Lolth is extremely insular, favoring only female Drow of the Underdark. If your character is not such, your character will either be unfavored, shunned, or likely considered an enemy as her greatest rival - her own son - favors all Drow equally including surface Drow. Anyone merely suspected of being a follower of her son was likely to be killed outright - no trial. Any desire to return to the surface permanently is forbidden by Lolth. Her dogma is law - no deviations.
This will be a required starting point to be a faithful servant of Lolth with any amount of power through established Lore. She's quite single-minded in her desires. She's had her own plots now and then, but she's quite a traditionalist and extremely resistant to any changes. What she was is what she is and is what she will always be - quite the irony given her Chaotic nature. There is little else to know about her.
Otherwise, you're better off with her son, Vhaeraun, and being an enemy to Lolth.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I found this online (grab a drink/snack its quite long), I think its ad&d info so quite old:
History
Lolth was formerly Araushnee, elven goddess of destiny, artisans and dark elves. She was the lover of Corellon and had him completely smitten by her grace and beauty but she grew power-hungry and a sense of never-before seen greed and cruelty entered into her mind. She began by aiding Corellon’s enemies. In a fight with his nemesis Gruumsh, Araushnee aided the orc god and Corellon had to flee. She then sent her new ally Malar to hunt her weakened lover but through sheer skill of arms Corellon, with the help of Sehanine Moonbow, managed to defeat the Beastlord.
Corellon still had no idea that his beautiful consort was behind the attacks but Sehanine Moonbow had found out the truth after discovering that Araushnee had started an affair with Fenmarel Mestarine in an effort to make him aid her in an upcoming rebellion. Although at first entranced by her advances he eventually spurned her. Sehanine confronted Araushnee and was imprisoned as a result. With her subtle plans failed, she instead organized an attack on the entire Seldarine with her “Anti-Seldarine” consisting of Vhaeraun, Malar, Ghaunadaur, Gruumsh, Auril, and a host of other gods of goblinoids, orcs, giants, and kobolds, as well as Eilistraee, who was only an unwitting participant in her schemes. Sehanine escaped from her imprisonment and warned Corellon of the impending attack. Despite their force of numbers, the anti-Seldarine were defeated. While her allies fled, Araushnee directly confronted her former lover but then Sehanine, Hanali Celanil and Aerdrie Faenya came to the rescue, merging their powers together to become a single deity, Angharradh. Araushnee was defeated and cast into the Abyss along with both of her children (despite the fact that Corellon knew Eilistraee had been tricked). Araushnee’s banishment also involved Corellon turning her into a bloated spider demon so that he could not be persuaded to reconsider his decision due to her beauty.
Araushnee took the name Lolth and turned the 66th layer of the Abyss into her new home. Without another home Vhaeraun, Eilistraee and Ghaunadaur took up small residences there, though Vhaeraun and Eilistraee rarely visited them, preferring to wander in the Plane of Shadow and Arvandor respectively. Ghaunadaur took the opportunity of living in the same realm as Lolth to announce his love for her but Lolth prized physical beauty, an attribute Ghaunadaur did not have and rejected his advances. The Drow demi-power Kiaransalee created a tower of bones in the realm and was thusly subjugated by Lolth’s will into becoming her reluctant vassal. Also, Lolth learned of the demon prince Zanassu who claimed divine dominion over spiders. Considering her new body, she thought it was her sole right to own such a portfolio and angrily tricked Selvetarm into attacking the demon prince, killing him. She gained a divine portfolio and a new consort. She used her regained divinity to turn the 66th layer into the Demonweb Pits, morphing it into a giant funnel-shaped web to fit her spidery appearance.
Some time afterward, the moon elf Kethryllia Amarillis intruded into the demonweb, reminding Lolth of a way to regain more of her divinity by having the surface elves worship her once more.
She began corrupting the surface elves, especially the dark-skinned and warlike Illythiri of whom she used to be the sole patron. It was her actions during the second Crown War that ended up causing the Illythiri to turn to darkness when she sent the balor lord Wendonai and other demonic servants to offer corrupting power to the dark elves. Just before the Illythiri were turned into drow they had begun openly worshiping Lolth.
Although she has attempted to inspire a couple of invasions of Evermeet, Lolth seemed to have been content to sit and watch her worshipers killing each other in the Underdark, at least until the Time of Troubles. She spent most of her time as an avatar tracking down the new drow demi-power in the realms, Zinzerena. She killed Zinzerena easily and became more chaotic in nature as a result, actually spreading the faith of Zinzerena (who wanted to rebel against Lolth) in Menzoberranzan, and granted spells in her name seemingly just for the sheer irony. When the Time of Troubles ended, Lolth also began granting spells to the followers of Moander after he was killed by Finder Wyvernspur.
Then came the Silence of Lolth. Clerics suddenly could not receive spells, throwing the entire theocratic drow society into turmoil. Two great drow cities were destroyed, while others were taken over by Vhaeraunites. Lolth emerged again though. She had moved the Demonweb Pits from the Abyss to its own separate plane where spiders destroy each other day-by-day and Lolth weeds out the weak even from her dead as they have to traverse the plane’s barren, mad spider-infested lands to get to the Demonweb itself.
