Wondering about The Goddess of the Underdark and Queen of Spiders?
Here is an easy breakdown of Lolth Spider Queen 5e Easily Explained!
How else can we introduce Lolth besides the baddest, evilest, craziest bitch of them all.
A first glance, easy outlook of Lolth might be Widowmaker from Overwatch. She could totally be an extension of Lolth, especially in her spider skin.
Here is a breakdown of Lolth Spider Queen 5e Easily Explained, the lore, the situation and the chaos.
Why Though : The Lore
They say Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…
Once upon a time, in a realm far, far away, there was a queen goddess with a loving husband and two beautiful twin babies. They lived in a beautiful home in the high forest of Arvandor in the realm of Arborea (right next door to Aphrodite and Zeus).
Ages passed and our good queen Araushnee (Lolth’s initial name) got extremely bored with her life. She turned to QAnon forums and Forbes magazine to fill her boredom, but this only made her start to question the way things were and want to seize power for herself! She started obsessing over secret theories while seeing secret (non-existent) codes everywhere!
Naturally, she had a full-blown mid-life crisis worth going viral over and contacted the Orc God Cruumsh during the War of the Seldarine (some war, who cares). She convinced him that she would help him kill her husband by putting her heart and soul (not literally) into a sheath for her husband’s sun sword that would make it shatter before the fight with Gruumsh.
Unfortunately, her husband was probably cheating with some floozy goddess named Sehanine, who knew about the scabbard tampering and thwarted the plans! Saving Correllian and ratting out Araushnee in the process.
After that fail, Lolth wandered the plains in secret looking for another god who would be able to do the dirty deed. But she stayed with her husband and kiddos for the time being.
She tried a few more times, once with Malar, another time with a huge army of elven enemies, she even tried to turn her own daughter into a scapegoat for the murder. With every fail, she grew more and more hateful of her husband and his new lady friend.
When Lolth was so close to finally getting that sweet sweet victory, that floozy stepped in again and saved him. This time at the idiocy of her son not being able to imprison her. In a rage, Araushnee turned into a giant spider monster and tried to attack again. She was unsurprisingly defeated, but her husband still loved her and couldn’t bring himself to kill her and instead let her escape into banishment.
She then became Lolth, the crazy bitch we know and love today.
That Booty: Her Appearance
A back-end made straight out of Pixar
If Lolth is starting to give you Ex-GF vibes, you should probably be concerned for your life. But in reality, a big part of why she gets away with a lot of the shit she does is because she is pretty sexy and is not afraid to show some skin. She also prefers when her priestesses and followers are naked, and sometimes if they wear clothes, she will straight up burn them off.
Lolth will either have black, red or purple vibes, those are definitely her brand colours and is rarely, if ever, seen in anything else (maybe silver).
Clothing generally has a lace/spider web vibe mixed with S&M.
Anything revealing or chain-focused is right up her alley. This also makes her a pretty great cos-play option for ladies looking to get lots of attention at Comicon (not that dnd and comics are really related).
A great example is this outfit by Caverna Obscura, for $599 you too could look like Lolth.
But in reality, she looks more like a giant spider with a female human torso. This is what is widely accepted as her “true form”. But she can also go full spider (black widow), or full human female (covered in spiders), depending on the situation.
The Situation: Worshipping Lolth
Why the drow follow Lolth
On top of being super hot, Lolth is super scary. And she is obsessive… and VERY involved in the daily lives of the Drow. If you are born a woman, you get the chance of becoming a priestess (check out some of the crazy things they have to do). If you are a male, you just live a shit life and hope to get by.
The majority of Drow follow Lolth simply because they don’t know another way. They were created when Lolth originally tried to kill her husband (the first time).
They just kind of rose up out of his downed blood, like daisies!
Correllian had no real interest in them and just basically told them to figure it out on their own.
She felt like she needed to guide them into living life the way she wanted them to and started to heavily influence the way they live their lives.
There are some basic rules for following lolth, including:
- Women are #1, men are similar to livestock or tools
- Absolutely no worshipping other gods/goddesses
- Dont even think about other ways of life
- Pass tests and do Lolth’s bidding or die.
- Chaos is life.
That basically sums it up.
The twin children who were banished with her after her multiple failed murder attempts are also deities drow may choose to follow, but Lolth abandons those drow completely and will try to kill them if possible. She considers her children inept and anyone who follows them are the same and deserve to die.
Some other races besides Drow that might follow Lolth are aranea, chitine, draegloths and deep dragons, but not all by any means.
Chaos or Order?
Ironically Lolth loves chaos but has an order to her following
How the number of worshippers stays up high enough to sustain her goddess level is beyond me, especially with the lack of babies Drow are inclined to have.
Lolth drives her worshippers into heavy infighting under the pretense of “culling the weak” while her actual goal is to keep as much control as possible. They can’t fight back if they are organized! The key to any healthy relationship really.
Clerics
All-female, they go through crazy trials and tribulations to gain favour with Lolth and gain their own power
Militant Myrlochar
All-male, one of the few uses a male has, fight to protect the matriarch until they die. Occasionally used for mating.
Handmaidens of the Spider Queen
All-female crusaders, also called “Daughters of the Yochlol“, they have no city alignment and are basically used like Hades uses the Kraken in “Clash of the Titans”. When an entire city needs to be brought back into line, these scary warriors come in and make it happen.
“Great Goddess, Mother of the Dark, grant me the blood of my enemies for drink and their living hearts for meat. Grant me the screams of their young for song, grant me the helplessness of their males for my satisfaction, grant me the wealth of their houses for my bed. By this unworthy sacrifice I honor you, Queen of Spiders, and beseech of you the strength to destroy my foes.”
– A secret sacrificial prayer in Abyssal known only to high priestesses
Where is Lolth now?
Besides your nightmares..
Technically according to lore, she has been somewhat defeated and is at the moment travelling around trying to get her forces in order to make another attempt at being the multi-worlds greatest threat. But before that, she could be located in the Demonweb pits.
This was originally the 66th layer of the abyss, but lord knows Lolth couldn’t be happy with such a low number, so now it’s her own plane. There is a giant iron fortress there where she resides, it originally belonged to Selvetarm (Lolths grandson) until he got taken out by some do-gooder adventurer sent by the original floozy. Then Lolth was the sole ruler there until he came back to life 100 years later.
Or if you are a dungeon master and want to find her somewhere else, you absolutely can, she travels all over the place looking for ways she can take over and spread her chaos.
This concludes Lolth Spider Queen 5e Easily Explained.
There is loads of lore on Lolth, we will slowly cover it all!
Sources:
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lolth
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Arvandor
https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Lolth
