Right? And she has the death domain, but does not have any true personal conviction about fulfilling that role-she just grabbed up that domain and any others she could because she's power hungry and wants all domains. So we have a goddess that's supposed to fulfill this sacred cosmic role of ushering souls onto their afterlives, but she never considered that role sacred herself. She wanted to dominate and control all souls for her own power.
My head cannon is what our GM came up in Rime of the Frost maiden. The Raven queen, Auril - goddess of winter, Queen of Air and Darkness, and goddess of hags, were all once a single entity, an elven maiden of immense power. When Lolth and Corellon fought she appealed for reason and was struck by both sides. The black diamond she wore shattered and her reflections in all the facets were split into separate beings
This is why I like Mathew Mercer's Matron of Ravens in his Exandria setting, her lore is coherent and is well written in comparison to the confused mess 5e has become.
What annoys me is how unnecessary all the thrashing around is. Even if all you want to do is crowbar the deity into the Forgotten Realms, which I am not adverse to, you don't need to engage in some grand retcon. One of the central themes of The Forgotten Realms is that it is a world drenched in half-forgotten apocrypha and dimly recollected historic mysteries; it is right there in the name of the setting for crying out loud. With a supernatural entity of shadowy nature like the Raven Queen, you can just say she's been there all along, but is often an obscure force to those unaligned/uncontested with her or lacking in the arcane knowledge. Gentle recon and move on. So I guess I roughly agree with Esper's take that she has a niche to fill and is a legitimately appealing figure in her own right, but her writing and integration into the setting leaves a lot to be desired.
It's so frustrating with many of the interloping gods that have been poured together into the multiverse cauldron that they often have contendors in their domains and vibes but no clear conflict or relation of faiths like there used to be interesting Lolth-Shar sincretic heresies, Lathander/Amaunator heresies and more.
Word. I think that’s because less people are applying theology to creative writing the early writers had knowledge of classical theology in order to write deep characters. Now it’s a sort of universalized concept of death, evil etc Make her look like a modern alt tok girl say she rules death whatever you want that to mean and call it a day. 5e has brought a sort of narrative anarchy or post modern approach to story telling and gaming it’s imo more shallow by its own nature Because ultimately it’s about marketing and widening markets through semiotic branding
A lot of fantasy writers have no deeper understanding of philosophy, theology, or spiritualism or what makes a religion engaging or not. Over time this has lead fantastical depictions of religion to become bland, one-note, watered down, and repetitive. Also I remember the Lolth-Shar rivalries and pacts, conflicts and compromises. That's some lore for Throwback Thursday lol! Fun times.
A group of ravens is also known as a Conspiracy. Not as hardcore as a murder of crows but, I think, far more interesting and certainly more appropriate for such brilliant animals.
I've always heard a group of ravens referred to as an unkindness, conspiracy is a new one. Like a group of buzzards being referred to as a wake. Ornithologists are weird man
Actually, it's unkindness. Calling us a conspiracy is just that, a conspiracy. A conspiracy brought to you by globalist seagulls who just want your hand foods, so who are you going to believe? You should trust ravens over random things you read on the internet. Trust me, I'm a raven.
The multiverse thing has been around for quite some time in D&D, Planescape discussed that certain gods are realm-hoppers, Bahamut and Tiamat for example are active in both Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms
That is true, though there are two main differences between then and now: 1. Multiverse was an optional approach only presented in certain books, like Planescape. 2. The modern concept of a multiverse has infinite variants of all universes. So there's the Drizz't we know, then Drizz't that's just slightly different in another universe, then Drizz't that's a woman in another universe, then Drizz't that's green in another universe, and so on. And anyone can cross over into any universe, and join forces or come back to life or time travel, etc. It's a giant mess.
@@esperthebard 1-Planescape/the Great Wheel is presented as the cosmology of most/many settings, even Eberron which has its own cosmology was retroactively put there, but it's "sealed away" 2-That was also the approach used by Gygax, here's a quote from AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide "The known planes are a part of the "multiverse". In the Prime Material Plane are countless suns, planets, galaxies, universes. So too there are endless parallel worlds"
Ok so the Shadowfell is actually the plane of shadow - face palm. That's what you get jumping from first edition to 5th, I will try to keep up! I remember trying to figure out what the hell she was all about when one of my players started playing a Hexblade. After a frustrating half an hour on the Wiki's I just gave up and wrote down "mysterious goddess who collects memories, seems to be good?". Thanks for doing the leg work.
Yeah, as someone who similarly tried several times to understand the lore of the shadowfell I always came to the conclusion that's it's just another mess of contradictions so that the dm can pick and choose whatever narrative spin they want.
To be honest vague lore is fine for my purposes. Less chance of a player say "well actually" while I am riffing. But yea it would be nice if was is there was coherent. @@TheMightyBattleSquid
I think quite a bit of the Raven queen’s background was taken from Norse mythology of Hel. Hel was a mortal descendant of Loki and a giantess named Angrboda. Despite her linage, Odin gave her power over Niflheim, lands of the dead, and her power is so great that when the god, Baldr, was killed through trickery by Loki, she refused to let Baldr return to Asgard when the other gods requested his return. In a campaign I am running now, I don’t use the Ravenqueen at all and instead use Hel, under a different guise as ruler of Shadowfell, and had made Shadowfell one of the nine worlds ruled by her.
Considering D&D's nature as a TTRPG effectively means its entirety is determined by each and every individual that participates in it, only really needing to provide the skeleton for its players to build off of, it's not surprising that it's a bit of a mess. It's essentially a microcosm of memetic circulation in action.
Now it is because its more marketed and must be more marketable and by that more generalized of basic gestalts. But the original inspiration in the deep D&D lore is worthy of being gatekept because its through the specificity in the early creative writings that these characters became inducted in the rules and monster manuals
I though she was watching over souls as they pass by her on their way to the Fugue Plane, and would pluck out souls she found interesting for whatever reason. She might even ressurect them if they have an interesting fate. Also, the goddess Shar turned the Plane of Shadow into the Shadowfell by infusing it with energy from the Negative Energy Plane.
I did like that story where The Raven queen sheltered the Queen of Spring, Titatan and her mortal lover by flinging them into the future which cause the King of Summer to fall into despair and because the Prince of Frost so the Raven queen could then pursue him as lover which failed dramatically.
The way I want to run her is that she’s actually a composite of several women whose threads of fate essentially became a knot. The different stories are different raven queens and there’s also deliberate misinformation on her part. This is in part because if I ever want to keep her name a secret even if Wotc makes the mistake of releasing it but also because I can have both her original inexplicably powerful and scheming self and the cursed child of divorce elf to play into her collecting memories like they’re shiny things.
I don't recall any of that "Nera" stuff from 4e. Her whole thing was that no one knew how she overthrew Nerull or who she even was. That's why Orcus had cults running around in the Shadowfell and elsewhere trying to find information on her, he thought if he could find out her real name he could gain power over her and claim the title of "God of Death" for himself.
Dungeon Magazine #171 (quoted at the beginning of the video) had a whole lore section on her and her origin, which I described in this video. It was quite a read, let me tell ya.
In one of the adventures I played in, we met” the rave’in queen “ . A lesser goddess created by Koa toa who misunderstood a warlock talking about the Raven queen when he unsuccessfully attempted to wipe them all out . The few survivors knew to worship and fear “ the rave’in queen “ and hold wild parties in her honor . That was a weird campaign
The short version is that there's two Raven Queens: The 4E Nentir Vale version, and the weird mess they made to justify her in the Realms without changing too much. The former is cool, and should not be ruined by her lesser version.
