Demonweb Pits

Template:Greyhawk Plane The Demonweb Pits, also called Lolth's Web or the Demonweb, is the 66th layer of the chaotic evil-aligned plane of existence known as the Infinite Layers of the Abyss.

Description

The layer is the home of evil drow deity Lolth, her consort Keptolo, and her champion Selvetarm. The plane resembles a giant spiderweb across space, formed from strands of interwoven planar matter. Lolth's palace is a giant iron stronghold stylized in the shape of a spider that crawls across the web strands of the plane.

The 1980 1st-Edition AD&D module Queen of the Demonweb Pits describes the Demonweb Pits as an environment quite unlike the Prime Material Plane, stating that many magical spells and effects do not function as expected here. The web strands themselves are reported to be composed from the lost souls of the Abyss, surrounded by a grey foul-smelling fog above and to the sides of each strand, forming a tunnel-like structure.

Structure

The Demonweb Pits contain portals to a variety of other worlds and planes, including the Kingdom of Caer Sidi, a frozen range of mountains, a great ocean, a black fen, a labyrinth, Guldor, the Nightworld of Vlad Tolenkov, a prison world, a cloud world, a tundra, a jungle, a savanna, an airless world, a world of red trees, the city of Istivin, and the Vault of the Drow. The Demonweb is accessible from the first layer of the Abyss, Pazunia, through a dark pit.

Publishing history

The Demonweb was first introduced in David C. Sutherland III's 1980 adventure Queen of the Demonweb Pits, which was reprinted as part of the Queen of the Spiders supermodule. The setting was visited again in the 1988 adventure The Throne of Bloodstone and in the 1997 adventure Dead Gods, where the player characters travel through it on the way to the Vault of the Drow (reversing the route taken in the original adventure). It was remapped and expanded in the 2001 Dungeon Magazine adventure "The Harrowing," and the various sources compiled and expanded in Fiendish Codex I (2006) and expanded still further in Expedition of the Demonweb Pits (2007).

Lolth and Selvetarm were described in great detail in the 1998 Forgotten Realms product Demihuman Deities, though there is no significant information on the Demonweb itself there.

Bibliography

• Baur, Wolfgang, and Gwendolyn Kestral. Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2007.

• Boyd, Eric L. Demihuman Deities. Renton, WA: TSR, 1998.

• Cook, Monte. Dead Gods. Renton, WA: TSR, 1997.
• -----. "The Harrowing." Dungeon #84. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2001.

• Dobson, Michael, and Douglas Niles. The Throne of Bloodstone. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1988.

• Grubb, Jeff, Bruce R. Cordell, and David Noonan. Manual of the Planes. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2001.

• Jacobs, James, Erik Mona, and Ed Stark. Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2006.

• Moore, Roger E. "Gates in the World of Greyhawk." Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1995. Originally appeared in TSR's America Online folder, later moved to its website. Available online:[1]

• Sutherland, David C. III. Queen of the Demonweb Pits. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1980.