The Lash of Loviatar

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This tome takes the form of a whip of braided leather strands and a stout wooden handle wrapped about with a broad leather strap. The braided “striking strand” is about four feet in length and ends in a knot; it is dusted with “sparkles” or flecks of silver metal. The handle is about a foot long and over an inch in diameter; metal clips at both of its ends secure the leather wraps in place. If the clip at the butt end of the handle is undone (a function it is designed to perform readily and speedily), the wrapping-strap may be unwound—and on its inner surface, in a long ribbon of script, a spell is inscribed. At any given time the Lash of Loviatar displays a single, randomly selected spell from its “roster” of stored magics and continues to do so (whenever its wrapping-strap is released) until it is used to strike a living being (that is, deliberately swung, with attendant attack and damage rolls, to do harm to a given target). Once the Lash successfully strikes someone, its writing alters to display another randomly chosen spell from its list. (This is the only known way to access these spells. The lash demonstrably resists both dispel magic and enchantments that attempt to identify its stored spells or essential natures.) Although the lash is made of materials that seldom have a particularly long “life,” its age must have been prolonged by enchantments. It is first heard of in the Tidings of Taldan (written by the news-gathering minstrel Taldan, circa 778 DR), when it was wielded by Endreira Chathlass, a rising priestess of the Faith of Pain who ultimately became High Temptress of Loviatar over all Faerun. Endreira, known as “Lady Heartless” because of her cruelties as a mercenary warrior in the Vilhon Reach, murdered a series of wealthy merchants and took their worldly goods for her own, until she had amassed coins enough to found the Black Falcons of Fury, an elite band of female adventurers. The Black Falcons quickly made names for themselves through their daring ruthlessness, raiding various Mulhorand families and concerns at the behest of rivals. It was their custom to slaughter not only their quarries, but anyone who might have witnessed their attacks. The trails of blood quickly became long and deep enough to cause serious concern to all rulers in the region. Such concerns were even more sharp and intense after Endreira demanded the use of a cragtop castle from a petty ruler, the Jahorgan of Jahorga (a realm that lay between the Nagawater, the Nagaflow, and the Golden Road). The Jahorgan haughtily refused her. She responded by taking him captive, slaying all of his citizens, seizing the realm for her own and publicly inviting malcontents, rebels, and outlaws from the lands of the Vilhon, the Old Empires, and around the Lake of Steam to become citizens of her new “pirates’ realm,” Endrara. Even as armies were lined against her on all sides, Endreira turned to Loviatar for the first time in her bloody life and made a bold pact: She would slay the Jahorgan slowly, by torture, and make his death the first in a long line to be performed by herself and the priestesses under her, adopting the faith of the Maiden of Pain as the state religion of Endrara. In return, Loviatar would aid her with spells, priestesses hastily gathered from all over Faerun, and “torturer- gargoyles” (margoyles). Whatever the details of the secret agreement between deity and human, Lady Heartless spent all of the time during which her lands were being invaded by foreign armies slowly and lovingly doing the Jahorgan to death while her Loviatan aid fought for her. (Dismemberment and parasitic infestations are known to have been involved in the perse¬cution of the Jahorgan, as well as lengthy sessions with the Lash of Loviatar, which first comes to light in Faerun at this point.) Despite the overwhelming numerical and organiza¬tional superiority of the invaders, the stabbing spells that came leaping out of the sky repeatedly slaughtered them in their thousands, and the servitors of Loviatar did butchery among the remnants. The armies that sought to crush Endrara were obliterated. Yet the realm fell within a month of the Great Slaughter— evidently as a result of the fury of the god Talos, who was enraged by Loviatar’s hurling magic from the sky (as an encroachment on a portfolio he saw as his; namely, spell- storms—something he was later to lose decisively to Mystra). Talos smashed the fledgling realm with floods and titanic lightning storms, shattering the gathered Loviatans and oblit¬erating the settlements of the realm (that today remains a sparsely-settled, wilderland area of scattered farms and shep¬herds). Endreira survived, whisked elsewhere by the will of Loviatar, and, no doubt under the direct control of the goddess as her increasingly insane behavior