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Nordor
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Post Orc lifespan
on: October 14, 2017 09:52
Does anyone have any information on what the lifespan of an orc was? Since they were supposedly derived from elves would they have the indefinite lifespan of an elf? Or didn't Tolkien ever determine this?
(I apologize if this has been covered before.)
Gandolorin
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on: October 15, 2017 03:24
That Orcs were “bred” in whatever way by Melkor / Morgoth from Elves can at best be considered a hypothesis of those within, and outside of, Middle-earth. And of the latter, even JRRT himself basically failed to elevate it above the level of a hypothesis, as he was not able to resolve contradictions, not the least “with himself” in his roles as storyteller respectively devout Catholic, about fundamental issues.

With the Orcs being in so many ways the diametrical opposite of the Elves, how could even Melkor (not able to create any living things of the sort, as no other Vala was – Aulë’s Dwarves were only given life independent of him by Eru basically “adopting” them) have corrupted those hypothesized Elves that he had captured? When Oromë found the Elves on the shores of Lake Cuiviënen, they had been awake for a while (how long a while was in these pre-sun-and-moon eras of the First Age is always foggy). How widely did the awakened Elves differ in their traits? Were there some that more Orc-like in the beginning? Were those whom Oromë led west to the shores of Middle-earth only the cream of the “crop”? How large was the group of the Avari, the unwilling, some of whom may have fled Oromë outright (due to Melkor’s propaganda of some sort), some who refused to go on the journey when summoned, some who decided that the journey was not worthwhile somewhere along the unknown miles and perhaps centuries of the journey?

About the only chronological help we have as to the longevity of Orcs comes from Annals, the dates: of the Battle of Azanulbizar before the west-gate of Moria in 2799 Third Age, when Dáin Ironfoot (of later “The Hobbit” and marginally LoTR fame) slew Azog, chieftain of the Orcs of Moria; then it was Azog’s son Bolg who was the leader of the Orcs at the Battle of Five Armies in “The Hobbit” in 2941 TA, 142 years later. So some Orcs like Bolg must have had lifespans comparable to those of the Dwarves, at least. As corrupted Elves, they should potentially had the lifespan of their relatives, meaning that of Arda.

But there are at least hints that the Elves after the rise of the sun and the moon, and after they had been supplanted by men as of the Fourth Age, would fade bodily (their hröa) in Middle-earth, without affecting their fëa (spirits – think Fëanor, spirit of fire). So maybe Melkor was able, through poisons or whatever means, to change Elves captured by him into the gross caricatures that the Orcs were – but in the process degrading their hröa so that these lived only as long as men or Dwarves or other mortal creatures.
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Elthir
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on: October 15, 2017 04:27
To my mind Tolkien himself doesn't seem too sure about the question. He actually asks himself this in a text. After musing about the question of heritability and other things, Tolkien notes...

'In that case Elves, as a source, are very unlikely. And are orcs 'immortal' in the Elvish sense? Or Trolls?'

JRRT, text VIII, Morgoth's Ring


But by the end of this text Tolkien has concluded that the majority of Orcs are perverted beasts, with possibly some Elves in the mix, explaining...

'It remains therefore terribly possible there was an Elvish strain in orcs. These may have even been mated with beasts (sterile!) -- and later Men. Their life span would be diminished. And dying they would go to Mandos and be held in prison until the end.'


But then Tolkien adds a passage in which he simply says orcs are beasts! So one wonders if he had maybe rejected the idea of an Elvish strain here, or was just not mentioning it again due to brevity.

And that's not the only text about Orcs in any case, as in text X we have Orcs made from Men [the chronology was altered to allow this], and the Orcs were said to be short-lived compared with the life span of Men of higher race, such as the Edain.
But...

'This last point was not well understood on the Elder Days. For Morgoth had many servants, the oldest and most potent of whom were immortal, belonging indeed in their beginning to the Maiar; and these spirits like their Master could take on visible forms. Those whose business it was to direct the Orcs often took Orkish shapes, through 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.'

