the very least they would have to live even longer than 150 years would be my bet that could possibly be only half of their life span if not even less than a half.

[Androthelm]

Yes! Bolg at the age of ~150 is every bit in his prime as Aragorn was in his eighties. It makes me wonder: how long did that prime last? Did Aragorn spend the last half-century of his rule as a senior politician, gray-haired and wise? Or was he young until the last few years?

[Elenhir]

Well, not necessarily the Orcs. That Orc, sure, but Tolkien was fully aware that he didn't handle individual orc characters through the years as well as he might. He even wrote himself a note about it.

Those whose business it was to direct the Orcs often took Orkish shapes, though they were greater and more terrible. Thus it was that the histories speak of Great Orcs or Orc-captains who were not slain, and who reappeared in battle through years far longer than the span of the lives of Men.*

* [footnote to the text]Boldog, for instance, is a name that occurs many times in the tales of the War. But it is possible that Boldog was not a personal name, and either a title, or else the name of a kind of creature: the Orc-formed Maiar, only less formidable than Balrogs.

With Bolg, we get into the issue that the mention of his relationship to Azog comes from The Hobbit, and the chronology that places the death of Azog (or, really, any details about Azog besides this one referenced line) was brought about years later. It could be as simple an issue as Tolkien finding it far more important that the War of the Dwarves and Orcs took place when it did than that the Hobbit said something in one line. That happens a lot with Hobbit material. We sort of just handwave away that Thorin and Company moved about half as slowly to Rivendell as Frodo and Company, even though Thorin's group had ponies and were on the road more. But that would present a major difficulty if we took the approach that all Hobbit stuff needed to be incorporated into our understanding of LotR and the wider mythos perfectly.

Maybe Bolg is a title of the heir to Azog, the last Orc prior to the events of The Hobbit who ruled Moria, which was presumably of some importance to Orc holdings in the Misty Mountains and thus a meaningful thing to keep track of. Perhaps son means descendent, not necessarily the exact next generation. Tolkien used the mortality and short-lived nature of Orcs to throw out the Elven origin he briefly considered for them in the early 50's. It seems to be a detail he was rather inflexible on. If it can break the Elvish origin of Orcs I don't think Bolg should break it.

[Androthelm]

That's all very fair @Elenhir -- and, in the end, I think you're right that we're reading deeper in to things than we need to. Still, it's interesting speculation -- although, thank you for the note on the short lived nature of Orcs as a counter to the Elven origin. I hadn't read it before, where did that come from?

[Paracelio]

I believe that if they were elves in order to understand if they lose their immortality one important thing could be the motivation. WHY did they became orcs ? Because of destiny or because of their will ? If they were considered like Angels who fell down and become Demons, then we should consider also the possibility that they have lost immortality, like angels who falling down have lost their light.
Here we enter in a religious similitude , but for sure I think that something should have been aid has price for such change.

[Raisins]

Well, not necessarily the Orcs. That Orc, sure, but Tolkien was fully aware that he didn't handle individual orc characters through the years as well as he might. He even wrote himself a note about it.

This is an excellent point, I have no doubt there is a definite SPREAD of orc lifespans, I personally wouldn't expect ALL orcs to be long lived as I mention there are a good many that just die in battle fairly young, I would assume that Morgoth wouldn't care what he twisted into orcs as long as they were twisted and did his will. So perhaps it is like Men, where some have exceptionally long lifespans comparatively

As for characters losing their grace @Paracelio I think you're assuming more that the beings that were taken to become orcs or these dark twisted things chose to fall instead of were taken and twisted by something else. While it's possible they lost their immortaility, (One might say that is a kindness by Eru to take that if they were once kind/fair beings but that's another discussion and probably even harder to find quotes to argue with it) we still have prove that without immortality there are still those that are exceptionally long lived in their own races.

Perhaps that is a good measure of the 'magical' orcs. How long their life span might be where you have maiar blood mixed in perhaps the lifespans extend.

