The Orcs Of Angband

The orcs of Angband

Orcish society summed up in one word would be complicated.

It’s a system based on honour- honour of your ancestors, honour you bring upon your family with your productivity and the quality of your service, honour bestowed upon you by The Lieutenant and His Highness. 

But it’s also a system heavily divided by blood. How closely are you related to the progenitors? is it in your direct bloodline or is it so distant to be inconsequential? How long has it been since His Highness touched your blood?

There is not an emphasis on war per se, more an emphasis on productivity. His Highness and The Lieutenant have given your family and your blood a function, a duty to perform; whether that be to serve as warriors or making shoes. It is glorious to die in battle, of course it is. But it is also glorious to say you were the smith behind the sword that smote hundreds of elves, that you were the one to train the wargs that made men weep and wail in fear, that you made the shoes that enabled the troops to walk hundreds of miles to give aid to the front lines.

A war cannot be fought with soldiers alone. A mantra they are taught from youth. You can insult another for disobedience, for being to slow in training, for complaining about food. But you do not insult an orc’s craft, you do not call their line of work redundant, and you do not insinuate that one is lesser for not being a warrior. To do so is to bring dishonour on your own blood for His Highness and The Lieutenant have deemed that craft necessary and who are you to disagree with them?

Elves are considered lesser. Well, of course they are. They have not had His Highness’ gifts, they fight him when he attempts to improve them, and they dare to fight him over his rightful property. Some pity them, for they are obviously ignorant and deceived. They wouldn’t help slaves, of course they wouldn’t, they still fought His Highness. Others despise elves- have lost family, lovers, battalions, and have no sympathy left for the crawling cringing things when they return. They deserve everything and more besides.

Men are worse. They die quicker than both Orcs and Elves, and are less fun besides. Worse, there are more of them in Angband, scuttling too and fro akin to so many cockroaches. They breed fast at least. If ever someone gets angry it is entirely acceptable to take it out on man-slaves. They are not permitted to kill the elves because they cannot be easily replaced. Men breed like rats. A dead one is easily replaced. 

Celebrimbor singing ‘Burn’ from Hamilton after he finds out Annatar was Sauron.

Not only your art is amazing, but the concept! I imagine Mairon keeping all his fav elves like porcelain dolls to have fun with, whenever he pleases

Thank you so much! And yeah, I definitely think Mairon has a collection of his favourites that he keeps exclusively for himself to do whatever he wants with- whether that be to induce Stockholm syndrome so he has someone to fawn over him, or to torture mercilessly because he’s bored.

Namo Mandos. I think he’d be able to take a decently convincing eldar form inside his own halls, but as soon as he leaves it becomes more and more horrifying so he tends to wear dark cloaks/hoods so he doesn't scare anyone.

Eonwe! Eonwe had immense trouble making a physical form because as a maia of Manwe he has problems being confined in any way, so when he finally managed to take an Eldar form he took great pride in it (even though he sometimes twists his head around like an owl and often forgets to blink).

An Angbang headcanon

Mairon is, at every given moment, simultaneously mad as a hatter and the most organised person to ever exist. 

He is the type of person to cackle evilly both while torturing someone to the brink of insanity and while organising what deliveries the kitchen needs that month. Does he do it on purpose to unnerve his elf assistants? no-one knows. His paperwork is always filled out in triplicate, but it also always manages to get delivered at the exact moment someone is about to leave and smelling faintly of sulphur.

His study seems meticulously organised at first glance. Then someone actually needs a report and realises they’re organised by what he was eating when he read it the first time and not something...reasonable. It’s a system, it makes a certain type of sense, its just...not the most practical. He knows this. He also enjoys watching them try to figure it out and laughing at them because they can’t wrap their heads around it.

Melkor by contrast is utterly incapable of being even remotely orderly. It is fundamentally against his nature. His study looks like a tornado decided to stay for a weekend and even he doesn't know where anything is. He is the worst at giving protracted speeches- he always ends up on a rambling tangent that goes absolutely nowhere.

But he is very good at looking like he knows what he’s doing. Mairon always looks like he’s a second away from just eating anyone who talks to him, but Melkor has mastered ominous silences. This means people make the mistake of assuming Melkor is competent.

Because Mairon might have logic that is a bit all over the place, but there is a logic to everything he does. He does have a system, convoluted though it might be. And that’s why he works so well with Melkor. He can spin logic out of Melkor’s thought process and turn it into something truly brilliant.