Lolth (lol-th)
Demon Lord Araushnee Tangiadesh (a.k.a. Demon Queen of Spiders, Queen of Darkness, Weaver of Destiny, Fleshcarver)
(https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lolth)
Lolth, or Lloth, known as the Queen of Spiders as well as the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, was the first Dark Elf to be created by Gother and Ryra. She later became corrupted by her own ambitions.
Personality:
Lolth was a goddess of cold cruelty, not out of place in the darkest depths of the endless Abyss, revelling in betrayal and bloodshed and toying with everyone from her minions to her victims. She not only enjoyed but thrived upon torture, destruction, and death, whether personally performing it or causing it. Every interaction was ultimately done with malice, ill will seething from her every move, and even those who knew her well could be surprised by just how deep her viciousness went. Her malevolence could be compared to the rage of the brutal orc deity Gruumsh, but where his fury was as mindlessly violent as a force of nature, her malice was complicated and deliberate. Furthermore, Gruumsh could at least be said to be steady and constant in his hate, whilst Lolth's was utterly capricious.
Lolth demanded absolute fealty and obedience from all drow, and questioning her motives or wisdom was considered a sin. This applied even to male drow despite her considering them to be unclean, and she took vengeful notice if one abandoned her faith. She also secretly desired the worship of other types of elves, as well as humans, and enjoyed corrupting them into her service even more than torment and devastation. In contrast, she fomented unending chaos amongst the drow, eternally setting them against each other. Ostensibly, this was to weed out the weak and complacent, leaving only the strongest, cruellest, and most devious to serve her, and to some degree she believed this, but it was also simply for her own amusement and supremacy.
Despite her demands for loyalty, those who blindly obeyed Lolth's demands would find themselves quickly led to their deaths. In truth, Lolth's capricious nature meant that there were few hard-and-fast rules, and much uncertainty as to her desires. The successful had to pay attention to her ever-changing wants, for her favour was fickle, and those whom she played favourites with (a frequent occurrence) would inevitably find her turning on them without warning. The Spider Queen was technically capable of displaying kindness and aiding those she fancied, and would always give one chance for the disfavoured to redeem themselves, but this usually meant a dangerous mission, and in others might just mean silently watching their next move. She could never be relied on, and her ultimate motivation was almost always manipulative.
Lolth's promotion of infighting amongst her worshipers led many to believe she was insane, and this assessment was not baseless. Indeed, ever since her fall from grace, her sanity had frayed and fractured until she became the petty, conniving monster she was commonly known as. Her will was not merely fluid, but often contradictory, although even if she was mad, the drow placed more importance on a deep and devious sense of cunning than mental stability. Ironically, for all her demands for obedience, nothing demanded her attention and admiration more than treachery, even towards herself (if only temporarily). Guile and political ruthlessness were the signs of her favourite servants, and she ultimately admired ambition more than she did loyalty.
Divine Domains
Trickery, War
Divine Symbols & Sigils
Spider
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Lolth was formerly Araushnee, the first Drow to be created. She started to gain a following among other drow, which started to give her magic in this world of pure magic.
At some point, Araushnee grew ambitious and started to plot against the deities. During her first attempt, she aided Ryra in trying to kill Gother by imbuing the scabbard that he had crafted for his sword with magic that would cause the weapon to shatter during the fight. However, this plan failed due to Taris's bow interfering with it: she knew that Araushnee had tampered with the scabbard, because she could sense the magic.
Araushnee's next move was to raise an army against the prime deities and become a lesser deity. The army itself was so badly organised that she was confident that they would fail. Her true plan was to give the cursed scabbard back to Gother, as during the battle that would later unfold, the item would cause arrows shot by her daughter, Eilistraee, to hit his chest instead. According to Lolth's plan, that would have killed Gother while turning her daughter into a scapegoat.
Before the attack by the anti-deity faction was ready, Taris confronted Araushnee about her betrayal, but Araushnee struck first and imprisoned her with the help of her son, Vhaeraun. Together, they also made sure that Eilistraee would find and deliver the scabbard to Gother and that she would be in his vicinity during the battle.
Once the battle started, the Weaver's plan almost went as she expected, supported even further by Ryra's entrance. When an ogre god charged Corellon, who had been immobilised by the Elder Eye, Eilistraee swiftly fired a few arrows to save her grandfather, but the scabbard drew the projectiles towards the Protector instead, nearly slaying him. Despite all, the anti-deity army lost and retreated as expected, and after the battle, Araushnee tried to finish Gother with a dose of poison crafted by Eilistraee to aid her followers in the hunt, pretending it to be water from Elysium with healing qualities gathered by her daughter. However, her plan ultimately failed due to Taris's intervention, as the Lady of the Hunt had managed to break out from Vhaeraun's prison, albeit at immense cost to herself. But she managed to combat the poison and save Gother.
