this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
344 points (97.8% liked)
Dungeons and Dragons - Memes and Comics
3164 readers
80 users here now
A community for Dungeons and Dragons Memes and Comics
/c/DnD Network Communities
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Dungeons and Dragons - Art
- DM Academy
- Dungeons and Dragons - Homebrew
- Dungeons and Dragons - AI
- Dungeons and Dragons - Looking for Group
Rules (Subject to Change)
- Be a Decent Human Being
- Credit OC content (self or otherwise)
- When posting OC comics please tailor your title to adhere to the following format*:
"Title" - [Comic Name]
e.g. "Krak of Dawn" - [Swords Comic]
*Does not apply to memes
- Posts must have something to do with Dungeons and Dragons and be in a meme format or a comic
- Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
- No NSFW content
- Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Where do elder scrolls orks with their "orks are literally just another type of elf" fit? Closest to Tolkien orks in that regard I guess?
In The Lord of the Rings, orcs are a corrupted race of elves. In Tolkien's mythology, orcs are traditionally “monstrous” and represent corrupted, twisted versions of elves and men.
According to the Silmarillion, orcs are a corrupted race of elves, either bred that way by Morgoth, or turned savage in that manner. The Dark Powers tortured, corrupted and bred the captive Elves until they became the vile Orcs.
Tolkien's further writings indicate the Orcs were a corrupted mish mash of Elf, Human and beast, in varying combinations. Some Orc leaders were incarnate entities.
Tolkien himself never fully landed on a final 'origin' of the orcs.
In the book The Two Towers, it is implied even further that the Uruk-Hai were created by combining potions, magic, ancient wizard knowledge and also by having Orcs rape human women captives for Saruman's eugenics program in the depths underneath the Orthanc tower.
And isn't that a pleasant imagery to invoke nightmares?
Elder Scrolls orcs are very close to this version. They were changed when their god Trinimac was eaten by Boethiah, turning him in to Malacath and all of Trinimac's elven followers in to orcs. Except in this case they're still just regular people who have some large-scale bad luck and have often been discriminated against, there's not anything evil or corrupted about them
Isn't there a famous note, that Christopher found after publishing the Silmarillion, that says "Not Elves"?
That was one of the initial ideas Tolkien had, and that also made its way into final Silmarillion edition after his death. However, there are notes from later years where its shown he has changed his mind about Orcs elven origin. Also, due to his Catholic upbringing he had struggled with the idea of an intelligent race so corrupted to be irredeemably evil and undeserving of mercy.
In later material the Orcs had been either former humans tortured and deformed by Morgoth/Sauron, or, even later on, automatons possessed by fallen spirits and/or imbued with Morgoths evil will (as only Eru was capable of creating true life, so technically the Orcs would not be real living beings), thus skirting around the intelligent being issue.
Of cource, the Silmarillion does not reflect that, as the released book is based on older material, so in the end, the elven origin of Orcs IS sort of canon, at least as much as anything is, with JRRT constantly changing things.
Agreed on that point. Tho I find it funny towards the end it almost feels like scientology, but with orcs.
Reminds me that elves in Warcraft are descended from the Trolls