Let's see this one added to the schedule. Including a Priestess of Lloth PrC!
Let's see this one added to the schedule. Including a Priestess of Lloth PrC!
It's tempting, but on the other hand, I think Lolth might be handily covered already by the forthcoming Drow book from WotC. Plus I'd honestly like to see more coverage given to the human gods of the Grayhawk pantheon first, before moving into any of the demihuman gods. But that's just my perspective.
And because I have nothing else to do on this particular saturday night, here's some comments on Lloth versus Lolth, in story format.
***
El'ziira screamed out of the final words of her incantation, feeling the powerful summoning magic build within her body like the intoxicating rush of centuries old mushroom wine. The power grew and grew before finally it erupted from her lips as a gust of wind to make the candles that ringed her summoning circle flare, flicker, and finally die.
The room grew colder and she watched, wide-eyed as the curls of smoke took on the forms of dancing, cavorting figures, tiny devils of smoke and shadow.
This is it the priestess thought, the tome was correct. A ceremony to summon an aspect of the Spider Queen herself. With a tangible fragment of their goddess to lead and inspire them, the drow under her command would reign supreme over their corner of the thousand caverns.
The smoke cleared and a low, rumbling inhalation filled the room.
"Hail Lloth!" El'ziira shouted as the figure took form.
"Damnit!" A bestial voice called out from the circle. "Where in the Oinoloth's name am I this time?!"
El'ziira blinked. Standing there in her summoning circle was not an aspect or avatar of the Spider Queen, but a powerfully muscled, winged, four-armed fiend with a vaguely dog-like head. Smoldering eyes narrowed and locked with her own, and then the fiend began to mutter and lapse into a string of soft explatives.
"Again with you drow!" The nycaloth complained. "What is wrong with you mortals?"
"But you are not... I mean..."
The 'loth held up one hand to silence her. "No. Seriously. Does living in the dark make your eyesight so poor that you constantly, CONSTANTLY, must screw up the names of what you try to summon."
"You are not Lloth." El'ziira hissed with disappointment. She had no avatar of her goddess, she just had a surly fiend.
"No I'm not." The 'loth replied, leaning forwards to the edge of the circle. "And neither is Lolth you mortal dolt. There's a difference between Lolth and 'loth. One is some rather bitter chick that got dumped rather publically by Corellon Larethian, and the latter is a nickname for the best type of fiends."
"What blasphemy do you speak?!" The drow demanded.
Seiromoth the Eater of Mustevals rolled his eyes. "EMO goddess versus Manifest Evil. What is so hard about this to understand?"
The drow broke into hysterics at that point and the 'loth started mocking her even more.
"I'm a 'loth, short for Yugoloth. Your silly little deity is named Lolth, not Lloth. So guess what genius? Since the pronunciation is the same it screws up summonings!"
Seiromoth clapped two hands to his cheeks and gave a mock look of astonishment, and the drow was by that point kicking over candles and ranting, lost in her own little world of drow-drama.
"So now that you've called me here, what am I supposed to do? Not a very comfy summoning circle. What do you have to pass the time around here? And shouldn't you be off summoning a glabrezu to... you know... and because Tanar'ri gossip incessently, I heard from Glorfogoth of Abyssm that drow were overrated. Just saying. Do you have any larvae? Because I'm kinda hungry. And..."
***
Don't let this happen to you. You might be trying to summon the Demon Queen of Spiders, but you too might end up summoning a cranky and wise-cracking greater yugoloths instead. Spare yourself this fate. It's Lolth, not Lloth.
This has been a public service message from the Gehenna Public Awareness Council. The more you know. *little flying star thingy*
I'm fairly certain that when Lolth appeared in Menzoberranzan during the Time of Troubles she specifically did so in order to correct the spelling and pronunciation of her name. As proof of this, I'll offer that since her appearance at that time, every dark elf in Faerun seems to be able to spell and pronounce her name as "Lolth." Its amazing the impact of a god inspired grammer lesson.
On a more serious note, there is a PrC for a priestess of Lolth, the Arachne, in Faiths and Pantheons, on page 183.
I'm going to print that beautiful peice of prose out and put it on my wall.
But, as not to flame anymore, I can't spell rouge (or rogue or whatever the hell it is) for the life of me.
Oh, please, not Lolth! Aside from the limited usefulness of an article about a monster god, I doubt the author could come up with anything that doesn't contradict or repeat what's been written a million times already about the most tediously overdone deity and the implausible society of her worshippers. Buy the upcoming drow book if you like, and keep that nonsense out of Dragon. I'd rather see Core Beliefs: Laogzed.
I'm going to have to cast my vote to not have a Lloth or Lolth or whatever spider queen of the over-dramatized dark elves is calling herself these days.
I love the Core Beliefs articles. I think that since since the Drow Deity is not listed as one of the Core Deities (that is, not int he PHB3.5, I understand that yes, she is in the GH pantheon) presidence is set that those listed should be taken care of first.
Granted, I also personally feel that after the rest of the Core Deities are covered (which I think at this point would be Corellon Larethian, Ehlonna, Erythnul, Fharlanghn, Garl Glittergold, Gruumsh, Heironeous, Hextor, Kord, Moradin, Nerull, Obad-Hai, St. Cuthbert, and Yondalla) they should move to the Deities listed in the Eberron setting, rather than to the lesser deities of GH.
Now, considering that there's 3-4 monthes between Core Beleifs articles, and 13-14 more deities listed . . . That's 3.25 to 4.5 years before they'd move out of the PHB for deities.
Er, uhm . . . guess I got off on a bit of a tangent. But please, no Drow Gods please.
I think the whole point of Eberron and their gods is that you don't know many details about them, and Faiths of Eberron has to do with the actual religions of Eberron and how the churches operate, so I don't think it would make much sense to move on to them.
Even though I'm a FR fan first and foremost, the point of Core Beliefs seems to be to cover the "core" pantheon, which means more or less Greyhawk's, so I'm good with that. That having been said, I'd almost be kind of interested in seeing the differences between Corellon, Grummsh, and Lolth (to name a few) and their churches in Greyhawk as opposed to Faerun.
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I'd welcome an article detailing the original concept of drow worship: slut demonolaters, with a certain affinity for Lolth but switching to the Elder Elemental God and other demon lords such as Graz'zt as whim and expedience takes them. This is at least as attractive a set-up as the Realms-derived drow pantheon.
Rather than Laogzed, I think the equivalent deity to Lolth -- introduced at the same time but not cursed by the fetishization of the drow -- would be Blibdoolpoolp.
I completely agree both on Blidool-Bilidb-Blidbolo-HER and Laogzed.
About Lolth... I liked her much more when she wasn't a goddess. ^_^
Please, keep her out of those excellent articles. ;-)
Unfortunately, all the people who want to write an article on the drow deity would first have to get into a huge argument about whether to spell it "Lolth" or "Lloth".