Favourite Orcs

[Xray the Enforcer]

[quote name='Fat Belwas' post='1663987' date='Jan 27 2009, 10.36']Hahahahahaaha, you guys and your fictional Orcs.

[url="http://www.abandoforcs.com/"]http://www.abandoforcs.com/[/url]

I normally cannot stand thrash metal, but these guys put on such a good show that it doesn't even matter. They go up on stage in full Orc costume, rubber masks, armor, weapons, and all, and play their Orc songs.[/quote]

:lol:
Ser Bazz (come back, you orc-loving bastard!) is friends with one of the guys in that band.

[alguien]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1666570' date='Jan 29 2009, 01.43']Tolkien Orcs are about as consistent as a Balrog's Wings.[/quote]

But Balrogs CLEARLY have wings.

Except when they don't.

[El-ahrairah]

[i]"… suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall …"[/i]

Balrogs have wings. (Although centuries of cave-living has reduced them to vestigial appendages incapable of flight.)

[Happy Ent]

+ wingless Balrogs
+ Glorfindel == Glorfindel

[Sandello]

Stan Nicholls' orcs. I got a very bad Russian translation by some crazy Tolkien fan. Orignal unit is much better.
And one skinny, grey-skinned, human-eating, lord-slaying orc from my very own head.

[Eurytus]

[quote name='El-ahrairah' post='1667004' date='Jan 29 2009, 18.00'][i]"… suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall …"[/i]

Balrogs have wings. (Although centuries of cave-living has reduced them to vestigial appendages incapable of flight.)[/quote]

And yet no Balrog ever flew BEFORE centuries of cave living. Even when it would have saved their lives to do so.
Nope, they don't have wings.

[BookWyrm]

Winged Balrogs are one of the most debated parts of Tolkien lore. Ultimately you have to decide for yourself what the case is and stick to it, but there are no arguments good enough to merit forcing those beliefs on others, besides, lets stick to orcs right now.

[quote]The humanoid, non-maritime race of Orcs that exists in Middle-earth is J. R. R. Tolkien's invention, albeit one which he stated in letter #25 was influenced by George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin. MacDonald's influence is readily apparent as Tolkien's Orcs and MacDonald's Goblins share physical and cultural similarities, not to mention similarly antagonistic relationships with humans. The term 'Orc' is usually capitalised in Tolkien's writing, but not necessarily in other sources. In Tolkien's writing, Orcs are of human shape, but smaller than Men, ugly, filthy, with a taste for manflesh. In a private letter, Tolkien describes them as "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes".[10] They are portrayed as miserable, crafty and vicious beings.[/quote]
- Quote from wikipedia [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc#Tolkien.27s_Orcs"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc#Tolkien.27s_Orcs[/url]
Has anyone read Macdonald's the Princess and the Goblin? I loved Macdonald's Phantastes, and now knowing how much of an influence he was on Tolkien's Orcs...well, what do you think of his goblins?

[TheEvilKing]

What about [i]flying Orcs?[/i]

[El-ahrairah]

[quote name='BookWyrm' post='1670225' date='Feb 1 2009, 14.56']- Quote from wikipedia [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc#Tolkien.27s_Orcs"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc#Tolkien.27s_Orcs[/url]
Has anyone read Macdonald's the Princess and the Goblin? I loved Macdonald's Phantastes, and now knowing how much of an influence he was on Tolkien's Orcs...well, what do you think of his goblins?[/quote]

I read it some time ago, liked it, but do not remember [i]that[/i] much of its goblins. I seem to recall that Tolkien read and enjoyed it.

[Rakka]

Necroposting OK? It's only two months.

"His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out [b]like[/b] two vast wings." Followed by "… suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall …" so it really can't be said either way. If it had wings why did it fall? I'm in the "metaphorical shadow wings for the Moria Balrog" camp, can't say about the ones who sacked Gondolin...

I'm partial to Dominic Deegan's orcs. Although if we're going for the Orcs-as-baddies-only, Uruks win that one by far.

[delikat]

[quote name='Happy Ent']They are completely underdeveloped, or inconsistent. Liking “them” makes no sense. It’s like preferring, out of all furry felines in the the fictional universe, Queen Berúthiel’s cats.[/quote]
Nevertheless I like Tolkien's orcs. And Queen Berúthiel’s cats. ;)

[Brude]

[quote name='El-ahrairah' post='1661491' date='Jan 25 2009, 00.38']Considering that the very idea of an "Orc" as an evil goblin-like being was invented by Tolkien, there is really no contest. Within Middle-earth, the Uruk-Hai (as shown in the films) are the pinnacle of orchood.[/quote]
Tolkien didn't invent Orcs, at least not the word. Orc is an Old English word for a demon or a bogey - the word likely comes from the Latin word Orcus, a Roman underworld god.

