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Thierriadin Xa: uncertainty and forgiveness

From Iskandr Tirielthin, ed., A Thousand Darks Before the Dawn: Points and Arcs in Elven History, Huzuz: Al-Bidir Sal’ah, 1926 DR.

Araushnee and Corellon were once consorts and the foremost deities in the elven pantheon, the Seldarine. Something went wrong between them — so the story goes — and eventually Araushnee, finding few allies among the Seldarine, conspired with powers from the demon realms to organize an army to invade Arvandor, the celestial home of the elven pantheon. They had one goal: to kill Corellon. Eilistraee, the free-spirited, kind-hearted daughter of Araushnee and Corellon — and herself deity of the hunt, dance, freedom, moonlight, and swordwork — knew nothing of these plans. During the battle, Eilistraee — a skilled archer — defended Arvandor, firing arrows at the demonic invaders. But Araushnee’s allies had cursed the scabbard of Corellon’s sword to draw arrows to itself; Eilistraee’s arrows, uncharacteristically, flew wide of their marks, finding their way instead to her father’s chest, wounding him grieviously.

The invaders were nonetheless repelled, and Corellon survived his wounds. Araushnee was exiled to the demon realms, where she took a new name: Lloth. Lloth accepted the ruthlessness of the demon realms, and eventually embraced it, establishing a new dominion as the deity of spiders. At the same time, the dark elves — the drow — who had worshipped Araushnee were exiled from the surface world into the Underdark. They went on worshipping Araushnee in her new form, Lloth, and their society turned brutal. They executed worshippers of other deities and enslaved the other creatures of the Underdark. Lloth encouraged murderous competition for power and status among their noble houses, and they sacrificed their third sons to her in an effort to gain her favor in their deadly games.

In Arvandor, the curse on Corellon’s scabbard was discovered, and Eilistraee was exonerated. She could have stayed in Arvandor, but chose instead to follow her mother into exile, saying, ‘The drow will need a light in the long darkness.’

This, anyway, is the story told to all novices beginning study of the long and intricate history of the elven pantheons. But as Thierriadin Xa writes in this short excerpt from the Way of Eilistraee, much remains unknown about the events leading to the invasion of Arvandor. What happened between Araushnee and Corellon so many thousand ages ago? It may be that no mortal will ever know. One could say that it occurred so long ago that it cannot possibly matter any longer: whatever happened happened, and things are as they are. Yet for followers of Eilistraee this uncertainty about what happened ‘before’ is a pillar of religious practice. This ‘not knowing’ is the stepping stone to refraining from judgment, and therefore a key to seeking understanding and forgiveness in their quest to bring peace to the mortal realms. Xa writes (Way of Eilistraee, Vol. VII):

All this we know: Araushnee’s conspiracies against the Seldarine, against Corellon and against her own daughter; her expulsion from Arvandor and her transformation into Lloth; the descent of the drow into the Underdark and the gradual but inexorable conversion of most of them to the worship of Lloth; their fear, in their isolation in the vast darkness, and their slow but inexorable conversion to militarism; their quest for security, which became inevitably a quest for power; their delight in the ability to exercise their power over others, which manifested so often as simple delight in cruelty; the deadly intolerance of Lloth’s clerics for even the acknowledgment of other gods, which they called heresy. All this is beyond doubt. Even those who never lived under Lloth’s yoke do not question the accounts of those who escaped to the surface. Yet we remember always that we do not know everything. Why did Araushnee conspire with the demons against Arvandor, and especially against Corellon? The answer that she was simply always hungry for power, though in some ways consistent with later history, has never been truly satisfactory. Every relationship is its own universe, and the gods, unlike the primordials, are as complex and contradictory as any mortal — and at times just as passionate and imperfect. However good and just Corellon may have always been to the other gods, and to his subjects, we may never know what truly transpired between him and Araushnee. This uncertainty must temper our understanding of Lloth’s evil. We know that malice never springs from itself but always from history — that a heart bears scars only because it once bore wounds. It is this knowledge that allows us to say we are reluctant to believe either in pure evil or in pure goodness, and finally to say that no mortal is beyond forgiveness. As Eilistraee herself is said to have once told Veladorn Qilué, we all have complicated relationships with our parents.