I remember Gollum thinking in the books that, after the giant spider ate Frodo and Sam, he could sneakily go through their discarded clothes and gear and get the Ring again for himself. In the movies, the Ring was big enough to fit on Sauron’s finger but then shrank to fit on Isildur’s, and then later got big enough to slip off again at a most inconvenient time.
Was Shelob smart enough to figure out what the Ring was? And if she did, could she have successfully wielded it? Or would Sauron just have sensed that, come right over and ordered her to give it to him?
Since Shelob’s mom ate many jewels crafted by the Noldor and by Aule himself and wanted to eat the Silmarils, I bet Shelob would have just eaten the ring, grown great and terrifying, and threatened Sauron. And without a balrog or 6 to bail him out, she might have snuffed him.
I think this came up in one of the In Deep Geek YouTube videos, and I think he suggested that she just wouldn’t care about the kind of power that the Ring would be able to give her. She just wanted to fill her belly.
Also I don’t know if she was really that much like her mother; she was certainly less powerful. Shelob was frightened and cowed by a bright light, I think Ungoliant would have just eaten it.
Would it make her invisible? Only Isildur and three (eta forgot Smeagol) Hobbits were made invisible. I don’t believe Sauron was invisible or was even thinking of that feature, which AFAIK none of the other great or lesser rings conferred. Gandalf gives it a good long wonder so perhaps there were other rings (that came with invisibility) you didn’t need to toss in a fire to read the script.
I reckon anyone in the realm of Mordor trying to use The One would rather quickly be mobbed by Nazgul.
The 9 for Mortal Men seem to confer invisibility also and Gandalf at least hinted at there being some lesser rings that could.
Whether Shelob would be invisible is really hard to say.
Also, Shelob didn’t eat her victims as much as let them putrify into juice sacks. So she may not of noticed the Ring at all and Gollum may have been right that he had a chance to recover the Ring.
I was thinking of them - yet they are really ghosts of a kind. When Bilbo or Frodo put on the ring, wearing armor or carrying blades everything about them was invisible (maybe Sting gave off some light around Orcs).
Maybe the Black Riders/Nazgul were able to choose what garments or armor was visible to look badass. Though an invisible Sauron would ruin your day.
Sorry, I meant when they were still men wearing the rings.
The Nazgul don’t actually wear the Rings, those are kept somewhere safe by Sauron. It isn’t actually said where, but Barad-Dur seems likely.
The gear the Nazgul wore was mostly physical, though I think the Captain was described as having a spectral crown, but I might be getting that one wrong.
To the OP, I don’t think Shelob could have used the Ring or the Ring use Shelob.
My fanwank is that on Sauron’s finger, the One Ring did exactly what he wanted. Invisibility would have been available to him if he chose it at that moment.
The Witch King confronts Gandalf at the gate of Minas Tirith, he throws back his hood to reveal this crown, with red fires shining between it and his shoulders. Gandalf is suitably um-impressed, the “You shall not pass” being implied and WK goes off to sulk.
Certainly, there’s no clunk as it drops when Merry/Eowyn put the hit on him. None of the Rings of Power were said to confer invisibility, except to one man (who could clearly see Sauron kicking ass) who wrote about it and exactly one Wizard read about it 3000+ years later. If you’d asked Aragorn ten years prior to the WorR events, “Hey, remember that King who almost killed Sauron and got the invisible Ring,” he’d know as much as Gandalf about such things.
Elrond “the wise” would have known, but just as he couldn’t bother to do anything about the trollshaws like 20 leagues away. “Hey this is my grandfather’s sword. Let’s do brunch” he left it to Gandalf to discover the ancient scrolls.
I just can’t fanwank Elrond. In the 2nd age, he was surrounded and about to be crushed by Sauron in Hollin, yet Lorien and Gondor bailed him out. Elros was by far the better of the brothers. (eta: sorry for the digrression). I too agree Shelob would not have been able to wield The One, even if she was inclined to.
Invisibility wasn’t a feature of the Great Rings, so much as just a side effect. It’s from the wearer partly slipping into the Other World (and thus actually making you more visible to creatures of that World). But Elves and the other Great People already exist in both Worlds at once, and so it probably wouldn’t have that effect at all on them, and to the extent that it did, they’d have control over it..
That’s what real spiders do. It conflicts with the observation by the tower guards that “When she binds with cords, she’s after meat. She doesn’t eat dead meat, nor suck cold blood. This fellow isn’t dead!”
Yeah, they did have an exchange of words. I cannot help but hear WK in the voice of James Earl Jones, sans heavy breathing
“You cannot enter here,” said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. “Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go Back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!”
The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark from a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.
“Old fool!” he said. “Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!” And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.
… cock crows
… Rohan had come at last.
WK probably didn’t talk much, yet he really did not know who he was facing? Hadn’t Gandalf stood against Black Riders in some kerfuffle on Weathertop?
That ends that chapter. Next we hear from the ol’ WK is “Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!"
Dunno how he’d have done against Gandalf, but these are words you can’t cash in.
In my headcanon, the Nazgul can’t see things like we do, and Gandalf had changed so much after being reborn he literally looked like a completely different person to them.
Agree. When the One Ring was destroyed all the rest became just rings. No power left in them.
To the OP my understanding is the One Ring can and will corrupt anything that possesses it. Frodo was uniquely resistant to it but he (mostly) never wore it and it did still have a corrupting effect on him. One of the reasons he was let into Valinor at the end. He was permanently damaged by just carrying it. Valinor gave him some peace.
So yeah, I think if Shelob had the One Ring she’d have become much more fearsome.