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When one looks at the map of Mordor, and the various Orcs we find mentioned by Tolkien, there seems to be some distinct division among the various Orcs found therein.

For starters, we know there is a division between Minas Morgul, and the orcs which seemed to be ruled by The Witch King of Angmar (or, simply The Witch King in the late-Third Age, post demise of Angmar), and the orcs under the direct command of Sauron (or to whomever he delegated authority for such a role), referred to by other orcs as Lugbúrz.

But geographically, we have the plateau of Gorgoroth, the vale of Morgai running along the western edge of The Gorgoroth (and seemingly ruled from the old Númenórean fortress of Durthang.

To the North of Orodruin and the Plateau of Gorgoroth, there are the lowlands of Isenmouth (which are to the NW of Barad-Dûr).

And beyond the Isenmouth is the Valley of Udûn, directly behind the Black Gate(s) and the Morannon.

The Isenmouth, Udûn, and the Morannon all appear to be lowlands. While Gorgoroth, the Morgai, and the Morgul Vale all appear to be highlands.

Now, what does this have to do with?

In armies of the ancient world (1100BC - 1200AD) the terrain of a nation tended to influence how the troops of that nation fought.

Lowland warriors and soldiers would tend to fight in closer formations that warriors or soldiers from highlands or mountainous regions.

But....

Mordor was not likely to be invaded in the later-Third Age, and Sauron knew this.

Even what we call "Undrilled" or "Irregular" troops would have some form of training in units so that they were better prepared for actual warfare.

Would any of the orcs of Mordor bothered with any sort of drill to fight as anything but a close-ordered mob (Heavy Infantry)?

The only area where an actual large battle took place within the control of Mordor was in the outer end of the Morgul Vale, in the 25th Century Third Age. Would The Witch King have trained any Orcs to fight in Looser Order (Units as Medium Infantry, rather than Heavy), so that they would not be slowed as much by the terrain, or would be have just left the Orcs to fight in their typical mass of Heavy Infantry?

If the terrain where the orcs lived influenced how they trained for war, then Mordor should have had just about as much "Medium Infantry" (looser formation - armor is not a factor when considering Heavy or Medium Infantry. It is basically how closely packed the Warriors are in their unit) as they did Heavy Infantry.

But if the terrain was not a factor, then it would be more likely that the Orcs were arranged simply as Heavy Infantry, as where they were typically fighting was in relatively flat country compared to Mordor (In Gondor).

MB

Orcs do not seem to have been particularly trained for the most part and lack discipline, being held together by threat and force. They don't necessarily need training to war- unlike humans, they are not shy to bloodshed (or even cannibalism!) and are quarrelsome and violent by nature. Furthermore, they seemed to be utilized in the books less as typical heavy infantry (which is generally well trained and equipped) and more as just an overwhelming mass/horde- quantity over quality, as it were, and completely disposable to Sauron (who utilized beasts, trolls, and even Nazgul as his shock troops).

Orcs seem to rely on ferocity and impetus, much like the depiction of historical tribal warband groups, as distinguished from the discipline, training, and tactics of professional soldiers.
This is one of the things that distinguished the uruk-hai of Saruman- not only were they larger and more powerful, being manlike in stature, but also seemed better organized and responsive to direction.

In Tolkein's writing, quality is often inherent, not a product of training, and generally inverse to numbers, hence the superiority of elves over men, who in turn were superior to orcs.

What a fascinating thread topic! Nice one, BeAfraid!

My approach to the question is founded on identifying Mordor as a totalitarian nation-state. Such systems tend to obliterate regional identities as part of centralization. The relevant question is not from where a particular unit hails but rather what role it has been formed to play. Sauron seems to view orcs as an initially undifferentiated resource to be organized and equipped as necessary -- something like pouring water into various shapes of vessel. This mindset naturally entails a substantial emphasis on drill.

The broader question is, might there be different labor-based castes of orcs? We are used to thinking about what would be the military caste but there must also be a substantial population entirely devoted to, for example, agriculture. Just within Barad-dûr itself, there must likewise be a population assigned exclusively to arms production.

Very good point, Manchu. We are told:
"Orcs made no beautiful things, but many clever ones including machines, tools, weapons, and instruments of torture, were delighted by wheels, engines, and explosions, and could tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled Dwarves."

