Apsect of Eilistraee

I just finished my scratchbuilt Aspect of Eilistraee, the dancing woodland goddess of goodly drow.

It was a pretty simple modification from the Urban Legends Sophie available at Reaper Miniatures.
I looked everywhere for a naked 72mm female elf with a sword, and the Urban Legends Sophie is really the best miniature for the purpose outside of sculpting your own. Once you have the mini, which is a fantastic sculpt by Werner Klocke and under $25, simply don't glue on the wings or the scabbard of the sword.

I then painted her using a black primer. Once the primer was completely dry--so as to avoid getting fingerprints on her smooth features--I worked up a nice length of Brown Stuff, a varient form of the "green stuff" sculpting epoxy from Reaper which I find a little easier to work with because it isn't quite as sticky.

I rolled the brown stuff out into a suitable length and then flattened it out, attaching it to the figure to create the long white locks of the drow goddess. Once the hair was attached and had begun to harden a little, I used one of my dental picks to etch in the hair and smooth the brown stuff into the hair of the original miniature.This inclued a second length of hair that I brought in through the crooked arm to flow down from the wrist. This step wasn't entirely necessary, but I liked the way it looked and it helped create the impression of the crazy long tresses Eilistraee is known for.

It took incredible patience, but then I waited 24 hours for the brown stuff to dry and harden, before putting a coat of white primer over the entire length of hair from the crown of the miniature's pre-sculpted locks down to the end of the hair that I'd added. I wanted to have her hair really shine and be irridescent, and black primer tends to give a ruddy appearance.

After the primer dried, then I began to paint the miniature using Reaper paints. I went with the painting guide of the Sophie as depicted in the website, but with drow coloration. I liked the red leather glove and leggings, because they show up nice on drow skin and reflect the only other color of a black widow spider, one of Lolth's avatars. Then I used true silver instead of gold.

The hair was done in Reaper Pearl White, so that it was shiny and opalescent. I used Storm Grey for the lips and breast accents, and emerald green for her eyes.



I'm not a particularly gifted sculptor or painter, but I'm quite pleased with my efforts and very happy to have another god to put on my shelf.

Scratchbuilding is going to be increasingly important as 4E has radically changed the pantheons of existing worlds and most of the gods have been eliminated. I'm sorry to say that Eilistraee does not fare well in the Lisa Smedman books and WOTC isn't likely to do a lot of miniatures of deities who are not current.

Monster: Nagpa

I'm constantly flipping through old D&D books looking for monster descriptions which might correspond to miniatures I have, whether the miniature is intended to be a D&D monster or not.

I'd purchased some minis at a hobby store in Davenport, Iowa, last year which were made by Crocodile Games This is a company that has a game called Wargods of Aegyptus, and they've got some amazing miniatures in that line. I'm planning on using their Basti figs as Catfolk and really expanding that race of creatures as Bast worshippers in my world. I know she is Sharess in the Realms, but no god minds expanding their worshipper base and the catfolk seem perfect for this.

At any rate, I was flipping through the Mystara Monstrous Compendium and saw the entry for the Nagpa on page 82. The illustration looks like the creatures from Dark Crystal, but I thought I could find a way to incorporate the Nekharu miniatures I got in Davenport into my campaign by using them as an altered version of Nagpas.

I left the creature entry essentially the same, but rather than having them created as a curse by non-specific "certain immortals" I tied them directly to the Mulhorandi pantheon which is based on Egyptian mythology. All the stats and most of the entry are the same, though priests who become nagpas don't have staves, they have daggers and skulls which have been enchanted to function as "rings of spell storing."

This is what I came up with:

Nagpa
Nagpas are, or rather were, Mulhorandi mages or priests of the god Set, a particularly nasty evil god in the Mulhorandi pantehon. They are cursed with this disfigurement for causing a great offense to Set, or for failing him in some spectacular way. This punishment is somewhat similar to what happens to drow priestesses who fail Lolth’s test and are transformed into driders.

After the transformation, nagpas are banished from Mulhorand territories and transported by magic to some far flung desert region, usually Anarauch, to wander the length and breadth of Faerun in search of powerful artifacts with which they might placate the angry god and be granted a lifting of the curse. The nagpa tend to be solitary in their search, believing that combining efforts will lessen their individual chance to be granted the boon of returning to their former selves. When nagpa do come together, it is often in order to combine efforts to research magic which might reverse the curse placed upon them all without having to return to Set and beg this gift from him. Every nagpa is aware that any petition which does not result in lifting the curse results in a horrible death.

