It is said the cruelest punishment awaiting drow is not death, but the transformation into a drider, one of the Shunned. That statement is far from wrong. Surface dwellers do not understand what it is like. They treat driders just like they were normal drow, with the same moods, the same behaviors, the same way of thinking. Perhaps even some drow labor under that same false impression.

The worst part is in the beginning. There is no word for how terrible it is to look and see the Flesh-Carver's eyes looking through yours into your soul, no comparison for the horror of feeling the full weight of Lolth's madness even for the briefest instant. It shreds your mind until there are only fragments...the pain does not die for the rest of your life. And when you awake, more often than not you are alone, hurting, and afraid in the darkness of the Underdark with creatures waiting for you to die so they can make a meal of you.

A drider does not realize what has happened, with their mind so broken. The hunger Lolth curses them to always feel eats away at their souls, until even those they loved become nothing more than walking, talking meals. If they can control themselves, then these faces are like demons come to torment them with a past they can hardly remember, a life they can never touch again. Hate begins to burn deep within them—they have been robbed of everything.

They are separated forever from life. They do not feel chilled on a cold winter day, or comfortable before a warm fire. They have lost the ability to appreciate a fine meal. And they can never sleep—instead, they close their eyes in a parody and let their goddess-given nightmares begin a macabre display. Time passes, days stretching into weeks then blend into years. It does not matter to a drider. They cannot die unless their form is destroyed altogether.

In time, they do not remember their past, their name, their life before this wretched existence. They forget how to speak, how to laugh, how to smile. Alone in the dark, they stop feeling altogether, lost in the mad visions they have seen. This is the fate of a drider.

--Xunyl Melani, Reverend Daughter of Lolth, with many contributions from

Shria Barrison'Del'Armgo, drider and former Reverend Daughter

The soft splash of water drops against stone was what roused Lolsyn from her dazed state on the cavern floor. Webs surrounded her, shrouding the rough rock of the small chamber with a softer, silvery tapestry of spider silk. She had come a very long way in what she assumed was the past few weeks, and she had devoted the last couple of days to resting. This place was surprisingly comfortable, but she could not stop now.

She lifted herself up and walked over to the entrance that was shrouded in thicker webbing, tearing it out of the way. She could feel the tunnel zephyrs again, cool air wafting back and forth with the many smells of the subterranean maze known as the Night Beneath heavy on it. A strange clicking, scuttling sound echoed after her as she moved. It took her a moment to recall that the sound was her...footsteps, in a manner of speaking.

Lolsyn moved back over to where she had been resting by a small pool of water formed from similar drips. It was a wet cavern, with a bitter chill to it that lingered long in the bones of the living—that was its sole flaw. However, it meant that she had little competition for space. Almost curiously, she leaned over the pool of water to look at her reflection.

Blank white eyes, filled with the emptiness of her curse and a ravenous hunger, stared back. Her cheeks were hollow from not eating, the angles of her face painfully sharp. White hair fell into her face like a curtain, clean but tangled. The dirt had come out when she fell into the Under River where it wound its way by the paths that had brought her here. Her frame had become weak with starvation, shoulders and arms bony—even her ribs showed through the cloth she stolen and used to cover her torso. It was practically a rag now, worn threadbare and spattered with a rust-colored stain.

She followed the image down watching her waist blend seamlessly into the body of a spider, sans the head. Lolsyn's hand absently reached back, resting on the side of the smooth carapace between two legs. She could remember being beautiful once—or was that just another fevered dream? The drider scuttled back, turning around. She had nothing to carry with her, starting on her way out into the network of tunnels.

The slope upward was so slight it wasn't noticeable to Lolsyn as she scuttled over uneven stone and sent pebbles skittering along ahead and behind her. She would not have cared anyway. Up no longer carried a connotation any more than down, left, right, behind, or ahead. It simply meant a direction. She did not understand the urge driving her on—it was not hunger, though that seemed to dominate her world, pushing all thought aside. It was something almost as powerful. Pain, perhaps. It certainly seemed to wound her whenever she saw the ones that looked like her, the ones with two legs. Their eyes were not empty, though. They moved gracefully, talked, and had no arachnid characteristics that she could see. She found that around them she felt as though she had once been one. Ilythiiri, they called themselves. Drow.

Lolsyn Xaelyth, as she followed the tunnels upward, knew only three things: her name, what she was, and the fact that she was not a monster. And she prayed to the empty air, as unfeeling and uncaring as it was, that someone else would believe that too.