[Boromir88]

Fascinating @Fuin Elda. This post is primarily going to be speculation on my part, so I hope others can chime in. Whatever orc origins are, can we apply what Faramir says about the Men of Gondor to orcs?

"Yet now if the Rohirrim are grown in some ways more like to us, enhanced in arts and gentleness, we too have become more like to them, and can scarce claim any longer the title High. We are become Middle Men, of the Twilight, but with memory of other things. (The Two Towers: The Window on the West)

The Numenoreans in the southern kingdom, and those that fell into the folly of what Faramir called the "black arts" began mingling and reproducing with "lesser" bloodlines; with "Men of the Twilight" and "Men of Darkness."

The Northern Kingdom, the Dunedain in Arnor, were more adamant about keeping their bloodlines pure. They did not mingle with say the Men of Bree, and in this way, Aragorn is still notably older than the Men of Gondor during his time.

Tolkien comments in a letter to Mrs. Munby there must have been "orc women" and in The Silmarillion "the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar" (Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor).

Whatever their origins (a mix of corrupted Elves and Men?), they reproduced like the Children of Iluvatar. I think it's fair to speculate they would not have been picky about keeping pure bloodlines, their primary purpose was to fill the armies of Dark Lords. After thousands of years of mixing bloodlines, they would have followed the same pattern as the Numenoreans who mingled with the Middle Men and the Men of Darkness.

[Aeros]

Hold on, if Tolkien threw out the elvish origin of orcs in his later writings, what do we make of the Silmarillion's descriptions of orcs which attacked the Eldar immediately upon their arrival in Middle Earth, prior to the awakening of men? Where else would the orcs have come from, if they weren't made from captured Avari or Moriquendi?

[Raisins]

This is the issue, that there is whit orcs not being elves at all. at the very least the first whole batch of orcs would have to be elves or Maiar. My opinion on this is that once men started awakening, then the orcs became a mix of both men and elves as there aren't any other humanoid creatures for morgoth to have really twisted unless we get into Diogenes-esque arguments were we start plucking the feathers of eagles and saying behold a man.

We could argue also that if behold a man argument holds up - this is where we get balrog wings

(Sorry couldn't help it)

[Elenhir]

what do we make of the Silmarillion's descriptions of orcs which attacked the Eldar immediately upon their arrival in Middle Earth

We could throw it out, for one thing. The stuff about Orcs overrunning Beleriand, existing in numbers that were meaningful before Melkor even returned with the Silmarils, doesn't exist in the version written before Tolkien decided Orcs were Elves (it was by no means his first idea). The idea that the Sindar were fighting Orcs, that Beleriand was practically overrun, and that Cirdan was besieged and only rescued by Feanor is an addition after Tolkien decided Orcs were from Elves. Prior (when Orcs are created from stone), what Feanor fights is a force that comes specifically to investigate the burning of the boats. These plot points exist because Tolkien's changing ideas on the source of Orcs allowed or demanded them or disallowed previous plot points, leaving something needed to fill in gaps. If it could change to make Orcs from Elves work (which it did), and if before that it could change to make Orcs from stone but only after Melkor saw Elves work (which it did), it could change to make Orcs from Men, or any other idea Tolkien decided to seriously consider, work.

Or we could rely on how Tolkien had already independently pushed back the awakening of Men significantly before he considered the Mannish origin of Orcs. We don't need some other source for Orcs, because Men work, even for this.

Yes, if you look at the published Silmarillion and refuse to consider that anything could change or was changed except for one small piece, there's going to be a lot of problems and it's going to look like that one piece can't possibly be anything but what you already think it is. But that's a wrong way of looking at it. Tolkien wrote the Silmarillion a number of times, and each version was more consistent with itself than it was consistent with earlier or later versions, for obvious reasons. Grouping the ideas with the ideas they were meant to be grouped with gets you better results than hanging on to old material grouped with other old material. The solution is to be flexible, and not treat the published Silmarillion as a rigid truth. Even the published Silmarillion tells you not to use it that way.

