Ardad Lili (Ar-dad Li-li)
The End of Innocence - LE female Queen of the Night of seduction, snakes, and women
A being who engenders deliberately coaxed fear and misunderstanding among mortals and mixed admiration and loathing among celestials, Ardad Lili is a plotter, an unparalleled manipulator, and a dark queen of unique ambition. Most mortals think of her as a seducer—a figure of feminine predation who can corrupt victims by her very touch. However, the specter of a lustful serpent-queen is a carefully cultivated, millennia-old campaign of Ardad Lili’s aimed at bringing down her former celestial brethren. They never believed that she could become as powerful as she has, and now she shoves their noses in her glorious infamy.
In the time when mortals were young, Ardad Lili was an angel from Nirvana tasked with visiting the Material Plane and inspiring nascent poets, sculptors, and songwriters on behalf of Shelyn, a then-minor deity. As time wore on, Ardad Lili became distinctly aware that many of her earthly assignments harbored feelings of lust toward her angelic form—particularly foolish youths, who clearly thought themselves worthy of her despite the fact that she was immortal and they were not. Ardad Lili grew to hate these smug mortals and soon burned with disgust for all mortals with their pathetic and shallow egos.
Over time, the jaded angel formulated a plan. She continued her work as a muse, but she began coaxing mortals into swearing fealty and their undying souls to her in exchange for what she called a “stainless caress.” Usually, the pledge of allegiance came with Ardad Lili giving absolutely nothing in return, as she made long-term promises she never intended to keep, while prayers to her rose into Nirvana in droves. Those mortals who proved too virtuous
to make the pledge or who bored her, she simply killed. As Ardad Lili grew in power, she shared her manipulative ways with other disgruntled angels of inspiration, and she plotted to overthrow Nirvana’s lords and carve out her own place of absolute rulership in the realm.
Eventually, the servitor of Shelyn known as Phoenix Tail appeared to Ardad Lili—without authorization from Shelyn—to ask what her end goal was, censure her selfserving behavior, and declare that she was but a speck in the hosts of Nirvana, destined for obscurity. Quietly incensed but not yet strong enough to take on the servitor and his allies, Ardad Lili responded by gathering her own supporters and fleeing during the Exodus to Avernus, where she knew she could come up with a logical plan. Nirvana became deeply divided between those who abhorred Ardad Lili’s power-hungry ways and those who admired her ingenuity and initiative.
Meanwhile, word of her deeds had spread—exaggerated, extrapolated, and sometimes outright fabricated—on the Material Plane. Where admiring celestials had called her a Queen of the Night, after she proved her ability to exact declarations of ardor from foolish, arrogant mortals to whom she appeared under the stars, some on Golarion called her a Whore Queen, the End of Innocence, and She of the Forked Tongue, attaching their strange and hateful obsession with vilifying sensual women to the fallen angel, who wielded her powers like a knife. For her part, Ardad Lili found the monikers hilarious, and the powerhungry queen played to them as she developed new and even more vicious ways to bring worshipers to her side.
Even now, the self-styled Serpent Muse basks in her Avernus home—quite ironically named the Stainless Caress— gathering an army of damned souls, foolish mortals, fallen angels, erinyes
handmaidens, and like-minded female devils, waiting for the day she can invade Nirvana and twist its deluded servants into her dark likeness. Far more creative than the pedestrian devils who take Hell’s patriarchal hierarchy seriously, Ardad Lili wishes to rule not a layer of Hell, but a corner of the heavens themselves.
Of the four Queens of the Night, Ardad Lili is the least monstrous and most human in appearance. She appears as a beautiful, dark-skinned woman, and she favors the colors green and white. Her only diabolic feature is her wings, which feature long, slithering snake tails instead of feathers. Despite this unsettling cosmetic feature, her wings allow her swift and graceful flight. She prefers to leave the grisly details of battle to her minions (of which she has countless), but if she’s forced to fight, her slender ivory-bladed dagger is capable of inflicting unusually painful and deadly wounds.
Of course, Ardad Lili prefers to turn would-be enemies into loyal allies via magic or her silver tongue.
Children
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