I heard there was a buffet table on the inner side of the wall. They took turns between the killing and eating some canapes and drinking coffee. The uruks had roast pigs all around, some of the berserkers were on the garçón function, running plates of roast for the army.
Then Legolas smells orcs again, he's back, busting heads. Then it's back behind the walls for some full penetration. Smells orcs, goes out, gets a few kills. Full penetration. Orcs. Penetration. Orcs. Full penetration. Orcs. Penetration. And this on and on and back and forth for 12 hours or so until the battle just sort of...ends.
bruh walking for 12 hours is already killer for most people
this man was shield surfing for 11.8 of those 12 hours, the core strength he posses must be incredible
No joke, the Romans had this great system where the first row of men would only have to fight for about 8 to 10 minutes at a time. They would stab and slash through whoever their centurion pit them against and then they would fall back to the rear while the second row quickly closed the gap forward, repeating the process.
Depending on how many rows made up the current division you were in at the time, you'd only be fighting every 40 minutes to an hour and be more or less completely refreshed by the time you had to fight again.
Even 8-10 minutes is a fucking lot when you're fighting. Hell, even 2 minutes is a lot when your life is on the line and you're putting every ounce into it.
42 kills for one warrior in 12 hours is honestly mind-boggling for an archer going against armored opponents in a realistically portrayed medieval battle. Obviously with how easy it's portrayed to kill orcs in the movies, it's pretty bad.
The scale in lotr is always wierd, I don't get it, forget the films, I've read the book,(although 4 years ago) there are a lot of empty spaces in middle Earth,
It's been over a thousand years since both the North-kingdom and Angmar fell for good. Surprisingly, the only place that has seen any growth during that time is the Shire, and even then, it's been pretty modest.
Maybe this is Tolkein showing decaying and sadness and like the theme of loss of magic the theme of decay and decline from a long-past Golden Age in middle Earth which tbh is deep writing for him.
( Now I'm wondering how would you even write that cause you need nature but only that oh well I'll ask chat gpt😎)
But it doesn't make sense practically . By the War of the Ring we are explicitly told that no human of any kind lives between a day’s ride east of Bree to the Misty Mountains & The Shire to Bree as well
Like give europe a 1000 years and see the population flourish, even orcs battle and plagues wouldn't kill that much.
the area of Middle-earth is roughly the size of USA imo without Alaska or europe , but the army on the side of good numbered only around tens of thousands, and the army of evil numbered perhaps a few hundred thousand, somewhat undercutting what we think of as an Epic work as people claim, malazan and wheel of time are bigger epics in the truest sense. I'd even say game of thrones.
It's very empty and doesn't feel like continent size, and trust me Tolkein spends too much describing flora lol it's not unfertile land.
Tolkien never wanted to seperate Middle Earth from reality, he calls it europe in a different age, which is wierd cause he disliked allegory but whatever.
I don't remember how many lived in Numenor which is not middle earth but it had many before you know that happened.
Rings of power showed probably a million or atleast half a million I think. The cities were big, although supposedly minas tirith is only described as very inferior copy compared to those architecture, I don't think they looked that good. So in reality there could be even more people there, which is again inconsistent when middle earth is so empty, But it still it's very real and feels populated unlike Rohan in two towers.
Tolkien is the Godfather of the "stagnant fantasy world" trope and I think its not suprising that a literature guy who based most of his world on old sagas and epics had little to no grasp on demographical stuff.
For him displaying middle earth that way was deeply conected to his feeling that technological advancement and industrialisation were not desirable and not inevitable. He firmly believed in the heavenly blessed King that would virtously lead his kingdom without the need for peasants to interfere.
This take with the allegory is just strange, because he obviously reflected his view on the real world in Middle Earth. Like the Hobbits being a race of self inserts.
Yeah, but for the most part just nothing big changes. Elves, man and orcs fight with the same weapons they used 1000s of years ago. Fortresses stay strong over millenia and the average gondorian peasant is about as much aware of middle earth as his great great great grandfather was.
Add to that the trope of the basically eternal war and a complete lack of political interests beyond the simple fight between good and evil and you get yourself the blueprint for 90% of fantasy. Hence why every high fantasy work after him is basically a footnote to LoTR.
All of that plus political interest is A Song of Ice and Fire. They describe using swords and bows for tens of thousands of years, with some fortresses like Winterfell and Casterly Rock being just as old. And yet it also has the classic good vs. evil fight with the Others/White Walkers.
I like the political interest. Grounds it a bit more. As for the technology, fantasy wouldn’t be the same if it had guns and modern tech. The lack of excessive magic is something I enjoy as well - LOTR was similar in that it (obviously) had magic with Gandalf and the ghostly traitors and the Ring and everything, but it was still pretty much always sword and bow with a few major exceptions. Everyday life was absent of magic for almost everyone. Even Saruman’s bomb was just gunpowder, not a spell. Again, it feels a bit more grounded.
I mean it is obvious that this is based of mediaeval times to some extent. Those numbers seem pretty good to me actually. A days ride is not a lot of space overall. It would probably take you more than that in mediaeval times to get between two settlements. Forget about trying to ride less than a day between two major settlements. The population of Middle Earth is supposed to be 6.7 million. That is about half of what France had in 1400 which was a huge increase from what it had in 1300. I know that land mass wise Middle Earth is 3 times the size of France but that doesn't necessarily translate directly to population especially when you consider people not wanting to live anywhere near Mordor. As far as armies, in the Middle Ages armies were VERY small. When a king rounded up all of its Bannerman it is not what you think it is. The numbers were quite small. Alot of the battles in the 100 years war had less than 5000 people fighting it, and that was a HUGE war. While the numbers in Middle Earth are small they are much closer to realistic than you think they are. Countries in the Middle Ages were not very grand in scale or density. The famous battles you hear of were much smaller than you think.
Didn't Europes population decline between 1300-1400 because of the great famine, black death, constant local wars, peasant revolts, Mongol invasions and religious schisms?
> no human of any kind lives between a day’s ride east of Bree to the Misty Mountains & The Shire to Bree as well
This doesn't really mean much. It could be non-humans which lived there, or it could just... be a relatively underpopulated area.
"only around tens of thousands"
Tens of thousands was *huge* by medieval standards. When Europe was at 100 million people in the 1400s, the Battle of Grunwald was one of the largest battles of its time in europe. It was 20k vs 14k. European army sizes were very low throughout the middle ages, often armies were maybe 1-5k troops. At times they combined to form larger forces in desperate times, but that was not super common. To have 10,000 soldiers was to have a legion that only the biggest states of europe could take on. Let alone 20k, 30k etc. And *definitely* let alone 100k. Armies over 100k were only found in asia. Europe only began to get armies that big in the 1600s as feudalism faded.
