Unique? Tolkien was there first. If you recall, the orcs were Morgoth's abominations of elves. :nerd:

Oh, and Orcs know they're ugly [censored]s. That's their appeal.

But their females are rockin'!

Off-topic slightly but i must admit that whole fantasy genre overall should say one big thanks to Tolkien and probably also to DnD which took Tolkien's creations almost as they were and by so Tolkien's vision penetrated both books and games. One of most funny thing is that even then orcs aren't copied from Tolkien and DnD, even when their name is "stolen" all the time. Who presented this current green, tall, strudy orc type? Warhammer-series? Marvel by it's Hulk? Well Uruk-Hai isn't that far off, they were tall, strudy, but not green and very repulsive.

As for poll. Based on Tolkien's dwarves? No. Only one similarity: they are good smiths. But Dwarves are known from craftsmanship, everything they make is beautiful and superior, be it dungeon, they way doors work (mechanical stuff they handled alright), gems, jewelry, weapon, tools. Orcs? Well weapons and armor are smoking. There are tons of differences: Dwarven are greedy, proud, independent and solitary, resistant to cold and heat, also resistant against violent death and disease. not multiplying like rabbits (well TES's orcs don't seem to be popping offsprings all the time either). Creation story is of course very much different.

TES orcs closer to Tolkien's Uruk-Hai (creation of Sauron superior form of orcs) that it would be to dwarves. But even closer to Warhammer's Orcs. Dwemer defiently are closest to Tolkiens' dwarves than any PC-race or NPC-race in TES. Yes they are mer, but their basic characterstics from their "life style" are closest which i can figure out from TES compared to "generic" dwarf. Sure from Dwemer we (or you, my understandment is limited after all) actually know more about their high-culture (or religion?) and all that, but we know little from their day-to-day life. In Tolkien's tales Dwarf wasn't alcoholic, axe-wielding son-of-a-*****.

Ps. Nobody haven't suggested Bosmer just yet? They are atleast small.

Bosmer? It's only the males that are short, and even then, it's pretty apparent that there are almost no similarities towards classic Dwarves.
Nords would probably be the closest, but that might be because of the beards.

Tolkien was not the architect of all of these ideas, a lot of inspiration came from very old myths, legends and various stories from a number of cultures.

Tolkien's Dwarves, TES Nords, and Dwemer all have characteristics which they share, notably Nords and Tolkien's Dwarves have a strong theme of mead-hall storytelling in their culture, which is a fantastical represantation of Vikings.

Nords also visually adhere to the same image, by having architecture clothing and weapons similar to what one commonly believe to be very Viking-like.

Whereas a big part of Tolkien Dwarven flavour came from the fact they mainly lived underground, which the Dwemer have in common with them.

As far as Orcs go being cursed mer is obivously direrctly inspired by Tolkien Orcs, and I think their dwelling in mountainous regions does not equate to living underground (a la Dwemer and Dwarves)
There may be information on this point that I am overlooking though, if there is any reference that would shed light on this please correct me

So I do indeed believe that although in the Dwemer are their own unique race personalised by the team working on Morrowind, their original concept was very Dwarven indeed.

TES's orcs's motive for living in moutains isn't a matter of choice. They're living in the Wrothgarian and Dragontail moutains because it's a defensible location, and it doesn't hold something valuable enough to justify the effort of rooting them out.

Of course that changes a bit in the recent history with Orsinum being offically aknowledged by the Empire and a significant numbers of orcs serving in the Legion, earning the status of imperial citizens.

That's what pisses me off. I thought it was way cooler when Orcs were basically sentient goblins and evolved completely separate from the Aldmer. And you could soul trap them as whel because Arkay's Law didn't apply to them. I guess I'm just mad because they were made into generic fantasy crap, but maybe I'm the only one.

EDIT: And it also irks me that Imperials are even a race at all. The idea of Cyrodil having no one race and being a melting pot of races and cultures was far more interesting than the total Roman Empire rip off. And these gripes are coming from a guy who never even played Daggerfall, but I digress.

The Cyrodiilic and Roman Empires both contained many different races, Human races, not mer, Colovians are not Nibenese, in the same way the English are not Scottish, the melting pot exists but the differences are subtle.

You honestly think having them as dumb, generic fantasy enemies is better than being a sentient race?

Yes this is true. Overall he used lots of different aspects from various folklores selected those bits he liked and formed them into one coherent package. Which then penetrated whole becoming (western) fantasy genre. In that sense i see Tolkien as Grandmaster of these things, even when he didn't technically create it all by him self.

He gave them form and function in the modern world, so its as if he did create them. That's just me dissenting.

Tolkien was a funnel or a sieve...he collected a wide amount of raw material and compressed it through a small space and gave it new form.

All good explanations I will agree with, I just wanted to highlight the connections to real world Myths in both TES lore and Tolkien's

The difference is, I am John Tolkien, so I actually know what I'm talking about, when I talk about me.

You sure you know what you are talking about, when you are talking about yourself :shifty:

The cool thing was that they WEREN'T dumb, they had their own ideals and culture completely separate from anything else. Now, they're corrupted Elves, ala Tolkein. I mean, I'll admit that the story of Trinimac is pretty cool, but it seems to me that making them come from elves is closer to "generic fantasy."



Exactly. But do you see any of that in Oblivion? Nope, Imperials are Imperials are Imperials.

That doesn't really matter, I have long since resigned myself to the fact that massive games like oblivion just don't take all the minute details we here obsess over. It's just the way of things, but as long asbethesfa keep with their practice of giving fans almost a free reign to mod their games I think we will be able to explore those fantasies in one way or another

You DO see that in Oblivion. Imperials are Imperials, yes, and Bretons are Bretons. And Nords are Nords. And Redguards are Redguards. We already have FOUR races of men. I don't really think we need to pick between Colovian and Nibenese at character creation. What WOULD be nice is to show those cultural differences, which you DON'T see in Oblivion. Most NPCs are very generic. But this is the lore forum, and not a place for such discussions.

We're arguing over the same thing bro. I don't even WANT Imperials at all! There's no reason for em. I wanted to see more culture, and I always thought of Colovians and Nibenese as Bretons or Nords or whatever with cultural differences. I think there's too many races as is.

Some people would argue there's no true genetic difference between Imperials and Nords (or Bretons in some cases, as many of the descendants of the Ayleid slaves are from bastard children of Ayleid men and Nedic slaves). The thing that makes an Imperial an Imperial has more to do with culture than anything. Raise a mannish child in two different provinces and he will develop different proficiencies. The Imperials value diplomacy and discipline, and that is why they have different skill sets during character creation. I think the addition of such a race was a needed thing because none of the other races sufficiently filled that agent/bard/knightly archetype that was needed. We had races capable of filling multiple roles such as Argonians and Dunmer. We had the warriors - the Nords as the big tough viking type, the Orcs as the berserking powerhouses of carnage and the Redguards filling nimble swordsman roles. The Khajiit and Bosmer filled the stealth niche beautifully whereas Bretons and Altmer are your mages. But we didn't have a Personality race until the devs included the Imperials in Morrowind. I think they filled a much needed niche in the RPG setting.

From what I understand, the PGE 1E, which gave the greatest contrast between Colovians and Nibenese, was written after several centuries of anarchy. Being humans, 400 years of a united Cyrodiil was plenty of time for the contrasts in the Imperial cultures to diminish in the melting pot.