LordOfMoria
Balin Son of Fundin
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2003
- Messages
- 292
it came a bit odd to me that their was way more than 10,000 uruk-hai at helms deep. Their seamed like atleast 30,000. and when gandalf shows up, it seams like about 10,000 are left!!!

Originally posted by Hadhafang
I agree. I have seen massses of people at air shows and sporting events.
I think that in the movie version it was clearly longer than 3 weeks. First off, Gandalf was on the tower for a while. They didn't tell us the number of days, but Gandalf rescued by Gwaihir looks considerably more disheveled than he was when he was put on the tower- at least a week. We don't know how long it took him to get back to Rivendell, but he talks to Frodo on the 25th of October. We then have the stay in Rivendell, the journey to Hollin, the trip through Moria to Lorien, the stay in Lorien, the journey down the Anduin, and finally the race of the Three Hunters across Rohan. Again the movie doesn't give us explicit dates, but when we get estimates of time (Gandalf says they'll be travelling south from Rivendell for 40 days, and then he says it will be four days to get through Moria) it seems like the movies are trying to follow the timeline of the books. That would mean that Saruman has from ~early October when Gandalf is captured until ~March 2nd to get the Helm's Deep army ready. It appeared that Lurtz and the first 100+ were ready in late December- so at that time production would go into full swing. We have ~65 days then to produce 10,000 Uruk-hai and their armor= 154 Uruk-hai per day. I don' t know the exact recipe that goes into the man-human mixture (did it require an entire man and orc for each creature? Or just 1/2 each? Or just some DNA elements?), but within the logic of the movie this sort of logic seems plausible. As for the forge, it looked as if Saruman had ~100 Orcs working the smithies, so that means they would have to each churn out about 1.5 Orc suits a day. This seems achievable, since each piece of equipment was very crude.Originally posted by NetherDemon
---How long did it take between when Gandalf was captured and when the Orcs attacked Helms Deep? Maybe three weeks?
That makes them very hard to argue with. I'm not a huge history buff, but from readings of the third paragraph of this post it seems that well-defended fortresses could indeed hold out against the sort of numbers fielded by the Uruk-hai.Originally posted by Hawk
I have no idea where I get these ideas
Originally posted by NetherDemon
What I don't get is how you make 10,000 Orcs in a matter of a week or more?
---How long did it take between when Gandalf was captured and when the Orcs attacked Helms Deep? Maybe three weeks? Unless Saruman had already begun breeding orcs before Gandalf discovered what was going on, how can this be possible?
According to the movie version, you'd have to say that in that amount of time, Saruman chopped down all the trees around Isenguard, created a Huge Metal Forge to make orc weapons and armor, bred 10,000 Orcs, trained them/raised them into fighting mode???
Very skeptical I am...