Thalyrra Zyn'raen - The High Priestess of Lolth

Role in Its Society:

Thalyrra Zyn’raen is the supreme voice of Lolth in a sprawling Underdark city whose name surface-folk rarely learn and even more rarely survive. As High Priestess, she:

• Commands the primary temple of Lolth, its altars, sacrificial pits, and spider-filled vaults.
• Directs the city’s religious courts, where “justice” is whatever best serves Lolth’s whims and the matron mothers’ ambitions.
• Oversees the breeding, training, and deployment of spiders and driders, though she prefers to keep driders at arm’s length as useful warnings of failure.
• Serves as spiritual and political arbiter, blessing or condemning alliances between noble houses, sanctioning raids, and interpreting omens spun in web and blood.

In practice, Thalyrra is an overlord whose power rivals the city’s ruling matron. Her favor can elevate a minor house overnight; her displeasure can doom a line to sacrificial altars or the drider’s curse. For those outside drow society, she is the nightmare behind the raids: the one who whispers which surface villages will burn and which slaves will be taken.

She has no interest in alliances with lesser races beyond utility. To her, everything that is not drow is prey, pawn, or offering.

Appearance Description:

Thalyrra is the very image of Lolth’s favored: tall for a drow, with obsidian-black skin that reflects the faintest violet sheen in spiderlight. Her features are elegant and severe—high cheekbones, thin lips painted deep crimson, and eyes like polished rubies, their pupils thin as spider fangs.

Her hair is a cascade of silken white, braided into multiple tight ropes that loop and knot like stylized spider legs around her head and shoulders. Tiny living spiders nest in the braids, moving lazily, occasionally spinning fresh strands that she incorporates into her adornments.

She wears ceremonial armor beneath her robes: a fitted adamantine corset and pauldrons etched with web motifs and tiny spider sigils. Over this, flowing robes of black and blood-purple hang in layered, torn hems, each edge embroidered with silver thread that glitters like dew on a web. The robes never seem to snag on anything, moving with unnerving grace no matter the terrain.

Around her neck rests an obsidian holy symbol of Lolth, carved as a spider with a ruby hourglass in its abdomen. She wields a serpentine scourge—a whip of living, venomous snake-like cords tipped with barbed fangs—and often carries a spider-etched sacrificial dagger of black glass.

Her presence is accompanied by subtle signs:

• A faint rustle of tiny legs just out of sight.
• Threads of spider silk where there were none moments before.
• Shadows that seem to stretch into eight-legged shapes when she passes.

Backstory:

Thalyrra was marked by Lolth before she could walk.

During her naming ceremony, a spider descended from the temple ceiling and crawled across the infant’s face without biting. The priestesses proclaimed it a sign: Lolth was watching. From that day, Thalyrra’s path was set.

As a girl, she entered the temple cloister and proved herself both devout and vicious. She excelled at:

• Scriptural law and manipulation, using doctrine to twist rival acolytes into heretics.
• Ritual precision, performing sacrifices with calm, clinical grace.
• Subtle cruelty, choosing torments that broke pride before flesh.

When the time came for the Trial of Threads—the deadly competition that culls aspirant priestesses—Thalyrra went further than most. Where others simply sabotaged rivals, she wove a plot that turned two whole houses against each other, offering “prophecies” to both sides. The resulting bloodshed delighted Lolth; Thalyrra emerged as the only surviving candidate, her rivals dead, disgraced, or cursed into driders.

Years later, when the previous High Priestess faltered in the wake of a failed surface campaign, Thalyrra seized the moment. She claimed to have received a vision that named her predecessor wanting. Conveniently, incriminating evidence appeared in the temple archives. The old priestess was dragged to the webs, and Thalyrra ascended, taking the title and mantle of High Priestess in a ceremony that bathed the altar in fresh blood.

Now she rules with a blend of icy patience and sudden savagery. She encourages infighting between noble houses, ensuring all must come to her for divine favor. She dreams of orchestrating a grand crusade to drag a surface city—any city—down into the webs, brick by brick, as an offering to Lolth. Every sacrifice on her altar is a rehearsal for that day.