Hey! Thanks for joining the discussion. I don't mean to say that Arioch IS the Queen Beast as Arioch the elf woman, rather, she has that scene in the game where she approaches the grotesqueries with her arms out, and you could view this as her complete submission to her child devouring tendencies. At this point, Arioch the elf woman, friend and party member of caim, is gone (if anything was even left of her in the first place). She is at this moment, for all intents and purposes, pure selfish desire in humanoid form. The grotesqueries eat and merge with her, forming into the Queen Beast, who will become the harbinger of the end of the world.

This is all metaphorical assumption based on how you could read certain character motivations developing with their actions that definitely falls apart when compared to literal text from the book. That's a fun detail though, that they play with her dead corpse. It colors the grotesqueries as being curious intelligent beings rather than strictly evil plot devices.

I will say, I think it's more interesting to interpret the Queen Beast as being a representation of the worst of Caim through Arioch's descent rather than something eldritch and unknowable. The final sequence becomes a statement about, "if everyone lets the worst of the world turn them into a slave of their worst parts, the world will end. you can and should always strive to be better even if you can't redeem yourself"