> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Nelfandriss the Banished > [![[Codex/Assets/Characters/Nelfandriss_the_Banished_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Codex/Assets/Characters/Nelfandriss_the_Banished.webp) > ###### Basic Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Character | > ###### Character Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Creature Type | Monstrosity | > Species | Drider | > Gender | Female > Pronouns | She/Her | > Age | Ancient | > Place | [[The Ruby Falls Goldmine]] | > Connections | [[The Bloody Nails]]<br>[[The Green Gryphons]] | > Profession | Progenitor of the Driders | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Alive | **Nelfandriss the Banished** is an ancient Drider — and the first of her kind — who has dwelt in the middle depths beneath [[The Ruby Falls Goldmine]] for hundreds of years, beyond the reach of the sunlit world above. She is the solitary matriarch of a vast arachnid brood, a keeper of beautiful things, and an unlikely figure of negotiation for those wise enough not to draw steel. ## Description #### Appearance Nelfandriss is an imposing and unsettling sight: the upper body of a woman who appears to be in her early thirties — pale, serene, seemingly timeless — fused at the waist to the enormous dark-plated body of a spider spanning nearly ten feet across. Her long black hair falls unbound past her shoulders and across her torso, the only covering she wears. Her eyes, when they catch the light of the bioluminescent fungi that illuminate her domain, reveal a compound shimmer beneath their human surface — a trace of what she has become. Around her neck she wears an ornate amulet of silver and spider-silk weaving, which she keeps close at all times. She moves with a strange, considered grace — the spider legs carry her in near-silence across the stone and web of her cavern, while her hands gesture in slow, deliberate arcs that suggest she has spent centuries practising patience. #### Personality Nelfandriss is ancient and knows it. She speaks with the measured calm of someone for whom most threats are merely inconvenient, and her curiosity about the surface world — its stories, its trinkets, its peoples — has not dulled with age. She loves beautiful things: gemstones, carved pieces, unusual objects carried by travellers. She will accept them as gifts with genuine warmth. Beneath that warmth is a mother's ferocity. She has no interest in violence for its own sake, but the safety of her children — the driders who have spread through the depths since her transformation — is not a matter she negotiates lightly. Any arrangement that threatens them will find a different Nelfandriss entirely: ancient, vast, and utterly without mercy. ## Biography #### Background Little is known of Nelfandriss's origins. She has dwelt in the middle depths for longer than most living memory can trace — the shadowed caves and abandoned mines that lie between the open land above and the deeper world below. The sunlight at the surface burns her; she speaks nothing of what lies beneath. She collects stories and trinkets from the rare travellers who find her domain and survive the encounter, and she has grown into an unexpected custodian of a stretch of the middle depths — neither predator nor guardian, but something in between. The driders that now occur naturally throughout the depths are, in the end, her descendants. She speaks of them only as her children. She was living quietly in [[The Ruby Falls Goldmine]] when the [[Valtorran Empire]] began sending soldiers and miners to exploit the gold seams. The intrusion disturbed her brood, and she responded as any mother would: her spiders killed, cocooned, and stripped the bodies. She had no particular quarrel with the individuals — only with the disruption. ### [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 24 - Nelfandriss The Banished]] The party arrived in Nelfandriss's domain at the deepest point of [[The Ruby Falls Goldmine]], following a trail of cocooned miners and a bioluminescent fungal cavern. Rather than attacking, they chose diplomacy. Nelfandriss revealed that she had been defending her home against the Empire's encroachment — she bore no malice toward the miners as people, only toward the intrusion itself. [[The Bloody Nails]] negotiated a treaty on behalf of [[The Green Gryphons]]: the party would report the mine as inaccessible to the Empire, and in return Nelfandriss would permit the Gryphons' people to mine quietly without interference. The agreement was formally signed. As a gesture of goodwill, she gifted the party the *[[Amulet of the Arachnid Queen]]*, which grants its bearer the ability to climb like a spider or command arachnids. She also shared unsettling intelligence about [[Empress Morganna Eventide|Empress Morganna]] — confirming that the Empress is a century-old girl who brokered a dark deal long ago to trap her own soul and extend her life. ## Trivia - Despite commanding a cavern full of lethal spiders and being capable of devastating violence, the party avoided combat entirely in their encounter with her. She is one of very few major figures in the campaign who the party chose purely to talk to.