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06-04-2011, 07:57 PM | #17 |
Gruesome Spectre
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Heaven's doorstep
Posts: 8,037
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Just to stir this old pot again, let's add the Drúedain to the possible source of Orc-stock.
The UT essay regarding them makes a point of saying they and the Orcs had a particularly adversarial relationship. Though, to be fair, the same has been noted between the Orcs, and the Elves and Dwarves too. However, there's an interesting footnote (# 5) which says that "Orcs and Drûgs each regarded the other as renegades." The two certainly never helped one another or lived together, so a relationship seems to be the best explanation for their mutual feelings. Now, the same footnote makes a point of saying the Elves themselves did not believe in the relationship because "their laughter and the laughter or Orcs are as different as is the light of Aman from the darkness of Angband." That would seem to be a rather shaky basis on which to dismiss the theory though, since it seems obvious that the Drúedain, like any other potential sources from which Morgoth could have bred Orcs, could easily have been so altered after he got through that they were in effect different creatures. The Drúedain were said to be short, some as small as four feet, so they could account for the smaller breeds, maybe. And perhaps the "tracker" orc encountered by Frodo and Sam inside Mordor would have had Drûg blood? Ghân-buri-Ghân himself was able to scent a change in the wind.
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