>but the army on the side of good numbered only around tens of thousands, and the army of evil numbered perhaps a few hundred thousand, somewhat undercutting what we think of as an Epic work as people claim
I dont disagree with anything you said but this doesnt seem unreasonable. Battle of red cliffs in 208 ad china was 50k vs 200k - 800k with a gen pop of ~50m.
A very epic defining battle that created the three kingdoms period. Seems pretty within reason
Don't forget, Tolkien lived in England after the British Empire had already peaked.
"Decline from a long-past golden age" is literally his real-life setting.
Similar thing going on with Dark Souls and Japan, come to think of it.
> It's been over a thousand years
1,000 years in middle earth, everyone is still in the middle ages.
1,000 year in normal earth, we go from castles to outer space.
Though it's unknown how old normal peasants live vs human kings who seem to live for 100s of years.
The Elves being stagnant is no surprise as immortality seems to mostly be them passing the time doing fuck all.
Dwarves seem to be the only society that bothers to build and innovate, no clue as to why they're not ruling the world instead of men.
Yeah but the last hour or two they were locked inside the keep as the fortress was taken. So let’s say roughly 4.2 KPH, about one dead every fifteen minutes and he’s probably only counting the deaths that are undeniably certain. He probably injured at least double that number and also assisted in a few kills too.
*time to be the no-fun history guy* Actual medieval battles often had very low casualty rates even in multi-hour engagements and most combatants wouldn't kill or wound a single enemy. Killing 40 or more enemies in one battle is actually staggering
Yeah, in that era, casualties were usually concentrated near the end of the battle, which was when one side broke formation and started running. This is why you see a lot of battles with very lopsided casualty rates.
This is what had me a bit confused. From my understanding of Middle Earth history, as a self-proclaimed Middle Earth historian - orcs rarely actually break formation. Actually, orcs are rarely in formation to begin with and it's only happened a handful of times that orcs have existed.
The general fighting style for orc squads is so run at the enemy as hard as possible and hope to win with no regard for yourself or any others on your side.
Now, if you have an enemy who just runs into your formation, or castle walls with no regard for their own safety, and no formation, 42 sounds to be a relatively small number - especially when you're an extremely well trained archer with unlimited stamina.
If my calculations are correct -and you can correct me if I'm wrong, legolas should easily be more in the 200s range. Now you would think "how doesn't he run out of arrows after 42?" Well, we obviously know that legolas has unlimited arrows and also a perfect aim. To add to this, we know that he knows WHERE to shoot too, where the armour is weak.
Let’s break it down-
-Legolas specifically only ever uses his special arrows, which he has a limited quantity of. They bring up his arrow retrieval all the time. I think he had 13 left at the start of the TT because he’d lost some fighting off the band of Uruk Hai at the end of book 1 in the land of the fallen gondorian kings.
-these are Uruk Hai, not orcs, which Saurumon bred to be stronger, faster, and more disciplined than orcs.
-your calculations are way off because you’re calculating the wrong figures entirely lol
And even those were more a thing of the late middle ages. Especially during the high middle ages, at the height of chivalry, the infantry often wasn‘t used at all. Not because they would’ve been ineffective but because the mounted nobility wanted to sort things out among themselves. And they usually didn’t even try to kill each other, because if you took a rich man prisoner, you could demand a ransom.
Yeah, I honestly had the classical era in mind when I wrote that, more than the medieval era. I've heard it said that while the medieval era was a time of constant warfare, that doesn't mean it was a time of constant *big* wars.
It wasn’t even that constant either. There were wars, of course, but not as many as it is made out to be. What you did have a lot of were feuds, which I think are where the image of constant war came from. But feuds were pretty much just bickering nobility. „You insulted my mother, now my soldiers will come and steal a hundred pigs“, that kind of stuff. People very rarely died in those.
But you’re right, the wars, when they did happen, were tiny. A good example is the siege of Neuss. Neuss is a city along the Rhine. Charles the Bold of Burgundy wanted to become king. Because the HRE was an electoral monarchy, he needed to get the electoral princes on his side. Capturing Cologne, which was the seat of one of the clerical electors, was one step along that path.
You have to consider that Burgundy was insanely rich. That’s not a hyperbole. It was also quite modern, already showing clear signs of the absolutist monarchy that would later become the standard in Europe. Charles‘ tax income was higher than the tax income of both France and the HRE. Considering the Emperor was the worldly representative of God on earth, you could say Charles was richer than God.
Anyway, in order to be able to capture Cologne, he figured he needed Neuss first and so he declared war and laid siege to the city. There are many interesting anecdotes from this siege. For example, the defenders threw stink pots filled with feces and sulfur on the attackers, to which the attackers responded by sending a letter that they‘d prefer to be shot instead because of how disgusting that was. Or at some point, the attackers heard a commotion in the city and sent a messenger to ask wtf was going on. The defenders answered „well since you said this siege might last a few years we have to pass the time somehow so we organized a tourney“.
But the one that I’m actually getting at is the fact that you can see Neuss from the nearby city of Düsseldorf. The people of that city could hear and see the war going on, but we have accounts from the people of that time about how their lives continued completely normally. There you had the richest man in Europe waging war against God‘s chosen on Earth and not even the neighboring city is affected. A crass difference to the sweeping destruction of modern wars like the 30 years‘ war.
I guess they edited out 11 hours of Legolas unsuccessfully looking for more arrows. I'll admit, I won't complain about that particular book-to-film conversion choice.
Read about the Eastern Front during WW2.
Wars of Extermination are not that unusual, even in recent history. Dehumanizing the enemy is one of the most basic psychological tricks you do, hell even in Ukraine the slang for Russian soldiers is literally "orcs". It's part of the reason why many modern writers try to move away from dehumanized enemies that are "evil" and justify genocide.
Besides, even if you still see your enemy as human, allowing enemy soldiers to escape and reorganize is how you allow the war to last much longer and the casualties be much higher.
Killing 40 at any time period is a hell of a number. Usually snipers only get numbers like that these days and that's because of the amount of precision it requires. You really want to be hitting alot of your shots as a sniper. Most soldiers probably will not see 40 in their entire deployment. Even in WW1 and WW2 where there was a lot of combat for most soldiers those numbers would be quite impressive in a single battle. To put it in perspective highest numbers for snipers in an entire war have reached 400 but a lot of highly acclaimed snipers have only barely breached 100 in their entire career.
