Loviatar (Forgotten Realms)
| Game background | |
|---|---|
| Title(s) | The Maiden of Pain The Willing Whip |
| Home plane | 2E: Ondtland (Gehenna, Mungoth) 3E: Barrens of Doom and Despair |
| Power level | Intermediate |
| Alignment | Lawful Evil |
| Portfolio | Pain, torture, Hurt, Agony, Torment, Suffering |
| Domains |
Evil, Law, Retribution, Strength, Suffering |
| Design details | |
Evil, Law, Retribution, Strength, Suffering
Loviatar (/ˈloʊviˈætɑːr/ LOH-vee-A-tar) is a fictional evil goddess of agony and pain in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting inspired by a Finnish deity of the same name, and a member of the Finnish pantheon within the larger D&D multiverse. She is a cold-hearted bully, calculating and despotic; she is the master of inflicting physical and psychological pain and torture. Bringing pain and suffering is the aim of all Loviatans, either through physical torture or sometimes more subtly and psychologically. Beauty, intelligence and acting are useful attributes of a Loviatan, but the ability to fully understand someone is the best skill a Loviatan can acquire, as knowing someone fully can help a Loviatan inflict maximum pain, one way or another.
Ed Greenwood used Loviatar as a deity in his home Dungeons & Dragons game, taken directly from the Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia, which was loosely inspired by the deity of the same name from Finnish myth. Within the D&D cosmology as a whole, Loviatar is explicitly the Loviatar of Finnish mythology, and while worshipped across a multitude of prime material worlds, she is considered an interloper deity within the Faerunian pantheon (especially in light of its revised 3rd edition cosmology).
The version of Loviatar from the Forgotten Realms setting first appeared within Dungeons & Dragons as one of the deities featured in Ed Greenwood's article "Down-to-earth Divinity" in Dragon #54 (October 1981). Loviatar is introduced as the Maiden of Pain and Torture, goddess of pain, hurt, and patron of torturers, a lawful evil demigoddess from the plane of Gehenna. Loviatar is described as one of “The Dark Gods” of evil alignment: "Loviatar, Talona, and Malar serve Bane through Bhaal (although Loviatar and Talona are rivals)." Loviatar is commonly worshipped by lawful evil magic-users, assassins, monks, and clerics, and characters employed as torturers.
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