Raven Queen

The Raven Queen is the unaligned goddess of death, fate and doom. She is the seasonal goddess of winter and patron deity of the shadar-kai.

Description
The Raven Queen appears most often in the form of a human woman. She is most often depicted as a tall woman with skin as white as bleached bone and midnight-black hair, wearing either dark courtly dress or a long cowled black robe. Her eyes reveal her true nature: they lack whites, pupils, or irises, being instead a blackness filled with pinpoints of light, a reflection of the stars in the night sky.

She has other appearances, as well. Among the barbarians of the far north, where she bears the title Old Mother Winter, she is depicted as a crone, bent with age, dressed in white save her cloak of raven’s feathers. Despite her seeming frailty, she has an unbreakable grip, and she has been known to choke the life out of even the bravest and strongest of warriors who gets lost among the snow and howling winds of the storms she brings. She is said to spin each snowflake on her loom of fate, encoding a small portion of destiny within its unique pattern, and many barbarian shamans practice the art of divination by reading snowflakes. The fiercest storms, they claim, reveal the most of the future, for those who can withstand them.

When the Raven Queen takes animal form, she usually chooses to be embodied either as a large raven, or as a white wolf. These animals are thus considered sacred to her followers, but many mortals see them as omens of death. Her weapons are the spear and the scythe, and she is fearsome in battle; one myth tells of a duel fought between the Raven Queen and Bane that went on for a full century without respite or victor—the pair chose to call a draw in order to return to their other duties.

The Raven Queen is a mercurial being. Sometimes she is as callous as Asmodeus himself; other times she is kind, even loving. She is as implacable as death itself, yet she has been known to show mercy, or even, on occasion, to be swayed by a mortal’s plea. At times, too, she will bargain over mortal lives; there are several tales of the Raven Queen accepting a woman’s life in place of her lover’s. At least one tale in this vein has a twist: in exchange for a woman’s life, the Queen takes not the man’s life, but his memories of the woman. Then, too, there are those who try bargaining with the Raven Queen to extend their own lives. But no matter what they offer, the Queen eventually refuses the bargain—for she allows none to escape fate.

Because of her knowledge of destiny, the Raven Queen is sometimes petitioned for information. While she will bargain for this as well, there is often a trap for the unwary in what she reveals. She might omit some important detail that was not directly asked about, or provide detailed information about an extraneous point. She will not lie, but she might mislead. She takes a dim view of those who attempt to circumvent fate, but she does delight in watching the “foreknowledge” they gain from their bargain with her ultimately lead them to the fate they had been trying to avoid.

History
Once the mortal consort of the original god of the dead, the Raven Queen overthrew the tyrannical Nerull and claimed his portfolio by absorbing the powers of every tormented soul in his dominion. This lead the other deities to revoke her power over deceased souls; hence, she can only claim dominion over death itself, and not over those who have died.

The Raven Queen would later solidify her power base during the War of Winter, when she demanded the portfolio of winter in exchange for slaying the rebel goddess Khala. The Raven Queen thus joined the ranks of those gods who control the seasons, the others being Corellon (spring), Pelor (summer) and Sehanine (autumn). At some point, the Raven Queen assisted Corellon in his war against Lolth; as a reward, she demanded power over fate, which had previously been in Lolth's portfolio.

Her true name is lost to history. Refrences to her mortal life refer to her only as "the Sorceress-Queen". Orcus believes that key to defeating her may be uncovering her true name.

Relationships
The Raven Queen counts few personal enemies (or friends) among the gods. She is the only god on "friendly" terms with Torog, but even she keeps the King That Crawls at arm's length. Her most hated foe is Orcus, the Demon Prince of the Undead, who constantly schemes to slay her and take her portfolio. She may be romantically engaged with the coldhearted Archfey known as the Prince of Frost.

Pelor, God of Summer, is Her antitheses; however, the two are not enemies. He aided her in the War of Winter, and their exarchs have worked together in the past to rid the world of powerful undead.

Realm
The Raven Queen’s domain of Letherna is a glittering palace of obsidian and silver, located at the very center of the Shadowfell. Letherna is the place to which all of the spirits of the dead come before ultimately proceeding on to their final fate. Within its confines, they regain some semblance of form, and they pass their days in the court of the Raven Queen until they receive their final judgment. Letherna is in a constant state of winter, though the spirits who dwell there feel no discomfort because of the fact; to them, it may as well be midsummer.

To some spirits, Letherna is a place of revelry, and its inhabitants dance and feast for eternity. Other spirits find it a daunting fortress in a frozen wasteland where they will be imprisoned for eons before being released into the great beyond. The spirits swiftly lose track of how long they’ve spent there; time passes strangely in the Shadowfell. A hero a thousand years dead might be encountered there, swearing he had just recently arrived, while another, dead for only a day or two, might feel a century had passed. In this way, Letherna is very similar to the courts of the fey.

The Raven Queen is empowered to both escort the newly dead to Letherna and to sit in judgment of them. Once they are judged worthy, she gives up spirits of the agents of other gods. These spirits then go on to dwell in their gods’ dominions. She is considered by the other gods as a necessity, though she is somewhat separate and a more primal being then themselves. Most do not begrudge their faithful turning to the Raven Queen occasionally, for information on the future or to beg reprieve from death. Even the other Gods do not know what the Weave of Fate holds unless they ask The Queen.

Dogma
The Raven Queen commands her followers to destroy the servants of Orcus, Vecna and all those who prolong life with unnatural magic.

It is a tradition throughout the lands to make an offering or say a prayer to the Goddess on the eve of the New Year, asking for her to weave prosperity on her loom of fate and to hold off death for another year. Other than this, there are no holidays or major days of worship for the Nameless Lady, for fate and death are constant forces that apply to each of us, every day.

Worshipers
Priest and Priestesses of The Raven Queen are usually older, and this has led to many inaccurate assumptions by outsiders. Many claim that the Goddess sucks the life from her followers to speed their arrival to her kingdom. This is not the case. Younger, able bodied followers are required to serve the Goddess as Paladins. It is only in their old age or after injury that these warriors retire to the life of the priesthood. The tradition of the Paladins honors the Raven Queen’s war and victory against Nerull, which liberated the souls of mortals. The followers of the Goddess often turn to her after suffering a great loss or a brush with their own mortality. Dark colors are preferred by Her worshipers, and they usually have raven feathers somewhere on their person so show their loyalty. The rites and rituals they perform are shrouded in secrecy.

The Raven Queen is the patron of the shadar-kai, a race native to the Shadowfell, who serve her fiercely. She commands legions of Sorrowsworn against her enemies in lieu of angels.

Temples
There are no major temples dedicated to the Raven Queen in the Evenfall.