Character Musings
Nov. 30th, 2015 08:46 pm Since She only gets a few pages devoted to Her in canon, most of Her personality, origins and fate are of my own creation. So here we go.
- Ungoliant is not a being of Eru. She is basically a Lovecraftian entity that wandered into Eru's creation and then back out again, though She may be akin the the nameless things that gnaw the world under Moria.
- Ungoliant is a thing of darkness and change, but not stupid and exactly evil. She ate the Two Trees, but not their last fruit/flowers. She would have eaten Melkor if she'd been allowed. Her motives are both simpler and more complex than mere evil. She is in some ways a symbol of renewal as well as destruction.
- Ungoliant is not entirely spider in form. Her shape is somewhat fluid, like a shadow, and She has aspects of many arthropods: a basic spider shape is augmented with scorpion stingers, ichneumon wasp oviposition, mantis claws and the like when needed.
- Ungoliant is a devoted, if disturbing, mother. Of course, this mostly means that She will kill gods to feed Her young if she can.
- Ungoliant is always hungry, but humanoids have relatively little to fear from Her save being crushed by accident: they are too small for Her to bother with eating these days.
- Ungoliant is actually rather kind to mortals and other beings too small for Her to eat, on the rare occasions that She notices them.
- Ungoliant's Unlight is far more than a mere shadow; it is an actual light with inverted properties, and it destroys any regular light it touches. She can see perfectly in Unlight, and finds its Uncolors beautiful.