Saturday, August 6, 2011

Wicked Monsters from Stories Old


Those who make up the Forces of Evil

Fantasy equal: Orc

The animated mythological collection now deviates from the noble and beautiful, to the monstrous and thuggish. It is a mission a find material for this collection. Artists in general do not seem to be all that inspired by monsters and orcs and the like. Luckily for you I managed to scrape together 16 decent representations of wicked monsters found in stories old. Where else would you find a collection like this other than this blog, .

Great evil warlords and warlocks always have scores of minions at their disposal. Most of the minions can be classified into a single group. You would have captains appointed from these groups (usually those minions that are somewhat bigger and more intimidating than the rest) along with fewer of specialised minions or greater monsters. These specialised minions could be shamans (for healing purposes) or techies (for siege weapon purposes), for example. The monsters could be great mythological creatures (like trolls and minotaurs) captured and enchanted by the warlord to perform their new master’s bidding. These monsters are captured to strike fear in the average good soldier and can’t take down several of these squishy humans with a single wallop.

Seldom you would see females of these beasts, which makes one wonder how do they reproduce? Do they even have the tools to do so? The images below indicate they do. Thank goodness for that! They don’t seem all that much different from the forces of good and the way I would imagine they pass their time when not in war.

The fantasy equal simply has to be the orc. The orc is the preferred minion of the evil warlord. They are bloodthirsty beasts, don’t need all that much maintenance, are strong, resilient, obedient and fearless. What more could an evil doer striving for world domination ask for?




"Orcs are described as ugly and filthy fanged humanoids. The largest can reach near-human height, but they are always shorter, and some are as small as Hobbits (since Frodo and Sam disguise themselves as such when they enter Mordor). In contrast, crossbreeds between Men and Orcs are called "man-high, but with goblin-faces."[14] However, some Orcs are very broad, if not tall. Many Orcs have long arms, like monkeys or apes. Many of them also have crooked backs and legs. They have black blood, reminiscent of reanimated corpses."

"The origin of Orcs is an open question. In Tolkien's writings, evil is not capable of independent creation, making it unlikely that the Vala Morgoth, who was the first to produce them, could create them from nothing.

Unlike the orc-néas ('orc-corpses') of Beowulf, no female Orcs are ever mentioned by Tolkien in any publication. However, in the published Silmarillion it is stated that Orcs "had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar", implying that there are; in The Hobbit the Orc Bolg is the son of one Azog, while Gollum is described as having eaten a young goblin-imp (Goblins being the same as orcs) shortly before he first met Bilbo (which seems to be alluded to in The Lord of the Rings movie when Gollum goes on (with himself) about how unpleasant-tasting orcs are and that sweet hobbit meat would suit Shelob better)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_(Middle-earth)

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