So far as anyone knows, the Nagpa Curse cannot be removed by any spell less powerful than a wish, but they labor in hope of finding something that will help them. Nagpas will most often be discovered deep in ruined temples below the sands of the desert and will always have extremely large collections of powerful magic items. Their wizard laboratories will always be decorated as though a temple to Set, and they will have tried to curry favor with their god by attempting to spread his worship wherever they go, even though they secretly hate him for placing the curse upon them. This conflict tends to render their service to Set somewhat ineffectively, though they can have fanatical followers. Sometimes these followers detect the heresy of the nagpa’s resentment and they will revolt, killing the nagpa if they can as an offering to Set.

Extremely rare occasions may find a solitary nagpa traveling overland with a rare and powerful artifact on its way back to Mulhorand and a temple of Set.

Fortunately for the nagpa, and unfortunately for those who would plot against them, these creatures instinctively know if they are being ridiculed or plotted against anywhere within a 100-mile radius. It is believed that this is part of their curse. They can track such gossipers as long as the speakers remain in range. A nagpa's ears suffer a burning sensation that grows hotter as the nagpa gets closer to the individual who spoke about the race. Items such as amulets of non-detection protect speakers from the cursed detection of the nagpas. They are determined that none should mock them or work against them. When a detractor is found, he or she is immediately killed by the nagpa. It then wanders away, consumed with feelings of guilt, remorse, relief, and joy.

Similarly, chanting or being in the presence of those who are chanting to the worship and glory of Set has a cooling, calming, and sustaining effect on the nagpa. For each hour of such chanting the nagpa regains 1d3 hit points per chanter and the worship of Set itself nourishes them as though they had eaten a full meal. So long as they worship, or cause others to worship Set, they have no need for food or water. In fact, attempts to eat or drink normally cause 1d6 points of damage as though they were poisoned.

Ecology: These cursed creatures cannot eat, sleep, laugh, reproduce, or take part in any other activity enjoyed by living humans until the curse is lifted. Some evil mages use the skin of nagpas as parchment for scrolls of certain powerful necromantic spells.

Lolth, as she is supposed to look...

Well, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I have a burr up my butt about current deptictions of Lolth as a drider.

It ain't right, because driders are the unfavored of Lolth, so she would not logically transform her unfavored ones into her likeness. You can read the long rant about that in the other post.

I'd been using the head you see here on a Ral Partha Giant Black Widow miniature for years as my "proper" Lolth, but the body was too small and it wasn't very scary.

I recently got a second Reaper Miniatures Labith: Female Spider Centaur and used the body from that for my Lolth body. I didn't think the legs looked scary enough for Lolth, though, because they were very thick and not enough like a black widow.

Since I had legs left over from the Giant Scorpion I'd used to make the Aboleth, I tried using them. They worked really well, but I had to do some clipping, bending and filling in with green stuff to get them to both fit in the leg sockets and support the weight of the miniature. Then I broke the Frost Giantess head off the old Lolth and glued it on the new body. I think it looks fantastic. Very evil, very cruel, and very Lolth-like.

Aspects of Lolth shouldn't look like a drider!

This is a longstanding gripe of mine. Nobody has released a good figure of Lolth, ever, to my knowledge. What constitutes good? Something reasonably accurate to the descriptions of her in the original 1st edition products.

Lolth appears as a drow of unparalleled beauty and cruelty, as a giant black widow with the head and face of a drow, and as a giant black widow spider without human head. The cover art of the old Demonweb Pits modules show the drow head on top of spider eyes, which is icky. I don't really want that, either.

At any rate, my beef with current depictions of her is that she looks like a drider. For example, the cover art of Queen of the Demonweb Pits by Paul Kid. Ick again.

The drider is a transformed drow who has displeased Lolth and fallen out of her favor. There can be no greater display of favor of a god than to transform something into their own image. Hence, it is impossible for me to concieve of these drider-like Lolth's as anything approaching her actual avatar, because only that which is favored by her would look like her.

If someone can give me an explanation why my line of reasoning is faulty, I'd appreciate it...but not as much as I'd appreciate having someone do an actual, accurate Lolth...especially if it was a boxed set with all three of her forms.

Until then I'll have to make due with the Ral Partha giant black widow with a Grenadier Frost Giantess head I glued to it. It isn't perfect, but it is better than one of these female drider versions.