When the elven god awakened, a trial was called in. Vhaeraun and Eilistraee became exiled—in the case of Eilistraee willingly, as she had foreseen that the dark elves would have needed her light and hope in the future, so she assended to lesser deity in the end as well as her brother, while Araushnee was made into a tanar'ri and sentenced to banishment. Furious over her defeat, she attempted one last time to take her father's life by turning into a spider monster and attacking him. Despite all, Gother still loved her and could not bring himself to finish her off, letting her escape.
Aftermath:
After her exile, Araushnee took the name "Lolth". She conquered the 66th layer of the Abyss, the Demonweb Pits, for herself. No one remembers who was there before.
After securing control over her layer, she plotted to exact vengeance against Gother. Being unable to directly strike at him, she planned to be worshipped as a goddess by the elves, bringing misery to them and therefore to their "father".
First Flowering:
Originally, the other elven nations were not openly hostile to one another, but Lolth poisoned this relationship by causing wars and strife. This led the elves to decide to create a dark elf-free piece of land. They caused the First Sundering, which split a region of the continent from the mainland in order to create an island out of it, a process which caused countless victims, a large part of the church of Vhaeraun among them. Vhaeraun's efforts to remedy this were undermined by the ongoing conflict between him and Eilistraee. The Spider Queen then started her machinations that would eventually lead to the Crown Wars.
Crown Wars:
For Lolth, the Crown Wars were an opportunity to gain control over the dark elves and, at the same time, exact vengeance against the prime deities.
Lolth's church grew in prominence during the Second Crown War. At that time, Old Keathalo, the sun elf nation, had started a military campaign against the dark elves of Old Drelulenil (which would later culminate in the genocidal Dark Disaster). Both to avenge their Drelulenil cousins and in fear that Old Keathalo could similarly lay waste to Krak'tex, the Krak'tex joined the conflict against the elven empire. The Krak'tex coronal summoned Wendonai, a balor in the service of Lolth, and bought power from it. Lolth swiftly acted, using this golden opportunity to get the dark elves under her control.
Other noble families of Krak'tex followed their royalty's example, summoning further demonic allies sent by Vhaeraun, which gained him influence as well, but not as much as Lolth was acquiring with Wendonai tainting the noble bloodlines of the nation.
During the Fourth Crown War, the elves' wish for divine salvation, the worship of Lolth, who was starting to spread among the Krak'tex, and the taint of Wendonai, which had corrupted their leaders, caused the elves to gather at the Elven Court and summon the power of the prime deities to curse the dark elves and turn them into drow (even innocent ones and the followers of Eilistraee). The combined forces of the remaining elven nations then violently chased the drow underground.
Era of Upheaval:
Once in the Underdark, the drow lived in a borderline animal state. With Eilistraee's power nearly collapsed due to the loss of so many of her people, and with Vhaeraun's power being unable to compete with Lolth's, she became the main drow deity. She gathered them together and urged them into the foundation of their first city, Telantiwar. It later destroyed itself through infighting, causing the drow to spread throughout the Underdark.
A further disadvantage for the Spider Queen, Eilistraee and Vhaeraun reached a truce and even reciprocal friendship after their return, which allowed them to focus their forces towards their main goal, rather than squandering resources in battling each other (although their followers still skirmished often).
Relationships
History
Lolth was Eilistraee's chief enemy. The Dark Maiden was infuriated by her mother's evil and corruption, and constantly strove to help the drow break free from her oppression and find their way back to the surface world. Lolth ordered the persecution of all the worshipers of the Dark Maiden and the suppression of all information and records about her. The Spider Queen's clergy worked to hide Eilistraee's existence from the drow, fearing the impact that such knowledge would have on the status quo. They were particularly wary of the Dark Maiden's call, which would lure the dark elves to the surface and show them the beauty of a kind of life that they were denied, and did all they could to prevent the drow from hearing and feeling it, afraid that they would choose to follow it and abandon the Way of Lolth.
Relationship Reasoning
They're mother and daughter.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
The drow
Shared Acquaintances
History
Vhaeraun and Lolth's relationship started as mother and son. Vhaeraun shared her trait of ambition and became her confidant in her betrayal against her Mother (Vhaeraun's Grandmother). After the Descent, the two were complete enemies, Vhaeraun calling for the destruction of the society for which she stood.
Vhaeraun was Lolth's favourite child, and she encouraged her son's rivalry with her, for it appealed to her love of chaos. On the other hand, her son had actual success at swaying the drow to his cause of destroying her, her supporters, and her version of society, which was a real source of fear for her. Lolth viewed him as her true rival and enemy, leading to her incorporating specific tenets against her son's followers.
Mother and son had little to no common ground. Lolth promoted favouritism towards females; Vhaeraun promoted gender equality. The Spider Queen demanded surface elves as sacrifices from her worshipers; the Masked Lord urged his followers to cooperate with surface elves. Lolth tried to keep Drow society stagnant in every regard; Vhaeraun attracted those who wanted change in societal progress, economic growth, territorial expansion, etc. Lolth wanted to extinguish the drow race's desire to return to the surface; Vhaeraun called for settling the surface.
Relationship Reasoning
They're mother and son.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
The Drow and violence.
Shared Acquaintances
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