Roark Thar's Story

(This is a fanfiction I wrote, detailing the life story of an original character by the name of Roark Thar. Just for a brief description, Roark is an orc, not a typical Orc, but a hybrid of Tolkinian Orc and Tamrelic. This story uses elements from Tolkien's LOTR, and The Hobbit book(s) as well as Bethesda's TES video game. )

My name is Roark Thar, son of the great Azog the Defiler and one of his many brood wives -Ghorza Orum. Who I am, who I was, and what I came to be are scrawled onto the pages that are now in front of you. I feel like I must apologize for my rather poor legibility, the small quil I use is like a toothpick in my massive hands. This is an autobiography of sorts,my own story.

This is my story, the story of the Orc that changed the face of the continent known as Tamriel and the forgotten land beyond the sea which the races of man have called Middle Earth; more commonly referred to as 'Gor Gogu Ronk' by my people. In the common tongue I believe it would be roughly translated to 'Hard old pit'; a small jape at the unfortunate circumstances my people have been forced to face. The races of man, both in this land and the old have deemed my people, the Uruk-Hai evil, cruel and malevolent. We have been forced to suffer multiple exoduses throughout our time, segregation based upon culture, and the threat of genocide lurks around us more than starvation permeates around a wild dog. The origins of my people are often conflicted, and often misunderstood. There seems to be the common belief that my people are inherently evil,malevolent, and utterly cruel. Sadly, the misunderstandings seem to be built upon the hard, cold truth of my people's past 'exploits'. The common people believe that orcs are a breed only bred for destruction, first being sired from the imagination of the first dark lord of the land across the sea. The dark lord was called Melkor, only later to be called by the name "Morgoth". Melkor bred a specific breed of Orc, much like how you would breed dogs or horses; only this time the "cattle" were the first race to be enslaved by the dark lord's rule-the Uruk-Hai.

My people looked much more akin to the type of Orcs found in the continent of Tamriel, albeit we were taller and more intelligent than either of the various "breeds" we know today. The Uruk-hai of today bear very little resemblance of the Orcs of old, for simplicity sake let us call them by the name Gogu-Hai, or Old folk. The land that the Gogu-Hai claimed was very different from the ones we claim today, grand castles and citadels dotted the rocky landscape of the Mordor. Mordor,at least at this time, was not the charred, husk we know of today. It was full of life, wild mountain flowers grew in abundances, hares ran across the hills and salmon ran through our rivers. Despite its beauty and great resources life became rather hard when winter hit, unlike the outlying lands around the mountain ranges winter last for ten of the twelve months of the Tamerelic calendar. When winter hit the Gogu-Hai could only pray to their gods that the blizzards would subside, and their food stores would last until the coming spring. Of course with every great civilization there comes its faults. To celebrate the coming of spring the Gogu-Hai would hold a festival where grown men and women would fight to the death in armed combat. This was in hope that their blood would give fertile life to the earth for the two short months that allowed the people to grow their crops.

It was during this very festival that the dark lord Melkor attacked, catching the Gogu-Hai off guard and enslaving them in almost a fortnight. Turning one of the great civilizations of man into, but lowly slaves. The largest provider of Iron, Steel, and technology was lost in less time than it took to grow a bushel of wheat. Of course with every great cataclysm, there were those that escaped and fled to lands anew. Those lucky few escaped to the human lands of Gondor, at the time-our staunchest ally. They fled across The Great Western Sea, to the continent of Tamriel were they dispersed and became the tribes that are known today. For those left behind only the sharp embrace of the master's whip and the terrible pain only a dead civilization could feel. Our people never recovered, before long we were twisted and changed, ugly and cruel; no longer the people who graced the mountains. With us the land changed, and when the tyrant died we were led by another, when he too, died we went to another. We were, but chattel, forever bound to serve and be hated. Bred to be hateful and cruel, we lost what we prided ourselves most on, not our glory, not our intelligent, not even our resources-our perseverance. I am descended from those we call the "Fundu Ufum", the sons of fear.