So they have their own craftsmen in their own fashion, and it certainly would take a lot of gear to equip the throngs of Mordor. And given their systems, I am guessing the craftsmen are probably "selected", not volunteers. Although I can see cowardly goblinkind preferring to stay away from the risk of death under a burning sun. Probably also a constant whip and threat of pain to keep them properly motivated!

I have a hard time reconciling agriculture and orcs, though. I picture large mud farms with foul, misshapen, lumps of vegetation. Likely also a source of the ingredients for their healing balms. Ranching would be very hard to fathom as orcs are largely impatient and violent and would likely not be able to ever effectively raise any sort of food animal.

 jmurph wrote:
Orcs do not seem to have been particularly trained for the most part and lack discipline, being held together by threat and force. They don't necessarily need training to war- unlike humans, they are not shy to bloodshed (or even cannibalism!) and are quarrelsome and violent by nature. Furthermore, they seemed to be utilized in the books less as typical heavy infantry (which is generally well trained and equipped) and more as just an overwhelming mass/horde- quantity over quality, as it were, and completely disposable to Sauron (who utilized beasts, trolls, and even Nazgul as his shock troops).

Orcs seem to rely on ferocity and impetus, much like the depiction of historical tribal warband groups, as distinguished from the discipline, training, and tactics of professional soldiers.
This is one of the things that distinguished the uruk-hai of Saruman- not only were they larger and more powerful, being manlike in stature, but also seemed better organized and responsive to direction.

In Tolkein's writing, quality is often inherent, not a product of training, and generally inverse to numbers, hence the superiority of elves over men, who in turn were superior to orcs.

Most Gauls, Germans, and even Saxons and Vikings were Heavy Infantry, but were not well trained, or "Drilled" at any rate (they practiced killing each other though).

MB

 jmurph wrote:
Very good point, Manchu. We are told:
"Orcs made no beautiful things, but many clever ones including machines, tools, weapons, and instruments of torture, were delighted by wheels, engines, and explosions, and could tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled Dwarves."

So they have their own craftsmen in their own fashion, and it certainly would take a lot of gear to equip the throngs of Mordor. And given their systems, I am guessing the craftsmen are probably "selected", not volunteers. Although I can see cowardly goblinkind preferring to stay away from the risk of death under a burning sun. Probably also a constant whip and threat of pain to keep them properly motivated!

I have a hard time reconciling agriculture and orcs, though. I picture large mud farms with foul, misshapen, lumps of vegetation. Likely also a source of the ingredients for their healing balms. Ranching would be very hard to fathom as orcs are largely impatient and violent and would likely not be able to ever effectively raise any sort of food animal.

In Tolkien's various personal writings about the "background" of Middle-earth, and in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings he states that large populations of human (slaves) lived in the South of Mordor around The Sea of Núrnen (In "Núrn" to be precise, and in the further south, which has no precise name) to produce the food that fed the Orc Armies (which is what allowed him to breed such huge armies of Orcs).

In The History of Middle-earth (And the Appendices) he describes Aragorn giving Mordor to these millions of Human slaves (a larger population of slaves than his Orcs, it would seem).

In his later life, Tolkien went through very dark periods as a result of his "failure" (he did not fail, he just rejected his solution as too hideous to contemplate, and his attitudes and theology threw him into a great depression that he could even consider something so dark) to resolve the issues of how Orcs Bred and supported themselves (here is one area where Peter Jackson got it right, as he read the same documents as did I at the Bodleian Library at Oxford prior to Christopher Tolkien confiscating some of them as "too personal"). I would go into it more (as I found it to be a fascinating and very appropriate resolution to the whole problem of Orcs, and what happens to the Fëa of the elves and humans that originally were involved in their "creation"), but there no longer exists the evidence to back it up, other than a movie which I consider to be largely apocryphal, or outright heretical to begin with.

Aside from their reliance upon slave labor, they also had tribal societies that likely had domesticated animals (likely goats, pigs and wolves) which they ate (much like Asiatic Nomads ate both Horse and Dog that accompanied them).

So each Tribal gathering was not particularly large (outside of the few concentrated and organized settlements of Orcs: Angband, Tol-n-Guarhoth, Angmar, Gundabad, Dol Goldur, Moria, and Mordor) and relatively easy to sustain by foraging and domestic animals.