[Aeros]

Well, there's what Tolkien thought and wrote about through his entire life, and then there's canon, and it seems very odd to say that the published Silmarillion is not canon. But I don't think it matters very much and the question of how Tolkien's thinking changed on the matter is more interesting.

[Elenhir]

Understanding that the published Silmarillion is not canon is literally the first step in looking at Tolkien's writings from the perspective of lore, instead of casual reading. It only seems 'very odd' because most people skip the Foreword, where Christopher Tolkien spends a couple pages going over this.

[Raisins]

Technically outside of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit I don't think any of the published works to do with Middle Earth are hard set canon by JRRs standards so a lot of things are fairly open to interpretation unless I mistook the pages you are mentioning Elenhir. I don't have my books but I remember those pages vaguely for the moment. - I"ll double check again when I have access to them again (which will be soon as the bookshelves are being built this week in my new house) And even those two (Hobbit/LOTR) have corrections to them based on later writings from my understandings so I'm not even sure they are entirely 'canon' by the hardest definitions of 'what is canon to JRR Tolkien' And sadly with the man and now Christopher gone I feel like we are going to have a lot harder time getting that sort of definition because with Christopher we were already a step removed.

I honestly mostly use threads like this to discover if I can do something in terms of RPing it - is it in the realms of possibility lore wise more so than this is hard fast lore mostly because I have no patience to become an academic or write fancy papers. Dealing with Canon and not canon though and learning from people that are way more into the lore aspect is highly helpful in terms of RP building. Until I retire from tattooing and want to keep busy doing something else which maybe be academics on Tolkien, I'm afraid I'll just be making frustratingly odd questions like immortal and magical orcs and could they exist by the lore we do have.

[Troelsfo]

What a marvellous topic, @Fuin Elda, thank you!

So marvellous, in fact, that I have despaired at finding the time to contribute (not to speak of finding something relevant to contribute) ...

Both @Elenhir and @Androthelm are quick to point out the transience in Tolkien's conception of the idea that Orcs were corrupted Elves. It would be worth noting, however, that this idea only arose late in the writing of The Lord of the Rings.

In the majority of Tolkien's writings within his Silmarillion mythology, the Orcs were created by Melkor the Morgoth, as Treebeard points out, “in mockery of Elves.” Not long before he embarked on the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had finished (as far as it would go) writing the Quenta Silmarillion in the last pre-LotR version. There, the creation of the Orcs is described as follows.

There countless became the hosts of his beasts and demons; and he brought into being the race of the Orcs, and they grew and multiplied in the bowels of the earth. These Orcs Morgoth made in envy and mockery of the Elves, and they were made of stone, but their hearts of hatred. Glamhoth, the hosts of hate, the Gnomes have called them. Goblins they may be called, but in ancient days they were strong and fell.

Tolkien, Christopher. The Lost Road and Other Writings (The History of Middle-earth, Book 5). “Quenta Silmarillion §62 (p. 233). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

This view was, with minor variations, constant throughout the many pre-LotR versions of the story from the earliest Fall of Gondolin:

How it came ever that among Men the Noldoli have been confused with the Orcs who are Melko’s goblins, I know not, unless it be that certain of the Noldoli were twisted to the evil of Melko and mingled among these Orcs, for all that race were bred by Melko of the subterranean heats and slime. Their hearts were of granite and their bodies deformed; foul their faces which smiled not, but their laugh that of the clash of metal, and to nothing were they more fain than to aid in the basest of the purposes of Melko. The greatest hatred was between them and the Noldoli, who named them Glamhoth, or folk of dreadful hate.

Tolkien, Christopher. The Book of Lost Tales 2 (The History of Middle-earth, Book 2): Pt. 2. “III The Fall of Gondolin” (pp. 159-160). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Treebeard's comment that “Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.” (LR,3,IV:168) clearly shows that this view was firmly in place late into the writing of The Lord of the Rings, and the first hint that this view was being challenged is Frodo's comment to Sam that “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them;”. (LR,6,I:108)

Personally, I do not doubt that the passage from book VI marks the first time that the idea entered Tolkien's mind that Orcs might not have been created by Morgoth, but had been twisted and corrupted from something else. At this point, however, there seems to be no indication of what they might have been corrupted versions of. When reading The Lord of the Rings, we would therefore do well to understand that the Orcs we meet in that book is neither the goblins of The Hobbit nor the Orcs of the published Silmarillion – we are well served if, in our own minds, we can see these at (at least) three different conceptions, because that is how they are written.

