Eilistraee.com

Hello. I have only recently read the 4th edition rules and lore after reading The Lady Penitent trilogy and I'm quite confused. Eilistraee is (or should I say "was") one of my favorite deities, but as far as I undestand she's currently dead, right? (just like the rest of the Drow pantheon, except for Lolth) It would be a great shame, drows and their deities are my favorite thing in the FR...
Excuse me if the answer is obvious, but I keep finding so much misleading information on the Internet right now.

Well in 4th Edition it appears she was dead, however in 5th Edition she might again live. The why and how we have yet to see.

[quote="Bhaern Quel":3675jlgi]Well in 4th Edition it appears she was dead, however in 5th Edition she might again live. The why and how we have yet to see.[/quote:3675jlgi]
I definitely hope so. I think they can't just leave the Drow like that, with only Lolth as a deity.

We have to wait and see. Many that post here refused to accept the 4th Edition lore, some I am sure did not buy anything of 4th Edition prints.

There have been hints and even half promises that she and a few other deities will actually turn out not to have been killed or some how restored again to life.

Until we see what is in print for 5th Edition we will not know what they in the end decide to do, how they explain and so on.

[quote="Bhaern Quel":3f5z8qw5]Many that post here refused to accept the 4th Edition lore, some I am sure did not buy anything of 4th Edition prints.[/quote:3f5z8qw5]
[i:3f5z8qw5]<raises hand>[/i:3f5z8qw5] Like me. I reject the entire Lady Penitent series (the Masked Lady might've been interesting and something we could've worked with, but we can't really work with "she's dead"), I disregard anything 4E and refuse to spent any money on anything that I know WotC is involved in. My own personal boycott of sorts. I know it won't make any damn of a difference, but it makes me feel a bit better.

And that's alright. I don't play tabletop anymore anyway and this way I'm saving myself a lot of money (I had no problem buying rulebooks despite not playing the game itself much beyond computer games).

There are some rumors that most all deities are coming back in the next edition, but I'm not convinced. I got the impression that they're going for a "they all might be alive so use them as you desire, we're just not going to say anything official on exactly which ones". And that simply isn't good enough. I've got that now (I can just say "hey, she's alive still"). I want her to officially be alive because then we might get additional official material about her again. Like picking up the 3E source book Champions of Valor and being pleasantly surprised that Eilistraee (and, more importantly, her followers) are mentioned several times in the book with some additional lore and rules. I want her to officially be back alive for community building as well so that someone [i:3f5z8qw5]else[/i:3f5z8qw5] might pick up the game, pick up a book mentioning her, and think "hey, that's a pretty interesting deity" looking for more information and then perhaps ending up in our little community here. I want her to officially be back alive so that when I talk with other D&D fans I don't first have to explain how my personal setting is different from the canon setting. When I join other players I don't want them to scratch their head and ask "wait, how can you be a priestess of Eilistraee when she's dead?". I want her to officially be back alive so that when new computer games are released (like the upcoming Neverwinter) I can play it without feeling like I'm breaking the lore of the game. I want to be able to be surprised when playing games like Hordes of the Underdark and running into followers of Eilistraee.

I can do anything in my own settings that I want. I don't need WotC for that and never did. If that's the stance they're taking then I don't need them at all anymore. They're not adding any value at all for me. If they want me to be part of their community and pay for their products then they will have to come to me and facilitate all the things I mentioned above. They need to provide the added benefit by saying "yes, she's officially alive and we're going to produce more material for her". And I'm not convinced that they will do that in 5E as they seem to be wanting to play everything in the middle and try and please everyone, maintain every setting they have. And that simply doesn't work.

So in answer to your original question: yes she is alive (for me), but that isn't the question to ask. The question is whether WotC is alive (for me) as Eilistraee will always be.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le

There were plans at WotC to make it so that neither Eilistraee or Vhaeraun actually died, but only gave up their divinity to get away from that foolish and pointless chess match and keep fighting w/o its restraints. This lore should've been published in a recently released Menzo sourcebook, however with the usual awesomeness that characterizes WotC's decisions, they decided to [url=http://eilistraee.com/forums/viewtopic. ... /:3b1fbvtf]ignore their authors' request[/url:3b1fbvtf] (yes, the idea started from them) and reject the whole thing.

