Baldur's Gate 3: Why You Shouldn't Worship Lolth!

one of the choices you can make in baldur's gate 3 is to choose whether or not you play one of two types of drow a so-called loath sworn drow or a seldarine trow there might be some people that blithely make the choice of loth sworn drow but do they really know what that choice entails and just how absolutely and thoroughly evil she is lolf is strangely enough one of the more popular deities at least in terms of familiarity when it comes to d d as many people have heard of lolth the spider queen but very few people know just how horrific a goddess she is what she is like and what she does sure the forgotten realms are filled with many evil deities bane loviator char to name a few but few deities can rival loathe in terms of the sheer chaos and malasheen bodies and the near insanity she instills in her followers and worshipers driving them to states of monstrous frenzy for those unfamiliar with her greater story then it might come as a surprise that lolth was in fact a cherished member of the seldarine or elvin pantheon and not just cherished but also the wife of corellon noritian the creator of the elves and was even the mother of his two children elistrae and varam at this time long ago she bore the name arushnay and was the lesser elven goddess of destiny and artisans as well as the patron of dark elves we do not know how long she remained this position or more importantly how sincere her commitment to it was as all the legends tell us is what came after arushnay was dissatisfied with her position as mere consort to corellon and lesser goddess and wanted more and so set about to ensure the fall of her husband and bring about her own ascension to power her very first attempt to ridden herself of her husband manifested itself as her secretly aiding the york god grumpsh in trying to slay karelin by magically altering the scabbard of his sword to shatter the sword when it was drawn hoping that this would leave him vulnerable to the york god but her involvement had been scrutinized by another prominent elven goddess sehanin moonbow who had observed her from afar when casting the magic corellon was indeed wounded but managed to escape despite her encouraging malar the beast lord to attack the god but arushnay was not going to leave it at only one attempt and plan something far greater and deadlier than before her next plan lay in gathering a host of gods into an army gods hostile to the seldarines seeking to unleash this host upon her fellow gods however she knew that this would likely fail as the forces she wished to gather were both insufficiently competent and poorly organized but she was banking on something else all was going according to plan until cehanin accused a rush nay of treachery but with the aid of her son who sought to help his mother she imprisoned her so she could not warn corellon the army of gods she had gathered however was just a front for her true plan which involved further enchanting the already cursed scabbard and giving it back to her husband in the hopes that she might frame her daughter illystre for his death for the scabbard had been so enchanted that when his daughter shot her arrows to defend her father they would magically be drawn to his chest killing him and ensuring that allistre received blame for his death and shielding a rushdie in the process illustrate delivered the scabbard to her father on the eve of battle unwittingly aiding the rush day in her coup things almost went as planned corellon was being attacked by multiple gods and one charged him and so illystrae fired her arrows to save her father but instead of finding their intended target they instead pierced corellon's chest and corellon fell nearly dying despite this the other elven gods were able to rally themselves and succeed in driving off the assailing gods aroshnay then surreptitiously sought to finish off her husband with poison her daughter had used on her hunts but this ultimately failed as seyanin broke free from her prison and joined with two other elven goddesses erdrifenya to become the triune goddess for the first time known as angerod and using their combined might healed karelin and saved him from near certain death in the wake of this a trial was held and a rush day and her children varane and illistry were found guilty of conspiracy to murder and exiled though corellon's daughter who was unwitting in her participation was forgiven and she was allowed to stay despite ultimately choosing exile for the sake of the dark elves who she thought would need a beacon of hope in the future arashnae was stripped of her divinity and turned into a tanari a demon and banished from arvandor the home of the elven gods for all time on accepting of this she transformed into a monstrous spider and attacked karelin but corellon still bound and blinded by his love for her could not end her and thus allowed her to escape having survived and licking her wounds aroshnay gave up this name and instead took the name lolth she journeyed to the only place in the universe that she found suitable the abyss the plane of absolute chaos and evil and although no longer a goddess was still very powerful and she conquered the 66th layer of the abyss other powers opposed her but she overcame the mao through deception cunning and outright strength and she quickly set herself to the task of increasing her power base with a long-term goal of exacting vengeance on her former husband but being much weaker than corellon loth realized that the best way to get back at him was to hurt him indirectly by manipulating and harming his children the elves long ago in pre-ancient times an elf called catheria amarillis sought her lover in the abyss as he had been dragged into it via portal by a demon having to travel through the demon web pits the name of lost lair and lol's realm loth became aware of the world of toril and sensed its potential as a power base for worship and regaining her divinity as she quickly took note that her son varon had already gained a foothold in a realm called illithir a realm dominated by dark elves loth observed the ambition and brutality of the illa theory and admiring it sought a way to attract their worship she hatched a plan that would take millennia to come to fruition but was ultimately responsible for the downfall of the dark elves lolf observed one archmage and leader of the elother in particular one named carnalist a fierce and cruel man and seduced him to