But Angband and Mordor represent specifically huge and organized concentrations of Orcs supported by a massive system of slave labor. And both had millions of Orcs at their disposal as a result. Angband was an attempt to create such a system in the north of Middle-earth in the Third Age but the human population enslaved was never large enough to support the populations as it was in Mordor or Angband. Most of the population of Eriador was heavily armed by the Third Age and very warlike. Even though many of the humans or NE Eriador were co-opted by Angmar, they tended to work only to support themselves, and not an Orc overclass (they saw themselves as being superior to the Orcs, and would not be oppressed by them). which is why we see Men being the wall of spears that overruns the remnants of Arnor/Arthedain in Frodo's vision in the Barrow-downs, and within Tom Bombadil's songs (see: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil), and not Orcs. Orcs were no doubt there, but they were there alongside the "Dark/Evil Hill-Men" of Rhudaur, and not as their oppressors.

Thus the curiosity about the factions and behaviors that might arise within those factions due to the landscape occupied by those factions. Did it affect how they fought outside of Mordor?

For instance:

As I mentioned in the OP, the Morgai represented a Vale and a Highlands next to the Eastern Slopes of the Ephel Dúath. With Human Barbarians in such terrain (Cisalpine Guals, Scotti, Alpine Germanics, Scots Highlanders, etc.) they tended to fight as more Loose Order Medium Infantry, which was capable of better making use of the terrain, and moving through it more rapidly than would a Close Order Heavy Infantry, which would be tripping all over themselves in such a terrain.

And, as I mentioned in the OP, you have places like the Gorgoroth Plains, or the Vallies of Udun or the Morannon where the terrain is relatively open and flat. As with Human Barbarians in such terrain (Lowland, Transalpine Guals, most Ancient Germanics, Saxons/Vikings, Lowland Scots, etc.) you will see them naturally fight as more Close Order Infantry, as the terrain presents few obstacles to moving in denser formations.

I am sure that many Orcs fought as nothing more than Rabble, or a Mob (The Snaga most precisely), but they tended to represent a minority (albeit a probably large minority) of Orc troops, which seemed to be divided into classes:

• Snaga
• (Lesser) Orcs
• Uruks/Uruk-Hai (there is some argument as to whether Sauron actually created Uruk-Hai with his Uruks in 2901 - some texts refer to them as just "Uruks" while others refer to them as "Uruk-Hai." There is also disagreement over whether Saruman's "Fighting Uruk-Hai" represented a particularly fierce breed of Uruk-Hai, if the Mordor Uruks were actually Uruk-Hai).
• Black/Great Uruks

So...

One would probably see:

• Snaga as unorganized mobs, driven by Greater Orcs, usually with the stereotypical whip.
• (Lesser) Orcs as a combination of Unorganized, but more motivated Mobs, and as skirmishers, or Archers (formed into massed units, rather than skirmishers)
• Uruks and the Black/Great Uruks as a more organized fighting force. They would likely not be formless Mobs, but would form as close knit units as possible.

Caesar's Gallic Wars describes the Guals as fighting in Close Order but unorganized, or undrilled Units, which were not as maneuverable as the Romans, nor as disciplined in their fighting tactics or morale.

But Caesar, and other Authors (Polybios, Plutarch, Livy, etc.) also describe the Guals closer to Italy (living in the foothills of the Alps) as fighting in Loose Order (the men in the "files," if you could call them that, were further apart, making for fewer people across the same frontage of a unit - where the Romans would have Ten Men, the Highland Guals would have only Seven or Eight).

So... with that information for the Great(er) Uruks....

Which by 3019 (The War of the Ring) made up most of Mordor's Orcs...

Would the Orcs tend to fight (outside of Mordor) based upon the terrain where they were "born" inside Mordor... Or would they tend to bunch up, or spread out based upon where they were fighting?


But the other issues you raise of Orc culture are very important as well.

Do not forget that Orcs also had another class, which Tolkien did not get to detail in any depth: the Boldoeg.

Most Orcs were of a mix of Human and elvish Stock. They were "mortal" only living a hundred or so years (although they "matured" very quickly - roughly ten years to "adulthood").

But the Boldoeg are (nearly) "immortal" types of Orcs, which may be a mixture of Maia and elf. Tolkien discusses them in his essay On Orcs from The History of Middle-earth, vol X: Morgoth's Ring. The Two Orcs in Cirith Ungol (Shagrat and Gorbag) reminiscing about "the Good ol' days" are of this type, and they are reminiscing about the days under Morgoth in the First Age.

