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Originally posted by Bracho Bugental

Oh, and don’t forget Pathfinder’s Eldest – Count Ranalc, The Lantern King, The Lost Prince, Magdh, Ng the Hooded, or the trans-temporal Shyka the Many – awesome and very easy to incorporate into your own campaign.

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Originally posted by Irennan

Eilistraee

She chose to give up on all she could have wanted, face a path full of hardships that she had foreseen and that she feared, only out of love to her people. She found herself alone, fighting forces far greater than her. She suffered defeats, was wounded by the very people that she loved, was broken by grief and loss, and by seeing all that she had fought to build, destroyed.

Yet, as I read about her, the first thing that strikes me is that not only Eilistraee didn't steer from the path that she had chosen to walk for people, but that battling her wounds and sadness taught to see and nurture the beauty, or the potential for it, in everything--even where no one else would look: in the broken, in the abandoned, the forsaken, in the darkest places. As someone who has gone (and is still going through) depression, "melancholy" is a tough opponent, and I simply love that Eilistraee fights hers by striving to heal and create beauty, and by trying to look for chances to enjoy and share it at every opportunity. She continues to dance and sing; to heal, create, and to look for the joy that the world has to offer in all its aspects, even the most mundane--for life is too full of pain to let chances for laughter go to waste. She latches on to what can appear like small things--like creating music, cooking tasty food, being subtly impish/irreverent (she's often described like this), or making someone else happy--and to the act of sharing it with others. It's poignant IMO, because this is her anchor to go through all she had to endure; it's what she built herself on. Creating beauty and spreading this joy that she learned to find, reopening the eyes of her people (or of all those who suffer) to it, make them smile, is what gives her the strength to wake up every morning; she bets herself on the potential of all this, and on the fact that her people, after all, do want to be "seduced" by it. It's her identity at this point.

Which leads to the other part of the character that makes me like her so much--her interaction with the drow. Setting aside her role as a nurturing mother, and the paractical help that she gives the to thrive in a hostile world, to her, the drow are the result of lifelong abuse and neglect from those who should have loved them the most. She knows and feels that, because she's chosen to be one of them, to share their fate. And for that, she also sees the part of them that was silenced by hatred and strife, their potential. Her way of awakening it and healing the abuse is (aside from taking the role of the nurturing mother they never had) to lure the drow out of their prison, to seduce them to embark on a journey to see and marvel at what life actually can be--in short, empowering them to find and pursue beauty in their own life, in the way it best fulfills them. It can't be differently for Eilistraee, because of what I said above--she knows how that abuse feels, and latching onto that beauty, creating it for herself like for others, is what she herself did to rise from her own grief and to rebuild herself; it's only logical that she feels that it can help the drow do the same and be reborn.

As for other gods I enjoy, there's Shaundakul, Selune, Mask, Vhaeraun. Mystra too, because of her intimate connection with the Weave, which is unlike any other deity of magic, but she needs to be left the hell alone for a long time. I'd add deities like Oghma and Sune too, but they're quite standard deities of knowldege and love, so they don't strike me as particularly interesting in that regard. Shelyn from PF is a better characterized deity of love than Sune is, for example, IMHO.

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Originally posted by Delnyn

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Originally posted by Irennan

Eilistraee

She chose to give up on all she could have wanted, face a path full of hardships that she had foreseen and that she feared, only out of love to her people. She found herself alone, fighting forces far greater than her. She suffered defeats, was wounded by the very people that she loved, was broken by grief and loss, and by seeing all that she had fought to build, destroyed.

Yet, as I read about her, the first thing that strikes me is that not only Eilistraee didn't steer from the path that she had chosen to walk for people, but that battling her wounds and sadness taught to see and nurture the beauty, or the potential for it, in everything--even where no one else would look: in the broken, in the abandoned, the forsaken, in the darkest places. As someone who has gone (and is still going through) depression, "melancholy" is a tough opponent, and I simply love that Eilistraee fights hers by striving to heal and create beauty, and by trying to look for chances to enjoy and share it at every opportunity. She continues to dance and sing; to heal, create, and to look for the joy that the world has to offer in all its aspects, even the most mundane--for life is too full of pain to let chances for laughter go to waste. She latches on to what can appear like small things--like creating music, cooking tasty food, being subtly impish/irreverent (she's often described like this), or making someone else happy--and to the act of sharing it with others. It's poignant IMO, because this is her anchor to go through all she had to endure; it's what she built herself on. Creating beauty and spreading this joy that she learned to find, reopening the eyes of her people (or of all those who suffer) to it, make them smile, is what gives her the strength to wake up every morning; she bets herself on the potential of all this, and on the fact that her people, after all, do want to be "seduced" by it. It's her identity at this point.

Which leads to the other part of the character that makes me like her so much--her interaction with the drow. Setting aside her role as a nurturing mother, and the paractical help that she gives the to thrive in a hostile world, to her, the drow are the result of lifelong abuse and neglect from those who should have loved them the most. She knows and feels that, because she's chosen to be one of them, to share their fate. And for that, she also sees the part of them that was silenced by hatred and strife, their potential. Her way of awakening it and healing the abuse is (aside from taking the role of the nurturing mother they never had) to lure the drow out of their prison, to seduce them to embark on a journey to see and marvel at what life actually can be--in short, empowering them to find and pursue beauty in their own life, in the way it best fulfills them. It can't be differently for Eilistraee, because of what I said above--she knows how that abuse feels, and latching onto that beauty, creating it for herself like for others, is what she herself did to rise from her own grief and to rebuild herself; it's only logical that she feels that it can help the drow do the same and be reborn.

As for other gods I enjoy, there's Shaundakul, Selune, Mask, Vhaeraun. Mystra too, because of her intimate connection with the Weave, which is unlike any other deity of magic, but she needs to be left the hell alone for a long time. I'd add deities like Oghma and Sune too, but they're quite standard deities of knowldege and love, so they don't strike me as particularly interesting in that regard. Shelyn from PF is a better characterized deity of love than Sune is, for example, IMHO.

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I was less than impressed in her portrayal and the portrayal of her worshippers in the Lady Penitent suite of books. The books utterly disregarded the points you illustrated and made her come across as merely less-cruel-than-Lolth. my two coppers. Others may vehemently disagree.

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Originally posted by CorellonsDevout

Yeah, Elaine Cunningham's work paints Eilistraee in a much better (and more accurate) light.

Where is this Q'arlynd thread?

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