her worship and even temporarily took him as her consort and over the subsequent centuries lol succeeded in poisoning the illithi beyond their own natural ruthlessness and over time reacquires her divinity leading the dark elves ever further down the path of corruption and corrupt them she did during the crown wars a series of wars that would splinter and forever change the elven landscape of firoon the illatheria began to openly court with demons summoning the powerful bailor wendunai a servant of lulth who further tainted the dark elves and brought them nigh fully under her control more time pass and thoth through her servant and her own machination succeeded in bringing many more dark elves under her sway so much so that the other elves beleaguered and at their limit prayed to their gods to curse the dark elves for their evil and corruption which resulted in the final banishment of the dark elves from the surface of the underdark and the rebranding of the dark elves is drow an event that could be laid at the feet of none other than lolth herself as was her desire as she ultimately sought to both accumulate power but above all to bring low the seldarine and their children the elves by corrupting the dark elves and forcing them by way of the elven gods intervention to be cursed to forevermore bedrow lolth at least in part achieved her goal of harming corellon and his children creating a wound and rift that does not heal to this day and likely never will i realize i may not have as yet painted a sufficiently accurate picture of just how bad lolth is as this has been just a brief history and what is a little bit of corruption and betrayal after all but love might actually possibly be the worst and cruelest deity in all faerun and on some accounts insane lolth revels in mayhem cruelty death and wanton destruction not only enjoying these things but thriving on them as they ultimately make her stronger she delights in causing suffering both personally and through manipulation and her malice and evil run so deep that at times they exceed the expectations of those already familiar with it invariably surprising those familiar with ever greater deaths of depravity and perhaps worst of all is the fact that loath is only consistent in her capriciousness and unpredictability thus making it impossible to know beforehand what her intentions are other than that they will be horrific and malevolent wealth is in this sense despite not being native to the plane truly a creature of the abyss as chaotic and evil as they come and as any demon inhabiting it and perhaps in some respects even more so valve maintains an iron grip on drow society and her whims and desires determine virtually all aspects of drow civilization and that which she cannot control whether directly or through her priesthood is utterly destroyed as she recognizes only two states for other sentient beings service to her capricious whim or destruction as a reflection of her view of the universe and also partly to spite her former husband lolth has established an absolute matriarchy among the drow and drow society is dominated by the priesthood of wealth and males wield very little power and influence and survive by the whims of the priesthood of wealth and by ingratiating themselves to powerful females to quote the famous rebel drow and ranger drist who escaped the cruelty of lols webb to illustrate the point station is the way of wealth the ambition she bestows to further the chaos to keep her drow children along their appointed course of self-improvement children pawns more likely dancing dolls for the spider queen puppets of the imperceptible but impervious strands of her web all climb the spider queen's ladders all hunt for her pleasure and all fall to the hunters of her pleasure and few know and understand the cruelty of the spider queen as well as wrist who was subject to it from his very first day of life and until he left the city of his birth menzer baranson and even beyond as the vengeance of love is never ending for refusing to kill an elf child his house house doerden lost the favor of lolth which could only be regained by sacrificing his father zachneffane who was ritually murdered and raised as an undead creature a zincarla or spirit wraith under the control of drist's own mother a priestess of loth sent to kill her own son for daring not to murder a child and this is all standard fair and protocol under the rulership of wealth whereas an evil deity such as bane might very well be a tyrant and demand absolute obedience his lawful nature ensures both progression stability within a hierarchy an evil deity such as bane is reliable but within lolsweb it is just an illusion for no one retains the favor of the spider queen for long and i'll eventually fall from her graces as such despite its chaotic nature drow society is unusually stagnant under the domination of lulth who continues to spin her web and weave grand plans stringing all along she can manipulate his pawns and destroying those she cannot and i say all this to point out how truly and incomprehensibly awful lolth is to the point where no matter how evil you might be no amount of service to her cause would ever spare you her wrath and you are guaranteed to lose her favor it's not a question of if but when it is her nature to betray all but herself and that includes all who worship her indeed above all those who worship her and those who follow her are just shooting themselves in the foot and assuredly suffer far worse than mere failure of course this is just my opinion but i for one could never ever follow lult even when playing an evil character simply because she's so depraved and so fickle that no reward other than my ultimate failure or worse would be guaranteed but would you take the chance and choose to follow such an utterly malevolent capricious and possibly insane deity even as you know what her nature is and what awaits you in this sense i have to say in the context of baldur's gay three even if i chose to play an evil drow i would invariably play a so-called seldorine trout because at the very least in this manner i'm not guaranteed to be destroyed as always thank you for tuning in please leave a like comment share and subscribe as it really helps out the channel and i'll check you out next time take care

Channel: Spell&Shield

Views: 114,333

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Id: ZdT93bpGs0o

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 23 2022