Anyway, some of the best orcs I've encountered were NPCs in various D&D games I've played - some of my DM's (and myself for that matter) came up with better Orc characters then I've yet seen in anything else. Og the Immortal from my friend's Telrhin is one - a tiny, nasty, smelly, dirty, evil little goblin, but for some reason the PCs kept him as a pack bearer after wiping out his entire clan when they ransacked my friend's version of Moria in his game. Over the course of some years, little Og somehow managed to survive certain death countless times (hence his nickname), and by the time they finished their campaign he was a 15th level thief. I guess you had to be there, but my friend played him as an NPC hilariously.

[Joanna vander Poele]

[quote name='Ouroboros' post='1666644' date='Jan 29 2009, 01.26']Indeed, there is no orc scarier, nor as much fun, as a Warhammer orc.

If you think about it, the orcs of Fantasy and 40k are pretty terrifying.[/quote]
Everything in 40K is terrifying.

[sologdin]

Do the Imperial Stormtroopers count as Orcs?

the key post in this thread.

i prefer a broad usage of the term, such that orc designates any motivelessly malignant, endlessly repeatable, uniform & undifferentiated threat in general, but threatening in particular (i.e. to the protagonist) if and only if it appears in sufficient numbers (where sufficient = ridiculous). it must also have several of the following characteristics: physically ugly, arbitrarily cruel, hopelessly unmanageable, craven, unintelligent but humanoid nonetheless, potentially racist caricature, mute, opinionless, perverse, or otherwise not consistent with the aesthetic, political, or ethical norms of the ideology of mass culture, especially the propaganda of the hygiene & cosmetics industries. the key to the orc is that they can be killed in genocidal numbers without any perceptible effect on the macro-narrative or geopolitical setting that they inhabit, and moreover no one, protagonist or reader, feels bad about the mass killings, except for weirdo fruitloopy losar types like, respectively, covenant or me.

so, of course stormtroopers are orcs, broadly stated. so are srancs, borgs, hippie liberal schoolchildren in goodkind, and all those guys who show up in the iliad for two lines, just before hektor kills them.

[Brude]

Do the Imperial Stormtroopers count as Orcs?

the key post in this thread.

i prefer a broad usage of the term, such that orc designates any motivelessly malignant, endlessly repeatable, uniform & undifferentiated threat in general, but threatening in particular (i.e. to the protagonist) if and only if it appears in sufficient numbers (where sufficient = ridiculous). it must also have several of the following characteristics: physically ugly, arbitrarily cruel, hopelessly unmanageable, craven, unintelligent but humanoid nonetheless, potentially racist caricature, mute, opinionless, perverse, or otherwise not consistent with the aesthetic, political, or ethical norms of the ideology of mass culture, especially the propaganda of the hygiene & cosmetics industries. the key to the orc is that they can be killed in genocidal numbers without any perceptible effect on the macro-narrative or geopolitical setting that they inhabit, and moreover no one, protagonist or reader, feels bad about the mass killings, except for weirdo fruitloopy losar types like, respectively, covenant or me.

so, of course stormtroopers are orcs, broadly stated. so are srancs, borgs, hippie liberal schoolchildren in goodkind, and all those guys who show up in the iliad for two lines, just before hektor kills them.

Hmm, I think by this definition all of those jumpsuited, usually hard-hated henchmen for the various James Bond villains could also fit. Where do they get so many people to help them with such nefarious schemes. The Simpsons at least tried to answer that question in the episode where Homer gets hired by a would-be Bond villain type as one of these henchmen - it was for the benefits package as I recall, wasn't it?

[Tyrellius]

Joe Dever's Giaks.

In the game books they were small, goblin like creatures spawned in the Darklands.

When he wrote the novels, 'Legends of Lone-Wolf' they became pretty big, front line shock troops and were used for a variety of things; pack animals, guinea pigs, food. I also remember a a giak 'defecting' and having a few PoV chapters himself.

Pity he never got to really finish the Legends tales as they seem to be expanding the gamebook range this year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lone_...ds_of_Lone_Wolf

[Galactus]

I'd say that orcs are a subtype of mooks, but not all mooks are orcs. Stormptroopers aren't particularly unhygienic for instance.

[Black Dow]

Sranc. Totally nasty

:agree:

[Jerol]

My wife once read a slash opus that was slightly out of canon. Apparently after the War of the Ring, Legolas took one of the Uruk as a lover and moved to Rivendell. She claimed it was pretty good. I have confiscated her action figures. I wanna say it was Lurtz but how even an elf could boink a decapitated orc is beyond me.