I was born in the Third Age in the year 2787, in a land far from where I dwell now. I grew up in one of the various caves and crevices that the tribe my father led held claim to. My father was called Azog,or The Pale Orc a name muttered behind his back. He wasn't around much when I was young, typically at his main fortress of Moria, a citadel once belonging to the famed Kingdom of Khazad-Dum. The dwarves were long dead when my father stumbled upon the ruins, first he raided and looted what he could from the stony corpse. Yet when he found the skeletons of dwarves he believed that it could serve as a home for his people-his tribe. I can't seem to remember too much about my father and as the days go on, that memory grows more and more blurred. From what I can remember; he was a giant,he had more akin to the brutish Trolls that came from the old lands, his skin was pale-almost did not have the green complexion my mother possessed nor brown or grey like so many of my friends at the time. My mother said that's what made him "special", unique in his own little way. His skin was pale and scared, no doubt from the plethora of wars and battles he fought his way through. When I was but a boy, I possessed very few clear memories of my father, but the one that sticks with me to this day was one from when I was very little. I can vaguely remember the time when I could barely stand up to his knees, forced to strain my neck to even look at him. He placed me atop his shoulders, as easily as if he were holding a sack of potatoes and began to speak to me about a place he wanted to bring me once I was old enough to hold a blade. A place farther than my eyes could ever see, beyond the forest and beyond the mountains. He spoke in a tired tone, a tone used by those that have seen their fair share of things to be seen.

" My little lad." He began his face turning into a smile, revealing his sharp and chipped teeth. To some it would seem scary, but to me it was oddly comforting. " There's a place far away from our humble cave, far to the south; a place called Moria. Where the air feels like warm blankets on your skin, and where the walls are carved with the finest etchings. Filled with more gold than the mind can imagine. Great feasts are a daily occurrence and a man could eat as much as he wanted without fear of running out!" He would grin, point to the mountains far in the unseen distance, his eyes shining with something a man could never hope to describe on paper.

My father was a troubled man, to say he was kind to me would not be the entire truth. But in my heart I do believe he did love me, even if i were not as clear to me as the love of other fathers for their son's may be. I was not his only join, nor was I merely one of a few. My father, much like many Orc chieftains had a plethora of brood wives, both which he traveled with and left behind.I was, but a small number in a swarm of others. I had sisters I never would meet, brothers I would never know, but of the very few I did meet-I was glad I didn't meet the rest. There was Yotul the twitch, who enjoyed her little habit of twitching her lip and squinting her eyes, Shagar the flirt who often enjoyed shoving my small head between her bosom, Turg the Smelly who reeked worse than a troll's garderobe. Lastly there was Bolg the Weak-Tempered, the worst of the offspring my father produced. I would not have called myself the least favourite of all his children, but neither would I call myself the favourite. Oh no that honour would belong to my elder brother-Bolg.

I rarely ever saw my brother( well technically half-brother), as he lived far away from my beloved cave. He lived to the south where my father mostly stayed, in the citadel my father spoke of so much. He was a brute in our earlier years, big muscled, thick skulled, and a face uglier than Warg's shit on a hot summer's evening.

On the few occasions my father brought Bolg with him. Bolg would often spend his time ruthlessly and maliciously destroying what few objects I possessed. My blanket my mother knitted for me, my favourite hat my father brought me back. He was far from what I expected a brother should be. He looked a lot more like my father then I ever did, he had his pale complexion instead of my light green tinge. His teeth were pointed and smaller than mine and he lacked the distinguishing tusks that protruded from my bottom row. His ears were far more pointed then mine seemed to be. He had the same disturbing laughter my father did,and he was far more interested in my father's "master' as well as his hatred of other creatures. The two of us never saw eye to eye on much at all, I was more of a Mother's boy. Where he revealed in killing and torturing the small rats that could be found scurrying through the caves and beating the smaller children until they could no longer get up.

I practiced speaking in front of my friends, taking walks in the cave tunnels. Most often I would spend my time fighting and wrestling with my friends, in a vain attempt to impress what girls lived in the caves. Doing my best to show off what my mother called my inner "Ghash', the closest word I found to hold the same meaning was 'fire', but it lacks the proper emotion that she conveyed. In these various attempts I grew to posses a fair amount of scars and bruises that my mother chastised me for.