Running LMoP for a few friends but we all decided to use the same pantheon and history as critical role, since that's what got a bunch of them into D&D in the first place. Looking at the raven queen, she always felt very... meh to me? Like, you have this whole concept of taking over a god's place (wresting their fate from them) but also being the goddess of fate? The whole thing with Nerull just felt like a weird way to change the face of their death god instead of actually making an interesting character. She started out as a mortal, which I feel is incredibly underutilized in that she has to have had mortal motivations at some point, which proceeded to devolve into godly incomprehensibility. My personal backstory for the goddess is that she was the head of her country's prestigious arcane academy, and a royal advisor (because like heck does a queen have the time to study that much magic). She cared deeply about her people. However, the previous god of death had figured out that since he got power the more souls were in his domain, he could speed the process along by spreading plagues and catastrophe. He targeted her city. When people started dying, none of the clerics could cure the sick. All they knew was a god had marked them for death. The wizard, being a little hubristic but also genuinely caring about her people, went screw that, if this god is killing my people, then I'll kill him to stop him. The only problem? Figuring out how to kill a god. She spent months searching, trying desperately to find a way, but it couldn't be done. No mortal could come close to the power it would require to kill a god. But gods get their power from somewhere. So the wizard had a crazy idea: she didn't have to destroy the god of death, just its current incarnation. By cutting him off from the source of his power, say, by erasing his name from existence entirely and then claiming his domain for herself before he could recover, she could destroy him. Now the god of death wasn't looking out for threats to his life, especially not from some random mortal country he's been in the process of eviscerating. So it came as a surprise when a sudden assault on his domain cut him off from the vast majority of his power all at once. Caught flat-footed (she got a surprise round on him!), the wizard was able to steal that power and, after a fierce battle and with a fair bit of luck, erase the rest of him from existence and take his place. Of corse, this did not go unnoticed, and while she was still recovering from her existence very suddenly changing orders of magnitude, the other gods were able to wrest the domain of the dead away from her. I like this backstory a lot better because I feel it holds true to the raven queen's drive for death to play out naturally, and fate to remain uninterrupted. To me, the raven queen has always felt coded to be a sort of protector goddess, keeping the souls of the dead safe as they transition and ensuring that those not meant to die do not. She just doesn't see death as something people need protecting from. That's why she's so adamant about fate and death happening when it is meant to: the previous god of death took people before their time, and the undead do the same in an attempt to preserve their own existences. Her mortal desire to protect her people now coupled with whatever the heck goes on inside a god's head has led to this weird sort of balance of insistence on fate playing out, no matter how cruel, but also on the swift punishment of those who unjustly break fate. I dunno, she's a bit weird and also a little crazy because even if she's a god now, a) god's minds are freaking weird, and b) she hasn't actually held a casual conversation in what? 1000 years now? And she started off a wizard. Yeah, she has like zero people skills at this point.
One thing I think this video misses is the aspect of time. You go straight from that blurb in the PHB to the full lore she had by edition's end. As someone who played 4e for almost its entire lifespan my experience with the Raven Queen lore was much more fucky. For years all we had to go off of was that blurb in the PHB and the threat Orcus posed to her and thus everyone in the adventure path. This left us with this sort of Lawful Neutral Death Goddess who was all about fighting undeath and enforcing fate, which, you know, I think is appealing to a lot of players. You can play an edgy, goth character while still being a mostly good person. Your primary religious duties deal with ensuring the spiritual nature of death remains untainted and hunting evil undead monsters. Van Helsing if he read Camus. Since most death gods are presented as evil, this was a fun space for players who wanted to play with that stuff while not having to RP as a serial killer. She was basically presented as Kelemvor with drip. Then, as time came on, we were hit with what felt like major retcons to her character. Portraying her as cruel, jealous, calculating, and selfish. She went from the protector of the dead to a selfish goddess eternally mad SHE didn't get to be the horrible death tyrant. It's literally canon that she either deliberately broke OR refused to fix the previously functional system of reincarnation because she wanted to hoard the dead for power, Wall of Lost Souls style. Objectively evil. Granted, these retcons did make for some nice drama in my long running game I was doing while all this was happening. One of my players was her champion, and as her lore got more and more generically evil, we wrote that into his character and how I roleplayed her, with him first abandoning her for Pelor, and then eventually becoming a sort of independent Invoker wielding the power of faith itself. That was all cool, but I still felt a little robbed. So it's not just that this is a mess in retrospect; this was a mess for people on the ground as our fun, goth, guardian of the dead goddess got retcon'd into Yet Another Generically Evil Death God, ruining what made her appealing in the first place.
The Realms really suffers for being D&D's flagship setting. Any new idea that comes along get shoved in and integrated, hard and fast and without care or lube.
I don't think Esper was particularly accurate with her 4E lore. The main reason why Nerul was even defeated by her to begin with was because that entire series of events was set up by other gods who wanted him gone.
I played a warlock hexblade of the Raven Queen for a time. I latched onto the idea that the Raven Queen was a Goddess of memory more than anything else, she loved collecting the intense memories of important people and generally the easiest way for her to do that was to wait until they die and pluck what she can in-between the material and wherever they're going to for their afterlife. My character was an exceptionally aloof yet charming man, who insisted on being paid in anything BUT gold. His personal favorite asks were tears, and he had a remarkable ability to make people cry by bringing up old memories he couldn't possibly know, before collecting his pay in a small vial. These tears, of joy or sadness or whatever, had these intense memories stored within them - thus adding to his goddesses collection. I also flavored his weapon as basically cleaving through the soul of a person he slays and collecting the intense memories of death, leading to people thinking he worshipped death and that the Raven Queen was a true death goddess...when in reality, at least in my version, she never kept any of the souls, the blade just helped pilfer said souls of their memories in a really cruel way just as they die. My Raven Queen was generally presented as evil, but also kind of pitiful, she was basically this lonely woman that couldn't feel anything for herself and so stole feeling from others. She wasn't totally amoral though, she more so 'borrowed' and wrote down memories for her collection than actively stole them. Though sometimes she did just keep memories forever, especially negative ones, not realizing that negative memories make us just as human as the positive ones. And by virtue of living in a massive library full of memories, she was an unmatched historian.
The Raven Queen's ascension to godhood in the World Axis cosmology of the Nentir Vale setting is quite easily explained. See, in the World Axis, gods are merely "very difficult" to kill instead of flat-out "impossible". If you can perform certain special rites or acquire certain artifacts, you can bind their fundamental spark and render them vulnerable, allowing you the opportunity to kill them... if you're *very* strong and lucky. In fact, Nerull himself was the second God of Death, having usurped the role by murdering the original incumbent, Aurom, an elder god of birth, death, and the cycle of life. Also, there's a theory that the Raven Queen was covertly aided by Pelor, Corellon and Moradin, who had all despised Nerull, though in-universe that theory is heretical to most of her cults.
In my campaigns, the Raven Queen and Pale Night are two leShay elves who were at war with each other in another universe, who made their way to Faerun when their war destroyed their home universe. The Pale Night's transgressions destroyed the memories of the leShay (and their Eladrin descendants), and the Raven Queen is on a quest to retrieve them so they can remember who they are and defeat the Pale Night.
