As soon as I saw this model on the Bones 5 kickstarter, I knew it just had to happen. The question was only ever “when?”.

I call this piece “Shelob passes Sam by”.

–
Hardly had Sam hidden the light of the star-glass when she came. A little way ahead and to his left he saw suddenly, issuing from a black hole of shadow under the cliff, the most loathly shape that he had ever beheld, horrible beyond the horror of an evil dream. Most like a spider she was, but huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes. Those same eyes that he had thought daunted and defeated, there they were lit with a fell light again, clustering in her out-thrust head. Great horns she had, and behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg’s end there was a claw.

As soon as she had squeezed her soft squelching body and its folded limbs out of the upper exit from her lair, she moved with a horrible speed, now running on her creaking legs, now making a sudden bound. She was between Sam and his master. Either she did not see Sam, or she avoided him for the moment as the bearer of the light, and fixed all her intent upon one prey, upon Frodo, bereft of his Phial, running heedless up the path, unaware yet of his peril. Swiftly he ran, but Shelob was swifter; in a few leaps she would have him.

Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King (p. 725). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.



Colour scheme inspired by the New Zealand Black Tunnelweb spider, Porrhothele antipodiana. What could be more fitting?

Starring Bones 5 Arakoth as Shelob and co-starring 30025 Ingrid Gnome Thief as Samwise, both in Bones by Reaper Miniatures.

160mm 3D-printed base