"Eastern Orcs" or "Orcs of the East" were terms used by the Loremasters of the Westlands to describe the races of Orc-Kind who made their home in eastern Middle-earth.
History[]
Orcs entered the Wild Lands early in the history, as their ancestors began to spread southwards from the pits of the fortress Utumno, first in small groups, later in wandering entire tribes and organized marching armies. A significant portion of their number assembled under one of Morgoth's staunchest of servants, Fankil; these were initially kept at bay by the spells of the wizard Tû. These Orcs worshipped the Seducer and his Lord as their gods and were in league with wicked Men, whom their master had enraptured in his travels to Hildorien, and some disgraced clans of greedy Petty-Dwarves who were eager to plunder the homes of the Elves. The moment eventually came when Fankil was able to breach to the veil of Tû. The Seducer's Orc-host assaulted Palisor and fought against the Free Peoples there until their master was defeated by his wizard opponent in the ensuing great battle; their kindred was scattered in the four winds. Without the direct input of the first Dark Lord or one of his representatives, the Eastern Orcs became accustomed to autonomy at the cost of degenerating into an ungovernable rabble, troubled by infighting between the various factions that emerged; when Morgoth returned and occupied the fortress of Angband, they paid no heed to his summons as they were far from his domain owing to their remote eastern location and therefore far from the reach of his wrath. These Orcs were able to form petty realms on their own and harassed many of the Men around them, some of their chieftains becoming rulers of small subjugated peoples - this resulted in them embracing deities and beliefs from superficial Mannish cults as well as developing their own Orcish tongue.
By the First Age's end the Orcs of the East were still strong, and one could say they flourished compared to their north-western kinsmen who declined following the downfall of the first Dark Lord in the War of Wrath. Ruled by a caste of larger Orcs - of which a few possessed a strain of demonic-blood, they continued to manage themselves on their own, often preying on Men or on each other. As the Second Age unfurled, the time came for the reappearance of Sauron, once the most-devoted Lieutenant of Morgoth and now his successor - the allegiance of the Northerner-Orcs, who multiplied ever greater in his presence, he commanded but not yet that of the Eastern Orcs. For as long he could not yet openly reveal himself and conceived fair visages to deceive the Elves, the Orc-Kings of the East dared to mock him and spurn his demands, but their period of laughter was short-lived. After failing to suborn the Free Peoples through guileful trickery embodied by the forging of the Great Rings, the Enemy turned to amassing even more massive strength of arms of which the East had in plenty for war. So he sweeped most of those territories beneath his feet, and so terrible was his purge that even local powers trembled at the coming of the Dark Power that was Sauron: for one, the Sorcerer-King Fankil was coerced into accepting his sovereignty in exchange for being left his vassal to govern the Bay of Illuin , and even the Warlord Múar negotiated an alliance with him to evade his scorn; this leadership style and impressed the hesitant vulgar rabble of Eastern Orcs, for ever was their race dawn to cruelty, bloodshed and malice - the minions he had discreetly implanted among them told of the utter Blackness awaiting the arising of the Lord of the Long Night or the prosperity to be unveiled by the Lord of the Earth once his dominion stretched to the Sundering Sea, garnering a following. The Dark Lord bid the Orc-Kings once more to bend the knee, promising to forgive past transgressions: some swore fealty, either to conserve their realms as his fiefs, to take part in the upcoming plunder or due to feeling their hold slipping over their enraptured subjects, while others refused still to submit. The remaining upstarts were hunted by his Nazgûl Captains and Boldog-descended Generals and hauled in chains for execution in the Tower of Barad-dûr, or were slain by their own disgruntled minions who naively thought fealty to the Black One meant sharing in his glory. Like their north-western cousins, the Eastern Orcs became a race of thralls again, forever bound to the service of their Tyrant, Sauron - whom they worshipped as their foremost god, the Great Master of the World and Bringer of Endless Night - and, in his absence, his Diadochs. Small savage tribes who hid in the wilds initially escaped his grasp or were enslaved instead by the Warlord Múar.
By the end of the Second Age and surely by the beginning of the Third, the Eastern Orcs had intermingled with the scions of Northerner Orcs and become a part of the Mordorian kind. Indeed, some of the Dark Land's denizens retained the vestiges of this ancient bloodline in physical and even linguistic forms despite the formal adoption of Black Speech.
Divisions[]
The Eastern Orcs included the Steppe-Orcs of Central middle-earth, Wind Orcs, Araki and Khanû of Wômawas Drûs but also races of common Forest breed orcs,Deep-Orcs,Fighting-Orcs, Gongs, Desert Orcs, Swamp-Orcs and Jungle Orcs as they were also known in the Northwest. The native Easterlings knew them under many different local names, "Gôngai","Rukhi", "Urûk","Ôrsim", "Örghür", but all of these referred to Goblin- or Orc-kind. Two peculiar races, the Garku and Ice-Krals were of uninown origin,,while some Loremasters considered them orc-kin others believed themmto be a sort of Half-Troll or ape-like corrupted men.
See:
Notes[]
Both Loremaster (ICE Series) and Rolemaster have Orc- and Troll-like species, the small and goblin-like Murlogi and the huge and demon-like Lugroki, the deep-dwelling, degenerate Trogli and the Ape-like Karku, with their Gark and Kral sub-species.