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Originally posted by Irennan

Could be. In that case, Shar/Lolth could be attempting to rebuild the Shadow Weave (which collapsed because of the Spellplague) in another form. However, that would totally suck -IMO- because:

1)X deity was Y all along is boring.

2)If Shar was Lolth, then the Shades and the drow would find themselves on the same side of the battlefield in this new RSE, which would mean that the super-powerful and evil Shades would become even more powerful by having drow support. Just like Shar would become even more prominent by reabsorbing her aspect, Lolth (or vice-verse). This would be even more boring.

Also -AFAIK- Lolth didn't get Eilistraee's and Vhaeraun's portfolios, or absorbed their power or anything like that.

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2) This might not necessarily be the case. Even Paul's Twilight War series showed that Shar pits her agents against each other (not unlike how Lolth pits her minions against each other).

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You are absolutely correct that Lolth did not grab Vhaerun and Eilistrae's power (that was Corellon). However she did engineer the end of the drow pantheon, consolidating her power as the race's sole goddess.

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A Lolth/Shar reveal might even have ramifications with other deities. Corellon may be Lathander/Amuanator. Perhaps Corellon's assumption of Eilistrae's powers changed his nature, spurring in part the reversion from Lathander to Amuanator. The deities of the Realms may be involved in a much larger conflict than we've been led to realize. Maybe there is a secret war between the forces of creation and destruction playing out in a larger scale than Realms products have led us to believe.

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You (Irennan)are right, it slipped my mind that Corellon took Eilistraee's charges instead of her power (although arguably that might still alter Corellon's nature by assuming Eilistraee's role.) Since Eilistraee (as the Masked Lady) was slain by an agent of Lolth, it is conceivable that Lolth seized some or all of that power.

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I don't necessarily see a Lolth as Shar reveal to mean its getting "rid of" either deity. It may be a move towards the idea of deities as manifestations of a concept (destruction/oblivion)interpreted by mortals as Shar or Lolth as opposed to the super powered humanoids we've been treated to since the Time of Troubles.

As for the Corellon/Lathander/Amuanator distinction, there are several parallels.

Lathander and Corellon are both creators. Corellon is a patron of arts and a progenitor deity for elves (particularly favored by sun elves). Lathander is a sponsor of rebirth and light.
Amuanator is not just a sun god but is also marked by his ruthlesness (as A'tar the Merciless by the desert tribes). Corellon too is a relentless warrior.

Lathander/Amuanator by virtue of his dominion over sun and light are opposed to Shar's darkness and destruction. Similarly Corellon Larethian is opposed to and by Lolth.

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Eilistraee being stationed outside her home plane muddies the water a bit.

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From my perspective, a "reveal" along these lines would suggest a pervasive,primal struggle between forces of creation and destruction occurring in the backdrop of the Realms as a unified theme, as opposed to deities sitting around disliking each other. At least this way, gutting several favored Pantheons could appear to be part of a higher purpose other than streamlining the Realms for the sake of streamlining.

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Originally posted by Irennan

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Eilistraee being stationed outside her home plane muddies the water a bit.

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Yep, that's what I meant (one of her avatars was destroyed, and same goes for Vhaeraun since he was in Eilistraee's plane when he supposedly died); besides nothing really clear happens afterwards, nothing that could provide reliable info.

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From my perspective, a "reveal" along these lines would suggest a pervasive,primal struggle between forces of creation and destruction occurring in the backdrop of the Realms as a unified theme, as opposed to deities sitting around disliking each other. At least this way, gutting several favored Pantheons could appear to be part of a higher purpose other than streamlining the Realms for the sake of streamlining.

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A reveal like that could introduce this destroy vs create concept but at the cost of flavor (like I explained in the previous post). And I believe it isn't the only way to introduce such an idea.

Also, destruction vs creation is kinda streamline and -IMO- ambiguous.

I mean, the only deity who actually wants to return Toril to its primordial entropic status (i.e. ''destroy'') is Shar. Lolth merely wants to rule it. At the end of the day, Shar would turn on everyone else because, in order to reach her goal, she should basically wipe out everything in the planes, including other deities and the concepts they represent. So no ''cosmic faction'' of Torilian deities would likely include her. She'd represent ''destruction'' on her own.

Besides, everything in Toril happens by transformation, not creation. Even the Weave itself (and now, in the 4e Realms, the energy it shaped in a more ordinate form), the main source of magic (which is the only mean to create something out of nothing or utterly obliterating things), is just a way to harness the energy of the physical processes on the planet, which constantly change form but does not appear out of nothing or just disappear.

So, when even magic is actually transformation and not creation or destruction, those two concepts (taken raw) don't actually make sense and deities can't represent them.

The ''creation'' in some deities' portfolios can be seen as creation in the way mortals see it, like creating something beautiful, magnificent, alive etc... so transformation in something mortals generally see as positive, in contrast to transformation into something seen as negative (destruction).