I'll give D&D one thing over other mediums. It lends itself to the implementation of multiversal hijinks more than any other, simply because every table is inherently its own continuity and universe.
I will say, I think giving her the domain of life alongside death makes sense in the context of 1) she absolutely despises undeath and 2) she more presides over the *moment* or transitory period between life and death, including birth (think of her as the goddess of dusk/dawn instead of day or night, if that analogy helps at all). Even if in the official lore she is a bit of a mess, I've seen so many creative interpretations of her that branch off of 'official' content
I just make her an arch-fey who was tragically pulled into the shadowfell and twisted. She is rather new in my game world, which explains why she wasn't known before.
As someone who has been a fan of the old Planescape cosmology since the 90s, I absolutely hate how they've shoehorned the feywild and shadowfell into the game's lore (I'm not a fan of the game having large amounts of lore outside the specific setting books and boxed sets, in general). It's a lot more work to homebrew a setting in 5th edition than it was in 2nd or 3rd edition.
In my campaign, the Raven Queen was actually the Queen of Chaos, hiding on the Shadowfell and only recently reemerging as the Raven Queen after millenia following her defeat by the wind lords and their Rod of Seven Parts. It was the setup to lead into the old "Rod of Seven Parts" module from AD&D 2e, except i had placed the pieces of the rod all around the multiverse instead of scattered across Oerth.
It can probably be said that I did the Raven Queen a disservice, several years ago. When I was running 5e D&D, at the time, several of my players were new to the game, and had bee introduced to it by the Critical Role podcast; certainly not a new thing, these days. Well, they loved the setting, and the portrayals of various characters, so when they found out that I knew how to conduct D&D, they both decided that their characters HAD to be from Exandria, have backstories from there, and the like. I need to say that I didn't watch CR, so various things they were referencing went completely over my head. I told them our game would be in FRCS, because of course it would; 5e is mostly based on Faerun, and I've personally been a FRCS simp since the 90s, so they could have hopped worlds, but in my Forgotten Realms, there was no Raven Queen. I skipped 4e, and so I wasn't familiar, so to me, the best the RQ could be, in Faerun, was a Warlock Patron; her divinity was limited to Exandria, the sane as Wee Jas' would be to Oerth, and our Cleric of the Raven Queen could certainly still be one, but Kelrmvor wad granting her spells, while she was on Toril. It might not have seemed nice; like I was just trying to build up the world I knew, and could nerd about, instead of incorporating all this Matt Mercer content, but that's what I did. I always just assumed she wad a Pathfinder creation; another thing Vox Machina ported over when they came back to D&D, and it wasn't until later I learned I was wrong.
The strong bent against divinity in general is wrecking the game for the sake of players afraid of deep moral quandary (I'm lookin at you, paladins of the ideal of ham sammiches).
I'd like to say Vecna never died, but he did, several times anyhow he was undead when he became a diety. Kelemvore became a diety after he died, not Vecna.
The Raven Queen, Tharizdun, and a homebrew dead god of Time and Causality I called "Apostos" were all central to my 4th Edition fate-vs-free-will themed campaign, sort of a law vs chaos, gods vs elementals thing. The premise was basically that Apostos was the lynchpin that ensured the Gods' ascendency over the Primordials, but Tharizdun secretly corrupted Apostos, who defected to the side of the Primordials and instigated the Dawn War. Apostos was slain, and his portfolio was divided into subdomains that were inherited by the remaining gods. The Raven Queen (by way of Nerull) inherited Fate. Tharizdun, however, ensured his inevitable victory by securing Entropy. Being that this campaign took place in the north, it largely started out as Frost Giants making war against The Raven Queen and spiraled out from there.
So there are Deities and then there is Tharizdun. He is a bit unique in DnD Lore because in the Greyhawk setting he was so old that all the other Deities were children compared to him. In some books they say he existed before Time or Death was a thing. He is called the God of Madness and the Chained God. You know why he is called the Chained God? Because all the other Gods teamed up together to put him in chains. They wanted to kill Tharizdun but Death had no power over him. He is timeless and completely unkillable. Tharizdun is what you use when you want something so nasty it could end the universe. He is basically pure Chaos. Personally, I always played him like the Joker. If you want a story where the heroes and the villains have to team up, that is a Tharizdun storyline. Tharizdun created the Far Realms. He is their God.
I hadn't heard there was a Manual of the Planes 5e. I'll have to look into that. Any chance I could ask you a few questions? Drop me a line: esperthebard@gmail.com
5:52 Yes, but throughout history and mythology, we have many examples of conquerors letting their little head do the thinking in place of their big head, such as Jason's treatment of Medea in the myth of the Golden Fleece. No fearsome monster or great army can lay either hero or god low -- only the _kindly_ ministrations of a woman can do that; she is man's greatest nemesis and his Achilles' heel. Still, there should have been something that detailed how it went down, even if only in passing. I'd suggest something in the works got cancelled, if WotC wasn't known for firing their good writers and artists while creating derivative, half-assed work since the beginning of the 4E era. 17:32 Logical coherency is considered to be a hallmark of traditional Western storytelling, and American academic circles explicitly and vehemently oppose the Western tradition. This ideological opposition is the source of all these nonsensical multiverse settings. You can hear more details about subject of multiverse chicanery in a rant from comic book analyst and creator, The Fourth Age: ua-cam.com/video/AOAx5qQr1UY/v-deo.htmlsi=5BFPGkGWrQz4dOtI WotC probably hired someone straight out of college or high school who doesn't have a background either in tabletop RPGs or something related to story writing. These days, English majors aren't even trained to write what we traditionally think of as a story, that's a skill that someone needs to seek elsewhere.
I disagree with that, if Myrkul and the other 2 could become Death Deities why can't someone else do so. Look at the Lore of "Red Knight" if I remember correctly. They where originally a Mortal who was extremely loyal and helpful to Tempus, after Tempus (being the j*rk he is) defeated Garagos. Tempus decided to reward that loyalty by taking a portion of Garagos' power he gained and some of his own pre-existing power granting that to the person transforming them into "Red Knight". I think there are various other examples throughout all the lore/history of D&D of Mortals achieving Apotheosis.
@@morrigankasa570 The issue isn't a mortal achieving apotheosis, the problem is a mortal reaching a god level of power just because "she's so darn awesome." Without a good story and personal struggles and character development, it just comes off as contrived.
@@esperthebard I understand your points, but I disagree with you requiring struggle. Yes it requires effort, but struggle has negative connotations. As for character development that is also a matter for debate. I personally don't find any major issues with the Raven Queen. The only issue is the lack of in-depth lore.
They couldn't just say she was an interloper deity who came to Toril like the Mulhurandhi and Untherites? Or maybe she was a deity that got stuck on Abeir alongside the Primordials and manged to stay on the Toril side during the Second Sundering?
She has tons of potential. With good imagination, she can be all the greater. I still remember The Masked One's beef with her :) When the Warsor found out that getting rid of one of her followers was actually a good thing :)
15:00 the lore simultaneously states that she ascended to godhood as a result of a ritual in which she sacrificed all of her followers - aside from the backstabber wizards who tried to mount a power grab. Well - in D&D celestial cosmology: when a deity has no followers - it dies. You literally just could not become a deity by sacrificing all of your followers that way. That whole scheme would quite literally just not work.
