I’m still unclear whether orcs are immortal like elves.
They ain’t immortal Doghouse. Lop their heads off, they die.
You can do the same with elves, Desmostylus. But barring mortal injury or excessive ennui, elves live thousands of years in Middle Earth, and even when they are “killed” they go to the Halls of Mandos to await reincarnation, e.g., Glorfindel.
But Men are susceptible to disease and inevitably die–and when they do die, their spirits leave the circles of the world and go even the Wise wot not whither.
So since you’ve got all the snappy comebacks, Desmostylus, are Orcs (a) immortal like elves, or (b) mortal like men?
OK.
Morgoth made the orcs by warping elves.
Man’s mortality came as a “gift” from Iluvitar.
Could Morgoth confer Iluvitar’s “gift” upon the warped elves? No.
So Orcs are immortal. Interesting–some of the Orcs featured in LoTR might have been veteran foes of the Last Alliance, or even veterans of the War of Wrath.
Wait. Was I supposed to catch the duplicate Glorfindel thing?
Are you saying that the Glorfindel of Gondolin was reincarnated as the Glorfindel of the ford?
OMG, how did I miss that?
I’ll let you come visit and listen to The Silmarillion on CD while we soak in the hot tub?
That was posited in some of JRRT’s notes.
We don’t know the origin of Orcs. Tolkien may not have known.
Movie Saruman says they’re mutilated elves, but who’s going to take his word for it? Book Treebeard says something about this, but he’s only theorizing and he mistook Merry and Pippin for Orcs, so how reliable is that?
Many in the Cult of Tolkien turn to The Silmarillion for answers they can’t find in LOTR. However, Silmarillion was published after J.R.R. Tolkien’s death and was compiled from materials selected from decades of writing. Christopher Tolkien said in his foreword that his father had made many alterations over the years resulting in some inconsistencies. We don’t really know what form it would have taken if JRRT had controlled its publication. Therefore, I maintain it can only provide suggestions, not solutions to the mysteries of JRRT.
Finally, based on a marginal note , CT has said JRRT decided that Orcs descend from men, not elves. Whether this represents his final conviction on the matter or just a passing thought, we can only speculate.
Alright, exclude posthumous publications and marginal notes.
In that case we have from Appendix F:
“The Orcs were first bred by the Dark Power of the North in the Elder Days”.
We don’t what he bred them from.
As for their lifespan, we have this from Ch 4 of The Hobbit:
“The Great Goblin gave a truly awful howl of rage when he looked at it, and all his soldiers gnashed their teeth, clashed their shields and stamped. They knew the sword at once. It had killed hundreds of goblins in its time, when the fair elves of Gondolin hunted them in the hills or did battle before their walls. They had called it Orcrist, Goblin-cleaver, but the goblins called it simply Biter. They hated it and hated worse any one that carried it.”
That passage strongly implies that the orcs personally remembered the sword and its use in Gondolin.
*We don’t know what he bred them from.
We do know that at one point, JRRT did definitively write that orcs were bred from elves before the first rising of the Sun. Of that there is no doubt. Of course he also wrote that Trotter, Strider’s predecessor was in reality Bilbo Baggins, who had his feet cut off in Barad-Dur. Several re-writes later, this concept vanished.
We also know that JRRT left other notes and writings indicating that he was less than happy with the orcs having derived from elves, and was planning on making some changes. Probably after he fiddled with Galadriel’s departure from Aman, making her leave before the Oath of Fëanor, and with the Teleri elf Celeborn. He also expressed the desire to re-write the whole concept of the creation of the Sun and the Moon, feeling he had to make those objects present in the sky from the beginning. But again, he didn’t get around to it.
So we’re dealing with unfinished works here, fans. Even Canon fails us, when the author kept messing with it, or indicating his intent to mess with it. So might as well just enjoy it.
As for whether the orcs are immortal, ISTR a scene in Return of the King where Frodo and Samwise overhear two orcs talking about the Last Alliance, and it sounds like they personally remember the battle.
Also on the immortal Orc token, weren’t the orcs who resided in the mines of Moria there for a very long time?
Qadgop, 