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Originally posted by Fellfire

Masked Lady?!? What about Vhaerun? He got the shaft...twice.

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Originally posted by Thauranil

Then he shouldn't have been arrogant enough to attack Eilistraee in her home plane. I mean seriously what was he thinking?

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Originally posted by Lord Karsus

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Originally posted by Thauranil

Then he shouldn't have been arrogant enough to attack Eilistraee in her home plane. I mean seriously what was he thinking?

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-There's the rub: Do we really think a deity as scheming and whatever else as Vhaeraun really tried to attack Eilistraee head-on, in her own realm? I, personally, believe the hypothesis that he didn't attack her, but actually went to visit her as a means to work out merging in some manner, to present a unified front to either check Lolth's power or stop her permanently.

-In the end, it didn't exactly work out that way (yet), but...

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Originally posted by farinal

Hi everyone!

I have read the War of the Spider Queen with a great love. It's probably my favorite series in the Realms. I both have the Empyrean Odyssey & The Lady Pentient trilogies with me right now and I'll start the Lady Pentient as soon as I finish The Last Mythal trilogy. (It's been like two years since I read any Realms novels so I'm catching up at once with a lot of books right now. lol)

I dislike the 4E and the new lore and still play my games in years 60s or 70s with 3.5E. So my question is if I read The Lady Pentient (sadly I already know some major spoilers about the books) will I be dissapointed? I really like all drow deities and their schemes and fights with each other. I was really excited about this trilogy since I finished the WOTSQ but now I feel like everything I knew and love will get changed in my mind if I read the books and I wouldn't be able to remember previous status-quo of the Dark Seldarine. So what do you think?

I hope I made myself clear. Thanks.

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Originally posted by Lord Karsus

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Originally posted by Thauranil

Then he shouldn't have been arrogant enough to attack Eilistraee in her home plane. I mean seriously what was he thinking?

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-There's the rub: Do we really think a deity as scheming and whatever else as Vhaeraun really tried to attack Eilistraee head-on, in her own realm? I, personally, believe the hypothesis that he didn't attack her, but actually went to visit her as a means to work out merging in some manner, to present a unified front to either check Lolth's power or stop her permanently.
-In the end, it didn't exactly work out that way (yet), but...

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Originally posted by skychrome

I don't know how you feel about it, but the whole Eilistraee and Vhaeraun thing never looked as clear to me as it was supposed to look like. We really won on whom and who presented him/herself as whom?

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Originally posted by Lord Karsus

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Originally posted by skychrome

I don't know how you feel about it, but the whole Eilistraee and Vhaeraun thing never looked as clear to me as it was supposed to look like. We really won on whom and who presented him/herself as whom?

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-Eilistraee/Mask presented itself as Eilistraee/Mask, and nothing more. The Masked Lady was, by and far, the best thing to have come out of that series. And, it's funny too, because the Masked Lady didn't really add too much to either Eilistraee or Vhaeraun. But, smoosh them/their clergies together, and you go from two deities who, going by what they represented, and how, seemed just a little bit off to take 100% fully seriously, to one deity who seemed 'whole'.

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two deities who, going by what they represented, and how, seemed just a little bit off to take 100% fully seriously, to one deity who seemed 'whole'

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Originally posted by skychrome

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Originally posted by farinal

Hi everyone!

I have read the War of the Spider Queen with a great love. It's probably my favorite series in the Realms. I both have the Empyrean Odyssey & The Lady Pentient trilogies with me right now and I'll start the Lady Pentient as soon as I finish The Last Mythal trilogy. (It's been like two years since I read any Realms novels so I'm catching up at once with a lot of books right now. lol)

I dislike the 4E and the new lore and still play my games in years 60s or 70s with 3.5E. So my question is if I read The Lady Pentient (sadly I already know some major spoilers about the books) will I be dissapointed? I really like all drow deities and their schemes and fights with each other. I was really excited about this trilogy since I finished the WOTSQ but now I feel like everything I knew and love will get changed in my mind if I read the books and I wouldn't be able to remember previous status-quo of the Dark Seldarine. So what do you think?