Lolth had taken the soul of a drow, Danifae Yauntyrr, and added her as the eight aspect of her divinity. Whether this was a replacement or addition to Lolth’s combined mind was not clear.
Several key events occurred that led up to Lolth holding her undisputed place and Queen of the drow.
Eilistraee defeats and subsumes her brother Vhaeraun, in a botched attempt to slay her.
An uncooperative, joint effort between Lolth and her daughter destroyed Kiaransalee (represented in a cosmic game resembling the drow version of chess, Sava).
Ghaunadaur retreats from the Demonweb Pits to the Dismal Caverns.
Eilistraee, while inhabiting the body of Qilué Veladorn, is killed by the mad demi-power, the Lady Penitent (aka Halisstra Melarn) using the Crescent Blade.
However, just after Eilistraee’s death, Lolth discovers too late that her daughter managed to redeem 20% of the drow race, turning them back into dark elves and allowing Corellon Larethian to take over the dead goddess’s realm and place in the sava game. Thus, Eilistraee’s legacy and mission to save the drow passes over to Corellon, and Lolth is faced with a more powerful opponent for the worship of the drow.
However, just after Eilistraee’s death, Lolth discovers too late that her daughter managed to redeem 20% of the drow race, turning them back into dark elves and allowing Corellon Larethian to take over the dead goddess’s realm and place in the sava game. Thus, Eilistraee’s legacy and mission to save the drow passes over to Corellon, and Lolth is faced with a more powerful opponent for the worship of the drow.
This has actually pretty much been retconned/ignored, having never been expanded on past the Lady Penitent books. Also, Eilistraee and Vhaeraun are both back in 5e, having been revealed to be in stasis in the Weave. If you read the Sundering novel The Adversary, there is a chosen of Vhaeraun in it. They are also allies now, according to Ed Greenwood (though we have sadly yet to see anything in print on this). In the novel Death Masks, it was also revealed that Eilistraeens are establishing a temple in Waterdeep.
A couple other things to note: Lolth wasn't the sole deity of the Illythiir: they also worshiped Vhaeraun and Eilistraee, but the curse affected all of them, regardless. Eilistraee's realm, even before the events of LP, was moved from the Abyss to Arvandor a while back, iirc (or is kind of a pocket dimension within Arvandor, at least). In the book Evermeet, it was indicated that Eilistraee was willingly banished from Arvandor, as she wanted to provide a "balance" for the dark elves in the years to come. Part of Araunshnee's actions were also spurred by jealousy of Sehanine, whom Corellon also loved (they've been consorts since), but it was also a power grab, as you indicated.
Otherwise, good summary!
And, to the OP, if you don't want to read the novels (though I would recommend reading at least the beginning of Evermeet), I do at least recommend looking at the source book Demihuman Deities. While it doesn't cover the more recent events, being as it it AD&D, it will give a good history on the Seldarine and Dark Seldarine.
Lolth's getting ready to take it on the chin in some of the upcoming novels too. The stage was set in the most recent one, and Lolth's story is about to get really interesting.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
This isn't lore, just my take on the followers of lolth, and this may just be an unpopular opinion: Feminazi. Not feminists, feminazi. I make a clear distinction between the two.
Lolth's getting ready to take it on the chin in some of the upcoming novels too. The stage was set in the most recent one, and Lolth's story is about to get really interesting.
If there are more novels. The novel line has basically stopped, other than Drizzt. And...I have a lot of mixed opinions about what went down in Relentless lol
I like Lolth, but I also like Vhaeraun and Eilistraee too. They’re all pretty cool deities if you want to play a drow character. I didn’t know all the lore stuff.
Lolth's getting ready to take it on the chin in some of the upcoming novels too. The stage was set in the most recent one, and Lolth's story is about to get really interesting.
If there are more novels. The novel line has basically stopped, other than Drizzt. And...I have a lot of mixed opinions about what went down in Relentless lol
There are certainly mixed opinions. I do have to say what I saw in there is about the most acceptable way to gut the drow lore in the way of political correctness...and that gutting is going to happen.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
People see what they want to see. The females rule over the males with an iron fist to the point that third sons are sacrificed to Lolth.
In the case of the drow, people see things that aren't there because they want an excuse to be offended.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I have no problem with Lolth getting knocked down a peg and more drow breaking free of her yoke. There have always been goodly drow--if they would stop shoehorning Eilistraee. But Relentless completely ignores her--though there were plenty of opportunities.
If anyone is interested, there was actually a discussion about it (and other things in the book) on the Candlekeep forums. I'll link it here: http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23594. The first several posts aren't about Lolth, so if don't want to read them, scroll down a bit. I'm sorry to give a link to another site, but I feel it gives a sense of some of the issues that arose.
I like Lolth, but I also like Vhaeraun and Eilistraee too. They’re all pretty cool deities if you want to play a drow character. I didn’t know all the lore stuff.
My Autocorrect keeps changing Lolth to Lilith.
Eilistraee and Vhaeraun are awesome. They've been sadly ignored. Hopefully with the recent shift, that will change. If you are interested in the lore, I recommend the source book Demihuman Deities, and the novels Evermeet: Island of Elves, and Starlight and Shadows trilogy.
I like Lolth, but I also like Vhaeraun and Eilistraee too. They’re all pretty cool deities if you want to play a drow character. I didn’t know all the lore stuff.