Hey, Esper! Could you make a video about how the original forgotten realms setting was? I'm really interested in DMing a campaign in this setting, however due to the giant amount of information and the whole "sandbox" style of the setting (at least nowadays, it seems), I'm having a lot of difficulty trying to make something relatively simple both for me and my friends regarding this setting. Also, I remember reading a comment on SuperGeekMike's video on the forgotten realms, telling that the original idea of the setting was that only the Sword Coast, Thay, Cormyr, Waterdeep and Icewind Dale were fixed/ known regions, while the rest of the realms were blank spaces for you to fill in in your campaigns. Is this true? If so, I would love to know, so I can be more confident in making a campaign in the realms with my friends.
i will defend Nentir Vale. the setting is pretty cool and got a lot of cool locations and lorebits IE: primordials, at least 4 apocalypses, a lot of really cool locations in the dugenon and dragon magazine articles. the problem is that it kept everything really barebones so the DM could fill the gaps but it was still really barebones. one of the things really cool i the setting where some of the gods. specially Torog. Torog the crawling god of pain, in the past a vain god of hedonism who could not feel pain, fought a primordial in the underdark and defeated it. but he got injured really badly to the point of being left deformed and the primordial with the last of his breath , cursed torog to never heal from his wounds and never reach the surface again. so the underdark became this infinite labyrinthian demiplane where a god dwelled as a punishment. he also had the power to sometimes drag places into the underdark.
So I have since ported away from using any of the Dungeons & Dragons deities because of copyright reasons. And as such how to convert some of the gods and goddesses well actually almost all of them to our own mythological deities kind of Taking Liberties wherever I felt needed so the Raven Queen is called Nyx or nox depending on the region you are in. She is generally a central theme and almost all of my games because she is the goddess of death but again just a moment but because of that she is very widely regarded she does still fill that role of like kind of evil kind of knot generally a good God but yet not fully she has her own plans and you know none of the Gods obviously trusts her but they're not as openly hostile as they are in the Forgotten Realms / whatever that other one was but she is often there in the story one of my characters wanted to have his main character leave for a while to go do some stuff on his own and so he played a character that was a champion of the Raven Queen it's easier to refer to her the stat for this but yeah he was a Revenant who was brought back by her cuz he had garnered her fever in some way. One of the characters drew the actual like real interest of the Raven Queen and they kept noticing that a Raven constantly followed them follow them they even entered her Temple into a ancient tomb and that's what really got her interest because you know worshipers tune for a long time suddenly people start showing up inside you're like hey what's happening and they received her blessing just a really fun character to have in your repertoire
My headcanon for her is that she is the god of secrets/forbidden knowledge. I played a campaign with a warlock with her as her patron and she just had a Raven who encouraged the player to uncover and harness secret arcane knowledge. It was pretty fun and I think it fits her aesthetic
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Great Video Esper! I really enjoyed the History lesson!! Very interesting!
I remembered one time that my dead PC Paladin named 'Jundis Jonstar' gets visited by the Raven Queen in the afterlife who offers me a position that I cannot refused since according to my former DM friend as he quotes in woman's voice *"Swear fealty to me or else you'll become an Oathbreaker!"* I packed all my belongings and left his House, never to return playing Dungeons and Dragons in 2022. Now? I'm inclined to go back and play in a new group next year.
In the Salvatore books Lloth transitioned to being an actual deity and not just a super powerful demon, didn't she? I think the Demon web pits aren't even in the abyss anymore.
Well, she used to be a deity. Then became a demon... but still kind of god-ish, sort of...I think. But I think she went back to being a full god at some point. Yeah, I think it was in the Salvatore books, like when she went silent for a while then transformed back into to a god. Somehow. WotC just wanted to classify her as a god to make it simpler. Just go with it.
@@PyrelaI personally like her as a non demon Goddess and demon lord. We see from giant lore that some giants are so badass that they vacation and conquer layers of the abyss becoming demon generals/lords despite not originally being demons themselves and they of course become corrupted over time. Lloth is similar in my head canon she rules regions of the abyss through her power as a lesser goddess
Interesting watching this video. I've read a lot of Forgetten Relams novels (more so in the early 00's) and just nowish getting into its lore. I've got the 3.5 edition of forgetten Realms setting book that I read a lot back int he day. I thought Raven Queen was some other plane diety since she's in the popular Critical Role campiagn world setting (and has a major story arc in the first campaign). And when you were talking about her being in Forgetten Realms I was like WTF. I love how you talk about lack of creative cohearent vision invading all these "multiverse" story arcs and how its to the detriment of the storys.
Raven Queen was first introduced to D&D during 3.5 via Dragon Magazine. As a deity you could drop into any setting but aimed mainly at Oerth in the Greyhawk Setting.
She was cool in 4ed. I mean if you keep the lore brief you cant ruin it. Her 5th edition version added a bunch of words and names but took much more character and mystery. And mystery is cool for a character that pretty much embodies the y2k goth era.
I do kinda like the idea of someone that Lolth and Corellon both struck down. But the timing was just wrong. Would’ve been cool if she attempted ascension while Lolth was still playing the part of Wife. And they struck her down instead for her hubris, and it served as a bonding moment between the two gods that Lolth could exploit for her own treachery. Makes more sense for Lolth to be angry at someone else’ pride rather than Treachery. And gives the Raven Queen a more realized goal (Because realistically, no one could of come between Corellon and Lolth during their battle with how abrupt her betrayal was)
Very vaguely related. There's an animator with some stuff posted on YT, one of their shows had the protagonist faced with an apparently insurmountable problem, and they solved it by thinking "maybe if I just BELIEVE IN MYSELF," which was of course the solution. Your description of the Raven Queen's origins reminded me of that.
In 2e, Gruumsh was LE and lived in Acheron, fighting goblinoids. In 3e, they moved to CE but no one told the people who wrote the Manual of the Planes for 3e so he still appears in Acheron.
Eberron is explicitly frozen in the year 998YK to avoid some of these problems. $e tried to graft on other setting bits w/o care of the damage it did to 4e eberron but 5e ditched that mistake & added depth to 998YK eberron in ways that fit eberron without retcons & such
How did the Raven Queen essentially erase her former self from both memory and record exactly? I don't think that ability comes with the death god booster pack.
Look up "Wee Jas" and "Raven Queen" if you can- the original idea was supposedly that the Raven Queen was Wee Jas, the Greyhawk deity of magic and death, and "Nera" was more like an avatar or an aspect that tricked and manipulated Nerull so she could steal his power (or will- there might be some time-disparity involved). Wee Jas is Lawful Evil / Lawful Neutral bordering LE, but leaning "Lawful" and is more a mostly dutiful goddess who happens to be a bit selfish and vain. Lolth was always a fallen goddess turned demon who regained some of her godly power, so her origin checks out.
The 4e original lore for the Raven Queen is soooo most likely lifted from the character of Queen Narasen in Tanith Lee's Death's Master, a queen who battled plague and became basically Death's consort after Death.
This is by far my favorite god. Just give me a cool name and some background/backgrounds so I can disregard and do whatever I want with it. The Raven Queen is wonderful at this point ... so many variants, so many stories ... those mysteries helped me develop a god that nobody knows nothing about. Thank you Forgotten Realms.