[Troelsfo]

@Elenhir and @Androthelm have touched on much of the later development of Tolkien's concept of the Orcs. The idea that they had been bred from Elves captured and enslaved by Melkor before the coming of Oromë appears in a hand-written note in the Annals of Aman, probably belonging to the time around 1951 when Tolkien tried to get his Silmarillion mythology into a publishable form, hoping to see it published together with The Lord of the Rings.

This attempt was soon abandoned when Tolkien had to turn to the final editing of The Lord of the Rings and when he turned back to this problem, he appears to have begun questioning this solution, leading to the highly interesting, but ultimately inconclusive, discussions in ‘Myths Transformed’ (part five of Morgoth's Ring), where Tolkien presented such a legion of ideas and possibilities, considered their ramifications, and apparently never once realised that the only viable solution to his problem would be to go back to his pre-LotR concept, and let creation by Melkor be damned (in more than one sense).

[Troelsfo]

@Hoglorfen takes the discussion in another, and, I think, very relevant direction by pointing out the implications of our conceptualising Orcs as corrupted Eruhíni. I think it is irrelevant to distinguish here between Elves and Men – the possibly racialising connotations are the same in both cases (indeed, the same would be the case if the Orcs were a race of Melkor-created demons).

We do not need to feel bound, in our personal readings, to what Tolkien thought or conceived. It is perfectly legitimate to have completely different solutions, even though it is often interesting to also know what Tolkien might have thought.

There are so many aspects to consider in this ... personally, I abhor the whole ‘canon’-nonsense (unless one simply speaks of the ‘Tolkien canon’ as that which can be demonstrated to have been said or written by Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE). It is a fallacy that seeks to set up something that has never existed in Tolkien's mind. Tolkien changed his mind so often and so much that it is not only pointless to attempt to affix a certain conception as more authoritative, it actually falsifies what little we do know about Tolkien conception of his legendarium. No, there is not ‘canon’ in any other sense that “what Tolkien demonstrably wrote or said during his lifetime.” Understanding this crucial point is the necessary first step towards any engagement with Tolkien's writings as ‘lore’.

Verlyn Flieger did a brilliant Scholar Guest of Honor address to the members of MythCon 50 in 2019, which is printed in Mythlore 38.1 Fall/Winter 2019 as “The Arch and the Keystone”. In this paper (which builds on her article in Tolkien Studies volume XI 2014, “But What Did He Really Mean?”) Flieger speaks of how Tolkien would contradict himself and apparently could hold two mutually exclusive views at the same time. This is further to her discussions of Tolkien as “a man of antitheses” (a phrase she borrows from Carpenter's Biography) in earlier writings.

When reading The Lord of the Rings, we should see it as a sequel to the Quenta Silmarillion of the 1930s. The Hobbit is, in so many ways, completely incompatible with that world and can, at the very best, be seen as Bilbo's heavily fictionalised retelling of his adventures ... about as trustworthy as a source for the reality of Middle-earth as Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum is to the early history of the Danes ... (well ... actually ... until Lake Town I am inclined to trust Saxo slightly more than Bilbo). The whole idea of the swords being from Gondolin is ridiculous once you start taking The Hobbit too seriously as a story belonging to Middle-earth in the Third Age of the Children of Ilúvatar.

Also, do not put too much emphasis in the conversation between Gorbag and Shagrat. As @Androthelm points out, it may indicate a sense of history among Orcs, nothing more, and quite possibly rather less than that. It sounds good and it provides a bit of background into the contemporary thinking of Orcs – the whole discussion of ‘old days’ might be merely that much throw-away colour to the dialogue (Tolkien is, after all, known to use metatextual references to ‘historical’ texts and events to create depth).