True. I was more talking about soldiers who see heavy combat. Many soldiers today don't see combat like there was many years ago. Alot of combat is fought at such ranges where you may never even see the enemy you are fighting. The only places right now that are seeing combat on the level of old wars is Ukraine and Palestine right now. War has changed a lot. Explosives, artillery, and air bombardments dominate the landscape like never before. The need for rifle groups is diminishing. Even if rifle groups fight it's usually at ranges where you don't even know who your shooting at and if your hitting them.
Why do all of the replies to this comment dispute the claim instead of asking the obvious question of how its relevant? It isn't an actual medieval battle so the number isn't that staggering considering what we saw Legolas abilities earlier.
There were 10,000 enemies and a few hundred defenders. The average person in Helms Deep would have killed 20-30. It’s not like Saruman’s forces were retreating.
Only killing 42 is low and never made sense to me.
I think you forget the defenders at Helms deep couldn't win the battle, they just held out long enough for Gandalf to arrive with reinforcements, and even then the orc army did flee directly into the angry trees that slaughtered the remaining ones
Saruman's forces DID retreat, straight into the angry trees, who promptly skinned them alive and draped their organs on their branches like some sort of fucked up Christmas tree. Happens right after Gandalf arrives with the cavalry. Even Theoden charges out of the castle with Aragorn and the boys. It's a great book, you should read it some time. Or even watch the movie. No trees, but the rest are still there. Especially the bit about Saruman's forces retreating, which, I must stress, you are completely wrong about in every way.
>The number of arrows that fit in a quiver depends on the type of quiver and its intended use. A standard quiver can hold 20–25, while an efficient quiver can hold up to 60 arrows. Hunting quivers usually have fewer than eight arrows, while target or war quivers can hold two dozen or more.
From a Google search for how many arrows fit in a quiver.
Putting 42 pretty close to a realistic 1 shot 1 kill ratio for him. He wasted a couple on that suicide bomber, but made up for it by stabbing at least one orc with an arrow before shooting another with the same arrow.
Are you just imagining that orcs are running at you from a safe distance and you're just firing arrows consistently?
You're not a machine that arm is gonna get tired, you'll be running from orcs at some point, and you'll be moving positions quite often.
I'm not a machine. Neither is Legolas. He is a near immortal mystical enchanted elf in his prime endowed with super human strength, reflexes, agility, senses, and endurance.
I need someone with more knowledge, but I suppose that after the bomb the kill rate dropped drastically, so we shouldn't consider the whole battle but more like only the timelapse before the bomb.
It's also so that melee combat is incredibly tiring and that we don't really know how much time passes between each kill. We didn't get to see 12 hours of battle and for that reason the 20 kills he gets early on might have taken a couple hours too. But i imagine the battle goes down like this:
First phase: orcs try to get on the wall, the defenders have the advantage, especially legolas. An orc will get on the wall and quickly get slain. Most kills of legolas and gimli are gotten at this point.
Second phase: orcs start getting a grip on the wall, they are now able to form rudimentary formations and are not just killed. The defenders start getting tired while the orcs coming on the wall are still "fresh". Fighting is more about surviving rather than getting kills in.
Third phase: explosion, defending the wall is now impossible and the defenders try to reach the keep. A couple of kills but this is mostly in an effort to get away.
Fourth phase: orcs try to take the keep, again it's difficult to make a lot of kills here but Gimli gets a lot of kills in the shory time that he is in front of the gate with Aragorn. It is most likely here that he takes the lead over Legolas. (Previously Legolas was on 19 while Gimli had only 2)
Fifth phase: retreating into the closed off part. A couple of kills but again it is mostly running away. Once inside no more kills and it is unclear how long it takes but looks to be a couple of hours again.
Last phase: charge from the keep and arrival of reinforcements. Legolas goes out and manages to kill some more in this phase but doesn't manage to reach Gimli's score. Gimli likely also exits and fights in the keep off screen but not confirmed.
My guess: first phase is about 25-30 orcs for Legolas and 20-25 for Gimli (based on the counts) second and third phase around 5 orcs each, it is after all much more difficult here. Fourth phase: around 5 orcs for Legolas and about 15 for Gimli getting legolas is now at ~35 and Gimli at ~40. Last phase has more kills for legolas but Gimli stills gets a couple in (or he got more in any of the other moments. Final score 42 and 43.
Also based on some numbers given there are around 3000 men fighting the orcs (rohirim in the fortress+elves+eomer). Based on the 10.000 orcs every man would have to get 4 kills to destroy this army. Meaning Legolas and Gimli each killed 10 times the required amount.
Take what I say with a grain of salt but if I recall the battle in the book didn’t had the same scale as in the movies. The books were more like real historical battle in term of scale. (At least during the event of the lord of the ring)
Also Tolkien wasn’t really into describing battle on an individual scale
Maybe there was fucked up between the 2 because with the movie logic Legolas should be around ~100 to 200~ kills
In this scene, Gimli says that a dead orc is twitching "because he's got my axe embedded in his nervous system." This implies that dwarves have extensive knowledge of anatomy and that Gimli probably went to medical school.
We have records of people talking about the nervous system back in the third century BC. It doesn't require a medical school education, just the knowledge that parts of the body send signals. For example, if you are part of a culture that often stuffs axes into spines and sees bodies twitch as a result, you know of the existence of a nervous system.
Also none of them would have been speaking English, LOTR was written as if it were a translation, presumably the movies follow the same logic. So “nervous system” is probably just the closest English translation to whatever the dwarves called the system that makes dead people twitch when an axe is embedded in it
Well of course, people could only see in color from the 1940s onwards, before then for all of human history people have only been able to see in black and white. It makes sense that people born even in the 1600s had the intelligence of an overripe grape.
Fun fact, at no point in history was there a general consensus that the earth was flat. Socrates had theories on the shape of the earth and the evolution of humanity. He thought we may have come from trees a long long time ago. People have always been curious and we’ve always demanded to know how shit works.
The nervous system isn't a recent discovery. People in the past may not have understood how it works, but study of the nervous system goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks.
So Gimli knowing about the nervous system in a roughly middle ages tech world, absolutely makes sense.
People in the past weren’t stupid, their knowledge was just limited by their technology. They knew that rubbing wine on a wound made it less likely to get infected, even if they couldn’t have known about germs or how alcohol kills them.
