The sava board hung in mid-air, a bridge across an endless divide.

On one side of this line lay the Demonweb Pits, a vast plain of tortured rock under a purplish-black sky. An enormous black spider with red eyes dominated this landscape: the goddess Lolth, in one of her eight aspects. Sticky white webs stretched from her body to points near and far within her realm. They zigzagged back and forth between the spires of black rock that twisted toward the sky, and filled the many jagged craters that pocked the ground. Tiny bulges pulsed through these hollow webs: creatures, mortal and otherwise, who had found their way into her realm, either through death or deliberate folly. Muffled screams and moans came from within, bleeding out into to the sulfurous air.

On the other side of the divide stood a forest: Eilistraee's realm. A wind carried a whisper of song through tall trees, rustling branches heavy with moonstones. Half of the fruitlike orbs retained their original coloration-milky white with glints of shifting blue. The rest had darkened to a shadow black that drank in the moonlight dappling the forest. All lent a sweet perfume to the air.

Under these branches stood the goddess herself, a tall, lithe figure with coal black skin and moon-pale hair that hung to her ankles. Once, she had walked proudly naked through her realm, but now she wore a loose black shirt and trousers that hid her feminine curves. A mask-black, but glinting with moonlight as her breath stirred it-hid her face from the eyes down.

Eilistraee's twin swords hung beside her hips, suspended by song and magic. As the goddess contemplated the sava board, she played with an assassin's dagger, absently twirling the blade by its strangle cord.

Spotting something, she stiffened. "What is this, Lolth? Another of your distractions?"