re: Laundry list of LOTR questions

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I might be misremembering this, but I think they had been. Mordor created Uruk Hai before Isengard did.

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Yep. And in the books, while Tolkien does not go into graphic detail, the Uruk Hai were created by "crossing orcs with men". Which is a polite way of saying that Sauron forced human women to mate with orcs and created half-orcs.

Orcs were stated to have been elves that Morgoth twisted and corrupted.

I'm just saying some of the LOTR stuff is really dark folks.

To address another point, the Witch-King, in the books, did not defeat Gandalf. They had a Mexican (Gondorian?) standoff before the arrival of Rohan/Aragorn made the Witch King leave to deal with what was happening on his flanks.

For folks who like the nitty gritty details of things like this might I suggest checking out Dr. Brett Deveraux's blog on ancient history. Mostly he does ancient history but he also looks at fantasy battles and cultures. LINK

His latest entry was a look at whether the Dothraki from Game of Rape... err... Thrones were actually based on steppe nomads and American plains Indians (they weren't even close) but he also did some in depth analysis of the Minis Tirith and Helms Deep campaigns from LOTR.