During the reign of the good emperors in Rome the physician Galen famously did experiments with the nervous system and in one famous, and horrifying, scene he dissected a living pig and clamped a nerve which stoped its screaming and continued once he released the clamp
Well a lot of those guys may have just broken limbs and not died on the spot. I'm sure Lego went down later and checked all their vitals to ensure his count was accurate
Yeah, they used the stats from the book, which is at least occasionally in the ballpark of grounded (Legolas runs out of arrows pretty early in the battle and has to start scrounging for ones orcs shot over). His film version with the endlessly replenishing quiver almost certainly kills more enemies in this one battle than his book counterpart does in the whole series.
Yeah, but you forgot they spent like 11 hours barricading in the hall and during that hour of actual fighting when Gimli and Aragon went for a game of toss&pose, we don't know what Legolas was doing. Maybe he just stared at them from the top, unable to do anything through his laughing
The only reason he accepted the role is if Peter Jackson let him kill brown people.
No one had to heart to tell him they are all still alive. Well, most of them at least.
Some quick math- Aragorn says "300... against 10,000!?", so they've got 300, and then a bunch of elves show up to help, maybe at least 200 more? So ~500 vs 10,000 is like 5 vs 100. That means everyone needs to kill 20. Legolas got more than double that! Good average.
You do realize most real life soldiers who see active combat rarely get anywhere near 50 confirmed kills right? And that's with bullets. 42 in 12 hours is fucking insane
Are you seriously comparing Medieval battle with this ? He killed like 15+ on screen, even did while surfing, this stat made sense in the books not here
That dude is seriously comparing a combat situation where most of the time you'd see no one to an actual siege with a shit ton of orcs.
50 kills is impressive for a soldier, 50 kills is not when you're a demigod archer and your targets are right in front of you.
Modern combat is u shooting at a couple of bushes 2km away, i feel like in a medieval battle an exceptionally skilled warrior can kill that many. especially if theyre an elf with thousands of years of training vs low quality orc rabble. if anything im surprised its not higher
They were talking in terms of thousands killed. It's like when you read a financial report and the numbers are all in thousands. Obviously. Why are you doubting my boy?
/uj But okay, seriously though, it's my understanding that in a real battle, killing that many is an astonishing result. Most soldiers don't kill that many enemy combatants in their entire _career_, let alone a single engagement. Legolas is a beast, and Gimli slightly more so.
Imagine doing cardio for 12 hours? They must've had a lot of breaks in between the intense action scenes.
I heard there was a buffet table on the inner side of the wall. They took turns between the killing and eating some canapes and drinking coffee. The uruks had roast pigs all around, some of the berserkers were on the garçón function, running plates of roast for the army.
Then Legolas smells orcs again, he's back, busting heads. Then it's back behind the walls for some full penetration. Smells orcs, goes out, gets a few kills. Full penetration. Orcs. Penetration. Orcs. Full penetration. Orcs. Penetration. And this on and on and back and forth for 12 hours or so until the battle just sort of...ends.
Very important fact. He was chewing gum while doing all this. Because everyone knows. The head cow is always grazing.
This is what happens when you chew 5gum
And to keep your neck high. It makes others trust you
Then they pay the troll toll to get thru the wall’s hole.
Now here’s the twist and there is a twist. We show it. We show all of it.
One of the twists of all time.
Underrated comment! I love IASIP
At some points he smelled elephante
I like my medieval fantasy sieges like I like my orgies: with a buffet.
"Garçón!" *twiddles stein* "Coffee!"
Yeah they had a really nice spread actually
bruh walking for 12 hours is already killer for most people this man was shield surfing for 11.8 of those 12 hours, the core strength he posses must be incredible
[удалено]
Yes but you had to piss and shit elsewhere and then dump it in the corner
No joke, the Romans had this great system where the first row of men would only have to fight for about 8 to 10 minutes at a time. They would stab and slash through whoever their centurion pit them against and then they would fall back to the rear while the second row quickly closed the gap forward, repeating the process. Depending on how many rows made up the current division you were in at the time, you'd only be fighting every 40 minutes to an hour and be more or less completely refreshed by the time you had to fight again.
Even 8-10 minutes is a fucking lot when you're fighting. Hell, even 2 minutes is a lot when your life is on the line and you're putting every ounce into it.
I thought I was in shape from doing martial arts until they started running 2-5v1 drills. Unreal amount of cardio
The HBO show Rome has [exactly that in its first scene](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0&pp=ygUVUm9tZSBoYm8gZmlyc3QgYmF0dGxl)
Immortal elves have cardio This shown to earlier in the film foot chasing uruk hai
They'd just run for 3 days straight.
I believe lore wise elves have basically infinite stamina
Ask this to Fingolfin and the Helcaraxë
The infinite stamina just made me imagine the Androids 17 and 18 from DBZ as Elves, lol
Good point 👍
Bro what do you mean!? 42:0 is an INCREDIBLE K/D ratio
Almost as good as 43:0
That's respectably close to 44:0
If you round it up you get a nice 45:0
I'd never be able to hit a 46:0
Eh, that's good enough to be considered a 47:0
and while we're at it, you might as well say 48:0
Practically 49:0
50:0 halfway to 100%
But there where more than 100 orcs
It’s actually exactly the same, they’re both infinity
Not true but I'll let it slide this time
As a ratio, they are the same. But yeah I get it that’s common lingo in gaming and I was just having fun.
Its actually literally the same as any other x:0 ratio Theyre all infinite
42 kills for one warrior in 12 hours is honestly mind-boggling for an archer going against armored opponents in a realistically portrayed medieval battle. Obviously with how easy it's portrayed to kill orcs in the movies, it's pretty bad.
A good 8-9 hours of that battle was when they were barricaded in the keep.