My Autocorrect keeps changing Lolth to Lilith.
Eilistraee and Vhaeraun are awesome. They've been sadly ignored. Hopefully with the recent shift, that will change. If you are interested in the lore, I recommend the source book Demihuman Deities, and the novels Evermeet: Island of Elves, and Starlight and Shadows trilogy.
Eilistraee is best drow goddess, fight me forum. XD the fact that she is the only good drow deity, that wants her people to be free to stand with the other elves in peace, makes me lean more to her.
By all appearances, she was too fair a creature to be walking through the swirling sludge of this smoky layer of the Abyss. Too beautiful, her features were sculpted fine and delicate, her shining ebony skin giving her the appearance of animated artwork, an obsidian sculpture come to life.
The monstrous things around her, crawling slugs and bat-winged denizens, monitored her every move, watched her carefully, cautiously. Even the largest and strongest of them, gigantic fiends that could sack a fair-sized city, kept a safe distance, for appearances could be deceiving. While this fine-featured female seemed delicate, even frail by the standards of the gruesome monsters of the Abyss, she could easily destroy any one, any ten, any fifty, of the fiends now watching her.
They knew it, too, and her passage was unhindered. She was Lolth, the Spider Queen, goddess of the drow, the dark elves. She was chaos incarnate, an instrument of destruction, a monster beneath a delicate facade.
Lolth calmly strolled into a region of tall, thick mushrooms clustered on small islands amid the grimy swirl. She walked from island to island without concern, stepping so lightly about the slurping sludge that not even the bottoms of her delicate black slippers were soiled. She found many of this level’s strongest inhabitants, even true tanar’ri fiends, sleeping amid those mushroom groves, and rudely roused them. Inevitably, the irritable creatures came awake snarling and promising eternal torture, and just as inevitably, they were much relieved when Lolth demanded of them only a single answer to a single question.
“Where is he?” she asked each time, and though none of the monsters knew of the great fiend’s exact location, their answers led Lolth on, guided her until at last she found the beast she was looking for, a huge bipedal tanar’ri with a canine maw, the horns of a bull, and tremendous, leathery wings folded behind its huge body. Looking quite bored, it sat in a chair it had carved from one of the mushrooms, its grotesque head resting on the upraised palm of one hand. Dirty, curved claws scratched rhythmically against its pallid cheek. In its other hand the beast held a many-tongued whip and every so often, snapped it around, lashing at the side of the mushroom chair, where crouched the unfortunate lesser creature it had selected for torture during this point of eternity.
The smaller denizen yelped and whined pitifully, and that drew another stinging crack of the merciless fiend’s whip.
The seated beast grunted suddenly, head coming up alert, red eyes peering intently into the smoky veil swirling all around the mushroom throne. Something was about, it knew, something powerful.
Lolth walked into view, not slowing in the least as she regarded this monster, the greatest of this area.
A guttural growl escaped the tanar’ri’s lips, lips that curled into an evil smile, then turned down into a frown as it considered the pretty morsel walking into its lair. At first, the fiend thought Lolth a gift, a lost, wandering dark elf far from the Material Plane and her home. It didn’t take the fiend long to recognize the truth of this one, though.
It sat up straight in its chair. Then, with incredible speed and fluidity for one its size, it brought itself to its full height, twelve feet, and towered over the intruder.
“Sit, Errtu,” Lolth bade it, waving her hand impatiently. “I have not come to destroy you.”
A second growl issued from the proud tanar’ri, but Errtu made no move for Lolth, understanding that she could easily do what she had just claimed she had not come here to do. Just to salvage a bit of his pride, Errtu remained standing.
“Sit!” Lolth said suddenly, fiercely, and Errtu, before he registered the movement, found himself back on the mushroom throne. Frustrated, he took up his whip and battered the sniveling beast that groveled at his side.
“Why are you here, drow?” Errtu grumbled, his deep voice breaking into higher, crackling whines, like fingernails on slate.
“You have heard the rumblings of the pantheon?” Lolth asked.
Errtu considered the question for a long moment. Of course he had heard that the gods of the Realms were quarreling, stepping over each other in intrigue-laden power grabs and using intelligent lesser creatures as pawns in their private games. In the Abyss, this meant that the denizens, even greater tanar’ri such as Errtu, were often caught up in unwanted political intrigue.
Which was exactly what Errtu figured, and feared, was happening here.
“A time of great strife is approaching,” Lolth explained. “A time when the gods will pay for their foolishness.”
Errtu chuckled, a grating, terrible sound. Lolth’s red-glowing gaze fell over him scornfully.
“Why would such an event displease you, Lady of Chaos?” the fiend asked.
“This trouble will be beyond me,” Lolth explained, deadly serious, “beyond us all. I will enjoy watching the fools of the pantheon jostled about, stripped of their false pride, some perhaps even slain, but any worshipped being who is not cautious will find herself caught in the trouble.”
“Lolth was never known for caution,” Errtu put in dryly.
“Lolth was never a fool,” the Spider Queen quickly replied.
I have no problem with Lolth getting knocked down a peg and more drow breaking free of her yoke. There have always been goodly drow--if they would stop shoehorning Eilistraee. But Relentless completely ignores her--though there were plenty of opportunities.
