Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Heh. It's further complicated by the fact that, in 4th edition core cosmology, Corellon himself is emphatically not good-aligned (although he's still good in FR). Heck, if you wanted to, you could easily cast Lolth as the wronged party in the conflict without it contradicting the core fluff (though even I didn't go quite that far in my setting).

This moral ambiguity among deities in 4th is something WotC seem to have consciously created. For example, there's an article that makes it clear Bane really does genuinely see himself as a good-guy, despite being essentially the god of fascism. And one of Vecna's cults puts out propaganda that casts him as a Jesus figure.

If i may add some 'official' background, from 2nd edition Demihuman Deities and the Evermeet novel by Cunningham, the story goes somehow like this:

Corellon is in love with Araushne (the future Lolth), who becomes his consort, and together they have two children, Eilistraee and Vhaerun. At some point, Araushne is not content with the portfolio assigned to her (dark elves and weaving) and, desiring to be the ruler of elfkind, sabotages Corellon's sword when he is out battling Gruumsh. Still Corellon triumphs and does not notice (or, it is implied, denies to notice) that his sword 'malfunction' could be his wife's doing. Then at some point, Araushne who cannot wait any more to get the power for herself organizes an invation of Arvandor that would make her its Queen. She attacks Corellon with Vhaerun as her aide, and frames her daughter Eilistraee for the attempted murder, hoping to do away with both unwanted husband and annoying daughter (yes, it is copied from the Atreides tragedy). Still Angharhad, the trinity godess, intevenes, saves Corellon and exposes Araushne. Corellon curses his former lover, sentencing her to the abyss, and his son and daughter with her. Eilistraee proves her innocence but choses to remain in exile so she can help dark elves find their way back to the light.

In the book Araushne, once exposed, argues that Corellon patronized her, and restricted her, a fact he vehemently denies. I have to say, her speech made for a good argument (weaving? Come on!), but given that she tried to frame her own daughter and inivited orcs inside Arvandor, her portrait as a wronged potofeminist lost some of its lustre...I assume her insanity did evolve out of loosing her looks and residing in the abyss, but she was never a role model or even a neutral figure to begin with.

And, again, that story only applies within the FR setting.

In the 4th edition core setting, Lolth was originally the goddess of Fate (the weaving thing being a metaphor). The Fate domain does not seem compatible with a chaotic evil alignment to me, but rather lawful neutral or true neutral ('unaligned' as it's called in 4th). At some point since she left Arvandor, Lolth lost the Fate domain to the Raven Queen, which could be indicative of her alignment change.

I've always disliked the FR version of Lolth. It feels to me like whoever was writing it had just had a bad break-up with a wife/girlfriend and decided to create a fictional character to take out his frustrations on. (Seriously, a beautiful, evil, manipulative bitch who exists only to make her husband/boyfriend's life a misery and keeps trying to steal his stuff? And she's a man-hating straw feminist to boot? Somebody has issues! ) Also, as a writer, it always slightly annoys me to see evil characters with no real motivation for their malice.

It's been mentioned somewhere that the good-evil allignment thing is a Manichean "Christian" import into fantasy settings. If you read Greek mythology, for example, you see all kind of characters being punished not for being really evil, in some cases like Prometheus for being arguably good, but for daring to challenge the order of things, for offending Zeus or some other super-powerful god.

Like in real life, where you can end up in jail or even executed for robbing a piece of bread out of hunger or having an "immoral" but sincere love affair, while white collar criminals and "moral" rapists get away normally with no punishment whatsoever.

While I do make some sense of the Chaos-Law dychotomy (though in Chaos theory, order is just a accidental state of Chaos), I really have a problem swallowing the "Good-Evil" one, to be honest. As Rich wrote in some early strip, the difference is that the good guys only pretend not to like such things. Or as the goblin shaman said: "they outevil us". In other words: goodness or mere hypocrisy?

The Law v Chaos stuff is, of course taken from Moorcock's Eternal Champion books. In one of them (possibly The King of Swords) two powerful beings agree to destroy the gods of Chaos for the champion (Corum, if K of S). As an unwanted favour they destroy those of Law too. I wonder whether Moorcock had in mind Bakunin's twist on Voltaire that if God existed we would have to abolish him.

Lolth was the godess of Fate in the FR setting too, it's mentioned in the same book described above. And Honestly, Lolth's MO sounds like that of a succubus given more power but stuck working her charms on someone with vastly more power than her. And Lolth does have a few valid points, twisted though they may be from her perspective.

I will agree that the Good-Evil dichotomy is somehow rushed, but this is a fantasy world, and it can be ussful to illustrate a struggle.
For example, if you take Tolkien, the elves did some nasty things to each other but if you put then next to Sauron there is no comparison, no real grey areas. In that way, you can identify with the protagonists, who due to their background remain interesting -but ultimately good. Same thing in a game, you have to have creatures and even people clearly designated as Evil to excuse the killing that is part of the game. Even in real life, during times were life was cheap (medieval times or even the Rennaisance) the rulers had to paint the enemy as heretical, satanic even, to be able to send their subjects to war. So i for one am not annoyed when Lolth is given little motivation for being evil: in a fantasy game, manichaistic views facilitate the flow of the story. Of course, this is not an excuse not to flesh out motives, or to build two dimensional villains, and not all the antagonists need to be evil. Even Milton made his Satan a rounded and in the end likable character, even if he remains the villain of the story. But if you give the players Jeanne Valjeanne to fight, they are not very likely to enjoy winning.
As for Lolth, i agree Cunningham went a bit too far, but it is not as if other characters were better fleshed out: as is common in stories where gods are the protagonists, everyone came out as a bit of one dimensional. I for one was reminded of the Lilith story (the dark mistress who wants more power is cast out of Eden) but her Lolth lacked the allure that made Lilith a likable figure in the end. Shar is a much better example of how to build a dark goddess that is ultimately seen as necessary and even attractive to the average person.

