Did Sauron and Saruman BRAND their orcs?

[similarly]

When Talion brands orcs, he holds his hand to their face and a light shines out.

This made me think of the WHITE HAND sign on Saruman's Uruk-Hai.

That made me think of the sign of the Eye on Sauron's orcs.

Now of course, in the books, they're just painted markers.

However, it is kind of curious, and it made me wonder if Sauron and Saruman might have "branded" their orcs to control them.

[Twelvefield]

The rings of power were the primary means of control in Mordor, and abroad too, I guess. The rings went to the leaders of the various tribes, who already had control of their masses. There are also palantirs, the glowing bowling balls (or larger), which act like intercoms but could also subvert and control the weak-minded, although that's a slow process.

In the movie, Orcs get "hatched" and then are immediately initiated into their fighting or operational unit. Tolkein had the misfortune of dying before adequately explaining how Orcs reproduce and organize themselves. He does speak of orc women an children in his non-book writings. However, orc culture is just a farcical collection of ugly human stereotypes, at some points very racist.

Talion channels the power of Celebrimbor, who, regrettably, was a super-elf. Those guys gain whatever powers they need to propel the plot onwards, like Superman and his Repair-The-Great-Wall-Of-China-Vision in Superman III. Maybe there's some hand-based symbolism there, or maybe not. Probably you're right, but again it's just a convenience to keep the game's pace brisk.

I'll ask my brother-in-law, who is a true Middle Earth expert, and he would be able to point to the chapter and verse in Tolkein that would say for sure. He has the whole thing committed to memory, I think.

[SultryPasta]

Originally posted by similarly:

When Talion brands orcs, he holds his hand to their face and a light shines out.

This made me think of the WHITE HAND sign on Saruman's Uruk-Hai.

That made me think of the sign of the Eye on Sauron's orcs.

Now of course, in the books, they're just painted markers.

However, it is kind of curious, and it made me wonder if Sauron and Saruman might have "branded" their orcs to control them.

I was thinking the exact same thing during my playthrough! But it's as you said...they were all painted. Even though the marking looks identitcal to the white hand orcs saruman controls.

[similarly]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

The rings of power were the primary means of control in Mordor, and abroad too, I guess. The rings went to the leaders of the various tribes, who already had control of their masses. There are also palantirs, the glowing bowling balls (or larger), which act like intercoms but could also subvert and control the weak-minded, although that's a slow process.

In the movie, Orcs get "hatched" and then are immediately initiated into their fighting or operational unit. Tolkein had the misfortune of dying before adequately explaining how Orcs reproduce and organize themselves. He does speak of orc women an children in his non-book writings. However, orc culture is just a farcical collection of ugly human stereotypes, at some points very racist.

Talion channels the power of Celebrimbor, who, regrettably, was a super-elf. Those guys gain whatever powers they need to propel the plot onwards, like Superman and his Repair-The-Great-Wall-Of-China-Vision in Superman III. Maybe there's some hand-based symbolism there, or maybe not. Probably you're right, but again it's just a convenience to keep the game's pace brisk.

I'll ask my brother-in-law, who is a true Middle Earth expert, and he would be able to point to the chapter and verse in Tolkein that would say for sure. He has the whole thing committed to memory, I think.

That's quite a good response. As well, I seem to recall that Saruman also forged himself a minor ring, a kind of cheap imitation of the rings of power.

In Lord of the Rings, it's mentioned that the FIRST orcs were ELVES that were "ruined", basically experimented on by Sauron to TURN them into the first orcs. There was also mention that the orcs were created in IMITATION of elves, and that trolls were created in imitation of Ents.

[Twelvefield]

Well, my brother-in-law wasn't the help that I'd hoped. Tolkein contradicts himself on the whole goblin/orc/ork/uruk genesis throughout the span of his works. My understanding was that in his earliest writings, he was co-opting goblins into his fairy-tales because they were easy bad guys. Later, he took to giving goblins the ugliest of human tropes. He was developing them, but in their early stages they were just placeholer goons and not at all sophisticated or pleasant. Think of blackface performers in early films.

By the time he got to The Hobbit, Tolkein gave the goblins a hierarchy and they started to become more than stock villains. In LOTR, he makes some references to orc origins, but keeps the details vague. I am told that at the time he had four or five different sets of notes on orcs, and he went with the one that was in the book becuase...? Hell if I know. It's like choosing by throwing darts at a board. Apparently, the notes go into more detail on every orc origin except the one he used in the LOTR book(s).

Later, with the Silmarillion and so on, he goes into more detail, but these details contradict, or at least don't mesh. He wrote letters answering fans, and these letters describe many details but again none of them match. Maybe the game devs were using some of these letters and notes. The movies did.

At the end of his life, Tolkein was concerned with codifying the orc menace and with finding some way to make it all make sense. Consider that the orcs are like Klingons - essentially comic opera villains that became fan favourites and then took on a life of their own. You're supposed to root for Mozart, not Salieri. Tolkein thought his heroes deserved more detail than his villains. His heroes are cookie cutters, though.

Till came to him the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Societies, death put an end to Tolkein's plans for the orcs. Unless there's more notes yet uncovered, we'll never know. However, if the movies and games have taught us anything, we can probably just make up our own ideas, and as long as we are careful to match them into the fabric of the main story, they'll work just fine. Like branding.