JRRT, text X, Myths Transformed, Morgoth's Ring


In my opinion the Maiar-orcs were never supposed to be the main source of Orcs in any case, but they could explain some exceptionally powerful, or exceptionally long lived orcs.

my opinion

Tolkien was leaning toward altering the chronology, making Men the main source for orcs (along with some Maiar-orcs), which would, in any case, basically erase the question of Elvish "immortality" with respect to orcs.
Nordor
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on: October 21, 2017 09:55
This is just casual speculation on my part. Since the orcs were short, squat, strong and preferred a subterranean environment (at least a dark one) then the dwarves would be a reasonable source for them. It would make the orcs long lived but not indefinite. Since the dwarves were created by Aule (just ok'd by Eru) this would seem to open them up to being manipulated by Melkor. The timeline would be more correct; the dwarves appear before Men do. Just a thought....
Gandolorin
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on: October 21, 2017 11:24
One thing that makes me think that the Dwarves are very unlikely candidates as a source for Orcs is the (admittedly later, as of Second Age) fact that Sauron’s seven rings for the Dwarves had so little effect on them, at least as Sauron seems to have hoped the effect would be. And further back, when Aulë did create them, he seems to have had quite a bit of foresight on what Arda marred by Melkor would be like (and come to think of it, Manwë might have had need of some of this foresight – I mean, even Tulkas seems to have had more insight into Melkor’s character than Manwë did, a pretty poor showing of naïveté on the part of the nominally wisest of the Valar). Aulë specifically gave them characteristics to resist Melkor’s evils and their effects.

And while Elthir as usual, and to my fascination, is able to quote HoME (which I also own – but finding the quotes, actually just trying to, would leave me seriously frazzled pretty quickly), there is the point I would make that much of the later writing would have given us a seriously different Silmarillion from that compiled by Christopher Tolkien. Instead of just volumes 1 and 2 of HoME being designated as “Books of Lost Tales” (with such a totally different form of transmission of the events of the Elder Day of the Elves than JRRT later developed), there would have been several further volumes of “Lost Tales” …

So going back to earlier speculations about Elves having been the source for Orcs, there is JRRT’s concept of “Dark Elves”. Many, if not most Orcs up to and including LoTR have serious issues with being out and about in the bright sunshine (therefore the necessity for both Melkor and Sauron having to release “volcanic” clouds to block the sun). Since the Ages of the Two Trees are never really given explicitly, but pretty much surmised to be exceedingly long (each age of Aman of Melkor’s captivity perhaps being around 10,000 years of the sun is one guess), could then the rising of the sun as we know it when Fingolfin’s larger host of rebellious Noldor marched into Middle-earth not only have been a source of terror to Melkor’s Orcs, but also to all of the Dark Elves who had never crossed the Misty Mountains (at that time far in the east of the shores of Middle-earth)? The Vanyar, Noldor and Teleri who had crossed over to Aman had (mostly) seen the light of the Two Trees – which, I propose, might have amazed, and perhaps slightly terrified, even Ingwë, King of the Vanyar and High King of all Elves in Arda? So Orcs, except for later breeds like the Uruk-hai whose source also remains unclear, having severe issues with the sun might fit with Dark Elves, who might also have become nocturnal to avoid this to them overly bright celestial light. Maybe Doriath, more so Thranduil’s realm in Mirkwood in the Third Age, perhaps less so Nargothrond in the same age as Doriath, had deeper reasons? (I confess that the pun is accidental, at least consciously so.)
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Elthir
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on: October 25, 2017 09:40
Hmm, like Gandolorin notes, I don't think Dwarves were easily manipulated, and of the various notions that Tolkien considered with respect to orc-origins, which include...

... subterranean heat and slime, created by Melkor
... hatred and stone (in part, possibly poetic), created by Melkor

after revision that Melkor must pervert something

... Elves (or so say the Wise of Eressea)
... Musical Discord
... Elves and later Men, some Maiar
... Beasts, some Elves, some Men, some Maiar,
... Men (altering chronology of Men's awakening) some Maiar
... Some said the Druedain, Elves said no, source must be Men

... Tolkien never seems to consider Dwarves.