Actually, what I'll probably do since the Ral Partha giant black widow body is disproportionally small compared to the head, is break the head off and glue the head directly to the body of the 03085 : Labith, Female Spider Centaur by Reaper Miniatures (their own contribution to the non-Lolthy Loths).

I think that will hold me over until someone does an actual Lolth to my satisfaction. I'll post my version when finished.

The old rule books don't draw a distinction in appearance between drider wizards and priests, and don't mention warriors at all. This from the Monstrous Compendium:

All driders are able to cast the spells that normal drow can use once per day. Driders also retain the magical or clerical abilities they possessed before their weird transformation. A majority of driders (60%) were priests of 6th or 7th level before they were changed. (Remember that drow priests, and therefore driders that were priests, can also use clairvoyance, detect lie, suggestion, and dispel magic once per day.) All other driders were once mages of 6th, 7th, or 8th level.

And yet, nearly every drider picture and miniature has them decked out like warriors and not priests or wizards. And there are no drow priests, only priestesses. Well, it just isn't tidy.

They also seem to indicate that secondary sex traits disappear during the tranformation to drider, leaving all driders sexless and the only possible avenue for more driders is the more drow failing Lolth's test. You can get more information on driders from the Monster Manual II, page 60, the Monstrous Compendium, Volume 2 under Elf, Drow. There is also a section in the Drow of the Underdark, pp. 9-12. There is also a good article on driders in the January 1988 issue of Dragon Magazine, Entering the Drider's Web: What happens after a drow fails Lolth's test. None of these sources give any indication that driders look like Lolth, that she would like looking like a drider, or that driders have any secondary sex characteristics.

But, with 3rd Edition, we get driders with boobs and Lolth with a torso and two arms (and, yes, boobs) everywhere drow items are sold. Even untidier. Something had to be done, and I'm the only OC/ADHD guy I know who can do it to my satisfaction.

Because I can't not buy the miniatures, and if I have them, I have to use them somehow in my campaign...here is my break down of drider kind:

First of all, driders now retain the same secondary sex characteristics they had as drow, however these creatures are sterile and have no interest in copulation. As it says in Drow of the Underdark, "Lolth wants their existence to be a series of torments, not to create a race of enemies for the drow."
The old, original drider miniatures by Grenadier are the standard drider. These are promising drow male warriors who failed the test. Any drider figure which appears to be male and carries a weapon is this type of drider.

I think this is a RAFM miniature, possibly from the Cthulhu line, but could be Ral Partha. At any rate, it is clearly a drider-ish creature without boobs or weapons, so I am using it as the result of a drow male wizard who failed the test of Lolth. I call these "Draeders" in my world. Eventually I'll post a complete description of the drader here, but now is not the time.

Lastly, the driders with boobs.

This is that Reaper Mini I mentioned earlier, which is a nice female drider. All female driders in my world become "Drauders." Now, there is only one untidy little detail left, which NONE of the rule books address.

Drow priestesses are granted their spell casting ability by Lolth. If these priestesses have been turned into driders by failing Lolth's test and falling out of her favor, why is she still granting them spells? I am not satisfied with the answer that she does it because she is chaotic. That doesn't wash.

The Spider Queen loves chaos, yes, but as one of the cruelest dieties in the pantheon, I think she loves punishments even more.

I haven't decided yet who might be granting their clerical spells, but I am convinced it is not Lolth herself. I am currently leaning toward driders of all three types in my world being under the (grudging) protection and care of Lolth's son, Vhaeraun. And though he hates the priestesses of his mother, he delights in forcing these fallen priestesses to worship him instead of her, which they do because he is the only power which will accept their worship and grant themm their spells. (You can find more information on Vhaeraun by scrying through Google)

Some of these female driders, or Drauders, do refuse to worship him and give up the use of their clerical abilities entirely, opting instead to learning the warrior's art. They are not particularly good at it, having had no prior training and being new to their drider forms, and so do not tend to last very long in the perilous Underdark.

And that, my dears, is Shandar's Monstrology lesson for the day. I think this is logical attempt to deal with the inconsistencies created by WOTC 3rd edition art (which, admittedly, builds on the inconsistencies of TSR sourceworks). A kind of "unified theory of the drider" if you will.

It works for me, anyway, and if it works for you, feel free to use it. If you have an argument against this line of thinking, please leave me a comment. I'd like to consider it, but better be stronger than just "third edition is better, so just do that you old fogey."