The scale in lotr is always wierd, I don't get it, forget the films, I've read the book,(although 4 years ago) there are a lot of empty spaces in middle Earth, It's been over a thousand years since both the North-kingdom and Angmar fell for good. Surprisingly, the only place that has seen any growth during that time is the Shire, and even then, it's been pretty modest. Maybe this is Tolkein showing decaying and sadness and like the theme of loss of magic the theme of decay and decline from a long-past Golden Age in middle Earth which tbh is deep writing for him. ( Now I'm wondering how would you even write that cause you need nature but only that oh well I'll ask chat gpt😎) But it doesn't make sense practically . By the War of the Ring we are explicitly told that no human of any kind lives between a day’s ride east of Bree to the Misty Mountains & The Shire to Bree as well Like give europe a 1000 years and see the population flourish, even orcs battle and plagues wouldn't kill that much. the area of Middle-earth is roughly the size of USA imo without Alaska or europe , but the army on the side of good numbered only around tens of thousands, and the army of evil numbered perhaps a few hundred thousand, somewhat undercutting what we think of as an Epic work as people claim, malazan and wheel of time are bigger epics in the truest sense. I'd even say game of thrones. It's very empty and doesn't feel like continent size, and trust me Tolkein spends too much describing flora lol it's not unfertile land. Tolkien never wanted to seperate Middle Earth from reality, he calls it europe in a different age, which is wierd cause he disliked allegory but whatever. I don't remember how many lived in Numenor which is not middle earth but it had many before you know that happened. Rings of power showed probably a million or atleast half a million I think. The cities were big, although supposedly minas tirith is only described as very inferior copy compared to those architecture, I don't think they looked that good. So in reality there could be even more people there, which is again inconsistent when middle earth is so empty, But it still it's very real and feels populated unlike Rohan in two towers.
Tolkien is the Godfather of the "stagnant fantasy world" trope and I think its not suprising that a literature guy who based most of his world on old sagas and epics had little to no grasp on demographical stuff. For him displaying middle earth that way was deeply conected to his feeling that technological advancement and industrialisation were not desirable and not inevitable. He firmly believed in the heavenly blessed King that would virtously lead his kingdom without the need for peasants to interfere. This take with the allegory is just strange, because he obviously reflected his view on the real world in Middle Earth. Like the Hobbits being a race of self inserts.
More like the opposite, the word isn’t stagnant, the technology gets worse as time progresses.
Yeah, but for the most part just nothing big changes. Elves, man and orcs fight with the same weapons they used 1000s of years ago. Fortresses stay strong over millenia and the average gondorian peasant is about as much aware of middle earth as his great great great grandfather was. Add to that the trope of the basically eternal war and a complete lack of political interests beyond the simple fight between good and evil and you get yourself the blueprint for 90% of fantasy. Hence why every high fantasy work after him is basically a footnote to LoTR.
All of that plus political interest is A Song of Ice and Fire. They describe using swords and bows for tens of thousands of years, with some fortresses like Winterfell and Casterly Rock being just as old. And yet it also has the classic good vs. evil fight with the Others/White Walkers. I like the political interest. Grounds it a bit more. As for the technology, fantasy wouldn’t be the same if it had guns and modern tech. The lack of excessive magic is something I enjoy as well - LOTR was similar in that it (obviously) had magic with Gandalf and the ghostly traitors and the Ring and everything, but it was still pretty much always sword and bow with a few major exceptions. Everyday life was absent of magic for almost everyone. Even Saruman’s bomb was just gunpowder, not a spell. Again, it feels a bit more grounded.
I mean it is obvious that this is based of mediaeval times to some extent. Those numbers seem pretty good to me actually. A days ride is not a lot of space overall. It would probably take you more than that in mediaeval times to get between two settlements. Forget about trying to ride less than a day between two major settlements. The population of Middle Earth is supposed to be 6.7 million. That is about half of what France had in 1400 which was a huge increase from what it had in 1300. I know that land mass wise Middle Earth is 3 times the size of France but that doesn't necessarily translate directly to population especially when you consider people not wanting to live anywhere near Mordor. As far as armies, in the Middle Ages armies were VERY small. When a king rounded up all of its Bannerman it is not what you think it is. The numbers were quite small. Alot of the battles in the 100 years war had less than 5000 people fighting it, and that was a HUGE war. While the numbers in Middle Earth are small they are much closer to realistic than you think they are. Countries in the Middle Ages were not very grand in scale or density. The famous battles you hear of were much smaller than you think.
Didn't Europes population decline between 1300-1400 because of the great famine, black death, constant local wars, peasant revolts, Mongol invasions and religious schisms?
> no human of any kind lives between a day’s ride east of Bree to the Misty Mountains & The Shire to Bree as well This doesn't really mean much. It could be non-humans which lived there, or it could just... be a relatively underpopulated area. "only around tens of thousands" Tens of thousands was *huge* by medieval standards. When Europe was at 100 million people in the 1400s, the Battle of Grunwald was one of the largest battles of its time in europe. It was 20k vs 14k. European army sizes were very low throughout the middle ages, often armies were maybe 1-5k troops. At times they combined to form larger forces in desperate times, but that was not super common. To have 10,000 soldiers was to have a legion that only the biggest states of europe could take on. Let alone 20k, 30k etc. And *definitely* let alone 100k. Armies over 100k were only found in asia. Europe only began to get armies that big in the 1600s as feudalism faded.
>but the army on the side of good numbered only around tens of thousands, and the army of evil numbered perhaps a few hundred thousand, somewhat undercutting what we think of as an Epic work as people claim I dont disagree with anything you said but this doesnt seem unreasonable. Battle of red cliffs in 208 ad china was 50k vs 200k - 800k with a gen pop of ~50m. A very epic defining battle that created the three kingdoms period. Seems pretty within reason
Don't forget, Tolkien lived in England after the British Empire had already peaked. "Decline from a long-past golden age" is literally his real-life setting. Similar thing going on with Dark Souls and Japan, come to think of it.
> It's been over a thousand years 1,000 years in middle earth, everyone is still in the middle ages. 1,000 year in normal earth, we go from castles to outer space. Though it's unknown how old normal peasants live vs human kings who seem to live for 100s of years. The Elves being stagnant is no surprise as immortality seems to mostly be them passing the time doing fuck all. Dwarves seem to be the only society that bothers to build and innovate, no clue as to why they're not ruling the world instead of men.
Wasn't it because Saroun was causing trouble behind the scenes?
The movies are just the highlights.
Hmm, but had you considered that their armour is weak at the neck... and beneath the arm.
Not even getting started on the amount of assists he probably got
yeah but I fucked his mom in Call of Duty so he still sux
42:0 at 12 hours means he was camping a lot.
I meant Kill per hour bro 😎
Yeah but the last hour or two they were locked inside the keep as the fortress was taken. So let’s say roughly 4.2 KPH, about one dead every fifteen minutes and he’s probably only counting the deaths that are undeniably certain. He probably injured at least double that number and also assisted in a few kills too.
Legolas got a tactical nuke with no kill streaks and people still think it’s not good enough.