I am always seeing things from a 2nd and 3rd edition perspective, of course . Still haven't played the 4th.

I still think she works best as a Medea figure. Or Hera, if you'd rather. Hell hath no fury, etc.

Medea and Hera were wronged, and their husbands cheated on them. Lolth had no such motivation. She just did not want to play second fiddle, which is not bad, but surrendering your home plane to your worst enemies is a bit of an overreaction. I will stick with Lilith as even her name and the notion of being cursed for disobeying fit the bill. Plus Medea or Hera are nowhere as sexy .

Forgetting that scene in the Iliad where Hera walked up to Zeus on the mountain and seduced him right out of his chiton?

So was Lilith, by modern standards. Actually, in all three cases, the 'man' in question (Jason, Zeus and Adam) acted in a way that was considered perfectly acceptable by the society in which the myth originated. That's why all three of those 'women' were considered villainesses in the original myths. It is only with the advent of modern feminism that they began to be seen as anything other than evil monsters.

Really, most stories from European and Middle-Eastern mythology are hideously misogynistic in their original form. Personally, I much prefer the more modern versions that cast traditionally 'evil' female archetypes in a more sympathetic role, because to me myths are only of value inasmuch as they are relevant to their audience (which is why I'm a huge fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley).

But I see no reason to arbitrarily adapt some mythic villainesses to modern feminist heroines, while excluding others. If you see Hera and Medea as tragic heroines who were wronged and whose vengeance was entirely justified, then why not see Lilith the same way?

Or do you, and I've just totally misunderstood your post?

Lolth was pretty obviously named after Lilith, anyway.

Oh, and I'm still sticking with my original contention that we only know Lolth's motivations in the Forgotten Realms setting. In 4th edition core, we don't know why Lolth turned against Corellon, so it's entirely possible she was the wronged party in that setting. Given that Corellon is now hooked up with the goddess of love, inconstancy and "doing whatever the £%$& you want and hang the consequences", it seems quite plausible that he did a Zeus to Lolth's Hera.


Ya gotta love someone so sexy she became the original succubus. And by "gotta love", I of course mean...

Indeed but not all. Basque mythology is not mysoginistic at all (I can't think of even one example) and even Greek mythology keeps many instances (probably a remnant of pre-Indoeuropean times) where women are the true heroines: Ariadne, Myrina, Artemis and the evocation of the Golden Age embodied by Astraea. Furthermore in the divine hierarchy, only women are above Zeus: the Moiras who weave destiny and Gaia the grandmother of all gods, the leit motiv behind the changes of godly dynasties and a prophetess even more accurate than Apollo.

We know little of pre-Judaistic West Asian mythologies but my impression is that they were not more mysoginistic than the European ones. Take for instance the important role of Astarte or the quite relevant part of godesses in Sumerian (pre-Semitic indeed) myhology.

I'd also like to know a little more about Celtic mythology because, even if Indoeuropean it seems that, like with the Greek case and unlike the Germanic one (so extremely male-centric), godesses played some major roles, as far as I know.

In no mythlogy anyhow I have seen such a mysoginistic foundational legend as in the Hebrew one, where Eve (and Lilith before her, sure) is blamed for all the disgraces of humankind. Maybe the Greek legend of Pandora but is not even remotely as central.

Actually, i do like Lilith a lot, and being a 21st century European female, see her in a positive light. It is Lolth i object to: Lilith i understand, she was a villain for her time but even a role model today, but Lolth is there to play Chaotic Evil. What i meant is that no amount of feminist rhetoric can make right of what she did, as she is in reality a modern heroine (albeit based on an ancient one) and she was made to be evil in modern ways: her fault is not wanting to outrank Corellon, but destroying her home plane and framing her child -not even with a solid motivation behind her. I mean, passion as in Medea's case or desire for independence as in Lilith's i can understand, but bitterness for not being head of your pantheon is not a motive that can justify her. She is a typical evil overlord.

As for the last post, i will agree: myhtology is seldom 'misogynistic'. It is too much tied up to the natural rythms, where both sexes are seen as necessary and working together. True, some stories reflect certain society values of their own times but there is an abundance of female heroines and often the higher concepts are personified as women. Maybe this is why myhtology is used so much in spirituality today, it can be embraced more easily by us than religions who embrace more strictly patriarchal values.

Here's a theory, Lolth turned evil to reflect the evil within the mortal elves. Elves are, by nature, a proud and ambitious people and such traits, when taken to extremes can lead to a very dark place. And what is Lolth if not pride and ambition taken to their absolute extremes? It helps explain her actions even though she had no real motive to begin them.

Hm, maybe.

Not in D&D or Tolkien's but in other fantasy settings elves are soemtimes pictured as semi-evil because of their racial arrogance and like of boundless magic.

For instance in the Shadowbane lore (MMORPG that will be finished in two days, btw) elves are regarded, in general, as some sort of nostalgic neofascists who just want to restore their long-gone empire and enslave other races. Their magic inclinations in many cases lead them to extremes such as the creation of the minotaur thralls or the practice of necromancy.

But there are more evil criatures and factions (nephilim, vampires...), so guess that overall elves are just "neutral" in SB lore (humans sometimes, centaurs and dwarves are the "moral" ones in it, though this attitude sometimes leads to Inquisitorial excesses as well).