Lolth Was Framed

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Time for a quick segue into the world of tabletop roleplaying:

Specifically, Forgotten Realms.

More specifically, Lolth.

(Caution: Extreme nerdiness and tedious esoterica ahead.)

Lolth is one of the most famous female characters in all of Dungeons & Dragons. She has been the goto villain for novelists and dungeon masters for over 35 years.

But her character, as depicted, has always fallen flat. She’s a stereotype: a boilerplate femme fatale. A bad guy with only a fraction of the motivation of Gruumsh and only a fraction of the backstory of Cyric. Lolth also serves as a classic straw-woman argument against the evils of feminism and powerful women. She is literally the ruler of the largest Evil Matirarchy™ on the planet, which (if R. A. Salvatore is to be believed) consists mostly of priestesses who spend the majority of their time torturing men, taking off their clothes, and being easily thwarted.

Yet despite all this, Lolth is a very compelling character once you realize one simple fact about her shallow Forgotten Realms backstory:

None of it is true.

The Official History of Lolth

The most salient events in Lolth’s history, namely the War of the Seldarine, occurred over 30,000 years ago. There is no one left who can accurately remember that time outside of the gods, and they have an incentive to keep to the official history as is.

For you see, Lolth wasn’t always the famous Spider Queen that D&D players all know and loathe. She started out life as Araushnee the Weaver,  the Elven goddes of destiny, artisans, and dark-skinned elves (literally!). She was also the lover of the head of the elven pantheon, Corellon, and the mother of two of their children.

Now as far as the accepted history goes, one day Araushnee just, “grew power-hungry and a sense of never-before-seen greed and cruelty entered into her mind” at which point she used her ‘feminine wiles’ to lull Corellon into a false sense of security while hatching various schemey plots to overthrow him. But her plans were discoverd by another elven goddess, Sehanine Moonbow, and ultimately thwarted.

As punishment, Corellon banished Araushnee, along with their two children (while his son Vhaeraun had sided with Araushnee, his daughter Eilistraee was completely innocent in the affair but insisted upon being banished as well), and later all of Araushnee’s dark-skinned elven followers. Corellon also turned Araushnee into a bloated spider, “so that he could not be persuaded by her beauty to reconsider his decision”.

It was only after her horrible transformation and banishment that Araushnee changed her name to Lolth. And it was only after their banishment underground that Araushnee’s dark-skinned followers became known as the Drow.

The Crown Wars

Now, anyone who is remotely world-weary knows that people’s personalities rarely change in such sudden and extreme ways, so it seems rather fishy that Araushnee just turned evil out-of-the-blue after loving Corellon for years and raising two children with him. So what else could possibly explain why Corellon would banish his family into the Abyss? What terrible turn of events could have catalyzed such a horrible action?

As it turns out, there was one other terrible event in the ancient history of the elves that also involved Lolth and the Drow, and that is the Crown Wars.

The Crown Wars were a series of horrific, genocidal wars between the great elven kingdoms that lasted for three millennia and nearly wiped out the entire elven race! These wars were instigated and perpetuated by the brutal conquests of the (light-skinned) sun elf kingdom of Aryvandaar (please don’t ask me for pronunciations of elvish).

Now Aryvandaar kicked off the Crown Wars when they attacked and conquered the green-skinned and dark-skinned elves of Miyeritar, a cultural nexus that was the center of art and high magic on the continent.

Spurred on by the aggressiveness of Aryvandaar (perhaps not to be outdone?), the dark-skinned elves of Ilythiir waged a brutal expansionist war of their own.

This was followed by Aryvandaar (who by this time had literally sought and gained the assistance of devils) continuing their expansion by conquering the kingdom of Shantel Othereier after the sudden and suspicious death of their ruler.

And then things turned genocidal. When Miyeritar rebelled against their oppressors, Aryvandaar retaliated by creating a genocidal killing storm that wiped Miyeritar off the map, turning the entire kingdom into a wasteland. This genocidal act was so horrific that it was given its own name, the “Dark Disaster“.

In response, Ilythiir attacked Aryvandaar with such savagery and atrocities (and demonic magic to boot) that Corellion “unintentionally” banished all dark-skinned elves, not just those of Ilythiir, from all the lands under the sun, forcing them to retreat into the Underdark.

But the exile of all dark-skinned elves (now known as the Drow) from the surface of the planet did not stop the Crown Wars. It was only when Aryvandaar was found responsible for instigating the Crown Wars (by a Corellon-mandated court) that hostilities finally ceased.

And hostilities only really ceased when Aryvandaar contested the court’s decision by literally declaring war on everyone, resulting in their ultimate destruction some 200 years later.

Piecing The Real Story Together

Now the official history of the Crown Wars accuses Lolth of seducing the Ilythiir empire to war, and places the blame for their atrocities squarely on her. But it seems rather odd that an ostensibly treacherous master manipulator would sit idly in banishment for fifteen millennia, only to act in a reactionary manner to a war instigated by others. It also seems rather odd that Lolth, the deity who brought the enemies of the elves closer to victory than anyone has before or since, is today an enemy of all of them.

But what if Lolth’s was never an ally of Gruumsh and the others? What if Lolth’s banishment hadn’t happened the way the official history said it did? What if, instead of being banished 15,000 years earlier, Lolth was actually banished during the Crown Wars at the same time as her followers?

For you see, the Crown Wars were a horrific time for the elven people. And chances are that a war which tore apart the totality of elven society also engulfed their gods as well.

Now I do believe that Lolth came to the aid of Ilythiir, but as Araushnee, and only after the sun elves of Aryvandaar had invaded Miyeritar. And since the sun elves are the self-pofessed Chosen of Corellon, while the dark elves are under the care of Araushnee, the out-of-control, total war between Aryvandaar and Ilythiir would have driven a wedge between Corellon and Araushnee.

Then, at the height of the Crown Wars, plagued by the Dark Disaster (which Aryvandaar claimed was actually the fault of Miyeritar), the fire-bombings of Ilythiir, and the near-destruction of all of elvendom, Corellon went too far and banished all dark elves.

And Araushnee, after openly defying Corellon and refusing to abandon her people, was banished as well, along with their two dark elf children.

And to add to the tragedy, the Crown Wars continued for another thousand years, until Corellon finally ended the brutality of Aryvandaar. But by then it was too late for Corellon to undo the mistakes he had made.

That was 15,000 years ago, and true histories tend to get lost after fifteen millennia and five genocidal wars that nearly drive your people to extinction. And as we all know, history is written by the victors to make their actions seem more just than they actually were.

So yes, I’m telling you that Lolth was framed.

And after aeons, Correllon hooked up with a younger, lighter-skinned goddess named Sehanine Moonbow, who was given a much more noble role in the official history.

Meanwhile, to this day Lolth remains exiled, and her followers remain trapped in the Underdark. But Araushnee is still watching over her much-maligned dark-skinned followers, keeping them alive in one of the harshest environments on the planet, holding back the illithid threat, and holding out for aeons against those who would prefer to have her true story silenced forever.

Yet every now and then, despite millennia of baseless accusations against Loth and endless slander of the drow people, the truth slips through the cracks, and we end up with miraculously-blessed drow heroes like Drizzt Do’Urden (whom many already suspect is actually a blessed chosen of Lolth) and his plucky band of adventurers, who have managed to escape both the confines of the Underdark and the lies and stereotypes that surround drow.

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Forge Your Own Path

Tabletop roleplaying games have an advantage over video games in that, once placed in the capable hands of a creative GM, all the vapid sexism of the sourcebooks can metamorphose into something far more compelling.