I hope I made myself clear. Thanks.

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Farinal, I recommend to give those books a shot. I really loved them. Maybe not quite as much as WotSQ, which is a really exceptional series, but I liked it a lot, unless you take the major spoilers you already mentioned too serious. There are some fans out there who take those spoilers regarding the gods that serious, that they even rated my amazon review on book 3 as "not helpful", because I said that I liked the book. This FR series has created negative emotions in some people like probably none before. So from a realm shaking point of view the series may suck, but from a novel point of view it is a very good read in my opinion.

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Originally posted by Irennan

Personally, I prefer Eilistraee and Vhaeraun as two separate deities. I like their concept a lot, more than the Masked Lady's, and the 'family' struggle between them and Lolth adds some flavor to the fight over the drow. The only thing I appreciate about the Masked Lady is that she unified Eilistraeeans and Vhaerunites efforts, but i would have liked to see the Dark Maiden and the Masked Lord agreeing to a truce and working together rather than merging.

I understand that it is not too smart of them to fight each other rather than Lolth, but I strongly disagree with you here. IMO they can and should be taken seriously as separate deities, especially if they manage to set aside their grudges and come to some kind of cooperation.

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Eilistraee, for example, was about redeeming the Drow, and yet a full half of the race was marginalized and considered 'less than worthy' by her church- and yet she did nothing.

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Originally posted by Irennan

Yes, I didn't like the fact that males weren't allowed in her clergy. I think it was a mistake from her.

However, where does it say that her priestesses considered males less than worthy? I'm really surprised of reading this to be honest. For the clergy it'd be like going against what their own goddess fights for. And even so, it wouldn't be that Eilistraee's concept doesn't make sense. I'd rather say , at the cost of sounding arrogant, that whoever wrote those things about her priestesses while having the Dark Maiden doing nothing about it wasn't true to her spirit.

Anyway, I still think that such things (like males that can't be clerics) could've been corrected without merging the two deities.

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-As made very clear in the trilogy in question, sexism- maybe too strong a word; anti-male bias- to varying degrees is found in The Promenade, the very heart of Eilistraee's orthodoxy. When Eilistraee and Vhaeraun formed the Dark Maiden, and their churches combined, that tension grew tenfold, though a lot of that had to do with the alignments and outlooks of everyone involved, and not just their sexes. Looking in sources outside of just this book, the very large percentage of females in her clergy, and the infamous ritual in which males must be transformed into females in order to be ordained also point to a church that caters moreso to one sex than the other.

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I was asked to create a “good drow deity” for DROW OF THE UNDERDARK, pertaining to surface-dwelling drow, and I did, deciding to depict her as nurturing mother goddess worshipped through dancing nude under the moonlight (echoing British faery traditions, but seeking to make her seem not capricious, as the faeries are depicted, but non-warlike, non-violent except when protecting “her” mortals). Through her priestesses, Eilistraee aids her faithful in hunting and swordcraft as a way of helping them to survive and flourish in a hostile surface world. She’s not HERSELF depicted as any sort of a huntress; she’s the force that brings a stag into the reach of hungry drow, not the slayer-by-arrows of drow foes.
She can personally be an avenger or protectress, yes (an aspect strengthened in 3rd Edition, not by me), fearsomely wielding the sword she dances with, but owes more to the bard than the huntress.
So you’ve turned to a classical goddess depicted as the huntress, a peerless archer whose shafts never miss (or almost never miss, depending on the tale). This puzzles me; I certainly wouldn’t equate a benevolent nurturing (and fertility, though thanks to the TSR Code of Ethics you have to read between the lines to see this in DROW OF THE UNDERDARK and SILVERFALL, where I certainly wasn’t very subtle about it) goddess with the Queen of the Hunt, the virgin Greek goddess of chastity.
Let’s look more closely at Artemis. In her Roman derivation (Diana), it’s death to a mortal man to see her nude - - but he sees her bathing; she isn’t in that tradition depicted as normally racing about the forests bareskinned. (Some writers do depict all of the classical deities so, which probably has much to do with many of the real-life mortal cities of worshippers having few nudity taboos.) She’s the moon goddess, also goddess of childbirth, wild life, domestic animals, and infants (children just after they are born), as well as being goddess of flocks, and of the chase.
So there are a lot of possible portfolios here that someone TRYING to draw a parallel could catch onto, to try to make their case, but none of them really fit: I created Eilistraee as worshipped under the moon because that’s when she appears, NOT a moon goddess; her only connection to the moon was because drow (who had to stay in the dark to keep any power, in that edition of the D&D game) on the surface could see the moon but Underdark drow could not. Eilistraee has nothing to do with domestic animals or wild life, and her mothering is not of childbirth or the young, but of the WHOLE race (to sustain and strengthen them in their return to the surface). Eilistraee has nothing to do with flocks or the chase, is not virginal, and has nothing to do with chastity."