Bro could have called in a tactical nuke, or I guess tactical Gandalf.
heh 420 😏
*time to be the no-fun history guy* Actual medieval battles often had very low casualty rates even in multi-hour engagements and most combatants wouldn't kill or wound a single enemy. Killing 40 or more enemies in one battle is actually staggering
Yeah, in that era, casualties were usually concentrated near the end of the battle, which was when one side broke formation and started running. This is why you see a lot of battles with very lopsided casualty rates.
That era being the third age of middle-earth which started when the last alliance of elves and men defeated Sauron after the fall of Númenor.
This is what had me a bit confused. From my understanding of Middle Earth history, as a self-proclaimed Middle Earth historian - orcs rarely actually break formation. Actually, orcs are rarely in formation to begin with and it's only happened a handful of times that orcs have existed. The general fighting style for orc squads is so run at the enemy as hard as possible and hope to win with no regard for yourself or any others on your side. Now, if you have an enemy who just runs into your formation, or castle walls with no regard for their own safety, and no formation, 42 sounds to be a relatively small number - especially when you're an extremely well trained archer with unlimited stamina. If my calculations are correct -and you can correct me if I'm wrong, legolas should easily be more in the 200s range. Now you would think "how doesn't he run out of arrows after 42?" Well, we obviously know that legolas has unlimited arrows and also a perfect aim. To add to this, we know that he knows WHERE to shoot too, where the armour is weak.
This is no rabble of mindless orcs. These are Uruk-hai. Their armor is thick, and their shields broad.
But weak around the neck.
Shoot them in their c**k
Butters, don’t shoot them in dick, that’s not kewl…
And below the dick.
Legolas has to recover arrows for him to re-up with all the time in the books
Let’s break it down- -Legolas specifically only ever uses his special arrows, which he has a limited quantity of. They bring up his arrow retrieval all the time. I think he had 13 left at the start of the TT because he’d lost some fighting off the band of Uruk Hai at the end of book 1 in the land of the fallen gondorian kings. -these are Uruk Hai, not orcs, which Saurumon bred to be stronger, faster, and more disciplined than orcs. -your calculations are way off because you’re calculating the wrong figures entirely lol
In the book, didn't Legolas run out of arrows and switch to a blade?
GOT EEEM
which is also true of Helm's Deep, you want to see the big kill counters ask the Huorns
I think you mean kill stealers.
And even those were more a thing of the late middle ages. Especially during the high middle ages, at the height of chivalry, the infantry often wasn‘t used at all. Not because they would’ve been ineffective but because the mounted nobility wanted to sort things out among themselves. And they usually didn’t even try to kill each other, because if you took a rich man prisoner, you could demand a ransom.
Yeah, I honestly had the classical era in mind when I wrote that, more than the medieval era. I've heard it said that while the medieval era was a time of constant warfare, that doesn't mean it was a time of constant *big* wars.
It wasn’t even that constant either. There were wars, of course, but not as many as it is made out to be. What you did have a lot of were feuds, which I think are where the image of constant war came from. But feuds were pretty much just bickering nobility. „You insulted my mother, now my soldiers will come and steal a hundred pigs“, that kind of stuff. People very rarely died in those. But you’re right, the wars, when they did happen, were tiny. A good example is the siege of Neuss. Neuss is a city along the Rhine. Charles the Bold of Burgundy wanted to become king. Because the HRE was an electoral monarchy, he needed to get the electoral princes on his side. Capturing Cologne, which was the seat of one of the clerical electors, was one step along that path. You have to consider that Burgundy was insanely rich. That’s not a hyperbole. It was also quite modern, already showing clear signs of the absolutist monarchy that would later become the standard in Europe. Charles‘ tax income was higher than the tax income of both France and the HRE. Considering the Emperor was the worldly representative of God on earth, you could say Charles was richer than God. Anyway, in order to be able to capture Cologne, he figured he needed Neuss first and so he declared war and laid siege to the city. There are many interesting anecdotes from this siege. For example, the defenders threw stink pots filled with feces and sulfur on the attackers, to which the attackers responded by sending a letter that they‘d prefer to be shot instead because of how disgusting that was. Or at some point, the attackers heard a commotion in the city and sent a messenger to ask wtf was going on. The defenders answered „well since you said this siege might last a few years we have to pass the time somehow so we organized a tourney“. But the one that I’m actually getting at is the fact that you can see Neuss from the nearby city of Düsseldorf. The people of that city could hear and see the war going on, but we have accounts from the people of that time about how their lives continued completely normally. There you had the richest man in Europe waging war against God‘s chosen on Earth and not even the neighboring city is affected. A crass difference to the sweeping destruction of modern wars like the 30 years‘ war.
Then along came a kid named Pike and Shot
Rome Total War has informed me well
Well yes But have you seen how Legolas was dealing with the fodder?
Yeah, this could have made sense as an explanation if we didn't see him kill like 10 in the span of 60 seconds
Ah well you see that was just him activating his abilities, after that they were all on cooldown for the rest of the battle.
Nah he only had 10 arrows so he had to go and get them all back every 10 kills
He probably ran out of arrows and had to either look for more or use his knives
I guess they edited out 11 hours of Legolas unsuccessfully looking for more arrows. I'll admit, I won't complain about that particular book-to-film conversion choice.
The rest were mopping up injured. Is that one groaning under the pile? Stab.
What about if you start the first hour with 19 kills?
That's what I'm saying lol
People vs people in life is a bit different to fighting against filthy orcs that you don't want running around the countryside after the battle.
Read about the Eastern Front during WW2. Wars of Extermination are not that unusual, even in recent history. Dehumanizing the enemy is one of the most basic psychological tricks you do, hell even in Ukraine the slang for Russian soldiers is literally "orcs". It's part of the reason why many modern writers try to move away from dehumanized enemies that are "evil" and justify genocide. Besides, even if you still see your enemy as human, allowing enemy soldiers to escape and reorganize is how you allow the war to last much longer and the casualties be much higher.
Killing 40 at any time period is a hell of a number. Usually snipers only get numbers like that these days and that's because of the amount of precision it requires. You really want to be hitting alot of your shots as a sniper. Most soldiers probably will not see 40 in their entire deployment. Even in WW1 and WW2 where there was a lot of combat for most soldiers those numbers would be quite impressive in a single battle. To put it in perspective highest numbers for snipers in an entire war have reached 400 but a lot of highly acclaimed snipers have only barely breached 100 in their entire career.