My personal depiction of the raven queen is that she’s the goddess of reincarnation. That’s why she had life and death. She’s an Elvin goddess who is responsible for the elves reincarnation and the shadow Kai are drow to abandoned lolth, but can’t reincarnate due to the betrayal, so instead of going to the spider queen upon death, are scent to the raven queen as the shadow Kai instead of elves. She was also the first elf to ever die on the mortal plane, and as such was given the god status by the elven god to be responsible for all future dead elves to return to life as a new elf. Her bloodline became the drow, this is why she finds sympathy towards them and found away to accept them if they were ever able to escape lolth.
There's an old anecdote. Plane crashes in the ocean, only two pilots and a stewardess survive... If you font know it, I do not risk to write it here (in the years of total tolerance), but the final words of this anecdote are: "Enough lechery, bury the stewardess." Bury the raven queen😅
5e lore starts making a lot of sense when you realize that the fundamental idea behind the writing is that whoever is writing that stuff is assuming that no one reads the official lore and people will just make stuff up, so they just throw words at paper for five minutes in an afternoon and call it a day. With that said, I think the Raven Queen lore for 4e seems mostly alright. I'd try to isolate her from the regular pantheon as much as possible and leave her a single weird Shadowfell deity, whose backstory is a vague legend that reads like a fairy tale about an Elven Princess who died and somehow tricked the original god of death and now she reigns in his stead. It's strange, it's ambiguous, it works the most the less details you add to the story, and in that way you have a cool ambiguous goddess of a dark realm who can be good or bad depending on the circumstances and her whims, which is a good addition to the Shadowfell feel I think. Maybe in this version she wants to escape the Shadowfell herself. Maybe she made the Shadowfell. You could have conflicting stories existing at the same time to enhance the feeling of ambiguity around her.
It really does, when you come at it as they basically just put loose threads so you can come up with your own stuff (unless it's an official setting books like Rising form the Last War, or Mythic Odysseys) instead of deepest lore. It's even more true when said thing is basically from 4e where the "default" "world" was pretty much the old Gygax-Arneson TSR era of put this module wherever as long as it's near (this generic area you can put on your map). I think that's become a stumbling point for a lot of D&D loretubers that don't get specific (say TMG and his almost laser focus on Faerun) or Rhexx after he kinda learned that he needs to focus because something like 2e' Guide to Hell is going to be a major stumbling block because it's not tied to any real lore. It's especially true since they stopped selling the novels (or slowed it down immensely) where a LOT of lore happened.
I don’t understand why WotC doesn’t just put all the setting stuff in the PHB. For a different setting, they can just publish a different player’s handbook. Then each setting gets its own gods, classes, species, languages, map, & spells, & a few monsters at the back. But the DMG & MM would be common to all settings.
even if you plan things out, you eventually reintegrate stuff from older editions because you want to reimagine some old character of the IP or turn the old one into something new and fresh and then you eventually get to a point where nothing makes sense. The bigger your IP becomes the more it turns into Rick and Morty.
Reason why she has life inn her domain now; you die when your time comes; not before it. Which is why in my setting shes also seen as a goddess of health care; and her high priest is a doctor and surgen who sees himself in competition with her; knowning she will always win in the end.
In my Forgotten Realms the Raven Queen is Shar posing as a less horrible figure than she really is. She already has a history of posing as Selune and a healer when she hates the light and tortures the sick and wounded to death rather than healing them. Why wouldn't she hand out evil Dark Razor and other weapons to every warlock who asks for them? Easy win. And she gets their souls after they die.
I’m just waiting for raistlin and the towers of sorcery and lunitary, solinar, and nuitari to be pulled into the realm. Forgotten realms seems to absorb everything
My Swords bard, Majora, is a huge free will advocate. He never touches mind control magic, including charms, and will happily counter charm anyone who suffers under that crap. He interferes in his team mates charms, too, helping enemies escape them. He _despises_ the concept of fate, and the Raven Queen, and will happily, and cheerfully, gut any of her worshippers stupid enough to think that’s it’s remotely possible, or acceptable to enforce such nonsense on him.
You didn't even get into the part about her being based on Wee Jass back when the Greyhawk gods were based on a fair amount of research into religious history. Proto-indoeuropean reconstruction suggests that the prototype for this ambivalent goddes of death was Kolyo the Coverer which became Hel in Norse mythology, "Hell" in the bible, and many other fun historical and linguistic connections between beliefs of ancient peoples related to the inspirations that became Wee Jass and then the many versions of the Raven Queen.
I've had a whole campaign rolling around in my head for years that explores the Raven Queen, her overthrow of Nerull, and the ethical questions around her continuing the status quo of gods greedily hoarding mortal souls for power. Or rather, I have the epic level end of a campaign in my head, but none of the steps to get there. Perhaps that's all it will ever be. :P
That end rant actually reminded me of a complaint I hear a lot about real world mythology. Gods changing through time. Being syncretized into new cultures. The Greek and Roman pantheon looks much the same from our perspective today.
The origin story could of been cleaned up with the intervention of AO. Seems legit easier to say AO stepped in and made the Raven Queen a god. This could also play into a Hexblade Warlock's story where the Raven Queen lends out the shadowy essence of warriors past to hunt down those who become lich, made immortal or raised by the wish spell (using wish instead of a divine spell directly implies no permission to be raised is sought from a god) or using forbidden magic related to time. If I think about it... She could be an agent of AO to prevent mortals from becoming gods without his express authorisation. A potential failsafe to avoid another Karsus's Folly without directly stepping in.
There are a number of reasons to have preexisting lore. Firstly for people that aren't creative enough to come up with their own setting (no judgement!), but secondly so people don't have to read up on a bunch of lore every time they want to play with someone. That second reason is why I actually agree with lore being kept light and easily digestible for these settings, with depth for the people that really care but isn't essential if you just want to go smash some skeletons and orcs. Not being able to keep your own deities straight is a huge obstacle to that. It isn't a big deal having more than one Raven queen origin story, different religions might have different interpretations of the same event, but FFS
She wants to punish people who want to escape the chains of fate but wanted to escape the chains of the Gods. How ironic.
Right? And she has the death domain, but does not have any true personal conviction about fulfilling that role-she just grabbed up that domain and any others she could because she's power hungry and wants all domains. So we have a goddess that's supposed to fulfill this sacred cosmic role of ushering souls onto their afterlives, but she never considered that role sacred herself. She wanted to dominate and control all souls for her own power.
@@esperthebard and she definitely isn’t evil or anything right lol
Evil is relative & I like her no matter what anyone says!
sounds like someone who took a supervisor role for the pay, but doesnt do anything different
@@morrigankasa570Evil is certainly not realitive
My head cannon is what our GM came up in Rime of the Frost maiden. The Raven queen, Auril - goddess of winter, Queen of Air and Darkness, and goddess of hags, were all once a single entity, an elven maiden of immense power. When Lolth and Corellon fought she appealed for reason and was struck by both sides. The black diamond she wore shattered and her reflections in all the facets were split into separate beings
That is some A-tier head-canon. I'm totally stealing and refining that a bit for my own world.
That'd be a much better way to do that for sure.
Omg I love this
This is why I like Mathew Mercer's Matron of Ravens in his Exandria setting, her lore is coherent and is well written in comparison to the confused mess 5e has become.
