Otherworld Giant Spider

 

Instruction sheet with freaky ornamental borders and diagram I drew up for Richard over at Otherworld Miniatures for their WE10d Giant Spider, superbly sculpted by Pedro Navarro (for sale here in the wilderness encounters section).

Some shots below (with Mordred Wyrmsbane from Red Box Games)  to show the sheer scale of the beast, as you can see she isn't really a miniature giant spider, more of a giant spider miniature!

Ungoliant and Melkor

"In a ravine she lived, and took shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished. Now Melkor came to Avathar and sought her out; and he put on again the form that he had worn as the tyrant of Utumno: a dark Lord, tall and terrible. In that form he remained ever after. There in the black shadows, beyond the sight even of Manwë in his highest halls, Melkor with Ungoliant plotted his revenge." - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

"There were scenes of old wars, wherein Leng's almost-humans fought with the bloated purple spiders of the neighbouring vales; and there were scenes also of the coming of the black galleys from the moon, and of the submission of Leng's people to the polypous and amorphous blasphemies that hopped and floundered and wriggled out of them. " - H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

"...its eight thick hairy legs drove its ogreish body over the floor at headlong pace; its four evilly gleaming eyes shone with a horrible intelligence, and its fangs dripped venom that Conan knew, from the burning of his shoulder where only a few drops had splashed as the thing struck and missed, was laden with swift death." - R.E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant

I've posed the Giant Spider up, so it's rearing up. The photo's by OW show it much lower-down, with its body on the ground and its feet more 'flat', which is probably the intended pose for the miniature.  However, the lug and socket system for attaching each of the individually sculpted legs  does provide some leeway in their positioning - although I suspect my pose would require pinning and a bit more filling than the 'official version', as you can see in the photos, with my test pose the Giant Spider miniature was treated to a generous helping of blue-tac to hold it together.

Quite coincidentally I was flipping though The Warlock of Firetop Mountain the other day, and noticed the picture by Russ Nicholson of the Giant Spider attacking is quite similar (fore-legs up) to the view a standard 28mm miniature would have looking at it. I suspect it might have had some subconscious influence on my posing of the miniature!

(for sale here in the Otherworld Miniatures wilderness encounters section of their webshop).