If anyone is interested, there was actually a discussion about it (and other things in the book) on the Candlekeep forums. I'll link it here: http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23594. The first several posts aren't about Lolth, so if don't want to read them, scroll down a bit. I'm sorry to give a link to another site, but I feel it gives a sense of some of the issues that arose.
Eilistraee is ignored because the story isn't about her. Drizzt is the hero of those books and he's pretty much abandoned Mielikki too. I don't think you're going to see him start to follow Eilistraee now. In one of the earlier books, Drizzt even mentions Eilistraee. She simply does not have a place in a story about Drizzt, nor is the story about redeeming the drow. Lolth however does, because he's been in conflict with Lolth since she was still Lloth. By using the route that he chose, Salvatore has started to knock Lolth down a notch or two, and open some additional room for...deviance...among the drow. He's given them a reason to question, and to therefore start to think for themselves.
That helps Eilistraee as much or more than her trying to ride in to save the day.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I have no problem with Lolth getting knocked down a peg and more drow breaking free of her yoke. There have always been goodly drow--if they would stop shoehorning Eilistraee. But Relentless completely ignores her--though there were plenty of opportunities.
If anyone is interested, there was actually a discussion about it (and other things in the book) on the Candlekeep forums. I'll link it here: http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23594. The first several posts aren't about Lolth, so if don't want to read them, scroll down a bit. I'm sorry to give a link to another site, but I feel it gives a sense of some of the issues that arose.
Eilistraee is ignored because the story isn't about her. Drizzt is the hero of those books and he's pretty much abandoned Mielikki too. I don't think you're going to see him start to follow Eilistraee now. In one of the earlier books, Drizzt even mentions Eilistraee. She simply does not have a place in a story about Drizzt, nor is the story about redeeming the drow. Lolth however does, because he's been in conflict with Lolth since she was still Lloth. By using the route that he chose, Salvatore has started to knock Lolth down a notch or two, and open some additional room for...deviance...among the drow. He's given them a reason to question, and to therefore start to think for themselves.
That helps Eilistraee as much or more than her trying to ride in to save the day.
Eilistraee is ignored because Bob doesn't like her. Even Mielikki's sudden decree was random and OOC (as someone in the Candlekeep forum said, I don't think Bob does a lot of fact checking). And I'm not saying Drizzt has to be the one to worship Eilistraee, but I think there have been a number of missed opportunities to bring in her followers. Eilistraee may have been mentioned a few times in passing, but that's it.
The last several books have indeed been about redemption for the drow. Drizzt himself was not trying to do it, but he nevertheless became a "beacon", to quote the book. Drizzt, a renegade drow who really didn't want anything more to do with his people (not that I entirely blame him, considering his experience), compared to Eilistraeens, who have been offering a better path for centuries? To barely even acknowledge that makes little sense to me.
Though in all fairness to Bob, he hasn't been the only one to ignore Eilistraee and Vhaeraun. They were offed in 4e, though I remember hearing that one of the main reasons for this was because they wanted to make Drizzt "special", and they did want the drow to be inherently evil. Fortunately, they've changed their stance, and Eilistraee and Vhaeraun have returned in 5e, There was a chosen of Vhaeraun in The Adversary, and there was an update on Eilistraee and her followers in Death Masks, but other than that, they're still being shoehorned. I hope you're right in that this paves the way for more Eilistraeens (and even Vhaeraunites).
I like Lolth, but I also like Vhaeraun and Eilistraee too. They’re all pretty cool deities if you want to play a drow character. I didn’t know all the lore stuff.
My Autocorrect keeps changing Lolth to Lilith.
Eilistraee and Vhaeraun are awesome. They've been sadly ignored. Hopefully with the recent shift, that will change. If you are interested in the lore, I recommend the source book Demihuman Deities, and the novels Evermeet: Island of Elves, and Starlight and Shadows trilogy.
Eilistraee is best drow goddess, fight me forum. XD the fact that she is the only good drow deity, that wants her people to be free to stand with the other elves in peace, makes me lean more to her.
Lol you won't get any fight from me. I love Eilistraee, though I like Vhaeraun, too.
I have no problem with Lolth getting knocked down a peg and more drow breaking free of her yoke. There have always been goodly drow--if they would stop shoehorning Eilistraee. But Relentless completely ignores her--though there were plenty of opportunities.
If anyone is interested, there was actually a discussion about it (and other things in the book) on the Candlekeep forums. I'll link it here: http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23594. The first several posts aren't about Lolth, so if don't want to read them, scroll down a bit. I'm sorry to give a link to another site, but I feel it gives a sense of some of the issues that arose.
Eilistraee is ignored because the story isn't about her. Drizzt is the hero of those books and he's pretty much abandoned Mielikki too. I don't think you're going to see him start to follow Eilistraee now. In one of the earlier books, Drizzt even mentions Eilistraee. She simply does not have a place in a story about Drizzt, nor is the story about redeeming the drow. Lolth however does, because he's been in conflict with Lolth since she was still Lloth. By using the route that he chose, Salvatore has started to knock Lolth down a notch or two, and open some additional room for...deviance...among the drow. He's given them a reason to question, and to therefore start to think for themselves.
That helps Eilistraee as much or more than her trying to ride in to save the day.
