Dungeons & Dragons' Evil Spider Goddess Gets a Major Redesign

Lolth, the iconic spider-goddess at the heart of Dungeons & Dragons' first adventure, has received a major redesign. Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast revealed three new Magic: The Gathering cards from the upcoming "Adventures in the Forgotten Realms" set as part of the launch of a summer-wide celebration of Drizzt Do'Urden, the iconic drow ranger and star of a longrunning series of novels by R.A. Salvatore. One of those cards featured Lolth, the famed spider goddess responsible for the corruption of some of the drow in Dungeons & Dragons lore. It's been a few years since we've seen Lolth appear in any sort of official artwork and artist Tyler Jacobson mentioned that he had the opportunity to do a major redesign of the character while working on the art for the card.

Lolth, Spider Queen. This is my original painting of Lolth for the upcoming #mtgafr set. AD @zack_stella This one is near and dear to me because I had the opportunity to completely update her design during visual development. #dungeonsanddragons #magicthegathering #lolth #drow pic.twitter.com/QlqaeI3SQs

— Tyler Jacobson (@jacobsontyler) May 21, 2021

Lolth has always been depicted as being a mash-up of a spider and an elf, but her depictions have varied greatly over the years. The "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" adventure depicted Lolth as a large spider with the head of a female dark elf. As a goddess, Lolth has the ability to change forms, and she preferred either the forms of a giant black widow spider or of an "exquisitely beautiful" female dark elf. More recent art has depicted her as having a form similar to a drider - a D&D monster that looks like a centaur only with the bottom half of a spider instead of a horse. Most Lolth art shows her as a sultry dark elf woman attached to a giant spider's abdomen.

The new design is a lot more monstrous than her previous depictions. Her hair is either gone or blends in with a thick lair of webs that covers her face, and her female curves have been replaced with a chitinous body that's vaguely humanoid but still has way too many arms. Basically, Lolth looks a lot more like an evil otherworldly god than a dark elf with spider legs.

Lolth is one of the few major D&D villains to not appear in a Fifth Edition adventure. Given that Dungeons & Dragons recently updated its drow lore to include non-evil drow, we could see a lot more of her and the drow in the near future. In the meantime, let us know what you think of Lolth's new design in the comments section.