Now my mother was different, she hailed from a land far to the West-a land she called Tamriel. She said she came from a land where Orcs were treated slightly better than they were here. While they were generally feared from where she came they often belonged to the lower caste, a privilege that we didn't have here.. She was different from all the other Orc mothers, she was not brown and did not have dirty matted hair like the rest of the mothers. She had soft,silky,brown hair, and teeth that always stuck out of her mouth like tusks from a boar. She was shorter than most of my friend's mothers, but she was nicer and kinder. She always coddled me and told me stories about a god called " Malacath" who valued true honour and strength, not the brutish violence of the Orcs of this land. I often asked her to tell me stories of her old life and the life of those across the sea, for she was a bard when she lived over there. Only ever coming to this land because of the thrill of adventure and her hope of finding more stories to tell.

My favourite story was that of The Pig Children, it told of the brave Orcs who fought against the persecution of other races, and wanted a new world where all would be treated equally. Of course I never actually held a copy of the book, but desperately wanted one. She always told me stories about her homeland and how different it was from here.

I grew up on those tales. Tales of foreign gods and foreign heroes. Fables and myths that were not mine to possess, a land to which I would never reach. It was exotic, and exhilarating.

I always dreamed of travelling to Tamriel and having adventures, but those were all dreams concocted by a child whose mind wanders every few minutes, and attention is lost even sooner. I lived in this land where Orcs were persecuted for being "evil" and "destructive", an unfair land where the other races that shared our earth persecuted us over the very same dirt; the worst were the "Golugus"(Elves in your tongue). They continuously bothered us and killed many of my people. It never affected me much beyond the odd raid or border skirmish, the people who affected me were the dwarves of the land under the stone. I remember the day my world was flipped upside down more than I do the sunlight from the day before this one.

I was about seven or eight summers at the time. It was a cold night, the only thing keeping me warm was my mother's fire, and her stew bubbling over the lip of the pot. I licked my lips in anticipation; I loved her stew. It was made of rabbit meat, and Thyme mostly, but it tasted like edible gold, or at least what one would think gold taste like. My mother was stirring the stew, her sleeves rolled above her muscled forearms. I heard panting and coughing slowly come up from behind me, no doubt emerging from someone trying to get a hold of their breath. My mother stopped stirring and glanced behind me, her yellow eyes shining fiercely with a mother's protection. I turned around and saw a short, ugly man, with pointed ears and droopy skin. It was beige to the eye, and his eyes were a sickly yellow. He had no nose, but his nostrils were next to his large eyes, like some sort of inbred monster. He had his hands on his knees, bent over like a ragdoll, as he desperately tried to get air from between his sharp teeth.

"Ghorza?" he asked sharply looking up at my mother, his breath still laboured.

"Yes, may I help you?" she replied, in a cold protective tone.

"Azog, He has been hurt terribly in a battle, and he keeps asking for you, I have been assigned to get you." he panted eyeing up the stew and making a sharp grab for the pot with his hand. My mother smacked it with the stirring stick and he quickly wretched it back.

"I need to pack up then." she said pouring some into a bowl and handing it to me. I held it in my hand and a spoon in the other, I looked up at the creature who was eyeing my stew, and licking his disgusting teeth.

"Eat up Roark, he won't bother you."

I slowly spooned some into my mouth, not taking my eyes off of the creature. I slowly ate the bowl in front of the creature, who grew more and more upset with each mouthful.

"All done, now I trust you have Wargs for us to ride?" my mother asked slinging a pack onto her back and stomping out the fire.

"Of course." he nodded pointing to two massive drooling dogs outside of the cave.

'Where do we ride?" my mother asked pulling me up to my feet and holding my hand.

"We ride to Moria." My mother nodded and walked me to the Warg putting me on first then climbing on behind me. I looked into our cave and saw the creature greedily eating out of our cooking pot. My mother whispered in the Wargs ear, and off it went running into the outlying forest. I finally get to see Moria! I thought, I shivered with excitement and looked back at my mother who was looking straight ahead

"Go to sleep it's a long trip." she said. I Closed my eyes and gently fell asleep with the bumps and panting of the Wargs Breath.