Take the Shelob Challenge

[Shai-Hulud]

The Grandmaster (616 version) comes to you with a proposition. He wants you to enter Shelob's cave and fight her. If you win, you receive $1 billion dollars, all taxes paid, all legal ramifications worked out in advance.

To give you a chance, Grandmaster generously offers these benefits:

• You get restored to peak health and physical fitness, and any injuries and diseases you may have are completely healed.
  
  
• You are granted the superpower of nightvision.
  
  
• You get a light saber, and may train in a holodeck for one week before the combat, although the holo simulations do not exactly match all the twists and turns of Shelob's lair.

If you win, you get to keep the health and the nightvision, and of course get the prize money.

If you lose (die horribly), then provided you went out bravely, you get a place in Valhalla, if you want it. (Odin, too, is watching.)

So … who’s up for the Shelob challenge?

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

I mean, she straight up punched a giant hole in Frodo and didn't kill him, just KO'd him. Given that I'm many times more massive, and she's not a boat.

I clearly just eat her for breakfast.

Even if I was a puny human, like you do realize how much of a stomp this is against Shelob.

[Shai-Hulud]

I mean, she straight up punched a giant hole in Frodo and didn't kill him, just KO'd him. Given that I'm many times more massive, and she's not a boat.

I clearly just eat her for breakfast.

Even if I was a puny human, like you do realize how much of a stomp this is against Shelob.

If you're KO'd, you're dead, right? She wraps you and eats you.

Assume you weren't an ancient horror from beyond time, but a puny human.

What I'm asking is: would you take the challenge? Risk a grisly death for a chance at the money?

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

If you're KO'd, you're dead, right? She wraps you and eats you.

Assume you weren't an ancient horror from beyond time, but a puny human.

What I'm asking is: would you take the challenge? Risk a grisly death for a chance at the money?

KO'd = Dead ? Probably but ... see below.

I'm over one and a half times Frodo's size, and I have a lightsaber, peak health and fitness, and night-vision. Shelob's in a bad way if she gets a stabber in, I'll have a few seconds to slice her to hell and back before passing out.

So yea, I take this.

[Shai-Hulud]

KO'd = Dead ? Probably but ... see below.

I'm over one and a half times Frodo's size, and I have a lightsaber, peak health and fitness, and night-vision. Shelob's in a bad way if she gets a stabber in, I'll have a few seconds to slice her to hell and back before passing out.

So yea, I take this.

That's what I want to know. How many of us would say, "Yes, I like those odds, I'm in."

[MichaelC]

If you lose (die horribly), then provided you went out bravely, you get a place in Valhalla, if you want it. (Odin, too, is watching.)

Considering that I'm convinced that there is no afterlife in the real world, the answer is an emphatic yes. You're basically saying that if I "lose", my reward is immortality instead of eventual oblivion. I'm kinda rooting for Shelob here.

[The Drunkard Kid]

How will the nightvision interact with the lightsaber? Because I don't want to essentially KO myself the moment that I activate my weapon.

[Guy1]

The Grandmaster (616 version) comes to you with a proposition. He wants you to enter Shelob's cave and fight her. If you win, you receive $1 billion dollars, all taxes paid, all legal ramifications worked out in advance.

To give you a chance, Grandmaster generously offers these benefits:

• You get restored to peak health and physical fitness, and any injuries and diseases you may have are completely healed.
  
  
• You are granted the superpower of nightvision.
  
  
• You get a light saber, and may train in a holodeck for one week before the combat, although the holo simulations do not exactly match all the twists and turns of Shelob's lair.

If you win, you get to keep the health and the nightvision, and of course get the prize money.

If you lose (die horribly), then provided you went out bravely, you get a place in Valhalla, if you want it. (Odin, too, is watching.)

So … who’s up for the Shelob challenge?

Stops time, decapitates the spider and unfreezes time.*

Happy Halloween you filthy spider!

[Shai-Hulud]

How will the nightvision interact with the lightsaber? Because I don't want to essentially KO myself the moment that I activate my weapon.

The Grandmaster shakes his head.

"That's a good point, but I've already considered that, and the quality of enhanced vision I'm granting you doesn't come with any special vulnerabilities to flare, glare and so forth. So no problems along those lines."

