Editing Orc (section)

==Tolkien==
[[File:Tolkien Goblins.JPG|thumb|right|400px|The origin of the original Orcs.]]
Orcs as we know them have their beginnings with Tolkien's works. The first orcs were created by Melkor (later known as Morgoth) shortly after the first elves awoke, before humans existed. It should be noted that Tolkien never definitively stated the true origin of Orcs , and most of what we have comes from notes and decisions he left to his son Christopher when he passed control of the setting over. 
According to one account published after Tolkien's death in The Silmarillion, some of these elves wandered about exploring this world that they had awoken in and were captured by some of Melkor's Maiar ("fallen angels" futher down the hierarchy, Melkor being basically Satan) and were taken to Utumno, his base of operations. Because Melkor was bitter about being unable to create life they were tortured, abused, cursed, mutated and selectively bred until you got Orcs, [[What| because obviously torture is totally going to influence the physiology of your offspring]]. The result was a species of ugly, bad-smelling, fanged, bow-legged, long-armed, claw-handed, hairy apelike humanoids which were 'sallow', 'swart' or 'black' in coloration, had an aversion to sunlight, ranged in size from smaller than a hobbit to almost as large as a man. These creatures would make up the bulk of Melkor and later Sauron's armies. 

Tolkien's Orcs are not stupid, described as "making no beautiful things, but many clever ones" and their speech, while crass, is articulate. They are capable of making weapons (bows, spears, daggers, shields and curved swords), armor (helmets, mail and scale armor supplemented by salvage), effective if unpleasant medicine (prosthetic limbs are literally stabbed into the stump, for example, or salves that, while leaving visible scars and smelling horribly, work surprisingly well when treating cuts and bruises), and are pretty good engineers on top of creating assembly lines; one of the general morals of Tolkien's works is rampant industrialization is a path to evil and/or misfortune, and making Orcs more advanced than other races reflects this. They are almost as good at mining as Dwarves are even if their work ethic leaves something to be desired. Orcs also have heraldry (being able to recognize individual commanders by their banners) and knowledge of history, at least in oral form, stretching to the Second Age and probably further. Their endurance bears special mention, as they are able to run for several days straight, if need be. Interestingly enough, despite their nature, orcs do care about aesthetics in some way: there is a mention of an officer's weapon having a carved handle. 

Not all orcs are identical. There are variations among Orcs both in terms of individual personalities and differences between groups. Orcs from the Misty Mountains are described as being fairly tribal while those of Mordor are regimented (to the point where they have serial numbers). There are also different breeds of Orcs, besides the garden variety Orc you also have 'snufflers' bred for following scent trails and the larger and more sun resistant Uruk-Hai bred by Sauron and Saruman, supposedly made by crossbreeding Orcs with humans and specialized to act as commanders. However they are violent, sadistic, spiteful, enjoy breaking stuff, and are as a rule hateful and miserable. Fighting, killing, eating, drinking, looting, blowing stuff up, gaining power, bossing their subordinates around, torturing and presumably raping captives can only give temporary reprieve. They hate Sauron and especially Melkor, but serve them out of fear, their psychic influence over them and the fact that everyone who is not under their authority despises them and wants them dead. They are capable of internal loyalty and do have some social taboos (being accused of eating other Orcs is a considerable insult even though they are perfectly fine with eating non-Orcs) which are enough to let them act together as groups, although these groups tend to collapse due to infighting after reaching a certain size in the absence of a leader who can terrify them into submission. 

Despite this, little is said by Tolkien about how Orcs live their lives on a day-to-day basis as their role in the story is as a force which threatens the heroes and those around them. It can be extrapolated, however that it is usually nasty, brutish and short. Some of the interactions between different groups of orcs frequently results in back-stabbing and violent power struggles, so we can assume that they operate on a grimdark version of Klingon politics. All the orcs mentioned are male which is usually interpreted as "orcs don't bring their womenfolk along on campaigns" (which is basically what Tolkien said in one of his letters) but has led a few to say that orcish sexual dimorphism is basically nonexistent or that female orcs don't exist. Given Sauron's proclivities and the various castes in mordor they were likely subject to some form of selective breeding program.

In Tolkien's published works, "Orc" and "goblin" are synonyms (at least at first; later he said that goblins were a subtype of orc, and later still he said that they were totally unrelated). In later editions of The Hobbit, he says that "goblin" is a translation of "orc", which is "not an English word". "Uruk" means Orc in Black Speech, a mix of Elvish, human tongue, and Sauron's attempts to give them their own language. Most fantasy fiction typically distinguishes between Goblins and Orcs: most of Tolkien's Orcs would resemble other works' Goblins (Frodo and Sam disguised themselves as Orcs, so we can assume at least some are Hobbit height). The largest Orcs in Middle Earth - the Uruks of Isengard and Mordor - appear to be only almost as tall as Men.

