Half-orc

The half-orc is a fictional creature born to mixed orc and human parentage in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The half-orc is a playable race for D&D player characters. Half-orcs are typically born in wild frontiers where human and orc tribes come into contact. Half-orcs are between six and seven feet tall (180–210 cm) and usually weigh between 180 and 250 pounds (80–110 kg). This makes them less bulky and more agile than pure-bred orcs, but still taller and stronger than most humans. Half-orcs have pale green skin, jutting jaws, prominent teeth and coarse body-hair.

Half-orcs also appear in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. In Tolkien's Middle-earth, the half-orcs were the creation of the wizard Saruman and bore several similarities to Sauron's Uruk-hai (greater Orcs) but were taller (man high) and appeared more man-like; there was also another type called Goblin-men which were also said to be man-high but less muscular with sallow skin (instead of black skin like the Uruk-hai) and squinty eyes (one encountered by the hobbits at the Prancing Pony in Bree, and also present among Saruman's forces at the battle of Isengard).

Uruk-hai

The Uruk-hai are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth. They are introduced in The Lord of the Rings as an advanced breed of orcs that serve Sauron and Saruman. The first uruks appeared out of Mordor in attacks on Gondor in T.A. 2475.

Terminology

The name "Uruk-hai" has the element Uruk, which is a Black Speech word related to Orc, related to the word "Urko" in Tolkien's invented language of Quenya. The element hai means "folk", so "Uruk-hai" is "Orc-folk". A similar term is "Olog-hai" ("troll-folk"), used for a breed of especially strong and vicious trolls capable of surviving sunlight.

Christopher Tolkien describes "Uruks" as an anglicization of "Uruk-hai" and his father used the two terms interchangeably a number of times. While "Uruk-hai" means simply "Orc-folk", the term was reserved for the soldier orcs of Mordor and Isengard. The larger orcs called the smaller breeds snaga ("slave").

Literature

The Uruk-hai, described as large black orcs of great strength, first appeared from Mordor about the year 2475 of the Third Age, when they briefly took Ithilien and the city of Osgiliath. These original Uruks were of Sauron's breeding, but Saruman bred his own. Saruman's are shown to be indifferent to sunlight, though whether or not these features are unique to his Uruks is open to question. All Uruks were larger and stronger than other breeds of orc and consequently looked down upon and often bullied them.

Orc

An orc /ɔːrk/ (also spelled as ork, orch, or yrch) is a fictional humanoid creature that is part of a fantasy race akin to goblins.

While the overall concept of orcs draws on a variety of pre-existing mythology, the main conception of the creatures stems from the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, in particular The Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's works, orcs are a brutish, aggressive, repulsive and generally malevolent species, existing in stark contrast with the benevolent Elvish race (from which their own ancestors may have been developed and corrupted) and generally pressed into the service of an evil power. Tolkien's concept of orcs has subsequently been adapted and imported into other works of fantasy fiction as well as into fantasy role-playing and strategy games (such as Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer and Warcraft), broadening the recognition of the creatures in popular culture.

Earlier references to creatures etymologically or conceptually similar to orcs can be found in Old English and Anglo-Saxon sources; including Beowulf and 16th-century Italian folk tales, in particular those of Giambattista Basile.

Orc (disambiguation)

Orc or ORC may refer to:

In fiction

Mythical races

Other fictional uses

In Popular Culture

Other meanings

Orc (Dungeons & Dragons)

In the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, orcs are a primitive race of savage, bestial, barbaric humanoid.

Publication history

The orc was one of the earliest creatures introduced in the D&D game. The D&D orc is largely based upon the orcs appearing in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Dungeons & Dragons (1974–1976)

The orc was one of the first monsters introduced in the earliest edition of the game, in the Dungeons & Dragons "white box" set (1974), where they were described as tribal creatures that live in caves or villages.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition (1977–1988)

The orc appears in the first edition Monster Manual (1977), where it is described as a fiercely competitive bully, a tribal creature often living underground.

The mythology and attitudes of the orcs are described in detail in Dragon #62 (June 1982), in Roger E. Moore's article, "The Half-Orc Point of View".

In the article "Hey, Wanna Be a Kobold?" by Joseph Clay in Dragon #141 (January 1989), kobolds, xvarts, goblins, and orcs were presented as player character races along with two new character classes the "Shaman" and the "Witch Doctor".