I like the Hexblade Warlock enemy of all undead concept, it has a nice ring to it, and the lore around the queen herself I leave at mysterious
What annoys me is how unnecessary all the thrashing around is. Even if all you want to do is crowbar the deity into the Forgotten Realms, which I am not adverse to, you don't need to engage in some grand retcon. One of the central themes of The Forgotten Realms is that it is a world drenched in half-forgotten apocrypha and dimly recollected historic mysteries; it is right there in the name of the setting for crying out loud. With a supernatural entity of shadowy nature like the Raven Queen, you can just say she's been there all along, but is often an obscure force to those unaligned/uncontested with her or lacking in the arcane knowledge. Gentle recon and move on.
So I guess I roughly agree with Esper's take that she has a niche to fill and is a legitimately appealing figure in her own right, but her writing and integration into the setting leaves a lot to be desired.
It's so frustrating with many of the interloping gods that have been poured together into the multiverse cauldron that they often have contendors in their domains and vibes but no clear conflict or relation of faiths like there used to be interesting Lolth-Shar sincretic heresies, Lathander/Amaunator heresies and more.
Word. I think that’s because less people are applying theology to creative writing the early writers had knowledge of classical theology in order to write deep characters.
Now it’s a sort of universalized concept of death, evil etc
Make her look like a modern alt tok girl say she rules death whatever you want that to mean and call it a day.
5e has brought a sort of narrative anarchy or post modern approach to story telling and gaming it’s imo more shallow by its own nature
Because ultimately it’s about marketing and widening markets through semiotic branding
A lot of fantasy writers have no deeper understanding of philosophy, theology, or spiritualism or what makes a religion engaging or not. Over time this has lead fantastical depictions of religion to become bland, one-note, watered down, and repetitive. Also I remember the Lolth-Shar rivalries and pacts, conflicts and compromises. That's some lore for Throwback Thursday lol! Fun times.
A group of ravens is also known as a Conspiracy. Not as hardcore as a murder of crows but, I think, far more interesting and certainly more appropriate for such brilliant animals.
Conspiracy definitely sounds less awkward. Apparently you can also call them a rave of ravens or a treachery of ravens.
@@esperthebard I literally told you this before, lol
I've always heard a group of ravens referred to as an unkindness, conspiracy is a new one. Like a group of buzzards being referred to as a wake. Ornithologists are weird man
Actually, it's unkindness. Calling us a conspiracy is just that, a conspiracy. A conspiracy brought to you by globalist seagulls who just want your hand foods, so who are you going to believe? You should trust ravens over random things you read on the internet.
Trust me, I'm a raven.
I'm picturing a flock or Ravens sitting around with tinfoil hats on their heads. 🤣
The multiverse thing has been around for quite some time in D&D, Planescape discussed that certain gods are realm-hoppers, Bahamut and Tiamat for example are active in both Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms
Planescape did it a lot better... And Planescape was largely a reaction to the growing popularity of the White Wolf games in the 90s.
@@foxyfoxington2651 Planescape is set in the Great Wheel, which's in the 5e DMG (technically there's also the World Tree of Forgotten Realms)
That is true, though there are two main differences between then and now:
1. Multiverse was an optional approach only presented in certain books, like Planescape.
2. The modern concept of a multiverse has infinite variants of all universes. So there's the Drizz't we know, then Drizz't that's just slightly different in another universe, then Drizz't that's a woman in another universe, then Drizz't that's green in another universe, and so on. And anyone can cross over into any universe, and join forces or come back to life or time travel, etc. It's a giant mess.
@@esperthebardmakes things matter less. Really sucks
@@esperthebard 1-Planescape/the Great Wheel is presented as the cosmology of most/many settings, even Eberron which has its own cosmology was retroactively put there, but it's "sealed away"
2-That was also the approach used by Gygax, here's a quote from AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide
"The known planes are a part of the "multiverse". In the Prime Material Plane are countless suns, planets, galaxies, universes. So too there are endless parallel worlds"
Ok so the Shadowfell is actually the plane of shadow - face palm. That's what you get jumping from first edition to 5th, I will try to keep up! I remember trying to figure out what the hell she was all about when one of my players started playing a Hexblade. After a frustrating half an hour on the Wiki's I just gave up and wrote down "mysterious goddess who collects memories, seems to be good?". Thanks for doing the leg work.
Yeah, as someone who similarly tried several times to understand the lore of the shadowfell I always came to the conclusion that's it's just another mess of contradictions so that the dm can pick and choose whatever narrative spin they want.
To be honest vague lore is fine for my purposes. Less chance of a player say "well actually" while I am riffing. But yea it would be nice if was is there was coherent. @@TheMightyBattleSquid
The goddess Shar turned the Plane of Shadow into the Shadowfell by infusing it with energy from the Negative Energy Plane.
@@TheMightyBattleSquid I've always taken it to be a major quasi plane basically elemental shadow or quintessence
The Raven Queen is basically the same as the Morrigan of Irish Mythology
I think quite a bit of the Raven queen’s background was taken from Norse mythology of Hel. Hel was a mortal descendant of Loki and a giantess named Angrboda. Despite her linage, Odin gave her power over Niflheim, lands of the dead, and her power is so great that when the god, Baldr, was killed through trickery by Loki, she refused to let Baldr return to Asgard when the other gods requested his return.
In a campaign I am running now, I don’t use the Ravenqueen at all and instead use Hel, under a different guise as ruler of Shadowfell, and had made Shadowfell one of the nine worlds ruled by her.
Considering D&D's nature as a TTRPG effectively means its entirety is determined by each and every individual that participates in it, only really needing to provide the skeleton for its players to build off of, it's not surprising that it's a bit of a mess. It's essentially a microcosm of memetic circulation in action.
Now it is because its more marketed and must be more marketable and by that more generalized of basic gestalts. But the original inspiration in the deep D&D lore is worthy of being gatekept because its through the specificity in the early creative writings that these characters became inducted in the rules and monster manuals
I though she was watching over souls as they pass by her on their way to the Fugue Plane, and would pluck out souls she found interesting for whatever reason. She might even ressurect them if they have an interesting fate.
Also, the goddess Shar turned the Plane of Shadow into the Shadowfell by infusing it with energy from the Negative Energy Plane.
I did like that story where The Raven queen sheltered the Queen of Spring, Titatan and her mortal lover by flinging them into the future which cause the King of Summer to fall into despair and because the Prince of Frost so the Raven queen could then pursue him as lover which failed dramatically.
The way I want to run her is that she’s actually a composite of several women whose threads of fate essentially became a knot. The different stories are different raven queens and there’s also deliberate misinformation on her part. This is in part because if I ever want to keep her name a secret even if Wotc makes the mistake of releasing it but also because I can have both her original inexplicably powerful and scheming self and the cursed child of divorce elf to play into her collecting memories like they’re shiny things.
🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥
I don't recall any of that "Nera" stuff from 4e. Her whole thing was that no one knew how she overthrew Nerull or who she even was. That's why Orcus had cults running around in the Shadowfell and elsewhere trying to find information on her, he thought if he could find out her real name he could gain power over her and claim the title of "God of Death" for himself.
Dungeon Magazine #171 (quoted at the beginning of the video) had a whole lore section on her and her origin, which I described in this video. It was quite a read, let me tell ya.
