5 Fluffy Towels

"Listen here you weird looking elf!" The gate guard shouted, "We care not how you have come by these olog and dire caragors, this here is Camp Thrag, the domi… domi…domicile! Of Tark Slayer Thrag, and according to the rules as laid down by Warchief Thrag you are to offer big titty elf women as tribute, or you are to go home and get big titty elf women and bring them back here. Otherwise, you are not welcome here."

I sighed as I rested my face in my palm.

"I am Thrag." I told the heavily armed guard manning our wooden gatehouse at the third earthwork ringwall around my camp.

"Oh looky here boys!" the uruk called out to his mates behind the wall, "We got ourselves here a joker. Thinks he be Thrag. Can anyone tell me why this cannot be?"

"Thrag ain't got no long luxurious elf hair!" one shouted as he peaked his head over our wooden gate.

"That is indeed the truth." the gate guard stated, "Thrag's hair be wild and knotty, nothing like your hair be, weird elf."

The uruks did indeed have the right of it. Upon emerging from the river after vigorously washing myself with soap, exfoliants, and conditioner my appearance had greatly changed. Devoid of my protective layers of dirt, filth and grease I had discovered that I had skin a rather lovely shade of bronze, and my hair had magically become… well, fucking majestic. Thick long lustrous chocolate brown hair lightly curled down to my shoulder blades and chest. It was the sexiest hair in Middle Earth.

"Thrag ain't got such tender and soft looking skin!" another shouted.

"Gotcha!" The gate guard sounded, "Thrag the Tark Slayer's possesses the natural grit expected of any great uruk."

"I fink he is Thrag." shouted the final uruk, one of the smaller sort that liked to wield a crossbow.

"Houz that, Hawkeye?" the gate guard barked.

"He got Thrag's glowing yeller peepers and the same pissed off look on his face that Thrag gets right before he kicks some dumb shrahk right in the daddy bag." the marksman, Hawkeye, explained.

"Oh shrah!" the gate guard gasped as my armored foot impacted his armored groin and sent him to the ground choking on his pain.

"Open the gates!" the marksman shouted and the rest of the uruks compiled.

"Rally up you piles of shrahk! All of you!" I bellowed, my fucking powerful voice carrying all the way across the encampment.

What followed was a three hour sermon on hygiene followed by a week long company workshop in which I explained the finer points like the four key areas: armpits, asshole, crotch, and teeth, and how saving time by using the same brush for all of them is not worth it. I spent a fair bit of time explaining towels, and how they should always be fluffy. Always.

During this time I also discussed Aesthetics, the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature and appreciation of beauty. Besides hygiene, I introduced the uruks to the topics of bodybuilding and yoga, the later for the treatment of the common stiff and twisted limbs and trunks found in uruk bodies and the former because even Plato knew that there are only three types of men: Lovers of Wisdom, Lovers of Honor, and Lovers of GAIN! And Socrates decreed that no man should be an amateur in the matter of physical training, for it is a shame for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength his body is capable of.

We ended the week-long workshop at the same river I cleansed myself in, and I took each of my followers and dunked their terrified forms into the river, scrubbed them vigorously, and rose them up once more as new uruks.

Their bodies cleansed, purified, and moisturized my horde stood on the bank of the river clad in fluffy towels and amazed at the sight of themselves and their compatriots.

"You don't smell like the bung hole of a dead warg, no more." one spoke to another.

"And your breath don't make me want to hurl my brekky." another laughed.

"Anyone else notice that it don't feel like the sun wants to kill us anymore?" one asked aloud.

"Oh dang, yer right!" Another shouted, "The sun don't feel like it wants to burn me off the face of the earth no more!"

"Being clean is sweet!" Burzronk yelled.

"Clean, clean, that is what I say!

Clean, Clean, scour the filth away!

The thought once left us mortified!

But here we stand Transmorgifiiiiieeeeedddd!" Grishluk sang.

"Listen up!" I commanded, "Today I declare the founding to the Enlightened Tribe!" I paused to allow the cheering its due, "We will spread our message of cleanliness, aesthetics, and fluffy towels across Mordor! To each and every uruk, orc, and olog. And all will be unified under the Enlightened Tribe, no matter how many we need to kill to make it happen!"

"FLUFFY TOWELS! FLUFFY TOWELS! FLUFFY TOWELS!" the uruks of the Enlightened Tribe chanted.

I didn't know it at the time, but soon 'FLUFFY TOWELS!' would become the most feared battle cry in Mordor.