These Orcs would not be so plentiful as to form armies, or maybe even an entire Unit (There might be one unit of them serving either Minas Morgul, or Lúgburz/Barad-Dûr)), but they would be plentiful enough to serve as a sort of organizational officer class capable of inflicting their will upon even the Great Uruks to the extent to get some sort of organization to Orc armies from Mordor (but not really elsewhere).

And these Boldoeg would also be the ones capable of picking out the "craftier" Lesser Orcs to serve as Masons, Architects, Armorers/Blacksmiths, Cart-builders, road builders, etc.... They would form the backbone of the Orc service class in places like Mordor (remember the cisterns at the sides of the road in Mordor - they were probably organized by the Boldoeg, and built by the Crafts-Orcs selected by the Boldoeg).

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But thanks to both of you for responding to the query.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
I would go into it more (as I found it to be a fascinating and very appropriate resolution to the whole problem of Orcs, and what happens to the Fëa of the elves and humans that originally were involved in their "creation"), but there no longer exists the evidence to back it up

Would you mind extrapolating, by PM if you feel necessary?

 Manchu wrote:
What a fascinating thread topic! Nice one, BeAfraid!

My approach to the question is founded on identifying Mordor as a totalitarian nation-state. Such systems tend to obliterate regional identities as part of centralization. The relevant question is not from where a particular unit hails but rather what role it has been formed to play. Sauron seems to view orcs as an initially undifferentiated resource to be organized and equipped as necessary -- something like pouring water into various shapes of vessel. This mindset naturally entails a substantial emphasis on drill.

The broader question is, might there be different labor-based castes of orcs? We are used to thinking about what would be the military caste but there must also be a substantial population entirely devoted to, for example, agriculture. Just within Barad-dûr itself, there must likewise be a population assigned exclusively to arms production.

I addressed this point to a degree in my last post.

There seemed to be a division of labor among Orcs, with a caste system.

And, as I pointed out, HUGE numbers of Human Slaves in Núrn, in the south of Mordor, who produced most of the food (and where most of the remaining Black Númenóreans lived, now that I recall).

Barad-Dûr is something that I have yet to really start examining the operation of.

It must have had a sewage and aqueduct system that would rival the city of Rome in the first century. To say nothing of what must have been an extensive fresh water pumping system to get water to the upper floors (recall that Barad-Dûr was probably not the evil-skyscraper depicted in the movies. It was probably no higher than ten to twenty stories tall - stone only supports a structure to a half dozen or so floors, and then you begin to need steel supports... And it isn't likely that Sauron could produce enough steel for a structure much taller than a dozen or so stories).

But it did have a Lava Moat. That is in the books (Sauron had a lava channel from Orodruin dumping lava around Barad-Dûr, which means it must have also drained into caves or lava-tubes beneath the land running back toward Orodruin).

Eventually I plan to do some 3D models of a more accurate Orthanc and Barad-Dûr. The Romanesque architecture of the movies was probably accurate... Just the heights would have been a little different.

But inside of it... The upkeep... I need to consult an Architectural Historian to discover what would be needed to maintain such a structure with the given technology.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
I would go into it more (as I found it to be a fascinating and very appropriate resolution to the whole problem of Orcs, and what happens to the Fëa of the elves and humans that originally were involved in their "creation"), but there no longer exists the evidence to back it up

Would you mind extrapolating, by PM if you feel necessary?

I sent a PM... I did not get into all of the details of everything, nor the Fëa problem (which was an oversight).

I argue with myself over whether it was Tolkien's self-loathing over having even conceived of the solution, or of his fear that he was damning countless elves and humans to a fragmented oblivion that was the larger reason for his rejection of the solution.

If you have a question about it, I can go into more detail via PM about the Fëa issue's resolution. It is pretty complex, but elegant.

Pity that Tolkien was so afraid of his own mind.

MB

Fascinating information! The concept of a massive slave population supporting the orc warmachine explains a lot and is consistent with the hatred Morgoth/Sauron had for humanity's independent streak and tendency to use them for "superior" creations. Are any of those writings still available anywhere? Or did the estate decide not to make them available?

I was aware of the Boldoeg/Boldog and the implications a various elf/human/animal/Maiar mixes in orcs, but Tolkien's writings on the source of orcs are contradictory and subject to no small amount of dispute. It seems that he wanted to pull away from the origin of orcs as corrupted elves, at times implied that orcs may have been raised up by beasts (or even the earth!), was somewhat hamstrung by the implications of only Iluvatar being able to grant life (hence Aule's creations were little more than puppets), and unwilling to push forward by the horrible implications of mannish and elvish origins of orcs.