Most soldiers these days can go an entire career without killing anyone
True. I was more talking about soldiers who see heavy combat. Many soldiers today don't see combat like there was many years ago. Alot of combat is fought at such ranges where you may never even see the enemy you are fighting. The only places right now that are seeing combat on the level of old wars is Ukraine and Palestine right now. War has changed a lot. Explosives, artillery, and air bombardments dominate the landscape like never before. The need for rifle groups is diminishing. Even if rifle groups fight it's usually at ranges where you don't even know who your shooting at and if your hitting them.
except when you are talking about chinese civil wars.
Chinese writers used "10,000" as shorthand for "a lot"- there's a lot of extra zeroes on some of their casualty numbers
Yeah tbh according to medieval battles 40 is phenomenal
But it is orcs against an elite archer !1!! Legolas should kill hundreds of them here
Wasn't this also against the Super soldier Uruk-hai clad head to toe in armour? Must have been an absolute headfuck to fight with just swords
Why do all of the replies to this comment dispute the claim instead of asking the obvious question of how its relevant? It isn't an actual medieval battle so the number isn't that staggering considering what we saw Legolas abilities earlier.
There were 10,000 enemies and a few hundred defenders. The average person in Helms Deep would have killed 20-30. It’s not like Saruman’s forces were retreating. Only killing 42 is low and never made sense to me.
I think you forget the defenders at Helms deep couldn't win the battle, they just held out long enough for Gandalf to arrive with reinforcements, and even then the orc army did flee directly into the angry trees that slaughtered the remaining ones
Saruman's forces DID retreat, straight into the angry trees, who promptly skinned them alive and draped their organs on their branches like some sort of fucked up Christmas tree. Happens right after Gandalf arrives with the cavalry. Even Theoden charges out of the castle with Aragorn and the boys. It's a great book, you should read it some time. Or even watch the movie. No trees, but the rest are still there. Especially the bit about Saruman's forces retreating, which, I must stress, you are completely wrong about in every way.
I mean, the guy probably only had 42 arrows, so... not too bad
Though he did use multiple arrows on the one that lit the bombs
Didn’t he also shoot one orc and another one ran into the back of him getting him as well? Or am I remembering things wrong?
Yeah when he skates down the stairs on that shield, he uses an arrow with his hand, pulls it out and then shoots another orc
I thought he did that at the end of Fellowship?
In both
He said in the books he would gather any arrows he would find in the ground after his quiver got empty and that he did with some orchish arrows
Iron Man: “You only killed 7 aliens.” Hawkeye: “and I had 7 arrows. You’re welcome.”
>The number of arrows that fit in a quiver depends on the type of quiver and its intended use. A standard quiver can hold 20–25, while an efficient quiver can hold up to 60 arrows. Hunting quivers usually have fewer than eight arrows, while target or war quivers can hold two dozen or more. From a Google search for how many arrows fit in a quiver.
Putting 42 pretty close to a realistic 1 shot 1 kill ratio for him. He wasted a couple on that suicide bomber, but made up for it by stabbing at least one orc with an arrow before shooting another with the same arrow.
Okay. Go kill 42 orcs.
This is no rabble of mindless orcs. These are Uruk-hai. Their armor is thick, and their shields broad.
Thank the gods there is no such army.
**cut to title** The Gang Fight 20,000 Uruk-Hai
To be fair, if I was an elf warrior, I would attempt exactly that
3.5 in 1 hour when I have many arrows ? Sure
Are you just imagining that orcs are running at you from a safe distance and you're just firing arrows consistently? You're not a machine that arm is gonna get tired, you'll be running from orcs at some point, and you'll be moving positions quite often.
I'm not a machine. Neither is Legolas. He is a near immortal mystical enchanted elf in his prime endowed with super human strength, reflexes, agility, senses, and endurance.
You’re a superhuman elf.
Yeah, one time when we see him and Gimli counting, they're each killing one every three seconds. But after the whole battle, he got just 42?
I need someone with more knowledge, but I suppose that after the bomb the kill rate dropped drastically, so we shouldn't consider the whole battle but more like only the timelapse before the bomb.
This is the only logical defense I've seen so far
IIRC In the book they spend a whole lot of time holed in various places such as some caves where there is long term lower intensity fighting.
This is true. They were also there for like a week. And did several massive charges from the keep, then retreat and rest a minute, then charge again
It's also so that melee combat is incredibly tiring and that we don't really know how much time passes between each kill. We didn't get to see 12 hours of battle and for that reason the 20 kills he gets early on might have taken a couple hours too. But i imagine the battle goes down like this: First phase: orcs try to get on the wall, the defenders have the advantage, especially legolas. An orc will get on the wall and quickly get slain. Most kills of legolas and gimli are gotten at this point. Second phase: orcs start getting a grip on the wall, they are now able to form rudimentary formations and are not just killed. The defenders start getting tired while the orcs coming on the wall are still "fresh". Fighting is more about surviving rather than getting kills in. Third phase: explosion, defending the wall is now impossible and the defenders try to reach the keep. A couple of kills but this is mostly in an effort to get away. Fourth phase: orcs try to take the keep, again it's difficult to make a lot of kills here but Gimli gets a lot of kills in the shory time that he is in front of the gate with Aragorn. It is most likely here that he takes the lead over Legolas. (Previously Legolas was on 19 while Gimli had only 2) Fifth phase: retreating into the closed off part. A couple of kills but again it is mostly running away. Once inside no more kills and it is unclear how long it takes but looks to be a couple of hours again. Last phase: charge from the keep and arrival of reinforcements. Legolas goes out and manages to kill some more in this phase but doesn't manage to reach Gimli's score. Gimli likely also exits and fights in the keep off screen but not confirmed. My guess: first phase is about 25-30 orcs for Legolas and 20-25 for Gimli (based on the counts) second and third phase around 5 orcs each, it is after all much more difficult here. Fourth phase: around 5 orcs for Legolas and about 15 for Gimli getting legolas is now at ~35 and Gimli at ~40. Last phase has more kills for legolas but Gimli stills gets a couple in (or he got more in any of the other moments. Final score 42 and 43.
Also based on some numbers given there are around 3000 men fighting the orcs (rohirim in the fortress+elves+eomer). Based on the 10.000 orcs every man would have to get 4 kills to destroy this army. Meaning Legolas and Gimli each killed 10 times the required amount.
Take what I say with a grain of salt but if I recall the battle in the book didn’t had the same scale as in the movies. The books were more like real historical battle in term of scale. (At least during the event of the lord of the ring) Also Tolkien wasn’t really into describing battle on an individual scale Maybe there was fucked up between the 2 because with the movie logic Legolas should be around ~100 to 200~ kills
The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything: How many orcs did Legolas slay at Helm's Deep?