In one of the adventures I played in, we met” the rave’in queen “ . A lesser goddess created by Koa toa who misunderstood a warlock talking about the Raven queen when he unsuccessfully attempted to wipe them all out . The few survivors knew to worship and fear “ the rave’in queen “ and hold wild parties in her honor . That was a weird campaign
The short version is that there's two Raven Queens: The 4E Nentir Vale version, and the weird mess they made to justify her in the Realms without changing too much. The former is cool, and should not be ruined by her lesser version.
Running LMoP for a few friends but we all decided to use the same pantheon and history as critical role, since that's what got a bunch of them into D&D in the first place. Looking at the raven queen, she always felt very... meh to me? Like, you have this whole concept of taking over a god's place (wresting their fate from them) but also being the goddess of fate? The whole thing with Nerull just felt like a weird way to change the face of their death god instead of actually making an interesting character. She started out as a mortal, which I feel is incredibly underutilized in that she has to have had mortal motivations at some point, which proceeded to devolve into godly incomprehensibility.
My personal backstory for the goddess is that she was the head of her country's prestigious arcane academy, and a royal advisor (because like heck does a queen have the time to study that much magic). She cared deeply about her people. However, the previous god of death had figured out that since he got power the more souls were in his domain, he could speed the process along by spreading plagues and catastrophe. He targeted her city.
When people started dying, none of the clerics could cure the sick. All they knew was a god had marked them for death. The wizard, being a little hubristic but also genuinely caring about her people, went screw that, if this god is killing my people, then I'll kill him to stop him. The only problem? Figuring out how to kill a god.
She spent months searching, trying desperately to find a way, but it couldn't be done. No mortal could come close to the power it would require to kill a god. But gods get their power from somewhere. So the wizard had a crazy idea: she didn't have to destroy the god of death, just its current incarnation. By cutting him off from the source of his power, say, by erasing his name from existence entirely and then claiming his domain for herself before he could recover, she could destroy him.
Now the god of death wasn't looking out for threats to his life, especially not from some random mortal country he's been in the process of eviscerating. So it came as a surprise when a sudden assault on his domain cut him off from the vast majority of his power all at once. Caught flat-footed (she got a surprise round on him!), the wizard was able to steal that power and, after a fierce battle and with a fair bit of luck, erase the rest of him from existence and take his place. Of corse, this did not go unnoticed, and while she was still recovering from her existence very suddenly changing orders of magnitude, the other gods were able to wrest the domain of the dead away from her.
I like this backstory a lot better because I feel it holds true to the raven queen's drive for death to play out naturally, and fate to remain uninterrupted. To me, the raven queen has always felt coded to be a sort of protector goddess, keeping the souls of the dead safe as they transition and ensuring that those not meant to die do not. She just doesn't see death as something people need protecting from.
That's why she's so adamant about fate and death happening when it is meant to: the previous god of death took people before their time, and the undead do the same in an attempt to preserve their own existences. Her mortal desire to protect her people now coupled with whatever the heck goes on inside a god's head has led to this weird sort of balance of insistence on fate playing out, no matter how cruel, but also on the swift punishment of those who unjustly break fate. I dunno, she's a bit weird and also a little crazy because even if she's a god now, a) god's minds are freaking weird, and b) she hasn't actually held a casual conversation in what? 1000 years now? And she started off a wizard. Yeah, she has like zero people skills at this point.
One thing I think this video misses is the aspect of time. You go straight from that blurb in the PHB to the full lore she had by edition's end. As someone who played 4e for almost its entire lifespan my experience with the Raven Queen lore was much more fucky. For years all we had to go off of was that blurb in the PHB and the threat Orcus posed to her and thus everyone in the adventure path. This left us with this sort of Lawful Neutral Death Goddess who was all about fighting undeath and enforcing fate, which, you know, I think is appealing to a lot of players. You can play an edgy, goth character while still being a mostly good person. Your primary religious duties deal with ensuring the spiritual nature of death remains untainted and hunting evil undead monsters. Van Helsing if he read Camus. Since most death gods are presented as evil, this was a fun space for players who wanted to play with that stuff while not having to RP as a serial killer. She was basically presented as Kelemvor with drip.
Then, as time came on, we were hit with what felt like major retcons to her character. Portraying her as cruel, jealous, calculating, and selfish. She went from the protector of the dead to a selfish goddess eternally mad SHE didn't get to be the horrible death tyrant. It's literally canon that she either deliberately broke OR refused to fix the previously functional system of reincarnation because she wanted to hoard the dead for power, Wall of Lost Souls style. Objectively evil. Granted, these retcons did make for some nice drama in my long running game I was doing while all this was happening. One of my players was her champion, and as her lore got more and more generically evil, we wrote that into his character and how I roleplayed her, with him first abandoning her for Pelor, and then eventually becoming a sort of independent Invoker wielding the power of faith itself. That was all cool, but I still felt a little robbed.
So it's not just that this is a mess in retrospect; this was a mess for people on the ground as our fun, goth, guardian of the dead goddess got retcon'd into Yet Another Generically Evil Death God, ruining what made her appealing in the first place.
The Realms really suffers for being D&D's flagship setting. Any new idea that comes along get shoved in and integrated, hard and fast and without care or lube.
Realize how awesome she is - Is the plot to 99% of movies nowadays. It’s so stunning and brave.
I don't think Esper was particularly accurate with her 4E lore. The main reason why Nerul was even defeated by her to begin with was because that entire series of events was set up by other gods who wanted him gone.
I nearly fell off my chair when I heard that line. 😂
Silly
I played a warlock hexblade of the Raven Queen for a time. I latched onto the idea that the Raven Queen was a Goddess of memory more than anything else, she loved collecting the intense memories of important people and generally the easiest way for her to do that was to wait until they die and pluck what she can in-between the material and wherever they're going to for their afterlife. My character was an exceptionally aloof yet charming man, who insisted on being paid in anything BUT gold. His personal favorite asks were tears, and he had a remarkable ability to make people cry by bringing up old memories he couldn't possibly know, before collecting his pay in a small vial. These tears, of joy or sadness or whatever, had these intense memories stored within them - thus adding to his goddesses collection. I also flavored his weapon as basically cleaving through the soul of a person he slays and collecting the intense memories of death, leading to people thinking he worshipped death and that the Raven Queen was a true death goddess...when in reality, at least in my version, she never kept any of the souls, the blade just helped pilfer said souls of their memories in a really cruel way just as they die. My Raven Queen was generally presented as evil, but also kind of pitiful, she was basically this lonely woman that couldn't feel anything for herself and so stole feeling from others. She wasn't totally amoral though, she more so 'borrowed' and wrote down memories for her collection than actively stole them. Though sometimes she did just keep memories forever, especially negative ones, not realizing that negative memories make us just as human as the positive ones. And by virtue of living in a massive library full of memories, she was an unmatched historian.
love your 80s dark synth music
White Bat Audio, he produces some killer tracks
The Raven Queen's ascension to godhood in the World Axis cosmology of the Nentir Vale setting is quite easily explained. See, in the World Axis, gods are merely "very difficult" to kill instead of flat-out "impossible". If you can perform certain special rites or acquire certain artifacts, you can bind their fundamental spark and render them vulnerable, allowing you the opportunity to kill them... if you're *very* strong and lucky. In fact, Nerull himself was the second God of Death, having usurped the role by murdering the original incumbent, Aurom, an elder god of birth, death, and the cycle of life. Also, there's a theory that the Raven Queen was covertly aided by Pelor, Corellon and Moradin, who had all despised Nerull, though in-universe that theory is heretical to most of her cults.
