"Beneath the hills on either side the rock was bored into a hundred caves and
maggot-holes; there a host of
orcs lurked..."
The Two Towers IV 3
The Black Gate is Closed
A term for Orcs, especially those of lesser kinds that dwelt in the darkness and cowered from the Sun. 'Maggots' was a common insult among the Orcs for others of their own kind, and seems to have been used especially by the Uruk-hai for those they considered inferior. While Uruks could withstand the light of the Sun, many other Orcs could not, and hid in caverns and 'maggot-holes' during the daylight. Orcs had a talent for creating these networks of tunnels, from entire settlements like Goblin-town1 in the north to the maggot-holes that laced the mountains of Mordor. For those in northern Mordor, the waste from their tunnelings was piled into great slag-heaps before the Black Gate of that land.
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- Updated 19 January 2017
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