Eilistraee is ignored because Bob doesn't like her. Even Mielikki's sudden decree was random and OOC (as someone in the Candlekeep forum said, I don't think Bob does a lot of fact checking). And I'm not saying Drizzt has to be the one to worship Eilistraee, but I think there have been a number of missed opportunities to bring in her followers. Eilistraee may have been mentioned a few times in passing, but that's it.
The last several books have indeed been about redemption for the drow. Drizzt himself was not trying to do it, but he nevertheless became a "beacon", to quote the book. Drizzt, a renegade drow who really didn't want anything more to do with his people (not that I entirely blame him, considering his experience), compared to Eilistraeens, who have been offering a better path for centuries? To barely even acknowledge that makes little sense to me.
Though in all fairness to Bob, he hasn't been the only one to ignore Eilistraee and Vhaeraun. They were offed in 4e, though I remember hearing that one of the main reasons for this was because they wanted to make Drizzt "special", and they did want the drow to be inherently evil. Fortunately, they've changed their stance, and Eilistraee and Vhaeraun have returned in 5e, There was a chosen of Vhaeraun in The Adversary, and there was an update on Eilistraee and her followers in Death Masks, but other than that, they're still being shoehorned. I hope you're right in that this paves the way for more Eilistraeens (and even Vhaeraunites).
I don't like Eilistraee much either. She's too convenient, and it she feels cheap. I also don't like how sexist she was in the old days. She's supposed to be good, but males can't be priests? GTFO. Even Lolth allowed male priests in 2e, even if they weren't allowed to progress to high levels. That's all on Ed Greenwood though. I usually have my surface drow follow human gods; Selune and Mystra are my go-to goddesses. The only time I've ever considered following Eilistraee, is a fiend-pact warlock concept I came up with where I wanted to be good, and pacted to a yochlol who was trying to infiltrate the Eilistraeens.
You heard right. Many Arrows was wiped out because they wanted orcs to be wholly evil. Same with the drow; they (WotC) wanted Drizzt to be even MORE of a special snowflake (IIRC this was in an interview with Chris Perkins) so Tos'un Armgo had to go back to being evil (I really liked him, he was a great example of someone starting off evil and being redeemed). It was so, so stupid. Since Catti-brie was chosen of Mielikki, and supposedly Mielikki is the one that decreed that all orcs are evil, Drizzt gave her the finger. I think that was Salvatore's way of giving the finger to WotC for their stupidity.
Now they've come full circle and they throw it back to Salvatore to unscrew what they forced him to screw up in the first place. Using the tool that he had put in place years ago to do what he did was imo, nothing short of brilliant. There's no way he could have known back then the direction that WotC was going to take and that he'd have a tool he could use to bring that about. While things have turned in the direction of redeeming the drow, it started off as a way to get Bregan d'Aerthe out of Luskan and back into the underdark. That writing has been on the wall since at least the SCAG. I remember reading in there about the Arcane Brotherhood being back in charge of the Hosttower, and I was like, what about Gromph and Bregan D'Aerthe?
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I like Lolth, but I also like Vhaeraun and Eilistraee too. They’re all pretty cool deities if you want to play a drow character. I didn’t know all the lore stuff.
My Autocorrect keeps changing Lolth to Lilith.
Eilistraee and Vhaeraun are awesome. They've been sadly ignored. Hopefully with the recent shift, that will change. If you are interested in the lore, I recommend the source book Demihuman Deities, and the novels Evermeet: Island of Elves, and Starlight and Shadows trilogy.
Cool. I’m gonna check out Demihuman Deities.
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I want to play a paladin/rogue of lolth and need more lore the wiki is giving me without buying the novels help?
By established lore:
Lolth is extremely insular, favoring only female Drow of the Underdark. If your character is not such, your character will either be unfavored, shunned, or likely considered an enemy as her greatest rival - her own son - favors all Drow equally including surface Drow. Anyone merely suspected of being a follower of her son was likely to be killed outright - no trial. Any desire to return to the surface permanently is forbidden by Lolth. Her dogma is law - no deviations.
This will be a required starting point to be a faithful servant of Lolth with any amount of power through established Lore. She's quite single-minded in her desires. She's had her own plots now and then, but she's quite a traditionalist and extremely resistant to any changes. What she was is what she is and is what she will always be - quite the irony given her Chaotic nature. There is little else to know about her.
Otherwise, you're better off with her son, Vhaeraun, and being an enemy to Lolth.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I found this online (grab a drink/snack its quite long), I think its ad&d info so quite old:
History
Lolth was formerly Araushnee, elven goddess of destiny, artisans and dark elves. She was the lover of Corellon and had him completely smitten by her grace and beauty but she grew power-hungry and a sense of never-before seen greed and cruelty entered into her mind. She began by aiding Corellon’s enemies. In a fight with his nemesis Gruumsh, Araushnee aided the orc god and Corellon had to flee. She then sent her new ally Malar to hunt her weakened lover but through sheer skill of arms Corellon, with the help of Sehanine Moonbow, managed to defeat the Beastlord.