About the reason of this, one of the freelancers who worked on the book was pretty much explicit in one of his posts at CK: they simply don't give a crap about drow things that aren't Drizzt, or exclusively featuring Lolth. This means that chances to see material about non lolthite drow are low (yeah, as it has been said, we have to wait and see as Ed and others are working on 5th ed, still when the company has such a stance about the matter, things get pretty discouraging). Whatever, now that I think about it, the only sense-making story about Eilistraee published by WotC is 'Starlight and Shadows' (and EC isn't even working for them anymore, AFAIK), while the rest (WotSQ and LP) have a very forced plot which makes very little sense (for plenty of reasons discussed over and over here, on WotC's forums, at CK...). If this is the consideration she would get once restored in canon, I guess that we won't be missing out anything. Besides Eilistraee is based on a very appealing concept, freedom and the fight for it, and this alone is enough to make her alive and kicking in many people's FR/setting, as Shir'le pointed out (and [i:3b1fbvtf]maybe[/i:3b1fbvtf] due to her popularity, one day in the far far future, when people will be tired of all drow being either 'OMG ebil spider feticist' or Drizzt, wizbros might decide to publish something decent about her, or any other kind of dark elves again).

I don't play tabletop anymore either, but I have to say that as for a "dead" deity Eilistraee has a lot of active communities.
The thing that troubles me the most is the fact that by killing her and the rest of drow deities WotC actually prevented any future drow novels from being written. Right now the drow are just boring and monolithic, there isn't much to write about.
If they give no damn about drowish lore why don't they just kill or somehow erase the entire race, of course except for Drizzt so they could give him the title of " The last remaining drow".[/sarcasm]

'Cause Lolth is their plan B for when they run out of major villain ideas.

So I guess all we can do right now is wait and hope they bring her back in the 5th edition...

[quote="Kris":3uqjlekx]So I guess all we can do right now is wait and hope they bring her back in the 5th edition...[/quote:3uqjlekx]
No, that doesn't seem like a wise course of action. A much better course of action is to take the reigns into our own hands.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le

[quote="Bhaern Quel":1xntj0y2]We have to wait and see. Many that post here refused to accept the 4th Edition lore, some I am sure did not buy anything of 4th Edition prints.

There have been hints and even half promises that she and a few other deities will actually turn out not to have been killed or some how restored again to life.

Until we see what is in print for 5th Edition we will not know what they in the end decide to do, how they explain and so on.[/quote:1xntj0y2]

I bought 4th edition, and even played it for the first few months. It was great at first, and I like some of the classes even to this day (Warlord). That being said, it got old quickly, and I just had a hard time with what they not only did to my favorite setting, but also my favorite goddess. Now, they make it seem like you have to be a Driz'zt clone to be a good drow.

When did this thread become a ragging session on 4e?

[quote="Shriastae Tivale":1tx2gzcr]When did this thread become a ragging session on 4e? [/quote:1tx2gzcr]

Well in part because 4th tried to kill the Dark Maiden

WotC tried to rewrite FR history during the switch to 4e. This does not mean that 4e killed Eilistraee. I've noticed how no one mentions the other gods that WotC tried to kill off with the Spellplague.

Y'know. Little gods. Like Mystra.

[quote="Shriastae Tivale":3gzuc349]WotC tried to rewrite FR history during the switch to 4e. This does not mean that 4e killed Eilistraee. I've noticed how no one mentions the other gods that WotC tried to kill off with the Spellplague.

Y'know. Little gods. Like Mystra.[/quote:3gzuc349]

Oh some of us are not happy about the others "killed" as well, some in some rather strange ways. Just this forum is mostly followed by Eilistraee fans so she gets most discussion.