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Old 01-07-2007, 10:16 PM   #75
Alcuin
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Nurn
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I have often wondered if this is what became not of the Entwives, but of some of their offspring, warped by Sauron. RotK, “Appendix F”, “Of Other Races”
Quote:
...at the end of the Third Age a troll-race not before seen appeared in southern Mirkwood and in the mountain borders of Mordor. Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known. Some held that they were not Trolls but giant Orcs; but the Olog-hai were in fashion of body and mind quite unlike even the largest of Orc-kind, whom they far surpassed in size and power. Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dûr.
In Morgoth’s Ring, “Myths Transformed”, Christopher Tolkien covers a number of his father’s writings on the origins of the Orcs which are not pertinent here, except that while Sauron might not have conceived the idea of Orcs, he was instrumental in their development, or at least in their breeding, particularly while Morgoth was imprisoned in Mandos: Sauron reconstructed Angband and saw to the proliferation of the Orcs. I am uncertain if Tolkien’s musing on trolls, “It seems clearly implied in The Lord of the Rings that trolls existed in their own right, but were ‘tinkered’ with by Melkor,” (op. cit., “VIII”) was what Tolkien thought about the matter for most of his post-LotR life, but it is likely that Sauron had a hand in whatever his master was doing in this matter as well.

The upshot: while Sauron might not be the “creator” (or more accurately, “prime corruptor”) of Orcs and Trolls, I think it was Tolkien’s consistent idea that he was involved in their primeval corruption. I don’t think it would be out of character for him to seek to corrupt the Entwives to his own nefarious purposes; however, I am far from certain that Prof. Tolkien would agree that they could be corrupted in this way. Besides, the Ents could “tear [up stone] like bread-crust” and “crumple … iron like thin tin.” (Two Towers, “Flotsam and Jetsam”) How would you keep them imprisoned, especially for the whole of the Third Age?
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