Do you have a few minutes to talk about Lolth?

My name is Chaszmyr of House Vrinn, but you can call me Chip. Beneath these wraps and goggles, I’m a drow. Perhaps you’ve heard of us in stories. Perhaps not.

I come from the Underdark, from Menzobarranzan, the City of Spiders. You haven’t been? It’s lovely this time of year, though I haven’t been there is some time, myself. I’m on a mission, you see: a mission from Lolth.

But let me back up a little bit, a couple of years.

As the “secondboy” in House Vrinn, I had risen to the position of House Guard. Ours is a matriarchal and class-driven society, you understand, and though I was noble born, as the second son of House Vrinn, House Guard is about the highest rank I might hope for. My elder brother, Jyslin, was Weapons Master. I suppose I might have earned his position by sacrificing him to Lolth, but mine has never been a quest for power or rank, and in any event Jyslin never struck me as a worthy sacrifice to our goddess. The point is certainly moot now. Jyslin is dead. My mother—the Matron Lythrana—and her consorts are dead. My brothers and sisters, all dead. House Vrinn was brought to its knees and swiftly beheaded in an attack by House Baenre. No one, I wager, was especially surprised by this. House Baenre had been cutting a swath through the lower houses for centuries, and House Vrinn was in no position to hold off such an attack for long. I was wounded in the battle by a spear meant for my sister Haelra. I saved her from that, though she fell to a sword moments later. We all fell.

When I awoke, the House was in ruins around me. Bodies were crushed beneath the rubble, others cut in two. Acrid smoke filled the air. The spear had pinned me to the ground, and I could feel my blood trickling out. I expected to see it pooling beneath me, but when I looked, I saw no blood; instead, I saw something wondrous, a miracle. Instead of fluid, I bled spiders. A steady trickle of the holy creatures emerged from my side, where the spear still skewered me. The stream of spiders bled up the length of the spear, and continued on their path up a thread of silk from the end of the shaft, which disappeared into the smoke overhead. I watched in amazement as Lolth’s children bled from me by the hundreds. Eventually, after an impossible number had emerged from my wound, the trickle slowed. The last spider to emerge did not follow its sisters. Instead, it made its way up my torso, up my throat, and disappeared into my mouth. It bit my tongue, and I heard a horrible, beautiful voice. It told me to follow the spiders, to go to the surface. To spread the Word, to find children. It was time, the voice said, for Lolth’s return. Then I passed out again.

When I awoke, there were no voices, though my tongue had swollen where the spider had bitten me. I worked to free myself from the spear and was amazed to see that I still did not bleed. Indeed, the wound had completely healed, but left a hole through my side: a gift from Lolth, perhaps. I searched the ruins of the house, eventually unearthing the contents of the treasure room. I took what I could carry—more, I expect, than I would ever be able to spend. I burned the remains of the house and that of my family, first, so they could not be reanimated later by our enemies, and second, so my own absence would not be noticed. I knew where I had to go, and I knew who could get me there. I packed what I could and made my way to the dangerous part of town. There, my money bought me new, unassuming armor and an introduction to the House of the Hidden Pocket, a merchant clan. The merchant clans traded with the surface, and the House of the Hidden Pocket hired me as muscle under a new, unassuming name. The House of the Hidden Pocket would bring me where Lolth bid me to go.

The journey took longer than expected. Much longer. It took us many weeks to reach the surface, all the way battling trolls, kuo-toa, and rival merchant clans with an eye for our goods. Happily, we encountered neither aboleth nor beholder. Along the way, I read Lolth’s Word with a thirst I had never before known (sheltered, as drow males are, from holy study). Although those I traveled with would have chided or perhaps flayed me if they knew the depth of my studies, I yearned to drink and to share the Gibbering Word of the Spider Queen. I learned some of what to expect of the surface world from my comrades (I call them, for I had come to know them well): I learned of the sun’s sapping power, and purchased gauze wraps and dark goggles from a duergar clan we met along the way. I had never stepped foot above the surface, and wanted to be well prepared. Of course, I was fooling myself.

We stepped into the sunlight in what I later learned was a place called Punjabar, a sprawling and warring land. There, I left the House of the Hidden Pocket, offering my protection to one of their trading partners, a motley band of thieves and merchants headed west. It was the sigil on one of their wagons that caught my attention: a huge painted spider with eight glorious breasts. Lolth has never been the most subtle of deities. Of course, once I learned that they were not themselves followers of Lolth, they had to be sacrificed for their heresy, and one blood-filled, moonlit night I opened their throats for the Weaver of Chaos, and drank from them in her name. I did have the foresight to leave one wagon master alive—a human named Rushur Pahi. Rushur did not speak again, though he cried terribly in his sleep for the remainder of our trip. He did not seem to find comfort from Lolth’s scriptures—perhaps it was my translations.

With Rushur, I crossed into the Empire of Helm, and we made our way to Helmerica. I had learned that even the cursed high and wood elves are treated as things of children’s stories here. The drow, then, would be stories of stories, legends of legends. Lolth does weave a mysterious web. Shortly after we arrived, Rashur disappeared—run off, it seems. Lolth be with him. He abandoned me in front of a decrepit building in an old part of the city—a painted sign outside advertised for a roommate. As I read it, a spider slowly lowered itself from the sign, and I knew that it was a sign indeed. Either the current occupant would be to my liking, or he would find out if he was to Lolth’s.

A year later, and Nestor Coyne still lives.