Corellon still had no idea that his beautiful consort was behind the attacks but Sehanine Moonbow had found out the truth after discovering that Araushnee had started an affair with Fenmarel Mestarine in an effort to make him aid her in an upcoming rebellion. Although at first entranced by her advances he eventually spurned her. Sehanine confronted Araushnee and was imprisoned as a result. With her subtle plans failed, she instead organized an attack on the entire Seldarine with her “Anti-Seldarine” consisting of Vhaeraun, Malar, Ghaunadaur, Gruumsh, Auril, and a host of other gods of goblinoids, orcs, giants, and kobolds, as well as Eilistraee, who was only an unwitting participant in her schemes. Sehanine escaped from her imprisonment and warned Corellon of the impending attack. Despite their force of numbers, the anti-Seldarine were defeated. While her allies fled, Araushnee directly confronted her former lover but then Sehanine, Hanali Celanil and Aerdrie Faenya came to the rescue, merging their powers together to become a single deity, Angharradh. Araushnee was defeated and cast into the Abyss along with both of her children (despite the fact that Corellon knew Eilistraee had been tricked). Araushnee’s banishment also involved Corellon turning her into a bloated spider demon so that he could not be persuaded to reconsider his decision due to her beauty.
Araushnee took the name Lolth and turned the 66th layer of the Abyss into her new home. Without another home Vhaeraun, Eilistraee and Ghaunadaur took up small residences there, though Vhaeraun and Eilistraee rarely visited them, preferring to wander in the Plane of Shadow and Arvandor respectively. Ghaunadaur took the opportunity of living in the same realm as Lolth to announce his love for her but Lolth prized physical beauty, an attribute Ghaunadaur did not have and rejected his advances. The Drow demi-power Kiaransalee created a tower of bones in the realm and was thusly subjugated by Lolth’s will into becoming her reluctant vassal. Also, Lolth learned of the demon prince Zanassu who claimed divine dominion over spiders. Considering her new body, she thought it was her sole right to own such a portfolio and angrily tricked Selvetarm into attacking the demon prince, killing him. She gained a divine portfolio and a new consort. She used her regained divinity to turn the 66th layer into the Demonweb Pits, morphing it into a giant funnel-shaped web to fit her spidery appearance.
Some time afterward, the moon elf Kethryllia Amarillis intruded into the demonweb, reminding Lolth of a way to regain more of her divinity by having the surface elves worship her once more.
She began corrupting the surface elves, especially the dark-skinned and warlike Illythiri of whom she used to be the sole patron. It was her actions during the second Crown War that ended up causing the Illythiri to turn to darkness when she sent the balor lord Wendonai and other demonic servants to offer corrupting power to the dark elves. Just before the Illythiri were turned into drow they had begun openly worshiping Lolth.
Although she has attempted to inspire a couple of invasions of Evermeet, Lolth seemed to have been content to sit and watch her worshipers killing each other in the Underdark, at least until the Time of Troubles. She spent most of her time as an avatar tracking down the new drow demi-power in the realms, Zinzerena. She killed Zinzerena easily and became more chaotic in nature as a result, actually spreading the faith of Zinzerena (who wanted to rebel against Lolth) in Menzoberranzan, and granted spells in her name seemingly just for the sheer irony. When the Time of Troubles ended, Lolth also began granting spells to the followers of Moander after he was killed by Finder Wyvernspur.
Then came the Silence of Lolth. Clerics suddenly could not receive spells, throwing the entire theocratic drow society into turmoil. Two great drow cities were destroyed, while others were taken over by Vhaeraunites. Lolth emerged again though. She had moved the Demonweb Pits from the Abyss to its own separate plane where spiders destroy each other day-by-day and Lolth weeds out the weak even from her dead as they have to traverse the plane’s barren, mad spider-infested lands to get to the Demonweb itself.
Lolth had taken the soul of a drow, Danifae Yauntyrr, and added her as the eight aspect of her divinity. Whether this was a replacement or addition to Lolth’s combined mind was not clear.
Several key events occurred that led up to Lolth holding her undisputed place and Queen of the drow.
However, just after Eilistraee’s death, Lolth discovers too late that her daughter managed to redeem 20% of the drow race, turning them back into dark elves and allowing Corellon Larethian to take over the dead goddess’s realm and place in the sava game. Thus, Eilistraee’s legacy and mission to save the drow passes over to Corellon, and Lolth is faced with a more powerful opponent for the worship of the drow.
This has actually pretty much been retconned/ignored, having never been expanded on past the Lady Penitent books. Also, Eilistraee and Vhaeraun are both back in 5e, having been revealed to be in stasis in the Weave. If you read the Sundering novel The Adversary, there is a chosen of Vhaeraun in it. They are also allies now, according to Ed Greenwood (though we have sadly yet to see anything in print on this). In the novel Death Masks, it was also revealed that Eilistraeens are establishing a temple in Waterdeep.
A couple other things to note: Lolth wasn't the sole deity of the Illythiir: they also worshiped Vhaeraun and Eilistraee, but the curse affected all of them, regardless. Eilistraee's realm, even before the events of LP, was moved from the Abyss to Arvandor a while back, iirc (or is kind of a pocket dimension within Arvandor, at least). In the book Evermeet, it was indicated that Eilistraee was willingly banished from Arvandor, as she wanted to provide a "balance" for the dark elves in the years to come. Part of Araunshnee's actions were also spurred by jealousy of Sehanine, whom Corellon also loved (they've been consorts since), but it was also a power grab, as you indicated.
Otherwise, good summary!