[Sharpandpointies]

The Grandmaster (616 version) comes to you with a proposition. He wants you to enter Shelob's cave and fight her. If you win, you receive $1 billion dollars, all taxes paid, all legal ramifications worked out in advance.

To give you a chance, Grandmaster generously offers these benefits:

• You get restored to peak health and physical fitness, and any injuries and diseases you may have are completely healed.
  
  
• You are granted the superpower of nightvision.
  
  
• You get a light saber, and may train in a holodeck for one week before the combat, although the holo simulations do not exactly match all the twists and turns of Shelob's lair.

If you win, you get to keep the health and the nightvision, and of course get the prize money.

If you lose (die horribly), then provided you went out bravely, you get a place in Valhalla, if you want it. (Odin, too, is watching.)

So … who’s up for the Shelob challenge?

I don't see anything here that says Movie Shelob.

So, no.

The benefits are all nice and good, but I'm missing a few things that allowed Frodo and co. to manage.

1. Hobbit resistance to supernatural forces;
2. The Phial of Galadriel to provide further resistance and to cow Shelob with its holy light.

Without that, nightvision or not (and nightvision isn't all that helpful without ANY light, as it's an amplification of natural light, and unlike in the movies, canon-Shelob's basement/larder wasn't a light gray haze), we end up supernaturally panicked and broken, likely running into webs and the like. Possibly dropping the lightsaber to boot.

This is without getting into the fact that my phobia would likely kick in.

Given that the odds are very good that I die and leave this world, no amount of money is enough to convince me.

[MichaelC]

Why is no one but me talking about how your consolation prize is Heaven? Personally that's enough to make me take the challenge and root for Shelob.

[Sharpandpointies]

Why is no one but me talking about how your consolation prize is Heaven? Personally that's enough to make me take the challenge and root for Shelob.

Because if I die and go to Valhalla, then I'm no longer here.

And I rather enjoy my life with my wife, thank you.

[The Chou Lives]

Win win either way. Growing up I had a cousin who collected swords, with Time I grew up self taught to be better than him with the damned things and if losing means Heaceb, that’s a win in itself.

But to make that worthy of Odin is to actually put up a fight, which I will do.

[Shai-Hulud]

Without that, night vision or not (and night vision isn't all that helpful without ANY light, as it's an amplification of natural light, and unlike in the movies, canon-Shelob's basement/larder wasn't a light gray haze)

Perhaps I should have used "darkvision," which is, I think, the D&D term.

Basically, Grandmaster grants you the ability to see in the absence of light as though your surroundings were a black & white TV screen. He's comping you the ability to see normally in Shelob's lair, albeit the closer it is to absolute darkness, the more you see in just black, white and gray.

Sorry, I wasn't precise enough. Grandmaster is not pleased that I took a misstep with his thread....

we end up supernaturally panicked and broken, likely running into webs and the like. Possibly dropping the lightsaber to boot.

Yes, that's kind of key, the "Oh, ****!" factor of spiraling fear. And add to that the possibility of long spider legs knocking the weapon out of your hand.

[Sharpandpointies]

Perhaps I should have used "darkvision," which is, I think, the D&D term.

Basically, Grandmaster grants you the ability to see in the absence of light as though your surroundings were a black & white TV screen. He's comping you the ability to see normally in Shelob's lair, albeit the closer it is to absolute darkness, the more you see in just black, white and gray.

This is fair.

Yes, that's kind of key, the "Oh, ****!" factor of spiraling fear. And add to that the possibility of long spider legs knocking the weapon out of your hand.

Here's the thing. Shelob isn't just 'big and scary'. I mean, she is. But Tolkien writes her having an actual supernatural ability to instill fear into mortals, fear that builds to the point of blind panic. It's a thing. NONE of us -- barring people who are using poster personas -- have any demonstrated ability to resist that kind of thing (for anyone other than a poster persona who says 'I can resist supernatural fear auras!', I ask them to demonstrate proof), like the kind of resistance Hobbits have (and they still cracked). And we're also missing the Phial of Galadriel, whose (literally) holy light allowed further resistance, and even the cowing of Shelob herself.

Basically, I don't feel anyone has a chance, here. We end up as gibbering, hysterical wrecks, more apt to drop the lightsaber in our blind, panicked flight or even hurt ourselves by flailing around with it. That's well-before Shelob is actually in range.