how were elves turned into orcs ?

[gayare'dion]

do you think they were twisted by magic, or hybreaded, with other animals. theyre often described as having characteristics of different animals, such as wild boars, apes, and maybe reptillian, cause of theyre green skin.
any other ways they couldve become orcs ?

[lindil]

see the massive thread in the Silm Forum entitled 'Orcish Fear'

fear meaning Fea [spirit] = r [plural] it takes intoaccount JRRT's long and serious reservations he had about the idea of elves --> orcs.

The idea in general expressed by treebeard is considered to be his opinion and not definitive.

anyway it is covered in the thread exhaustively.

enjoy,

[Donisile Of Mirkwood]

I don't think Orcs were ever Elves, Melkor made Orcs in mockery of Elves.

[*nevquesseiel*]

maybe melkor tainted an elven spirit or something and turned it evil....

I thought they were tortured physically...in The Fellowship of the Ring the movie, it shows the Uruk-hai under a mud thing (for lack of a better term [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]). I think this changed his features - maybe it was very hot, maybe it was magical. Saruman also says in the movie, 'They were Elves once...tortured, and mutilated...a ruined and terrible form of life...now perfected.' when he talks about Orcs into Uruk-hai.

[Reyna Evergreen]

I half agree with Isilvente.

First of all, I think that they were tortured physically at first, because that is how Melkor was; prisonners, may they be elves, men or dwarves, were torchured until they told what was their purpose. So it's my theory that that's how they got their form of odd angles and lack of the elven beauty; physical torture bringing to the eventual distortion of the body, but in their mind and souls they were still the elven people.

To how they became evil, I have another theory; magic. Because Melkor was also a Vala, he had magic, altough tainted. So to change his new "creatures" to his side, he might have tortured them again using his magic. With the evil taint he had, it must of worked. So the twisted elves were corrupted and mutilated in their mind aswell.

Put two and two together and you have orcs.

[arelendil]

although i agree with reyna, i have to add that morgoth had no power left. the elves where still elves, twisted by torture. they hated morgoth for the evil he had done but feared him more. being torture would have put strain on mind as well as body and in the beginning the fea had not obtained the upper hand in the body, the mind still had it. and so was torture with the body not as well!
okay once more this what i've got and remember from HoME 10! sorry if i'm wrong

[Gayametwen]

Nay! They were captured and tortured, though I do not see how, the ones in the mud were bred, not the firest orcs who were tortured... And there are different types of elves..which might of made different types of orcs..if you see what I mean. The movie is not to be wholly relied on for it cut out half of the story like poor Tom Babadil and Burrow and Bill Ferny and well you see what I mean?

[Mintyztwin]

Okay, first the orcs were not created by Morgoth. In the Silmarillion it talks about how the Orcs came into being after the Elves came into the world.

"But those unhappy ones [elves] who were ensnared by [Morgoth} were put in prison and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did [Morgoth] breed the hideous race of the Orcs . . . "

Morgoth couldn't have created them, 'cause it [The Sil] says that he couldn't make anything that "had life of its own, nor the semblance of life . . . " ever since he rebelled in the beginning.

Sorry if anyone already answered this question! I just skimmed the thread, I really should be doing homework! [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Gayametwen]

another:
(Frodo): The shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real things of its own. I don't think it gave life to orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them; and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures. [to Sam]

And also somewhere in the book it also states that Orcs were also made to mock the elves for they used to be the same, all elves.

you have got to remember that Elves are fragil beings though they can be fierce and very worthy fighters they can die from grief!
i think they were tortured and twisted as said by many until their poor minds lost control they would of lost memory of all Elvish beauty and twisted into evil, it's really a terrible thing to think about...

[Afrodal Fenyar]

Well, I think there was a possibility that they weren't elves at all. If they were, they would've been immortal, and when their body destroyed, would have gone to the Halls of Mandos. But if they were, then I believe they were created by magic. For if somebody cuts the arm from your father, when you are born, you will probably still have two arms. Genemanipulation(hope I spelled it right, not very familiar word for me) would be a choise, but very unlikely. After all, Middle-earth is a fantasy world. Why they became evil, well.. Spend several hundred years tortured, I don't think you are very happy or nice. "Hello guys, I'm back from Utumno!" And after that they feared Melkor too much to be anything else.

But I believe they were something else, not elves at all.

[Iargwath]

Origins of Orcs

Within the deepest Pits of Utummno, in the First Age of Stars, it is said that Melkor committed his greatest blasphemy. For in that time he captured many of the newly risen race of Elves and took them in his dungeons, and with hideous acts of torture he made ruined and terrible forms of life. From these he bred a Goblin race of slaves who were as loathsome as Elves were fair.
These were Orcs, a multitude brought forward in shapes twisted by pain and hate. The only joy of these creatures was in the pain of others, for the blood within them was black and cold.

Sources

*The Silmarillion
-Quenta pg(s) 3,10
-Akabel pg 5
*The Hobbit
pg(s) 4,5
*Lord of the Rings
-Chapters I, II, III, V, VI

[Dimhuanion]

Evels turned into Orcs in Morgoths Dungeons
The Orcs were created after Morgoth locked away the elves he had captured down in his dungeons and left them there for millions of years

[Legolas]

Tolkien said orcs did not come from elves. As far as I can tell, he changed his mind about that orcs are corrupted elves thing.

Christopher Tolkien put it in The Silmarillion anyway.

Go figure.

Letter No. 144:

Orcs ... are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be 'corruptions'. They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in.

Letter No. 153:

As for other points. I think I agree about the 'creation by evil'. But you are more free with the word 'creation' than I am. Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord 'created' Trolls and Orcs. He says he 'made' them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing. There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements, so wide that Treebeard's statement could (in my world) have possibly been true. It is not true actually of the Orcs - who are fundamentally a race of 'rational incarnate' creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today. Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthy wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand. He does not know what 'wizards' are, or whence they came (though I do, even if exercising my subcreator's right I have thought it best in this Tale to leave the question a 'mystery', not without pointers to the solution).

Later in Letter No. 153:

I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them.

[ November 24, 2002: Message edited by: Legalos ]