I agree that it is a shame that Tolkien did not want to delve further into this aspect for explanation. But I suppose he wanted to emphasize the free will of man and triumph of light over dark and not dwell overlong on the nature of the darkness. After all, weren't evil beings largely defined by their dark, twisted thoughts and dwelling on ugly things?

One of the problems of trying to equate historical equivalents to this setting is that while it was certainly inspired by history, it is fantastical and follows it's own internal rules and flexes as literary narrative requires. For example, the world was flat and the stars, sun and moon were wholly different from ours in a way that violates basic physics and cosmological understanding. So orcs need not behave in a way consistent with historical human groups because they were not human and were largely driven by a wholly inhuman supernatural will while Sauron remained. Likewise, Barad-dûr need not satisfy true architectural or engineering requirements because it was maintained by the power of Sauron and fell with the destruction of the One Ring.

The movies are Peter Jackson's creation and little more needs to be said of them.

I have always been fascinated by Tolkein's Orcs. I don't know if that was the intention, but the little tidbits of personality and Orc culture that he let us see in the books really fired my imagination. Like when you talk about Gorbag and Shagrat talking about the "Good old days" and setting up with a few trustworthy lads somewhere else, I was completely intrigued.

The talk of Nazgul's getting someone's number, the whole idea that these were not always going to be faceless monsters to be killed but might have autonomous lives of their own with their own concerns and feelings about the story- lives and feelings that we never really got to see except as short glimpses...

I dunno, to me, that's powerful food for the imagination. It's an aspect of Tolkein's writing that I really enjoy. As a reader of just the novels, you are left with a sense of mystery and bigger things going on, which keeps you thinking for a long time afterwards. I often contrast this with a lot of modern fantasy, which approaches the whole thing from a more complete "scientific" paradigm. This may satisfy the scientist in me, but it doesn't fire my imagination in the same way, at all.

Da Boss, have you played Shadows of Mordor yet? If not, please stop everything and do that right now.

Good advice, but I have played it and I loved it. Unfortunately my copy of the game is in my parents place back in Ireland, but I am looking forward to the chance to play it again soon. It was amazing fun.

 jmurph wrote:
Fascinating information! The concept of a massive slave population supporting the orc warmachine explains a lot and is consistent with the hatred Morgoth/Sauron had for humanity's independent streak and tendency to use them for "superior" creations. Are any of those writings still available anywhere? Or did the estate decide not to make them available?

I know that after the first Trilogy came out, that Christopher Tolkien put in a request to the Bodleian Library to remove a few papers that he felt were "more personal."

Among these was an essay Tolkien had written about Orcs, which essentially solved most (if not all) of the various philosophical, theological, and physical problems their existence caused.

But, due to Tolkien's attitudes and beliefs regarding what "Sub-Creation" actually is (few people are really aware of the full-implications of that term - it essentially means that Tolkien was one incredibly deluded guy, when you get down into the specifics) he rejected the solution, and attempted to pretend he had never thought of it (even though there was evidence that this solution was what he was thinking the whole time).

I was aware of the Boldoeg/Boldog and the implications a various elf/human/animal/Maiar mixes in orcs, but Tolkien's writings on the source of orcs are contradictory and subject to no small amount of dispute. It seems that he wanted to pull away from the origin of orcs as corrupted elves, at times implied that orcs may have been raised up by beasts (or even the earth!), was somewhat hamstrung by the implications of only Iluvatar being able to grant life (hence Aule's creations were little more than puppets), and unwilling to push forward by the horrible implications of mannish and elvish origins of orcs.

I agree that it is a shame that Tolkien did not want to delve further into this aspect for explanation. But I suppose he wanted to emphasize the free will of man and triumph of light over dark and not dwell overlong on the nature of the darkness. After all, weren't evil beings largely defined by their dark, twisted thoughts and dwelling on ugly things?

