Within the deepest Pits of Utumno, in the First Age of Stars, it is said Melkor committed his greatest blasphemy. For in that time he captured many of the newly risen race of Elves and took them to his dungeons, and with hideous acts of torture he made ruined and terrible forms of life. From these he bred a Goblin race of slaves who were as loathsome as the Elves were fair.

These were the Orcs, a multitude brought forth in shapes twisted by pain and hate. The only joy of these creatures was in the pain of others, for the blood that flowed within Orcs was both black and cold. Their stunted form was hideous: bent, bow-legged and squat. Their arms were long and strong as the apes of the south, and their skin was black as wood that has been charred by flame. The jagged fangs in their wide mouths were yellow, their tongues red and thick, and their nostrils and faces were broad and flat. Their eyes were crimson gashes, like narrow slits in black iron grates behind which hot coals burn. These Orcs were fierce warriors, for they feared more greatly their master than any enemy; and perhaps death was preferable to the torment of Orkish life. They were cannibals, and often their rending claws and slavering fangs were gored with bitter flesh and the foul black blood of their own kind. They were fearful of light , for it weakened and burned them. Their eyes were night seeing, and they were dwellers of foul pits and tunnels. More quickly than any other beings of Arda their progeny came forth from the spawning pits. At the end of the First Age of Stars was the War of the Powers in which the Valar came to Utumno and broke it open. They bound Melkor with a great chain, and destroyed his servants in Utumno and with most of them the Orcs.