hints, embarked on tireless travel throughout Faerun, spreading the words of Loviatar and trying to persuade humans (young females in particular) to join in her worship. In this work, the spells of the Lash are known to have rendered critical aid time and time again. Lady Heartless met with slow but steady success in what became her lifework. She personally recruited almost 6,000 devout worshipers who were fit to become Priestesses of Pain before she died of old age in 848 DR, worn out by her travels and almost constant challenge-fights and debaucheries. Her successor, the ambitious but careless Chalice of the Faith, Imshrara Vlengaun, claimed the Lash as her badge of office, proclaiming it “the most holy relic of the Church,” as it (she believed) “has come to us from the bloody hand of the Lady herself.” Imshrara had the enthusiasm of Endreira but not her cunning, and soon succumbed to a cabal of underlings who then wracked the Church with a decade of confusion as they struggled for supremacy. Imshrara was found strangled by a roper that had been smuggled into her chambers by unknown hands. The roper was slaughtered by the ever-alert Holy Guards only after it had slain the Chalice Supreme. The corpses of both were shown to the hastily assembled senior priestesses of the faith, and then left to rot in chambers that were sealed away. Twelve years later, in 862 DR, Kathlathtra “Talons” Roultym of Sespech won the bloody internal struggle and took the title High Holy Temptress of the Faith, ordering the bones of Imshrara to be taken up from the dusty chambers where they had lain unburied and interred them with honor in a catafalque of black stone in the High House of Pain in Undelos (a town that has since vanished, which stood due east of the Ankhwood). Unfortunately for Kathlathtra’s ambition (and hopes of lasting survival), sometime during the period that Imshrara lay dead and forgotten, someone (undoubtedly a priestess of Loviatar) had stolen the Lash and taken or hidden it far away. This was clearly in accordance with the will of Loviatar, for all of Kathlathtra’s spells and agents failed to find the Lash in the eight years that followed. Not until her underling Imra took advantage of her Most Holy superior’s search for the ultimate Sacred Pain to do Kathlathtra to death and seize her title and the Sacred Throne of Skulls that Kathlathtra had just ordered built, was the Lash uncovered. Imra was a capable, paranoid, and over-careful bureaucrat, who saw conspiracies and treachery behind every pillar of every Loviatan temple, and in dealing with such “dark rots” slew almost every capable priestess of the faith who had risen to exalted rank. In so doing, Imra kept her throne, as the influ¬ence and true power of the church dwindled around her. For 46 long years, various unheralded, low-ranking adventurer-priest¬esses of Loviatar wielded the Lash— a manifestation of the goddess seized it upon the death of one, only to promptly arrive in some distant corner of Faerun, unannounced, and present it to another. The sacred weapon became almost an “anti-establishment” badge of the faith—so much so that when Naneethrama Luin rose from humble origins to slay the Highmost Lash of the Lady (Undreena, who had replaced Imra in 916 DR), and claim the rulership of the Loviatan church for her own in 929 DR, she gave the Lash to the lowest ranking priestess she could find in Undelos, and bade her “take it out into Faerun and give it to the most needy lay worshiper of the faith” she could find. In so doing, she undoubtedly preserved the sacred item from destruction—for Naneethrama, the Sacred Throne of Skulls, Undelos, and all were swept away in the Great Rising of the Orcgates, in 955 DR, when a fell power (some say Thayan archmages experimenting with dangerous spells, others insist that the gods of the orcs themselves were respon¬sible) suddenly brought into being scores of dimensional portals that spewed forth orcs from the mountain caverns of the far North to lay waste to half a hundred cities and realms all over Faerun. Who that nameless priestess bestowed the Lash upon and what uses they made of it are things forgotten by history. The Lash disappears from recorded lore after it was sent forth at the command of the Highmost Lash, and is not heard of again until 971 DR, when an adventuress of Sheirtalar, one Rakharla Lommerekh, flays a rival, Klarla of Durgar, to death with what is undoubtedly the holy weapon of Loviatar. Shortly thereafter, Rakharla came to the notice of Althatha Ammaeritus, a Tashlutan priestess of Loviatar, and met a swift end. Armed with the Lash, Althatha led a revolt against the “decadent, pleasure loving self-styled princesses” of the faith and succeeded in storming five of the ornate pleasure-houses that the Tashlutan senior priestesses of the faith had estab¬lished. She was slain during her assault on