And, to the OP, if you don't want to read the novels (though I would recommend reading at least the beginning of Evermeet), I do at least recommend looking at the source book Demihuman Deities. While it doesn't cover the more recent events, being as it it AD&D, it will give a good history on the Seldarine and Dark Seldarine.
Lolth's getting ready to take it on the chin in some of the upcoming novels too. The stage was set in the most recent one, and Lolth's story is about to get really interesting.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
This isn't lore, just my take on the followers of lolth, and this may just be an unpopular opinion: Feminazi. Not feminists, feminazi. I make a clear distinction between the two.
If there are more novels. The novel line has basically stopped, other than Drizzt. And...I have a lot of mixed opinions about what went down in Relentless lol
I like Lolth, but I also like Vhaeraun and Eilistraee too. They’re all pretty cool deities if you want to play a drow character. I didn’t know all the lore stuff.
My Autocorrect keeps changing Lolth to Lilith.
There are certainly mixed opinions. I do have to say what I saw in there is about the most acceptable way to gut the drow lore in the way of political correctness...and that gutting is going to happen.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Sometimes political correctness is a good thing. I’ve been told the original drow concept was kind of misogynistic.
People see what they want to see. The females rule over the males with an iron fist to the point that third sons are sacrificed to Lolth.
In the case of the drow, people see things that aren't there because they want an excuse to be offended.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I have no problem with Lolth getting knocked down a peg and more drow breaking free of her yoke. There have always been goodly drow--if they would stop shoehorning Eilistraee. But Relentless completely ignores her--though there were plenty of opportunities.
If anyone is interested, there was actually a discussion about it (and other things in the book) on the Candlekeep forums. I'll link it here: http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23594. The first several posts aren't about Lolth, so if don't want to read them, scroll down a bit. I'm sorry to give a link to another site, but I feel it gives a sense of some of the issues that arose.
Eilistraee and Vhaeraun are awesome. They've been sadly ignored. Hopefully with the recent shift, that will change. If you are interested in the lore, I recommend the source book Demihuman Deities, and the novels Evermeet: Island of Elves, and Starlight and Shadows trilogy.
Eilistraee is best drow goddess, fight me forum. XD the fact that she is the only good drow deity, that wants her people to be free to stand with the other elves in peace, makes me lean more to her.
From Siege of Darkness....
By all appearances, she was too fair a creature to be walking through the swirling sludge of this smoky layer of the Abyss. Too beautiful, her features were sculpted fine and delicate, her shining ebony skin giving her the appearance of animated artwork, an obsidian sculpture come to life.
The monstrous things around her, crawling slugs and bat-winged denizens, monitored her every move, watched her carefully, cautiously. Even the largest and strongest of them, gigantic fiends that could sack a fair-sized city, kept a safe distance, for appearances could be deceiving. While this fine-featured female seemed delicate, even frail by the standards of the gruesome monsters of the Abyss, she could easily destroy any one, any ten, any fifty, of the fiends now watching her.
They knew it, too, and her passage was unhindered. She was Lolth, the Spider Queen, goddess of the drow, the dark elves. She was chaos incarnate, an instrument of destruction, a monster beneath a delicate facade.
Lolth calmly strolled into a region of tall, thick mushrooms clustered on small islands amid the grimy swirl. She walked from island to island without concern, stepping so lightly about the slurping sludge that not even the bottoms of her delicate black slippers were soiled. She found many of this level’s strongest inhabitants, even true tanar’ri fiends, sleeping amid those mushroom groves, and rudely roused them. Inevitably, the irritable creatures came awake snarling and promising eternal torture, and just as inevitably, they were much relieved when Lolth demanded of them only a single answer to a single question.
“Where is he?” she asked each time, and though none of the monsters knew of the great fiend’s exact location, their answers led Lolth on, guided her until at last she found the beast she was looking for, a huge bipedal tanar’ri with a canine maw, the horns of a bull, and tremendous, leathery wings folded behind its huge body. Looking quite bored, it sat in a chair it had carved from one of the mushrooms, its grotesque head resting on the upraised palm of one hand. Dirty, curved claws scratched rhythmically against its pallid cheek. In its other hand the beast held a many-tongued whip and every so often, snapped it around, lashing at the side of the mushroom chair, where crouched the unfortunate lesser creature it had selected for torture during this point of eternity.
The smaller denizen yelped and whined pitifully, and that drew another stinging crack of the merciless fiend’s whip.
The seated beast grunted suddenly, head coming up alert, red eyes peering intently into the smoky veil swirling all around the mushroom throne. Something was about, it knew, something powerful.
Lolth walked into view, not slowing in the least as she regarded this monster, the greatest of this area.
A guttural growl escaped the tanar’ri’s lips, lips that curled into an evil smile, then turned down into a frown as it considered the pretty morsel walking into its lair. At first, the fiend thought Lolth a gift, a lost, wandering dark elf far from the Material Plane and her home. It didn’t take the fiend long to recognize the truth of this one, though.
It sat up straight in its chair. Then, with incredible speed and fluidity for one its size, it brought itself to its full height, twelve feet, and towered over the intruder.
“Sit, Errtu,” Lolth bade it, waving her hand impatiently. “I have not come to destroy you.”
A second growl issued from the proud tanar’ri, but Errtu made no move for Lolth, understanding that she could easily do what she had just claimed she had not come here to do. Just to salvage a bit of his pride, Errtu remained standing.
