Samua (Lantari ᠰᠠᠠᠮᠦᠠ, Saamua; IPA: /ˈsaːmua/), also called The Lady of the Undead (Lantari ᠪᠠᠨᠶᠤᠷᠮ᠎ᠠ ᠰᠦᠫᠠᠢᠨ᠎ᠢᠲᠡ ᠭᠠᠴ᠎ᠠᠢᠺᠠᠠ, wanyurm-a-subain-ide gaj-aikaa; IPA: /ˈwanjʊrmaˌsupaɪnˌite ˈkat͡ʃaɪˌqaː/) is the death goddess of the Lantari. She is also variously known as the Dark Lady, the Mistress of Unlife, Dark Queen of the Underworld, Mother of Torments, and Weaver of Destruction. Her portfolio also includes the sea, spiders, woodlands, storms, earthquakes, ice, and vengeance.

Samua is most often depicted as a graceful young woman with four arms, dark hair, ice-white skin, pale grey eyes, and a single horn projecting from her forehead. She is also frequently depicted as a large spider covered with thick, black fur and with dazzling jade-green eyes. The Lantari believe that she presides over the afterlife and judges all who pass from the world. Most who die are consigned to some part of Ukkalbajilm, her ice-laden realm of blizzards, but because of her kinship with Jeha, she selects a deserving few to enter the Star-Kingdom of the Lady of the Sky.

The Lantari view their afterlife in Samua's cold mountains as a form of purgatory - only the greatest and most worthy may join with Jeha after death, while the rest must wander the ice-wastes of Ukkalbajilm, proving themselves worthy of redemption in the eyes of the Sukalad. Only those who attract the notice of Samua's brethren will be succoured by another divinity and taken to that deity's kingdom to enjoy the joys therein.

The priesthood of Samua in Lantaren is viewed as a necessary part of life - as indeed death is - and its clerics work closely with Lantari nobles to govern the land. Clerics of Samua are most often deployed as tax-collectors by the ruling nobility, for the goddess's priesthood is a powerful political force and brooks no opposition to its authority. Human sacrifice is not uncommon in the temples of the Dark Lady, and those who refuse the church its demands or question the authority of either the king, the nobility, or the temples, or who engage in heresy (and sometimes even mere blasphemy) may be tried by the temple courts and given over to Samua's temple as an offering. Although, strictly speaking, Lantari law made human sacrifice illegal several centuries ago, the government turns a blind eye to the punishments meted out by Samua's followers (and only Samua's) in dispensing divine justice. Other temple crimes may incur a sentence of death, but the temple of Samua alone may ritually offer up a human life to the divine powers. Sometimes these sacrifices are raised again as undead beings, tasked with some service that the temple needs to have performed.

The undead are thought to be the children of Samua. Although they are invariably deadly creatures, they are not viewed with the same level of religious dread that they are in Lokren. Whereas the Lokrenians hold the undead to be an abomination, an unholy and blasphemous blight upon the will of the gods, in Lantaren undead creatures are said to have been "raised by the grace of the goddess". It is an act of heresy to slay an undead creature in Lantaren, for they are revered as divine messengers and are thought to carry out the will of Samua. The undead are kept in check by the powers of Samua's clerics, who are the only ones permitted to destroy the undead. More often, though, they will seek to control an undead being and use it to further the goals of the priesthood.

In Lantari, the undead are called wanyurm-a-subainid, which translates as "demons of death". It is believed that they are raised to unlife by the servants of Samua, the demons who dwell in Ukkalbajilm, and that the demons take control of a human or animal corpse because they have been dispatched thither on some errand for the Dark Lady.

Samua does not stand in opposition to the rest of the Sukalad; rather, being kin to two of them and on peaceable terms with the rest, she is part of a divine system of control over the Lantari people, in which each deity must play his or her own role.

The role of the temples and temple priests is incredibly important in the theocratic Lantari society, and those who are wise do fealty to the Lady of the Undead in concert with all the other gods. It is considered extremely foolish to vilify, disparage, or even ignore Samua and her priesthood, for death comes to all and one day every person shall stand before her and suffer judgement. Those who have done her due homage will spend less time in Ukkalbajilm and will be placed nearer to her great web, increasing the chance that they will be noticed and rescued by another divinity before long.

The temple of Samua is the richest temple in Lantaren, and also maintains several militant orders, based in fortresses scattered throughout the country. They are the front-line soldiers of the Lantari army, dealing death in the name of their mistress, and played a large role in the two wars that Lantaren fought against Lokren during the last century.

Some scholars - most notably Andew Shammerd - believe that worship of Samua may have evolved from an early cult of dark-hearted Myshak folk who took to worshipping the drow goddess Lolth more than a millennium ago, since which time worship of the spider-goddess has become an institutionalised form of oppression under the harsh and tyrannical regimes of Lantaren. Others refute this, claiming that the Lantari goddess evolved from Aalzanka, the spider-spirit revered by some Ardryn tribes in the Forest of Piges.

The origin of the name Samua is a subject of some debate, though the Enos Esoterica connects it to the Lantari words samaar (squid) and nuim (spirit), postulating that she was originally worshipped primarily as a sea-goddess (an aspect she still maintains in modern Lantaren, though secondary to her role as death-goddess) and that it was the many arms of the squid which gave rise to the myths associating her with spiders. According to Piersym Cote, the Lantari phrase samaar-i-nuim-una, meaning "as the spirit of a squid", in reference to the goddess's preferred mode of appearance in the mortal world, may have evolved into the name Samua.

Other scholars have connected the origin of the name to sammega ("with good fortune"), samagu ("let them breathe"), or even Ardryn suna ("spirit") or zagwa ("fish").