I think the ability to be manipulated into "orc-state", and to make that state heritable, was a factor in Tolkien later pointing to Men, even if the notion was going to be given as an internal belief, as the way the "origin" of orcs is expressed in the Druedain note, Unfinished Tales.

For myself, I believe, from the Western Elvish perspective anyway, that the Sun existed before the Elves awoke, and the "Dark Elves" were those Elves who never passed over sea and saw the light of the Two Trees.

From a Mannish and/or "Eastern Elvish" perspective, the Dark Elves did not pass Over Sea, and lived in the Twilight before the Sun and Moon arose, fruits of the Two Trees.

Yep... I went there
Gandolorin
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on: October 26, 2017 01:13
For my new speculation. I will for a moment put aside chronological difficulties and insufficient information about the earliest times between the awakening of the Elves / the captivity of Melkor and his return to Middle-earth with the stolen Silmarils.

A background to my speculation is the fact that work elephants in India and Southeast Asia have never been domesticated, i.e. bred in captivity, especially with the usual intent of breeders of trying to foster characteristics they consider beneficial for their purposes, and / or eliminating unwanted characteristics, as they did in cattle et.al. All work elephants, perhaps excluding a negligible, tiny minority, were tamed wild elephants. For one reason: Elephants take way too long to reach breeding age, 9 years at the earliest for females and around 15 for males – though the latter may not have chances of actually breeding in the wild until 25 years old. And typically, the times between calves is at least four years. Then, elephants are not ruminants like cattle, so the former have a digestive system that is woefully inefficient in the use of poorly digestible plants as food. So rearing a bull elephant calf to sexual maturity could use up fodder that would feed entire herds of cattle during the same time.

So what? I speculate that the natural procreation of Elves, including the Dark Elves, compares to that of humans in principle like that of elephants to cattle. And this would be one thing that Melkor would probably not be able to meddle with, being a very fundamental trait that Eru had given the Elves. But in contrast to elephants and cattle, “cross-breeding” between Elves and humans (and even Maiar!) is possible, if rare at the level of the High Elves we read about in JRRT’s works. But then there is the business of Prince Imrahil’s purported part-Elven ancestry. The important point here, as I see it, is that in contrast to the choice given the “Half-Elven” (a simplification) Elros and Elrond, and the latter’s children, the progeny of other Elven-human pairings are automatically mortal. Possible result: the “breeding cycle” of these mortal hybrids drops to human levels (an aside: a German insult does equate the insulted with cattle). On the other hand, the hybrids do inherit some of the superior physical qualities of the Elves. Just think of Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas chasing the Orc band (granted, driven along by the “super-Orcs” Uruk-hai, but still …) who had captured Marry and Pippin. Despite a chase pace which would probably frazzle ultra-triathletes, and which seriously impressed Éomer, they had lost ground on the Orc band.

A big problem is, of course: when could such a cross breeding have taken place? I don’t know if Orcs were mentioned as being among Melkor’s trrops defending him against the (other) Valar in the Battle of the Powers leading to his captivity in Valinor – not in the published Silmarillion, at any rate. So that would theoretically leave the time between Melkor’s return to Middle-earth with the stolen Silmarils and his first attack with Orc troops, even before any Noldor had returned to Middle-earth, to attack Thingol’s (and Melian’s) realm in Menegroth and Cirdan’s Elves in Eglarest. The chapter 12 “Of Men” presents the major problem to my speculation, as men are there said to have only awoken with the rising of the sun – for the one and only time in the west, which is why some of them felt drawn in that direction. But this was when Fingolfin’s Noldor hosts arrived in Middle-earth, never mind Fëanor’s hosts’ earlier arrival, giving the Orc armies their first massive thrashing, or the earlier Orc attacks on Thingol et.al. My only hope to resolve this contradiction is that men were so short-lived compared to Elves that their memories of actual “awakening”, still in a darkness only lit by stars (and men were ever fearful of the darkness) and the dazzling, first-time rising of the sun got muddled.

Another little speculation: maybe Elven-human cross-breeding had taken place for some time, and as genetic chances turn out, the ones with a more dominant Elven strain headed west, while those with a more dominant human strain were destined to become Orcs (with some “help” from Malkor and possibly also Sauron).

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