Where did all the goblins go?

[Sardy]

Forgive me if this has been covered before, or if there's an explanation in the books that I somehow missed?

At the end of the Third Age, after the defeat of Sauron, what became of all the goblins and orcs? Were they bound to Sauron and the ring, and so faded after its destruction? Did they retreat to the deep places of the earth, never to be heard from again? Did they become second-class citizens?

I'm curious whether their fate was ever addressed...

[FeRaL sHaDoW]

didnt they just scatter all around ME

[MatthewM]

I believe a lot retreated to the woods where they were crushed by the Huorns and the Ents...at least after the battle of Helm's Deep. I'm pretty sure many did still retreat to the woods after the fall of Sauron, and they were either consumed by the Ents/Huorns or the soldiers of Gondor. This is all speculation however, I have no evidence...pure speculation.

[Rhod the Red]

Wiped out, as the Renunited Kingdom formed.

[goldfinger]

They were hunted down by the reunited kingdom and it's allies, until none could be found but in the deepest places of the world and elsewhere.

[Thinlómien]

Makes me pity the cute little orcseys...

[littlemanpoet]

Assuming that this is feigned history, one would expect that some goblins, orcses, trolls, and whatnot, survived, or there would be none left to fill the later folklores of the Northern Europeans from approximately 2000 B.C. until such folklores stopped being produced. That would mean no Grendel for Beowulf to fight, for example. So I am supposing that some did escape to the depths of the mountains and to the far nothern wastes beyond the reach of the King of Gondor.

[Elmo]

'Feigned history' So Middle Earth isn't real then...

[Kuruharan]

Yeah, exactly like what happened after the War of Wrath, and they survived then (Sauron was not present at that time! And they were bound by the will of Morgoth, not Sauron, and as you can see, there was no problem).

There is some question presented in the books about whether his repentance was genuine. In any case, there was still a great force of primordial evil present in the world capable of chaining the wills of the orcs.

It may also have something to do with the fact that Sauron was the one who created the orcs in the first place.

Or after the war of the Last Alliance, and they survived again.

The Ring still existed. Sauron still existed. What is your point here?

But Orcs? They were "normal" free-willed (now really) beings. The Power that ruled them was gone, yes. Their leader and shiny future (for the carieristic or fanatically devoted Uruk-hai) was gone. What a shock for them.

There is a lot to question about what exactly the orcs were and whether the bulk of them were "rational." It is ultimately an unanswerable question because Tolkien changed his own mind on the subject a number of times.

Here is a cursory treatment.

If you really want to get into some nitty gritty (and delve into the bowels of the site, waaaaay back into its earliest days) click here

[mhagain]

'I'd like to try somewhere where there's none of 'em. But the war's on now, and when that's over things may be easier.'
'It's going well, they say.'
'They would.' grunted Gorbag. 'We'll see. But anyway, if it does go well, there should be a lot more room. What d'you say? – if we get a chance, you and me'll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there's good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.'
'Ah! ' said Shagrat. 'Like old times.'

I think "Like old times" is the key element of this quote. There was once a time when orcs acted as free agents without any "big bosses", and so - unless their nature has been changed dramatically in the interim - they would subsequently be able to do so again.

It's also blindingly obvious from this that orcs are - and I must emphasise this - rational free-thinking beings. Whatever version of their origin you may subscribe to, it must go without saying that rational free thought can only derive from Eru.

Think of Aule and the Dwarves - when he first created them, they were only able to move and act at his command. Now, this was a small number of Dwarves and one of the mighty of the Valar.

Now contrast. Sauron is a Maia, still powerful, but Aule would be off the scale by comparison (in fact, Aule was Sauron's original "master"). And it's not a small number of orcs, it's tens of thousands.

So no question about it, the orcs would have easily survived Sauron's downfall, no differently to the Haradrim, Variags or Easterlings.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

This is just what I wanted to say. Mhagain, you saved me the trouble

Kuru, I never wanted to start any speculations on Orcs, the Downs have had their share of it. I was only presenting the fact that Orcs, unlike Trolls or spell-enslaved beasts, were not dependant on Sauron. Which mhagain already said pretty brief and clear, I think.