Uruk-hai

Origins

The name is Black Speech: uruk means Orc, and the plural Uruk-hai was used by the Orcs themselves for the great soldier-breed as opposed to the lesser snaga. Appendix F records that Sauron bred them, and Appendix B dates their first appearance to T.A. 2475, when Uruks out of Mordor sacked Osgiliath and broke its stone bridge. They were nearly Man-high, black-skinned, straight-legged and far stronger than the Orcs of the mountains, and they became the core of Sauron's armies, garrisoning Minas Morgul and the tower of Cirith Ungol under captains like Shagrat and Gorbag.

Saruman's Uruks

Saruman, in his imitation of Sauron, bred his own Uruk-hai in the pits of Isengard. Whether he began with stock from Mordor is not said, but his breed had a quality the others lacked: they could travel and fight by daylight without weakening. They were marked with the S-rune and the White Hand, armed with short broad swords, yew bows and iron-shod boots, and were drilled to march at speed for days. Treebeard suspected that Saruman had also blended Orcs with Men, and the goblin-faced half-orcs seen at Bree, at Helm's Deep and in the Shire seem to be a related product of the same experiments, though the Uruk-hai proper were true Orcs.

The band of Uglúk

The best-known Uruk-hai are the company under Uglúk that attacked the Fellowship at Parth Galen, killed Boromir, and carried off Merry and Pippin. Their three-day run across Rohan, quarrelling with the Orcs of Moria and the Mordor detachment of Grishnákh, shows the breed at its most characteristic: contemptuous of lesser Orcs, proud of their master, able to keep going through the sunlight that halted the others. Éomer's éored surrounded them at the eaves of Fangorn on the night of 28 February 3019 and destroyed them to the last Orc, and Uglúk fell to Éomer himself.

Helm's Deep and after

Saruman sent the main strength of his Uruk-hai, with Dunlendings and half-orcs, against Rohan. They took the Fords of Isen, killing Théodred, and assaulted Helm's Deep on the night of 3 March, blasting the Deeping Wall with Saruman's fire. At dawn Théoden's charge and the coming of Gandalf and Erkenbrand broke them; those who fled into the forest of Huorns that had appeared overnight were never seen again. Isengard itself fell to the Ents the same night, and the breed of Isengard ended there. Sauron's Uruks fought on at the Pelennor and the Black Gate, and perished with the Ring.

The Uruk-hai stood almost as tall as Men, straight-limbed rather than bow-legged, with black skin, slanted eyes and thick heavy bodies. Saruman's Uruks had large hands and long arms, and their tolerance of sunlight set them apart from all other Orcs. They wore black gear, carried short broad-bladed swords and bows of yew, and many bore the White Hand on their shields or the S-rune on their helms.

The Uruk-hai regarded themselves as the fighting elite and the lesser Orcs as slaves. Saruman's breed were unusual in speaking Westron among themselves and in a fierce loyalty to their master, boasting that they alone were the fighting Uruk-hai and had killed the great warrior of the Fellowship. Their discipline was better than that of other Orcs, though it rested as much on the whip as on pride, and they used the same crude but effective medicines and foods as their kin. In Mordor the Uruks of the Morgul-guard and the tower of Cirith Ungol were divided by jealousy, and their feud over Frodo's mithril coat destroyed both garrisons.

Sauron bred the first great Uruks in Mordor in the twenty-fifth century of the Third Age; Saruman, studying the Enemy's arts, produced his own sun-hardy strain at Isengard in the years before the War of the Ring.

The Isengard Uruk-hai were annihilated at Helm's Deep and in Fangorn, and the Ents ended their breeding pits. Sauron's Uruks fell with Mordor.