The Dark Queen is the primordial mother of Chaos, from whose body the cosmos was made. Partly beheaded by Arian, she ruled the cosmos as a tyrant for a thousand years until her defeat in 1375 D.R., and has since persisted through avatars such as Ti Mut / Tii.
| Type | Deity |
| Other names | Queen Mother, Mother of the Five Faces, the Beheaded, the First Serpent, Tyrant of the Thousand Years, Ti Mut, Tii’Mhut, Tii |
| Avatars | Ti Mut / Tii’Mhut / Tii |
| Consorts | Coyote (interrupted), Ai |
| Houses of the Cycle | ◑ House of the One Kept in Store · ※ House of the Name |
| Spanish entry | La Reina Oscura |
Names
Her full name, the Akkadian word for the first Chaos, is avoided where possible. “The Dark Queen” is a polite euphemism, “Queen Mother” an ancient title, “Mother of the Five Faces” a description; Ti Mut, Tii’Mhut and Tii are named avatars. The doctrine of the Decadian holds that speaking the whole name opens the way to its bearer.
History
The first Chaos
Her oldest source is the Enuma Elish, an Akkadian tablet kept in the libraries of Nineveh, copied by Ethiopians, carried to Toledo and read by Paulus of Alexandria in a Coptic version. In it there was water and chaos, and the mother was the chaos. Marduk, the young god, danced with her, deceived her, split her, and made the world from her body.
The dance with Arian
In the first millennium of the shared cosmos, Arian (the 25th sun, of the first noon, a bodhisattva by office) repeated the act: he danced with her and, after Lucurioso, joined with her, then cut off a head. The beheading was not complete, and she survived.
The thousand-year tyranny
She then became tyrant of the cosmos for a thousand years, a continuation rather than a return. Her instrument was Dual Magic, the cosmic fire Paulus had stolen from the gods. No hero or god could stand against her, and the cosmos entered “the period of draining”. Heroes such as Sol-Luna and Minaya finally defeated her around 1375 D.R., the year of the Last Judgment of the first cosmos. She lost her dominion, not her life.
Avatars
As Ti Mut / Tii’Mhut / Tii, a beautiful widow in black, she appeared in trading places: Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms, a Mediterranean court, roadside inns, acting from the shadows for decades.
- She married, or tried to marry, Coyote, recorded as an attempt at redemption. The ceremony was interrupted by the Lord of the Shroud and Lady Zara. Coyote survived; when he became a vampire she wished him far away.
- She murdered the Patriarch, the chief churchman. The surviving formula, confirmed by chronomancy: «Lo desayunó» (“She had him for breakfast”).
- Around 1401 D.R. the avatar Tii abandoned the cult of the Dark Queen, ceasing to serve her from outside and becoming her from within, and took power in Egypt with a consort named Ai. After seven avatars, she governed Egypt for a time as a queen with a consort, not as an open goddess. In the Egyptian court she figures as the antagonist “Queen Mother”.
She waits, in the present cycle, for the head she has not yet shown.
Five heads
Tradition gives her five heads and the dried stump of a sixth. Her five heads are set beside the five eras of Graz’zt as the five points of the Abyssinian pentacle: the Ethiopian standard’s pentacle is also her sign, read in reverse.
In Vala
In the orb of Vala she is a living substrate. In Uruk the New Year ritual re-enacts the Enuma Elish each year; the imperial order of the Blue House is constituted against her. The Dark Queen of Vala’s New Year is the one of the first Chaos, not the version the Gray Cosmogony fused with the primordial cow of the north.
- Dragons of Tiamat: her own descent in Vala, a cosmological faction of several subdivisions. They are distinct from the Dragon Kings of the White House, creatures of the light side that fought the Dreys. A draconic line descends from particular heads (Avishai).
- Valley of the Tempest: where storm-god worshippers were displaced by Gilgamesh’s solar cult, a guardian dragon keeps the ruins and buried technology; her shadow falls on this arc.
- The Black Egg: in the Wordbreakers arc it is read as possibly an egg of the Queen or her brood.
- The Devourer: may be her avatar or a parallel entity; the matter is left unresolved.
She is also linked to Belial in the Waterdeep records.
Conflicting accounts
- Heads: five remaining plus the stump of a sixth cut by Arian; elsewhere, Arian cut one of the five she had, leaving four.
- Coyote: she married him, or only tried to.
Open questions
- Which head has not yet been shown.
- Who the Lord of the Shroud and Lady Zara were is not made clear.