Something worth pointing out here is that, Orcs do '''not''' represent non-European folks [[SJW|as some have suggested]], at least not in the mind of Tolkien. Instead, they were always a representation of man's inhumanity, especially the form it took in the 20th century. As stated previously, Orcs created many clever devices of war, as well as industry that polluted the land and enslaved others. Tolkien saw Orcs as the inevitable end-products of rationalism and progress without any sort of ethical restraint, and likened them to the various people who supported an ends-justify-the-means mentality, even going so far as condemning the creation of the atomic bomb as the most Orcish thing the Allies had ever done. In this light, Tolkien's Orcs are best understood not as the foreign ''Other'', but as a vision of what could happen to ourselves in the future, should we allow ourselves to degenerate into evil monsters unbound by any morality.

===Grey areas===
The question of whether they are [[always Chaotic Evil|intrinsically evil]] is never brought up, and several of Tolkien's unpublished works suggest that this was due to his own misgivings with the concept of a wholly evil race. Melkor had no power to create other beings himself, but the fact that elves could be corrupted would also imply Eru had either made the souls of some elves either inherently evil or easily corrupted to become evil. Unlike Melkor, Sauron, and Balrogs who were spiritual beings that made an active choice to be evil, Orcs are universally portrayed as evil which means they could be evil from birth which was strongly against Tolkien's strong Catholic beliefs in the nature of good and evil. This in turn contradicted his own views on the nature of [[God|Eru]] as a wholly good deity while also opening up some thorny questions of faith for Tolkien himself, and even in his last writings it appears he could not come up with a satisfactory explanation for how they could be universally evil by nature. Christopher similarly has not come up with a satisfactory answer and has largely avoided the subject, avoiding talking about Orcs as anything but adult militant antagonists and leaning back on his father's suggestions of corrupted man/elf hybrids descended from enslaved elves. 

Fans divide into different camps of explanation. 

* Orcs could be born adult and "male", like the Warhammer Orcs discussed below, and thus be more intelligent animal like Dragons as opposed to inherently evil people. 
* Another suggestion is they could also be people who are indoctrinated from youth, such as their closest inspiration as the Central Powers in World War 1 (trying to kill Tolkien in the Somme) and Axis (who blew up his barn while he and the family hid in the cellar during the Blitz) which would make Orcs antagonists with horrible leaders and a corrupt ideology as opposed to naturally evil; this would make them as evil as the Easterlings.
* Some have reasoned, in the vein of the second suggestion, that Orcs are not all unified on Melkor/Sauron's side, which is supported by a single line from Tolkien that no race stood united for or against Sauron; this is dismissed by some with the elf/man origins as all Orcs evil and all elves good, but can be interpreted either way. In this view some have reasoned there must be neutral tribes of Orcs who did not participate in conflict and are as unmentioned as the Stoorish Hobbits (Gollum's original people, who's only importance at all and thus only mention is just that; being Gollum's people before he degenerated into a [[Ghoul|ghoulish]] being), that these Orcs could possibly even be good for all that is known.
* Another idea is that Melkor's corruption of the Elves he kidnapped either diminished or removed their capacity to do good, which would make creating the Orcs one of the most monstrous acts he had ever committed, and considering this guy was capital-E Evil in every way he could think of that says a whole goddamn lot.
* The presence of Boldogs/"Orc-shaped Maiar"; AKA '''fucking Fallen Angels'''; amongst Melkor's forces suggests a more insidious reason as to why Orcs are so physically deformed and spiritually corrupted. As it does not make sense that the torture and spiritual corruption; even if done by fantasy Satan himself; of the captive Elves would somehow cause their [[Orcs|descendants]] to be so physically and spiritually twisted that they counted as a different species, it would however, make sense if the original Orcs were logically bred into existence like the later Orc breeds. Since there were no Orcs running around at this time in pre-history, what were these captive Elves bred with you might ask? [[Demon|The Maiar who sided with Melkor and took demonic physical forms.]] Like the Fallen Angels of the Christian Bible, these hateful beings would lust for the flesh of [[God|Eru's]] children, [[Rape|and would visit upon them every manner of violation and torture.]] Thus would the Orcs come to be, the spawn of rape by demonic beings, every bit as twisted and warped as you would expect such a creature to be. Unlike the Nephilim of the Christian Bible though, Orcs are not known for being incredibly strong, giant, or legendary warriors and kings; which begs the question as to why Orcs in this theory are not as strong despite being analagous to the Nephilim of the Bible. Furthermore, this theory also runs the most afoul of Tolkien's own misgivings about an inherently evil race, aside from [[FATAL|the obvious squickyness and implications that arise from rape by Fallen Angels.]]
* One possibility, strongly hinted at in the text by the fight going out of the Orcs as soon as the Ring was destroyed, is that some kind of mind control was involved.
* The final suggestion is Orcs have no souls, and much like the Little Mermaid (not the Disney version, but rather the original story where they are Feyfolk who are sea foam come to life in the forms of people that can love and grieve, but return to sea foam in oblivion when they die because they have no souls) are just some natural material come to life with no real importance or moral rights because they were not intentionally created by the omnipotent creator (Dwarves are exempt from this fate, being creations of the Vala Aulë who were granted life and 'adopted' by Eru Illuvatar). In this view you could do anything you want to an Orc from killing to torture because they have as much natural rights as their base components, similar to the destruction of the Golem in Hebrew myth, and would explain the ostensible absence of Orc souls in the afterlife of Tolkien's cosmology, though one could find moral problems with this as well depending on your worldview. Tolkien seems to have considered this explanation at one point but ultimately rejected it, as he believed that the Orcs would have been no more intelligent than any other animal if they were truly soulless.