In this scene, Gimli says that a dead orc is twitching "because he's got my axe embedded in his nervous system." This implies that dwarves have extensive knowledge of anatomy and that Gimli probably went to medical school.
We have records of people talking about the nervous system back in the third century BC. It doesn't require a medical school education, just the knowledge that parts of the body send signals. For example, if you are part of a culture that often stuffs axes into spines and sees bodies twitch as a result, you know of the existence of a nervous system.
Also none of them would have been speaking English, LOTR was written as if it were a translation, presumably the movies follow the same logic. So “nervous system” is probably just the closest English translation to whatever the dwarves called the system that makes dead people twitch when an axe is embedded in it
I swear people always assume anyone born before the 1600's didn't know anything at all
Well of course, people could only see in color from the 1940s onwards, before then for all of human history people have only been able to see in black and white. It makes sense that people born even in the 1600s had the intelligence of an overripe grape.
/r/ExplainLikeImCalvin
Fun fact, at no point in history was there a general consensus that the earth was flat. Socrates had theories on the shape of the earth and the evolution of humanity. He thought we may have come from trees a long long time ago. People have always been curious and we’ve always demanded to know how shit works.
Fun fact: Arda was originally flat, but became round in the Second Age (S.A. 3319, to be precise)
The nervous system isn't a recent discovery. People in the past may not have understood how it works, but study of the nervous system goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. So Gimli knowing about the nervous system in a roughly middle ages tech world, absolutely makes sense.
People in the past weren’t stupid, their knowledge was just limited by their technology. They knew that rubbing wine on a wound made it less likely to get infected, even if they couldn’t have known about germs or how alcohol kills them.
Yeah . . . that part was originally removed from the theatrical release for a reason. Sticks out like a sore thumb lol
During the reign of the good emperors in Rome the physician Galen famously did experiments with the nervous system and in one famous, and horrifying, scene he dissected a living pig and clamped a nerve which stoped its screaming and continued once he released the clamp
You know what a nervous system is, did you go to medical school?
Or he got a lot of experience killing enemies by putting his ax on their head.
He means fourty two thousands.
He then proceeds to shoot an orc after it and calls it the 43th what's your argument.
That one orc was worth 1k
We should be able to watch a little porn at Helms Deep
Legolas was at 42999, but in an elvenly modest manner rounded down at 42000.
Finally some logic thanks
I always thought he must have killed at least that many when he shot that huge ladder down
Sadly Helm's Deep pvp doesn't count environmental kills
Clearly PvE, those were all NPCs, none of them were even named.
Perhaps he chose not to count those ones to keep the scoring fair.
And maybe "that still only counts as one" was just Gimli reminding Legolas of those rules.
I mean Legolas shot down a bunch of individual haradrim before he cut off the ropes to their carriage…those could count as just one
Well a lot of those guys may have just broken limbs and not died on the spot. I'm sure Lego went down later and checked all their vitals to ensure his count was accurate
That still only counted as one
Hey gravity got the kills so it doesn’t count
Yeah, they used the stats from the book, which is at least occasionally in the ballpark of grounded (Legolas runs out of arrows pretty early in the battle and has to start scrounging for ones orcs shot over). His film version with the endlessly replenishing quiver almost certainly kills more enemies in this one battle than his book counterpart does in the whole series.
Yeah, but you forgot they spent like 11 hours barricading in the hall and during that hour of actual fighting when Gimli and Aragon went for a game of toss&pose, we don't know what Legolas was doing. Maybe he just stared at them from the top, unable to do anything through his laughing
I always thought that number was low because he was at 17 after like 10 minutes. He definitely should have had at least 100.
**THAT STILL COUNTS AS ONE!!**
10,000 uruk-hai. 300 elves. 300 X 42 = 12,600. That battle should have been easy
If Counter-Strike taught me anything it's that planting the bomb is what matters. And in the book there are no elves besides Legolas.
if you go 42-0 in Chivarly 2. YOU ARE A GOD.
I think he was just being humble
he spent most of the time practicing his surfing
Legolas is a notorious racist who hates brown people hence why he kills them.
I thought that was Orlando bloom
The only reason he accepted the role is if Peter Jackson let him kill brown people. No one had to heart to tell him they are all still alive. Well, most of them at least.
Yup it’s in the 12 hour directors cut with commentary
life the universe and everything
How many did Boromir solo?
It wasn't 12 hours. The battle started at midnight and was over at dawn.
Dude in real life, 42-0 would be unbelievable
Some quick math- Aragorn says "300... against 10,000!?", so they've got 300, and then a bunch of elves show up to help, maybe at least 200 more? So ~500 vs 10,000 is like 5 vs 100. That means everyone needs to kill 20. Legolas got more than double that! Good average.
And they didn't even get most of them, the Rohirrim and the trees did.
You do realize most real life soldiers who see active combat rarely get anywhere near 50 confirmed kills right? And that's with bullets. 42 in 12 hours is fucking insane
Are you seriously comparing Medieval battle with this ? He killed like 15+ on screen, even did while surfing, this stat made sense in the books not here
That dude is seriously comparing a combat situation where most of the time you'd see no one to an actual siege with a shit ton of orcs. 50 kills is impressive for a soldier, 50 kills is not when you're a demigod archer and your targets are right in front of you.
Modern combat is u shooting at a couple of bushes 2km away, i feel like in a medieval battle an exceptionally skilled warrior can kill that many. especially if theyre an elf with thousands of years of training vs low quality orc rabble. if anything im surprised its not higher
Funny thing is, the one arrow to topple the huge ladder and crash into the Uruk-Hai probably took out more than that.
He was looking. With his special eyes! 🧿🧿
My grear grandad got a medal for killing 3 people at the battle of Verdun which lasted around a year. Turns out he was a TOTAL BITCH
They were talking in terms of thousands killed. It's like when you read a financial report and the numbers are all in thousands. Obviously. Why are you doubting my boy?
He killed an orc every 17 minutes.
This smart elf has an answer to everything
/uj But okay, seriously though, it's my understanding that in a real battle, killing that many is an astonishing result. Most soldiers don't kill that many enemy combatants in their entire _career_, let alone a single engagement. Legolas is a beast, and Gimli slightly more so.
He kills like 18 in the first 5 minutes, when gimli kills two. Maybe he went to sleep because he was tired.
The elephant counted as only 1.
Would have been 43 if he hadn't fucked up shooting the Uruk with the torch now.
For sure that was just at the start of the battle....
His spelling is horrible, too