One of the questions from J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings is: how did the bad guys build an army of orcs? Each of his primary bad guys, first Morgoth and then Sauron, built up an army, but then those armies diminished as soon as the bad guy was gone. I’ve got a theory, and it doesn’t even require dark magics. You could even do this at home, if you are an evil overlord. Here’s how.
Physical and Mental Characteristics
The story goes that orcs, as a species, started out as predominantly elves, with some later experiments with humans, who were corrupted by the bad guys. The orcs were humanoid and generally filled with hate for the other humanoids and anything not corrupted. They also were not prone to building things of their own, but had to steal from other cultures or be forced to build things by their masters. They hated their masters as well.
If you look at the orcs as a people with a select group of characteristics, it becomes obvious that a sufficiently powerful leader could create such a group today using real humans. The physical differences between the orcs and everyone else are just enough to make it easy to see who is who. The mental limitations are just enough to keep them from turning on their masters, but not enough to keep them from fighting or from being sneaky when needed. The anger issues seem inborn, as though they are predisposed to a lack of impulse control. You may have heard of specific humans in our world who have one or more of these characteristics.
I’ve met many people in my life, so I have an assortment from which to pick in this example. I’m picking neo-Nazis because many readers would have an idea who they are, though there are others I could use for this example. Whoever I pick, someone will be upset, so too bad.
Most of the neo-Nazis that I’ve encountered are not mentally complex. Human mental complexity spans quite a range, and these people have tended to be below average. Most of them are still functional and generally capable of holding a job or managing speech. Most of them will not be doing calculus. This is how they get snared into the Nazi rhetoric. They don’t have the intelligence to understand why they aren’t rich, famous, or powerful, but someone came along and said it’s because of some outside group such as the Jews or black people.
In news coverage of some recent white supremacist rallies, you can see the faces of those involved. In some instances, you can see the sign of conditions such as fetal alcohol syndrome or other mild developmental disabilities. One must assume that some of those individuals do not understand their condition or how it affects what they can do in life. However, the leaders can quickly prey on that lack of understanding to fill their numbers. They fill the followers with nonsense about superiority that can easily be overcome by “inferior” peoples.
How to Use This
Imagine that you have decided that you are going to be a Dark Lord and you have the financial means to engage in that activity. You have a kingdom of your own where you can do what you like. You’ve decided to build an army that will be a threat to others but are not clever enough to be a threat to you. After all, you know that you are the smartest and all-around best entity that ever existed and should be worshiped by everyone else.
You start by separating out the ones who are likely to follow you and you get them angry by telling them that the rest of the world is keeping them down. You, of course, are their only friend and, if they stick with you, they will eventually rise up to be in charge of all those inferior people who are oppressing them. Anyone who doesn’t go along with what you say is obviously collaborating with the inferior people and must be ended.
Selective Breeding
If you have enough time, you can start selective breeding. You encourage anger and mild stupidity. You want followers who will be brave in their group, but need the group, otherwise you risk an uprising. You don’t want any individualists.
You can also encourage distinct physical traits so you can easily tell who is a member of your army and who comes from elsewhere. This is an important thing in groups such as the white supremacists because a simple, visual cue about who is a “good guy” and who is a “bad guy” is a must. It’s like an easy way to tell who is on each team. Since your army will be made of simple minded creatures, anything more complex will be confusing. The appearance is also a quality that makes your people “superior”. Anyone without the correct physical characteristics would be culled.
A side effect of this selective breeding is that two characteristics would develop naturally. Most of the genetic material would come from the physically strong, aggressive members. These individuals would have the strength to breed whenever they wanted, and would produce most of the offspring. A second, smaller group of breeders would be made up of those who are sneaky. They would use stealth and cunning to breed without conflict with the strong ones. This would give your army two types of viciousness in a good proportion, preferably about 80/20 or 90/10.
Going to War
Once your army had sufficient size and the right characteristics, you could unleash it on your neighbors. This could gain you more ground, at least at first. Any damage caused to your soldiers was just more evidence of the other people keeping them down. With an aggressive breeding program and a general disregard for the safety of your army, you could stay at war for quite a while.
In Tolkien’s works, the orc armies were only strong when being guided. Whenever the most recent dark lord was deposed, the size of the armies diminished. Small pockets of orcs withdrew to isolated areas where they rarely encountered other people. This makes sense for a species that was bred to be less capable of doing anything but fight. They simply cannot take care of themselves, so it takes an external leader to organize them and keep them healthy long enough to grow.
This means that you must make sure that you are around to keep motivating them. If you are dead or otherwise not viable, you army will fall. Small pockets of them will survive, but it will probably not be the strongest of them unless a smarter one appears to lead. It’s also possible that the skeeky ones will last longer just because they know how to avoid danger.
If there is a chance that you will not survive, make sure that there is at least one person that you would choose as a successor. That person must understand how to manage your army of monsters and your overall goals. However, you must take steps to make sure this person is not a threat to you.
You must also make it understood to your army that if you are gone it is because you had to return to your heavenly plane to fight enemies there. That means the army should be worshipping you. If things go poorly for them it is because they are not doing enough to defeat their earthly foes. They should try harder to get back into your good graces.
The Threat from the Enemy
Your enemy will be made up of individuals who are healthier and smarter than your individuals. The enemy will have a big weakness: they don’t want to go to war. That gives you a big advantage and the enemy scrambles to change from their peacetime lifestyle.
The specific threat posed by your enemy is that they will kill large quantities of your soldiers. The enemy will also attempt to invade your lands and kill you too. In today’s world, that means a drone strike on your headquarters. You may want to dig deep.
The longer term threat comes in the form do-gooders among the enemy. They will want to capture and rehabilitate your forces. With good healthcare and nutrition, proper education, and breeding taking place in a violence-resistant environment, your hard work will be wiped out in a few generations. That’s all it takes to turn your army of freaks into a slave class living peacefully among your enemies.
The best bet is to try to shorten the time to maturity for your monsters and make sure they are breeding like rabbits. You want them to consider the enemy to be a food source. Understanding that there will be a high mortality rate, send out as many of these things as you can as fast as possible.
Conclusion
This all seems highly unlikely to happen. There aren’t really any tyrants with the money and land to do this, we keep telling ourselves. The main issues are that those same tyrants don’t understand how this would work nor do they have the patience. Note that the conversion from humans to fiends takes generations, and no single tyrant has time for that. This is something that would have to be worked on by a dynasty, or at least a secret government research branch. Can you really imagine a government doing something like that?