However, these concepts are tied to the mortal perspective of the Multiverse and for this reason can't be used as a cause for a cosmic conflict that has been going on since forever (before mortals existed).

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The conflict is not so straight forward, delightfully so, as simply a clashing of trueform (i.e. logical arguments equally valad in competition for soundness). The Gods, at this level, also most represent organic beings. Their dislike of each other is only in part reflected in argumentative forms, and the rest being aspects of that highly complex elements of personality. It would seem to me that the the lower the god, the more reflected of personality, and the less of argumentation that individual would be. At least this is how the Gods have been shown to be for me. The issue though, and one that I feel hasn't been as well described, as the greater the representation of an idea, the less the form of a personality, and the less significance the presence of followers would become. This is of course is only in that those ideas are prevelent and regularly in use, learning for example would have less ideological strength on a reletively primateve planet, or one recovering from world wide destruction. This is one element of Gods, that I think is highly iportant to consider, the being/idea requires holders/worshipers in order to remain.

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Is it not equally plossible, in fact it is, that Schar knowing that her rival has made a personaification in the elven group of Gods, would not do the same, as her rival would predict the move. An important element of any game of stratagy is not doing what one's enemy expects. So Schar, instead of making another form of herself as an elf, does something slightly different, to which her rival did not anticipat, and thus gained the element of surprise. In either case, Lolth's presence, iwas there to distract Moonbow, while Schar concentrated on other issues.

Now let us hole that for a moment, and since in arguments/discussion we can form as many arms as we like, let us hold this.

An important lesson from research is that corlation does not = cause. Ice cream sales and drowning both go up in the summer, but Ice cream doesn't cause people to drown. Thus, given that we saw a corlation between Moonbow and she in fact turned to be who she was, does not allow us to make the leap of equivication with respect to Schar and Lolth. Having siad that however, if WOTC does go that route, they will be doing so, for the sake of simplicity, not for the argument of any ideological transformative Dischence I fear.

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As for Lolth, I don't really see much overlap between her and Shar. She was the patron of dark elves and spiders. She was probably able to establish herself on Toril without conflicting much with other established deities, at least where portfolios are concerned. I don't see any reason for Lolth to be an alias or aspect of Shar.

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Originally posted by Irennan

Not really. Loth is a deceiver, like Shar is and none of them would be above posing like another deity to get more followers.

They wouldn't care if their followers thought that they and their aliases were hostile to each other, their main concern would only be that mortal's prayers went to them. When needed any of the two would make sure that their followers cooperated to her goal, even if they wouldn't probably realize it.

On the other hand, if Shar was Lolth, then the Shades would be on the same side of the drow for this Rise of the Underdark thing, and that would suck a lot, at least IMO.

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One difficulty cited in particular was that Lolth is dead in Greyhawk,ergo we need a different Lolth for FR.

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It may be that Shar saw the Ilythiri as the destructive (to themselves and others) little monsters they are and so adopted traits which would appeal to them (domination and control). Several sources have suggest (don't ask me to name them) that but for Lolth's intervention, the dark elves would have annhilated themselves.

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I don't think they should be one and the same, but I do think there should be a(n ancient?) connection. The idea that Shar 'whispered dark things' in Araushnee's ear I find... interesting.

For all we know, Lolth and Auril - who we now know to be the [i]Queen of Air and Darkness - may be sisters, or related in some other way. There may be a whole extended family thing going on with Shar (I theorized Graz'zt may have been a drow originally).

If this is done right (and NOT heavy-handed), this could prove to be one of the most interesting FR stories ever told. however, it has far more potential of turning into a continuity nightmare - I hope they are on top of it.

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As for Lolth dying in the Demonwebs - that is a bit of a problem, but it is partially covered by WotSQ (they discovered the original demonweb pits - in the Abyss - abandoned and mostly a ruin). A single aspect of her may have been kept active in GH (where she never fell silent), and that aspect was killed in the DwP, while the greater portion of her power continued its 'gestation' and metamorphosis into a greater power elsewhere.

A little shaky, I know, but that's all I got.

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Again, I also don't believe that if Lolth and Shar turn out to be different faces of the same goddess, that this necessarily means the drow and Shade Enclave will ally. Both Shar and Lolth have had servants work at cross purposes (For an example concerning Shar, see the Twilight War trilogy). The goddess may have several tools working independently to reach the same ultimate end.

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Originally posted by Irennan

Hm... Then, as you pointed, maybe a drow-Shade alliance might have the effect of rallying the ''good'' aligned powers of the Realms under a single banner (at least temporarily) and weaken the super-powerful and evil presences that rose on Faerun after the Spellplague, lessening the ''pseudo-grimdark'' feeling the setting acquired (at least, it did so from my point of view). This would be a consequence I'd welcome, even if the huge good vs bad war thing is a bit cliché and unoriginal.

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