Other Names: Takhisis - Queen of Darkness, The Multi-Colored Dragon, The Dragon Queen, Tii'Mhut, She of Many Faces, Mai-tat, Lady Chaos, Darklady, The Dark Temptress.
Symbol: Black crescent.
Constellation: The five-headed dragon.
Colors: Irridescent black/midnight blue.
Patron of: Chromatic dragons, night, hatred, intrigue, chaos undivided, draconians, temptation.
Known Avatars:
- A massive dragon with five heads, one of each of the chromatic dragons—black, blue, green, red, and white.
- A bewitching dwarven sorceress in swirling black robes. Stars twinkle from her clothes and her eyes are twin black voids. She carries a flickering magic crystal orb in one hand and a long spear with a wicked barbed tip in the other.
- An achingly beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed human temptress in a skin-tight dress of iridescent blue with black decoration.
Tamex the Corruptor's name is not spoken lightly on Krynn, for it summons darkness, destruction, and death. Swathed in shadow and hatred, the Dragon Queen—known more commonly as Takhisis—desires only the domination of Krynn and the enslavement of its people.
In the Age of Dreams, the Dragon Queen was Malleus the Hammer's mate and consort. The two gods were equals in every way, but when they forged the first beings of creation, the dragons built of chaos, Tamex grew jealous. She wished to be the first creator and she wanted the first creatures of Krynn to bear her stamp. So, she devised a way to make it so. The nascent Dark Queen corrupted the dragons by draining their nobility and instilling them with cruelty, savageness, and fury instead. Her consort was deeply grieved, a sorrow that pleased his lover. By the warping of these first creations, Tamex the Corruptor forever divided the gods.
After corrupting the first dragons, she quit Malleus and consorted with
Sargonax the Vengeful, the god of fury and vengeance. In time they had two offspring,
Baloc the Ungod, god of black magic, and
Bhezomiax the Maelstrom, goddess of the sea and storms. The passion between Tamex and Sargonax is intense and volatile, vacillating between insatiable lust and rancorous loathing. The Dragon Queen bore one other child,
Artha the Foul, the demigoddess of wanton lust and greed. Originally believed to be a child from a passing liaison with
Khemax the Deathless, Artha was in truth sired by
Hitax the Fraud masquerading as the Lord of Death.
Such dalliances did not distract the Dark Queen from her ultimate goal of world domination, however. She turned her attention next to the star-spirits, wanting to form them into pawns to wage the deadly wars she planned against the other gods. Discovering her scheme, the other gods refused and the All-Saints War resulted. The conflict ended in a stalemate and Tamex, furious that she could not own the star-spirits, bestowed upon them weakness, disease, and death.
She has not spent an idle moment since. All three Dragon Wars began as ruses to distract from attempt by her to seize power. Between these wars, she brought about countless plagues and senseless slaughters. Surely worse catastrophes would have befallen the world had not Huma used the Dragonlance to drive the Dragon Queen from Krynn and banish her to the Nine Hells. With her imprisonment, dragons both evil and good sank deep into the ground and slept. Soon they lived only in folktales and legends.
The Queen of Darkness made her home in Avernus, the first layer of the Infernal Realms. Her domain was Abthalom, the Nether Reaches. During her rule, Abthalom was in a state of constant flux, mirroring the tempestuous moods of its mistress. While she awaited a chance to escape, she passed the time by torturing the spirits of dead folk consigned to live in the Nine Hells because of their Evil.
Eventually, the Kingpriest of Istar's pride and desire for godhood provided Takhisis a means of escape. Using his vanity like the strings of a puppet, she ruled lstar through him. For one glorious, heinous century, Takhisis spread her power from lstar to the four corners of Ansalon before, at last, the other gods could stand by no longer and so came the Great Cataclysm.
The Cataclysm nearly destroyed Ansalon and all of Krynn, a result Tamex minded little. Worse yet, she actually benefitted from the Cataclysm, for when the fiery mountain fell, she drew the Temple of the Kingpriest down to the Nether Reaches. Then, using the Temple’s innate connection to Krynn, she forged a gateway out of the Nine Hells and, so returning, nullified Huma’s banishment.
Upon her return to Krynn, the Dark Queen raised five armies—the Black, Blue, Green, Red, and White Dragonarmies. Each was led by a hand-picked Dragon Highlord—each a powerful warrior and brilliant battlefield commander—and their ranks were filled with goblinoids, and giants. Along with these monstrous soldiers, the Dark Lady recruited countless humans to her cause with promises of wealth, power, and eternal life. She allied with the ancient death knight Lord Soth and gave her newly-returned chromatic dragons free reign over Krynn. She even betrayed the metallic dragons and used their stolen eggs to make her horrible draconians.
This was all for naught, however. A coalition of good people of all races, metallic dragons, and a group of unlikely heroes from Solace saw to it that her plans were thwarted and the Dragon Queen was cast back to the Nine Hells. The brutal and costly War of the Lance lasted only a few years, but it changed the face of Ansalon as surely as the fiery mountain and the destruction of Istar. Today, Tamex the Corruptor languishes in the Abyss, licking her wounds and scheming. Soon she'll find another way out of her prison and the cycle of destruction and rebirth will begin again.
The Queen of Dragons is the embodiment of evil, chaos, and cruelty. She enjoys preying upon the weaknesses of others, using their hearts’ desires to enslave them. She is cold and brilliant, and exploitation has become second nature to her. The Dark Lady hates good and order, loves evil and chaos, and hoards wealth more fiercely than the most ancient, avaricious dragon.
Duties of the Priesthood
Priests of Tamex the Corruptor serve as their mistress’s eyes and ears, alert to any opportunity to further the goddess’s ambitions. They also carry out her plans to sabotage the power of every god. The Dark Queen’s chief directives to her priests are to use the desires of people who believe themselves good and pious to destroy them. Every priest of Tamex must take an oath of utter obedience. Those who break their oath receive a slow, painful death followed by an eternity of damnation.