the sixth temple, The House of the Hand of Torment, and the Lash fell into the hands of its Whipmistress Superior, Jalrathae, who saw it as a mark of Loviatar’s favor—and promptly embarked on her own conquering crusade among the temples of the faith. She did rather better than Althatha, forcing no less than a dozen temples to obey her commands before the High Holy Temptress of that day (974 DR), Lauraera Dlarayna of Arrabar, caught up with her and tortured her to death. Lauraera commanded two of her underlings, the priestesses Falindra and Yathrae, to investigate the powers of the Lash fully and write down their findings, which became part of the temple lore. The two did their task well, and while working together, plotted to slay their superior—a deed that proved to be all too easy. Falindra then tried to kill her partner and claim the rulership of the faith for her own. Nevertheless, Yathrae outsmarted her rival, mastering a spell that enabled her to take on a ghostlike form and avoid the multiple blade barriers and wailing whips cast by Falindra. (This incident is probably the origin of the persistent but almost certainly false rumors that the Lash can call up and command “ghosts”.) She took the Lash and fled with it, far and fast, using spells to conceal herself in the form of a man (and the Lash in the form of a notched and scarred broadsword, a form to which it still some¬times reverts, at apparently random times, for unknown reasons) from the searchers sent by Falindra. The seekers soon stopped coming, as Falindra was slain by an ambitious underpriestess, Olyndra Hothyn, whose atten¬tion was bent on other things. Yathrae lived out her days in hiding, revealing her true gender and passing on the Lash only on her deathbed, in 1036 DR, to the local Watchful Whip of Loviatar. This wise but lazy lady, Mulondrae of Ravvan, was astute enough to keep the Lash hidden, and Yathrae’s revela¬tion and identity secret from her fellow priestesses. She was well on her way up the hierarchy when a battle with a rival almost brought about her death, and forced her to reveal the Lash in defense. She won that battle, but she died at the hands of one of the dozens of ambitious Loviatan priestesses who converged on the scene in the tenday that followed. Sometime during that last ride of Mirtul in 1048 DR, the Lash of Loviatar disappeared, stolen away by a murderous priestess, and has not been found by the hierarchy of her church since, though it has surfaced briefly in the hands of adventurers of both genders and many alignments (notably the mercenary general Gordurn in 1167 DR, at the battle of Yonder Fields, and the famous freebooter and probable Lord of Waterdeep, Mirt, for a few days in 1322 DR). It was last traced by still- vigilant Loviatan agents to Sembia or perhaps Westgate, but may well have moved on, since extensive searches of both realm and city-state succeeded in making the Church of Pain many enemies but failed to turn up any sign of the elusive sacred lash. The lash is known to hold the following spells (and may well hold many more, according to coy notes left behind by Yathrae): Blade barrier, body blades (a spell detailed below), cure critical wounds, cure light wounds, cure serious wounds, dance of pain (a spell detailed in the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook), dispel magic, fire storm, flame blade, flame strike, heal, kiss of torment (Faiths & Avatars), loving pain (detailed below), neutralize poison, produce flame, remove curse, remove paralysis, resurrection, sacred strike (detailed below), slow poison, spell immunity, spiral of degeneration (Faiths & Avatars), storm of vengeance (Faiths & Avatars), wailing whips (detailed below), wall of fire, whip of flame (Faiths & Avatars), and whip of pain (Faiths & Avatars). Other Properties of the Lash In Loviatan lore, the Lash of Loviatar is reputed to be able to cast spells (from its roster) “by itself,” when released to “dance” and then commanded to unleash specific spells by a priest who knows how to make it do so. Two books in the library at Candlekeep record instances when a Loviatan priestess cast spells in battle as a dancing whip beside her did so too, responding to her commands. For both whip and commander to work spells during the same round, the spell cast by the priestess must obviously have a casting time of less than a round to allow her time for the command. It is also likely that she is the last being to touch the whip, that it can unleash only one of each spell it holds before being grasped again, and that it must deal damage to someone between castings, in order to change to a new spell. Its victim can reportedly be the priestess, if such can be accommodated without ruining her spellcasting. However, what THAC0 it employs, how fast it moves, and whether a priestess can choose its target remain unknown as of this writing.