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One could say that, "Yes, Eilistraee truly doesn't feel that way" and yada, yada, yada, but at the end of the day, what was written is canon, and by canon, Eilistraee allowed whatever- so, clearly, she might. Metagame thinking? Perhaps. But, at the end of the day, either you have dissonance, or it is all rectified by the conclusion that she does allow it, because she doesn't feel the need to change things.

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The concept of Eilistraee, as envisioned by whomever can say one thing, but in execution- canon books- there's some degree of separation

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I don't necessarily dislike that her clergy is more or less an absolutely matriarchy (it is what it is), but in light of what she stands for, I've always felt it somewhat stupid. Her goal was, more or less, to bring Drow- most of whom would have been former followers of Lolth- back into the fold of good. From the point of view of a male Drow who happened to leave Lolthite Drow society behind, coming across yet another strong matriarchal society would be akin to jumping from a fire into a vat of liquid nitrogen. Presenting a face that, upon first glance and a brief cursory inspection, would seemingly push 50% of possible Drow 'escapees' away never seemed a smart idea to me. Vhaeraun, the same thing. Forming a society in which females instead were marginalized and relegated to a 'lesser' status isn't the most effective way to gain former adherents among former Lolthites, 50% of whom might be female.

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plot/subplot that dealt with Eilistraee (or Vhaeraun) acknowledging the issue, deeming it not the most effective way to garner followers, and doing something about it would have been nice

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Originally posted by Irennan

And while I don't know exactly how the Masked Lady acts (though i can figure it), I think that she doesn't have the feeling that Eilistraee and Vhaeraun had separately. Their concepts seem to be too different for a merging and, as I said in my first post, for me the 'family' struggle adds some flavor to the whole thing.
However, it is just a question of preferences here. The thing that matters most is that without them the drows are kind of boring and bland to me.

Again, just my opinion.

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Originally posted by Lord Karsus

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Originally posted by Irennan

And while I don't know exactly how the Masked Lady acts (though i can figure it), I think that she doesn't have the feeling that Eilistraee and Vhaeraun had separately. Their concepts seem to be too different for a merging and, as I said in my first post, for me the 'family' struggle adds some flavor to the whole thing.
However, it is just a question of preferences here. The thing that matters most is that without them the drows are kind of boring and bland to me.

Again, just my opinion.

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-She didn't really do much, as she was around for two whole novels, most of which dealt with her followers or her enemies. I'd disagree, though, that she didn't have the feeling of Eilistraee or Vhaeraun. To me, she felt more like the kind of stereotypical scene in movies where the protagonist gets pushed past his/her limits, and basically throws away all the rules they formerly adhered to- usually accompanied by scenes of hair being cut, new clothing being worn, and other kinds of things designed to convey 'badassery'.

-The Masked Lady felt, to me, like Eilistraee realized that Lolth was setting in motion a chain of events that called for all of the stops to be pulled. Her normal MO would not be enough, and in order to keep up with the threat, she had to become 'darker' (while she did actually become literally darker, I mean it in that 'badassery' way). Conversely, from Vhaeraun's point of view, he realized that his normal MO was more petulant childish and reactive than proactive, and in order to keep up with the threat that Lolth was, he needed to 'settle down' and 'center' himself.

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She could give whatever feeling you want her to, giving it's you doing the interpreting!

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