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Perhaps a controversial opinion, but I do not think death deities should be good or evil. I think they should be true neutral. Death does not discriminate, it does not care if you were evil or kind, it comes to us all. No matter who you were in life, death is the one inevitably we all face. Even the gods die, no one is immune.

This is a huge reason I prefer the Raven Queen over Kelemvor. In the past, the deities of death have been mostly evil aligned, so Kelemvor was quite the switch up. But I still think it’s a wrong choice. Death does not take sides. This is in no way hate towards Kelemvor, I just personally believe the Raven Queen embodies the portfolio better. Tho I can definitely see the appeal of a god of death who is strictly good.

The Raven Queen is not just the goddess of death, but also life and fate. These things are bound to each other. They cannot exist without the other. And like death, she is incredibly mysterious. We do not fully understand her motives. We do know that she is highly fascinated by the memories of mortals and often seeks them out. She studies the emotions in these memories and may help these mortals to deal with their pain and grief.

Though shar is the deity of grief and loss, she does so in an exploitative way. I’d like to think of the raven queen as heavily being tied to these themes as well, though without taking advantage of people in mourning. She sees their memories, she sees their pain, and may guide them through the process of grief. Her temples would be places where her priests would prepare the dead for their final stage, and guide those lost in grief and sorrow. Unlike Shar, she would value the memories of the dead instead of taking people’s memories to “relieve pain”

She would embrace the sorrow that comes with death, and urge those in mourning to accept the pain that comes with it, while also appreciating the joy of their lives and memories. Life is a gift, but so is death. They are both bound to each other. Above all, the Raven Queen is the embodiment of balance and fate. She weaves the threads of destiny as Lolth once did.

“I am no good nor evil, simply I am”

This lyric from ptolemaea by Ethel Cain i feel is a good representation of the Raven Queen.

Of course each dm may portray the Raven Queen in their own unique way, but this is the impact she has on my own story and Coronis.

Coronis’ story is still unfinished, but the main ideas of her story remain the same, death, fate, loss, and life.

new ttrpg PC

Phoebe, cleric of Pelor. 19. Supposed to be in seminary but was conned into the shadow fell

Adventure: A Draft Through the Door

An unnatural gloom creeps over the countryside, the shadows grow long and the dawn seems slow to rise. The townsfolk grow increasingly listless, and have asked your party to investigate the mage's manor across the lake, which seems to be the origin of this miasmic melancholia. Your journey will not be an easy one, as the landscape grows ever more eerie, and things are seen to move in the drifting banks of mist.

Of the many reasons that wizards take on apprentices (passing down knowledge, having a sounding board for new theories, an extra pair of hands to prepare spell components and do the sweeping up) one of the less discussed ones is how vital it is to have a second pair of eyes on lookout for when something magical inevitably goes wrong.

It makes sense when you think about it, a proper wizard's mind is too full of brilliance to bother with things like making sure that week's batch of potions don't boil over in the cauldron or that the stacked tomes of lore present a firehazard if they're not put away.

So it was with the mage Milghram Brightstaff and his precocious apprentice Adaline, who lived a quaint existence in the manor by the edge of the lake filling their days with scholarship, experiments, and attending to the problems brought to them by locals visiting from across the countryside. That was until mage Milghram decided to pop off to his extra-dimensional storage unit by way of a shadowfell portal in the manor's basement. He thought he'd only been gone a few hours, but neglected to apply the protective charm required to spare himself from the memory-sapping defences guarding his vault. now Milghram wanders the land of shades in a perpetual state of "why did I come into this room?" while the essence of that dread dimension leak back through his unclosed portal.

Adventure Hooks:

The party might've been sent to seek out the wizard, or visit town on their own buisness. Either way nothing's getting done so long as the countyside is blanketed in memory erroding fog and creatures from the shadow realm stalk through the murk. After several nights worth of exposure the town's defenders have had the wost of it, having forgotten what they're guarding or why they've established barricades.. it'll take some guile or calm negoitation for them to let the heroes past the gate.

When the party eventually gets to the manor they'll not only find the place locked, shuttered, and in many cases barricaded, but also protected by a slew of arcane defences ranging from animated objects to teleportation traps that will hurl them out into the lake. Two thirds of the way through their magical B&E and likely expecting a mad wizard to emerge from the shadows and begin a villain monolog, they'll instead find an exhausted teen running through the manor hurling heedless spells at a fleeing bug-thing demanding they help catch it before it gets too big.

For a girl of only fourteen winters beset on all sides by living nightmares Adaline is handling herself marvellously. She's activated the manor's wards sealing the worst of the cursed mist in the basement (or atleast she had until the party chopped their way in) and has been using a borrowed wand to hunt down most of the shadow creatures that have begun to infest the manor grounds. She's deeply worried about her teacher however, and blames herself for the series of distractions that led the old man to forgetting to throw on his protective charm. Depending on how they play it, they can either have her charm them and venture into the portal looking for the errant mage, or attempt to distract her long enough to close the portal themselves and leave the old wizard for dead.

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