Queen of Air and Darkness

Of great interest to sages and wizards is the origin of the Black Diamond itself. The dwarves who brought the gem to Ladinion set about the chain of events, but they did it as a sign of friendship; thus, while faeriekind has distrusted dwarves ever since, they do not lay blame at their hands. Similarly, sages almost universally hold to the belief that they were unwitting pawns or accidental agents of chaos. Indications in the tale have led these sages to argue that the gem was already carved and found in that way by these dwarves; the evil nature of its corruption has put sages on the path of looking at ancient, powerful forces of darkness as the origin of the stone. Speculation is rampant and highly varied, with theories ranging from Apophis to Hiisi to a variety of ancient tanar’ri, baatezu, or slaadi lords, although the consensus is generally split between the entities known as the Elder Elemental God and the Dark God. Whatever the truth, if it was a plot to bring corruption to the sylvan races, it was considerably successful.

Soon after the mountain exploded, killing the Dwarves and sending black poisonous clouds over Ladinion, creating a smoke sickness which decimated the Faerie people. The Seelie Court was forced to take flight across the planes and abandon the land.

The wretched Queen of Air and Darkness haunts the Unseelie Court in Pandemonium as a hovering, unseen but very definitely perceived malign magical presence. From her twisted throne she snaps her fingers to her enslaved Elven and Faerie servitors, the mindless undead which perform menial duties, (and which the evil faeries she torments can themselves torment in their turn), and to the hell hounds and yeth hounds who slaver at her feet. The Queen is truly only a husk of a being, utterly corrupted by the ten-faceted Black Diamond, an artifact of vast magical strength and ineffable evil. The Queen deals with no other evil deities and simply ignores them. Wretched beyond any hope of her own physical death, the soul-dead Queen is driven to destroy what she herself once was, to drive the Seelie Court and the deep Sylvan races down into darkness and destruction, leaving only shells of their bodies remaining. Who or what created the Black Diamond is unknown, but some myths whisper that the Dark God of the Underdark created it, and that his return may be dependent on the Queen’s despoiling.

The Queen’s avatar roams the Prime Material, in darkened and despoiled woodlands, seeking to expand her influence among evil faeries and elves, turning other faerie folk to evil, and making fast despoiling forays into the edges of sylvan lands, testing their defenses. She is patient, cold and calculating, and will not risk a Black Diamond facet coming to harm. The Queen’s avatar is a cold, utterly evil, emotionless thing, its hatred delighting in the triumph of turning good to evil, of draining beings of their self-will and autonomy just as the Queen has lost hers.

Each avatar will carry a facet with it to enhance its powers, but will very carefully conceal this in a secret place away from its own “body”. As noted below, the avatar has no true physical form within a mile of the facet, and can only be perceived as an image in the mind’s eye, magically perceived or else dimly intuitively sensed. Aura: Magic (illusions), darkness, murder. Black Diamond

The Queen of Air and Darkness has no corporeal form and can ordinarily only be sensed as a chill wind that sends shivers down the spines of those who are near her. She has a voice that is at once both hauntingly beautiful and terrifyingly cold; few creatures who hear her speak can forget the experience. If magically perceived, her true nature is apparent. She appears as a female faerie with great grey moth-like wings and a cold, terrifying beauty. Her features are sharply angular and her skin bone-white, while her eyes have black irises and blood-red pupils. She has a long mane of black hair that is always gently blowing in an unseen wind, as is the tattered hem of her long white gown. 

The Queen of Air and Darkness is quite active on the Prime Material Plane, although many of her excursions are cloaked in illusions and deception. She does sometimes initiate direct assaults on sylvan lands to test their defenses and instill fear, but these are uncommon. She is cruel and calculating, but supremely patient. She is perfectly willing to wait centuries for her plots to bear fruit; she never acts rashly or hastily. She is often thought of as being emotionless due to this patience, but the truth is she is filled with an icy-cold rage that never burns hot. She is quick to stoke divisions and distrust between sylvan races and neighboring humans, dwarves, or other races, in hopes of turning such emotions into open warfare. She also watches for the emotionally desperate to whom she offers great power in exchange for acts of cruelty and destruction, and she is adept at appearing kindly in order to lead creatures to their doom with good intentions. She delights in draining such creatures of their self-will and autonomy, binding them to servitude just as she was. Her avatars are dispatched with facets of the Black Diamond, secreting them away nearby to feed her with power; these she protects with even greater urgency than that of her avatars themselves.