One of the problems of trying to equate historical equivalents to this setting is that while it was certainly inspired by history, it is fantastical and follows it's own internal rules and flexes as literary narrative requires. For example, the world was flat and the stars, sun and moon were wholly different from ours in a way that violates basic physics and cosmological understanding. So orcs need not behave in a way consistent with historical human groups because they were not human and were largely driven by a wholly inhuman supernatural will while Sauron remained. Likewise, Barad-dûr need not satisfy true architectural or engineering requirements because it was maintained by the power of Sauron and fell with the destruction of the One Ring.

Surprisingly, there is a shape and topology for a "flat earth" that works with Newtonian Physics (and probably Einsteinian extensions to those physics as well.... but we have not yet got that far in our modeling). It basically creates a world that is a lopsided hour-glass shape, with the smaller end of the hour-glass flattened, and the "world" on that flattened surface (technically, that surface is just slightly convex).

And, we are not applying historical equivalents to Middle-earth is the sense of mapping people in Middle-earth directly to people who existed in History. The historical comparisons are only for the purposes of looking at behavior of populations who inhabit certain types of geography: What sort of population settlements did they tend to create (villages, towns, cities), how did they support their populations (agriculture, livestock, water, etc.), and how they defended those areas.


With Orcs, we have a little bit of a difficulty.

Do we use what is an apocryphal, and not impossible to prove means of resolving the existential (and Ontological, cosmological, and theological) questions regarding Orcs that Tolkien came up with, but refused to confront (similarly to how he treated the beer stein he was given that had an inscription of The Ruling Ring on it - he refused to touch it, or look at it if possible, and only used it as an ash-tray on occasion).... Or do we use the more bowdlerized resolution that is published in vol X of The History of Middle-earth, which introduces just as many problems as it solves?

The movies are Peter Jackson's creation and little more needs to be said of them.

As I pointed out above, Jackson did get a few things pretty accurate in his first Trilogy (by far the better of the two). And, surprisingly, his treatment of Orcs was surely inspired by the rejected solution from Tolkien.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:

Good advice, but I have played it and I loved it. Unfortunately my copy of the game is in my parents place back in Ireland, but I am looking forward to the chance to play it again soon. It was amazing fun.

Our project will require me to look into all of the Video Game, and Online Middle-earth media.

I have been avoiding it due to the overt influence of Peter Jackson's movies, especially in Lord of the Rings Online (or is it Middle-earth Online???).

But when you are creating a film, or series of documentaries on the works of JRR Tolkien as depicted by various Popular media or academics, you are left with no choice but to pocket your biases as best as possible, and example the sources as deeply as possible.

Even Peter Jackson's last trilogy of The Hobbit has some things that are surprisingly well done an original (I just have a hard time thinking how much better those bits would be if framed within a larger account of the book(s) - since The Hobbit actually goes beyond just the novel - that itself was closer to the original trilogy in style, at the very least).

But as for the lives of the Wraiths, or the other servants of Sauron...

One can see that the various subjects of the Dark Lords, even back to The First Age with Morgoth, there is a large amount of autonomy.

In The First Age, you can see Sauron, or Thurwingethil having their own domains to rule, and their own goals.

Sauron, for instance, was vastly more interested in temporal subjugation of humanity and the elves than was Morgoth. Sauron seems to have been depicted as being more vain, as well (although this is definitely open to question or argumentation!). When he took over Tol-Sirion, and changed it to Tol-n-Guarhoth, he managed to seize a significant piece of key real estate in Beleriand, and were it not for Beren and Luthien, it is likely he would have stumbled upon Gondolin before too long.

Thurwingethil managed to occupy the highlands of Dorthonion, turning them into a zoo of woodland horrors, taking in the brood of Ungoliantë, and breeding her own Vampiric spawn along the way.

In The Second Age, after the creation of The Rings of Power Sauron basically abandoned Middle-earth, turning over rule of his real to the holders of The Nine, who had yet to become wraiths, completely.

And in The Third Age we see The Witch-King setting up an Independent Kingdom in Minas Morgul (twice, once at the end of The Second Age and beginning of The Third Age and then again at the end of that age), and his largest realm in Angmar. We have Khamûl being given proprietorship of Dol Goldur twice (during The watchful Peace and then after the assault by The White Council.

I don't imagine they had completely free hands, since, especially in the case of the Nazgûl, they were wholly enslaved to Sauron. But they do seem to have had their own goals and desires that were allowed to be indulged as long as they did not conflict with the overall goals of Sauron's.

I imagine that Orcs, as exhibited by Shagrat and Gorbag, had their own goals and desires, however ultimately corrupted and empty.

MB