Azog

Lord of the Dwarrowdelf

Nothing is recorded of Azog's origins. He first appears as the master of the Orcs who had crept into Moria in the centuries after the Balrog drove out Durin's Folk, and by the time the Dwarves next came to its gates he had been long enough in possession to regard the halls as his own. He was of the largest kind of Orc, with a great iron-clad head, and he was strong enough to meet a Dwarf-lord in single combat, which few of his race would attempt. His son was Bolg, who was still leading armies a century and a half after Azog's death. Among the Orcs of the North his name carried authority from Moria as far as Mount Gundabad, and the Dwarves later treated him as the chieftain of the whole mountain-range.

The murder of Thrór

In T.A. 2790 Thrór, the exiled King under the Mountain, old and half-mad with brooding on his lost realms, walked away from his people in Dunland with a single companion, the old Dwarf Nár, and went to the gates of Moria. He walked in through the East-gate alone. What happened inside is not told, but a few days later Orcs threw his body down the steps, and Azog came out after it. He had cut off the king's head and branded his own name into the forehead in Dwarf-runes, so that there could be no doubt who had done it. He mocked Nár, told him that beggars who came sniffing at the doors of Moria would be treated the same, tossed him a small purse of worthless coins as payment for carrying the message, and let him go. The body he left to be hacked apart and given to the crows. Nár took the head's message back to Thráin II, and Thráin sat seven days in silence before he stood up and called for war.

The War of the Dwarves and Orcs

The war that followed lasted from 2793 to 2799 and was fought almost wholly underground. All seven houses of the Dwarves sent warriors, for the insult to the eldest line was felt by all of them, and their hosts went from Orc-hold to Orc-hold along the Misty Mountains, from Gundabad in the north to the Gladden in the south, emptying each of them and killing everything in it. The Orcs were braver and more numerous than usual, but the Dwarves in their fury were stronger, and no Orc-fortress held. Azog himself was not found; he stayed in Moria and let the others die. At last the Dwarves came to the Dimrill Dale, the valley of Azanulbizar under the East-gate, and there in 2799 Azog brought out everything he had.

Azanulbizar

The battle was fought in a bitter winter, and for most of the day it went against the Dwarves, who had arrived in small numbers ahead of the host from the Iron Hills and were driven down the slopes. It was in this fight that Thorin lost his shield and took up an oak-branch in its place. The tide turned when Náin came up from the Iron Hills with fresh mail-clad warriors and drove through to the very steps of the gate. There Náin shouted for Azog by name, and Azog came out to him, a huge figure with his iron-helmed guard around him. Náin was exhausted and blind with rage; his stroke went wide as Azog stepped aside, and Azog's answering blow broke his neck. Azog laughed and turned back toward the gate, and there was the last of his luck. Dáin, Náin's son, a young Dwarf of thirty-two who had not yet fought a battle, ran up the steps after him and cut off his head with a red axe before he could reach the door. The Orcs broke when they saw it, and the Dwarves put the whole army to the sword.

Azog's head was set on a stake before the gate, and into its mouth the Dwarves stuffed the purse of coins that he had given to Nár. Dáin Ironfoot then went to the doorway and looked in, and came back grey-faced to tell Thráin that the Dwarves could not yet reclaim their home, for the Balrog was still there.

Legacy

Azog's victory in death was that the Dwarves had won nothing. They had emptied the mountains of Orcs at a cost of half their fighting strength, and Moria remained shut. The Orcs took generations to recover, which is why the northern passes were relatively quiet when Bilbo crossed them in 2941, but Azog's son Bolg gathered what was left and brought it to Erebor in that year, seeking to settle the old score and to seize the dragon's hoard. Among the Dwarves Azog was remembered chiefly as a name to curse, and among the Orcs as the only one of them who had killed a King of Durin's line.

Beheaded by the young Dáin Ironfoot on the doorstep of Moria at the end of the Battle of Azanulbizar, T.A. 2799; his head was set on a stake with Nár's purse in its mouth.