Demonweb Pits

The Demonweb Pits are the malevolent plane or planar-network in the multiverses of Dungeons & Dragons that serves as the personal planar nexus for Lolth, Demon Princess of Spiders and Goddess of the Drow. Later, also for her fellow deities in the Dark Seldarine.

Its precise location varies depending on which cosmology you look at; whilst it was presented as a layer of the Abyss in the Great Wheel, and maintained this state in the World Axis, it is considered its own unique plane in the World Tree of the Forgotten Realms - originally, it was an Abyssal layer there, too, but after the events of the Silence of Lolth, it was created anew elsewhere, although the original version can still be reached from the Abyss and it contains a portal to the new version. It's also questionable whether Lolth lives in the Demonweb herself, or just uses it to traverse from her lair to other planes.

First Edition Version

Gary Gygax envisioned the Demonweb first, in Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits. It consists of four layers as tunnels - but through the smoke of Abyssal Chaos, and intertwined. The last tunnel is separate from the others, and connects Lolth's actual home with other planes which Lolth is conquering. Lolth's home is a vast vehicle shaped like a spider; currently parked in a flat, yellow-sand desert with a purple sky overhead. This desert, we'll learn, is carved out of chaos like the Demonweb itself, implicitly likewise Abyssal.

Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes spun the Web proper on the 65th Abyssal layer, with Lolth's crib on the 66th.

Planescape Version

The Demonweb Pits are a huge inverted cone of webbing formed of planar materials and inhabited by spider fiends, drow petitioners and the Spider Queen Lolth. The goddess dwells in an enormous temple of black stone, fashioned in the shape of a giant black widow spider with a beautiful yet cruel drow woman's face for a head, which conceals the entrance. The temple moves about the web, spinning the stuff of the plane as it goes.

Independent Version

The freed Demonweb Pits are a rocky plane of pits, craters, chasms and gorges, littered with the petrified forms of giant spiders, with comparatively smaller spiders (notably songspiders) crawling everywhere, leaving webbing all over the place. It has a distinct day and night cycle; by day, a distant red star balefully glowers over the landscape, whilst at night, a cluster of eight bright red stars, arranged like the eyes of a spider, hangs over everything. Lolth resides in an iron citadel in the Infinite Web.

Godly Denizens

Naturally, Lolth lives here, as does her "pet" Selvetarm and her consort Keptolo.

Ghaunadaur lurks in a fungus-caked, slimy pit somewhere on the plane.

Both Kiaransalee and Vhaeraun begrudgingly reside in territories within the Demonweb Pits - Kiaransalee is especially bitter, since she used to rule the Abyssal layer of Thanatos by right of conquest before Orcus came back from the dead and booted her ass off of his throne.

Eilistraee technically has holdings here, but for obvious reasons, she prefers to stay away from her mom.

It's unknown whether or not Zinzerena and Malyk share this plane.