Half-orcs

Origin

The texts never state outright how the half-orcs were made, but every witness reaches the same conclusion. Treebeard, considering Saruman's Orcs that could walk in the sun, wondered whether the wizard had done something worse than breeding Orcs and had blended the races of Orcs and Men. Merry, Aragorn and Gamling at Helm's Deep all remarked on goblin-faced Men in Saruman's host. Gandalf later called Saruman's followers a mixed brood. Whatever the method, the result was a kind of creature between Orc and Man that owed everything to Isengard.

Appearance and abilities

The half-orcs were Man-high, sallow-skinned, with slanting eyes that gave them a squint, and faces that Hobbits found ugly and Men found unsettling. Unlike true Orcs they could endure daylight and pass, at a distance or in a crowd, for Men of the South or of Dunland. They were strong, well armed and disciplined enough to serve as soldiers, and cunning enough to serve as spies.

At Bree

The first half-orc encountered in the story is the squint-eyed Southerner at the Prancing Pony, an ill-favoured stranger who drank with Bill Ferny and watched the hobbits, and who joined Ferny in the attack on the inn's stables. He was one of a number of such spies that Saruman had planted along the roads of Eriador, and Aragorn took him for something more than a Man.

At Helm's Deep

Saruman's army against Rohan included, besides the Uruk-hai and the Dunlendings, many of these goblin-men, and the defenders noted them as the worst of the assailants. They shared the fate of the host: those who did not die on the walls fled into the Huorn-wood and vanished.

In the Shire

After Isengard fell, Saruman's remaining servants gathered around him in the Shire, where under the name Sharkey he made himself master of Lotho Sackville-Baggins's ruffians. Many of the Big Men who bullied the hobbits were half-orcs; the swarthy, squint-eyed leader whom Merry killed at the Battle of Bywater was one, and Frodo and Sam recognised in the ruffians the same look they had seen at Bree and in Isengard's soldiers. The Battle of Bywater ended their occupation and most of them were slain or driven out.

Legacy

The half-orcs left no people behind them. They are the clearest evidence in the histories of what Saruman became: not a servant of Sauron but an imitator of him, willing to do to Men what Morgoth had done to Elves.

Sallow or swarthy skin, slanting and squinting eyes, a heavy build, and features that struck observers as goblin-like set in a Man-sized body. They could bear the sun and were often mistaken for Dunlendings or Southerners at first sight.

None of their own. They served Saruman as soldiers, spies and ruffians, taking orders in Westron and mixing with the Dunlendings and Big Men in his pay. In the Shire they behaved as brigands, looting, bullying and burning under Sharkey's direction.

Saruman, having learned much of Sauron's arts, seems to have crossed Orcs with Men in the pits beneath Isengard; the histories record only the suspicion of the wise and the evidence of the result.

Killed at Helm's Deep, scattered by the fall of Isengard, and finally beaten at the Battle of Bywater in November 3019; none are heard of afterwards.