“Sit!” Lolth said suddenly, fiercely, and Errtu, before he registered the movement, found himself back on the mushroom throne. Frustrated, he took up his whip and battered the sniveling beast that groveled at his side.
“Why are you here, drow?” Errtu grumbled, his deep voice breaking into higher, crackling whines, like fingernails on slate.
“You have heard the rumblings of the pantheon?” Lolth asked.
Errtu considered the question for a long moment. Of course he had heard that the gods of the Realms were quarreling, stepping over each other in intrigue-laden power grabs and using intelligent lesser creatures as pawns in their private games. In the Abyss, this meant that the denizens, even greater tanar’ri such as Errtu, were often caught up in unwanted political intrigue.
Which was exactly what Errtu figured, and feared, was happening here.
“A time of great strife is approaching,” Lolth explained. “A time when the gods will pay for their foolishness.”
Errtu chuckled, a grating, terrible sound. Lolth’s red-glowing gaze fell over him scornfully.
“Why would such an event displease you, Lady of Chaos?” the fiend asked.
“This trouble will be beyond me,” Lolth explained, deadly serious, “beyond us all. I will enjoy watching the fools of the pantheon jostled about, stripped of their false pride, some perhaps even slain, but any worshipped being who is not cautious will find herself caught in the trouble.”
“Lolth was never known for caution,” Errtu put in dryly.
“Lolth was never a fool,” the Spider Queen quickly replied.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Eilistraee is ignored because the story isn't about her. Drizzt is the hero of those books and he's pretty much abandoned Mielikki too. I don't think you're going to see him start to follow Eilistraee now. In one of the earlier books, Drizzt even mentions Eilistraee. She simply does not have a place in a story about Drizzt, nor is the story about redeeming the drow. Lolth however does, because he's been in conflict with Lolth since she was still Lloth. By using the route that he chose, Salvatore has started to knock Lolth down a notch or two, and open some additional room for...deviance...among the drow. He's given them a reason to question, and to therefore start to think for themselves.
That helps Eilistraee as much or more than her trying to ride in to save the day.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Eilistraee is ignored because Bob doesn't like her. Even Mielikki's sudden decree was random and OOC (as someone in the Candlekeep forum said, I don't think Bob does a lot of fact checking). And I'm not saying Drizzt has to be the one to worship Eilistraee, but I think there have been a number of missed opportunities to bring in her followers. Eilistraee may have been mentioned a few times in passing, but that's it.
The last several books have indeed been about redemption for the drow. Drizzt himself was not trying to do it, but he nevertheless became a "beacon", to quote the book. Drizzt, a renegade drow who really didn't want anything more to do with his people (not that I entirely blame him, considering his experience), compared to Eilistraeens, who have been offering a better path for centuries? To barely even acknowledge that makes little sense to me.
Though in all fairness to Bob, he hasn't been the only one to ignore Eilistraee and Vhaeraun. They were offed in 4e, though I remember hearing that one of the main reasons for this was because they wanted to make Drizzt "special", and they did want the drow to be inherently evil. Fortunately, they've changed their stance, and Eilistraee and Vhaeraun have returned in 5e, There was a chosen of Vhaeraun in The Adversary, and there was an update on Eilistraee and her followers in Death Masks, but other than that, they're still being shoehorned. I hope you're right in that this paves the way for more Eilistraeens (and even Vhaeraunites).
Lol you won't get any fight from me. I love Eilistraee, though I like Vhaeraun, too.
I don't like Eilistraee much either. She's too convenient, and it she feels cheap. I also don't like how sexist she was in the old days. She's supposed to be good, but males can't be priests? GTFO. Even Lolth allowed male priests in 2e, even if they weren't allowed to progress to high levels. That's all on Ed Greenwood though. I usually have my surface drow follow human gods; Selune and Mystra are my go-to goddesses. The only time I've ever considered following Eilistraee, is a fiend-pact warlock concept I came up with where I wanted to be good, and pacted to a yochlol who was trying to infiltrate the Eilistraeens.
You heard right. Many Arrows was wiped out because they wanted orcs to be wholly evil. Same with the drow; they (WotC) wanted Drizzt to be even MORE of a special snowflake (IIRC this was in an interview with Chris Perkins) so Tos'un Armgo had to go back to being evil (I really liked him, he was a great example of someone starting off evil and being redeemed). It was so, so stupid. Since Catti-brie was chosen of Mielikki, and supposedly Mielikki is the one that decreed that all orcs are evil, Drizzt gave her the finger. I think that was Salvatore's way of giving the finger to WotC for their stupidity.
Now they've come full circle and they throw it back to Salvatore to unscrew what they forced him to screw up in the first place. Using the tool that he had put in place years ago to do what he did was imo, nothing short of brilliant. There's no way he could have known back then the direction that WotC was going to take and that he'd have a tool he could use to bring that about. While things have turned in the direction of redeeming the drow, it started off as a way to get Bregan d'Aerthe out of Luskan and back into the underdark. That writing has been on the wall since at least the SCAG. I remember reading in there about the Arcane Brotherhood being back in charge of the Hosttower, and I was like, what about Gromph and Bregan D'Aerthe?
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Cool. I’m gonna check out Demihuman Deities.