Since her corruption, the Queen of Air and Darkness has used her magic to tempt and change a number of sylvan races, bringing them into her Unseelie Court. She has no lords or trusted advisors like her sister, for she dominates and enslaves all her subjects, truly trusting none of them. The subjects she prizes above all others are the quicklings, malicious cousins of Titania’s favored brownies who the Queen has tempted to evil with promises of great magic. She enjoys twisting the members of the Seelie Court to murderous and cruel purposes and is said to be responsible for the creation of bramble and unseelie fairies, unseelie nymphs, black and shadow unicorns, lyrannikin and evil treants, and wicked leprechauns. Not all of her creations serve her, however; she is said to be responsible for creating spriggans from rock gnome stock, but most of these gnomes favor the Crawler Below, Urdlen. Some sages believe she is responsible for the creation of the underdark fairies known as glouras, although the truth behind this is unconfirmed. Finally, some sages see her hand at work in the curse Verenestra uses on some nymphs who displease her, creating dark nymphs; this needs significant investigation to confirm, as it could represent the Queen’s greatest threat to the Seelie Court yet. She has not been above trading the secrets of her corruptions to other deities, either, although the prices she demands are unknown. It is said she traded the secret of creating a root stock of black unicorns to the Beastlord Malar, who then shared that knowledge with the evil Red Wizards of Thay on the world of Toril. The creatures bound to her service are not limited to faeriekind; she has a host of undead creatures enslaved in the Unseelie Court and is said to have created the first lhiannan shee and yeth hounds. Temptation to power is the gateway to her corruption, and the cost is often eternal servitude and torment even beyond death.

While she can cast spells from all schools and spheres, she favors those from the schools of illusion/phantasm, elemental air, and shadow, and rarely uses those from the school of invocation/evocation. She never uses spells that create bright light. Death spell, finger of death, summon shadow 1/day each within a mile of black diamond facet. Commands hell hounds and yeth hounds. Can create food and drink from diamond, but tainted with addiction that makes the creature dominated.

Not long after, a great explosion tore apart the mountain of the dwarves and an acrid black cloud blanketed the sylvan lands, choking the life from tree and faerie alike. Titania and her Seelie court were forced to flee across the planes and have wandered ever since. What became of the land of Ladinion is unknown; some sages speculate it resides in some lost crystal sphere on the Prime Material, while others think it a planar land that has since slid into the Abyss or became the basis of the Queen’s own Unseelie Court.

Of the many legends and myths that may be connected to the Queen of Air and Darkness, a few have risen to a point that they can be considered full-fledged cults or aliases. Sages are divided as to whether these identities represent the Queen in truth, or whether they were adopted by her at later dates through duplicitous means, however. The most prominent may be the name Mab; in the oldest tales she appears as either a faerie queen or faerie midwife with power over dreams. She was said to bring dreams to those asleep; such dreams could be nightmares but could also be dreams about ambitions and desires that could drive people to work harder to achieve them. This form of the faerie Mab was clearly not malicious, and many sages believe it may reflect the Queen’s true original personality. Tales of Mab have changed over time, showing her more dangerous and malicious. Another name that may have originally referred to an independent entity is Nicnevin, invoked in some myths and legends as a malicious faerie queen or witch who brings storms and other troubles. Finally, the Queen of Air and Darkness is almost assuredly the inspiration for a witch-queen known variously as Orcades or Morcades in a few human legends in which she is a major threat to the protagonist, who is always a noble and heroic king. It is these stories that lend her the epithet the Witch in the Wood. Regardless of their origins, there are cults worshipping the Queen of Air and Darkness under each of these names. Most such cults consist of wizards and witches rather than priests, however.