There Be Spiders

Summary: Everyone knows that evil, talking spiders overtook Mirkwood by the time of the Quest for Erebor. But where did they come from?

May Sauron forgive me for what I am about to do to him…

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Sauron was really, really glad that Black Speech had been invented. The many curses that language provided came handy, since his experiment had once again ended in failure. The dark Maia absent-mindedly swept a few dozen spider bodies of different sizes off the desk and started pacing around his lab.

Sauron needed a way to keep Elves from snooping around his new and shiny fortress on the southern edge of Greenwood. His First Age memory instantly provided a solution: Spiders! But where does one get enough spiders? Large, Elf-eating, intelligent spiders?

Attempting to create spiders only resulted in a lot of spider bodies of different sizes strewn around his room and a few new words to add to the Black Speech more obscene lexicon.

Sauron was always a technology-oriented Maia, not some hippie animal-loving tree-hugger. Besides, as a mere Maia, could he really create life?

And then he remembered. He always prided himself on beating his master on one thing: Morgoth never overcame his fear of spiders after the Ungolianth fiasco, while Sauron had made almost a friend among them. At least, now she only tried to eat him every other time… Shelob could breed him an army of spiders worthy of Mordor… if he could keep her from eating them, of course, but was he a Maia or chopped liver?

Deep in a forgotten tunnel above the new Nazgul home of Minas Morgul, he found her. Still surviving into the Third Age and looking bigger and better than ever – who would have thought that a diet consisting entirely of Orcs could keep hair so spiky and so shiny? But a quick surveillance of Shelob's memory told him that she has not bred in centuries. No spiders were left alive who could match her size…

Only one option was left to him. Sauron sighed, closed his eyes, and began changing into a spider.

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Dedicated to the Webbalicious Lawyers of Mirkwood, who must have gotten their wits from their father, because their mother obviously had none…