In any case, Tolkien invented Orcs and what is discussed above served as the inspiration of of MANY spinoffs that to various degrees A: took the idea and ran with it while expanding on it to fill in the blanks, B: took the basic idea and gave it a few tweaks, or C: deliberately subverted what people expected from Orcs, making it possible for them to be the good guys. There have been various takes on the "are Orcs fundamentally evil?" question. As a general rule more people tend to go with some flavor of "in principle no" in that regard as it opens up more narrative possibilities as opposed to a race of set-in-stone killer meatbots utterly unable to deviate from their programing though still cast them primarily in a villainous role.

===Direct Adaptations===
For the most part the Lord of the Rings movies created by Peter Jackson have done a reasonable interpretation of the orcs from the books, though they have cranked their aggression up a bit, uglied them to a great degree, often used the green skin-tones that were popularized later, made them much taller across the board, and ''possibly'' confirmed females. No females are pointed out, but some actresses that played Orcs have insisted their characters (who are usually killed by Elf acrobatics in the same scene or just screech at the camera and shoot an arrow) are female; Jackson has never confirmed or denied this but still made a point of including these interviews on the special features sections of the home release of the movies. Then again, he also put Elves at Helms Deep... 

There's also a rather Grimdark theory akin to Daemonculaba regarding the breeding of the Uruk-Hai from mutating regular newborn Half-Orc infants. The "mud" seen in the movie has been filled with Dark Magic/Essence of Sauron, and the blood of sacrificed humans. Infant Half-Orcs are chosen after being selectively bred, torn from their human mothers' grasp (and possibly womb), and tossed heartlessly into the muck as they wail, crying and desperate for the return of their parent's love. They sink into the bubbling muck, where it serves as a sort of incubator, forcing the half-blood orcling to grow up in a matter of days, maybe even hours, instead of the years it would take the half-orc to normally grow up. Eventually, Snaga are forced to pull the cocooned body of the now Uruk-Hai out of the muck. They have been infused with Sauron's dark will, and are completely brainwashed to his cause by his will. This theory basically paints Saruman as being fucking Doctor Mengele.

Notably, the 2014 game Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, while mostly known for being "actually pretty good" for what was essentially an Assassin's Creed clone, also showed Orc culture. Essentially, they were a naturally evil race ruled by a hierarchy of tribe chiefs who use grimdark Klingon politics (although there was references made to Sauron possibly using his terrible magical psychic might to force them to be evil, along with references made in the first game of an Orc who was giving information to humans having Flies that are supposedly aspects of Sauron's dark spirit crawling up his ear whilst he slept and buzzing and gnawing within, driving said Orc mad); meaning whoever could knock around his fellow Uruks became boss, and a boss who could honorably duel, assassinate, or otherwise neutralize his peers climbed the ladder. While they were mostly the Chaotic Evil monsters Tolkien didn't want to portray them as, this didn't mean that they weren't interesting. Their mindset was that when they weren't focusing on eliminating other tribes, most Uruks just wanted to put in a hard day's work (of bossing around human slaves or Snaga), made small talk, had drinking songs, and at the end of the day just go have a drink with his mates. With the mental influence of Celebrimbor's shade on them they are rendered neutral in terms of good/evil, as Sauron's hold on their mind has been weakened, but will still fight and kill each other for promotions; this is generally interpreted as mind control, although a large number of Orcs following you without Celebrimbor in the sequel suggests it may also be you reducing Sauron's influence on them and allowing them to make their own moral choices.