In my campaigns, the Raven Queen and Pale Night are two leShay elves who were at war with each other in another universe, who made their way to Faerun when their war destroyed their home universe. The Pale Night's transgressions destroyed the memories of the leShay (and their Eladrin descendants), and the Raven Queen is on a quest to retrieve them so they can remember who they are and defeat the Pale Night.
I'll give D&D one thing over other mediums. It lends itself to the implementation of multiversal hijinks more than any other, simply because every table is inherently its own continuity and universe.
I will say, I think giving her the domain of life alongside death makes sense in the context of 1) she absolutely despises undeath and 2) she more presides over the *moment* or transitory period between life and death, including birth (think of her as the goddess of dusk/dawn instead of day or night, if that analogy helps at all). Even if in the official lore she is a bit of a mess, I've seen so many creative interpretations of her that branch off of 'official' content
I just make her an arch-fey who was tragically pulled into the shadowfell and twisted. She is rather new in my game world, which explains why she wasn't known before.
As someone who has been a fan of the old Planescape cosmology since the 90s, I absolutely hate how they've shoehorned the feywild and shadowfell into the game's lore (I'm not a fan of the game having large amounts of lore outside the specific setting books and boxed sets, in general).
It's a lot more work to homebrew a setting in 5th edition than it was in 2nd or 3rd edition.
In my campaign, the Raven Queen was actually the Queen of Chaos, hiding on the Shadowfell and only recently reemerging as the Raven Queen after millenia following her defeat by the wind lords and their Rod of Seven Parts. It was the setup to lead into the old "Rod of Seven Parts" module from AD&D 2e, except i had placed the pieces of the rod all around the multiverse instead of scattered across Oerth.
The messiness of D&Ds lore while it causes issues, does make researching it somewhat interesting.
It can probably be said that I did the Raven Queen a disservice, several years ago. When I was running 5e D&D, at the time, several of my players were new to the game, and had bee introduced to it by the Critical Role podcast; certainly not a new thing, these days. Well, they loved the setting, and the portrayals of various characters, so when they found out that I knew how to conduct D&D, they both decided that their characters HAD to be from Exandria, have backstories from there, and the like. I need to say that I didn't watch CR, so various things they were referencing went completely over my head. I told them our game would be in FRCS, because of course it would; 5e is mostly based on Faerun, and I've personally been a FRCS simp since the 90s, so they could have hopped worlds, but in my Forgotten Realms, there was no Raven Queen. I skipped 4e, and so I wasn't familiar, so to me, the best the RQ could be, in Faerun, was a Warlock Patron; her divinity was limited to Exandria, the sane as Wee Jas' would be to Oerth, and our Cleric of the Raven Queen could certainly still be one, but Kelrmvor wad granting her spells, while she was on Toril. It might not have seemed nice; like I was just trying to build up the world I knew, and could nerd about, instead of incorporating all this Matt Mercer content, but that's what I did. I always just assumed she wad a Pathfinder creation; another thing Vox Machina ported over when they came back to D&D, and it wasn't until later I learned I was wrong.
The strong bent against divinity in general is wrecking the game for the sake of players afraid of deep moral quandary (I'm lookin at you, paladins of the ideal of ham sammiches).
I'd like to say Vecna never died, but he did, several times anyhow he was undead when he became a diety.
Kelemvore became a diety after he died, not Vecna.
Oh my god, I thought D&D got past the "the wizards did it!" stage, why did they weave it into the lore of a god?
Thank the gods for Pharasma.
The Raven Queen, Tharizdun, and a homebrew dead god of Time and Causality I called "Apostos" were all central to my 4th Edition fate-vs-free-will themed campaign, sort of a law vs chaos, gods vs elementals thing. The premise was basically that Apostos was the lynchpin that ensured the Gods' ascendency over the Primordials, but Tharizdun secretly corrupted Apostos, who defected to the side of the Primordials and instigated the Dawn War. Apostos was slain, and his portfolio was divided into subdomains that were inherited by the remaining gods. The Raven Queen (by way of Nerull) inherited Fate. Tharizdun, however, ensured his inevitable victory by securing Entropy. Being that this campaign took place in the north, it largely started out as Frost Giants making war against The Raven Queen and spiraled out from there.
So there are Deities and then there is Tharizdun. He is a bit unique in DnD Lore because in the Greyhawk setting he was so old that all the other Deities were children compared to him. In some books they say he existed before Time or Death was a thing. He is called the God of Madness and the Chained God. You know why he is called the Chained God? Because all the other Gods teamed up together to put him in chains. They wanted to kill Tharizdun but Death had no power over him. He is timeless and completely unkillable. Tharizdun is what you use when you want something so nasty it could end the universe. He is basically pure Chaos. Personally, I always played him like the Joker. If you want a story where the heroes and the villains have to team up, that is a Tharizdun storyline. Tharizdun created the Far Realms. He is their God.
God she sounds like the product of some teenage gothgirls first attempt at fan fiction.
Would be nice to have this discussion about Shar and Selune, with which I wasn't familiar until BG3
Wrote the Raven Queen article for Manual of the Planes 5e. Making her work was tricky, but I tried to add some spice that ties her together.
I hadn't heard there was a Manual of the Planes 5e. I'll have to look into that. Any chance I could ask you a few questions? Drop me a line: esperthebard@gmail.com
5:52 Yes, but throughout history and mythology, we have many examples of conquerors letting their little head do the thinking in place of their big head, such as Jason's treatment of Medea in the myth of the Golden Fleece. No fearsome monster or great army can lay either hero or god low -- only the _kindly_ ministrations of a woman can do that; she is man's greatest nemesis and his Achilles' heel.
Still, there should have been something that detailed how it went down, even if only in passing. I'd suggest something in the works got cancelled, if WotC wasn't known for firing their good writers and artists while creating derivative, half-assed work since the beginning of the 4E era.
17:32 Logical coherency is considered to be a hallmark of traditional Western storytelling, and American academic circles explicitly and vehemently oppose the Western tradition. This ideological opposition is the source of all these nonsensical multiverse settings. You can hear more details about subject of multiverse chicanery in a rant from comic book analyst and creator, The Fourth Age: ua-cam.com/video/AOAx5qQr1UY/v-deo.htmlsi=5BFPGkGWrQz4dOtI
WotC probably hired someone straight out of college or high school who doesn't have a background either in tabletop RPGs or something related to story writing. These days, English majors aren't even trained to write what we traditionally think of as a story, that's a skill that someone needs to seek elsewhere.
Post-modern anti-narrative yup. That and cynical generalized marketing practices.
So basically she's a mary sue goddess
Yeah pretty much 😆
I disagree with that, if Myrkul and the other 2 could become Death Deities why can't someone else do so. Look at the Lore of "Red Knight" if I remember correctly. They where originally a Mortal who was extremely loyal and helpful to Tempus, after Tempus (being the j*rk he is) defeated Garagos. Tempus decided to reward that loyalty by taking a portion of Garagos' power he gained and some of his own pre-existing power granting that to the person transforming them into "Red Knight".
I think there are various other examples throughout all the lore/history of D&D of Mortals achieving Apotheosis.
@@morrigankasa570 The issue isn't a mortal achieving apotheosis, the problem is a mortal reaching a god level of power just because "she's so darn awesome." Without a good story and personal struggles and character development, it just comes off as contrived.
@@esperthebard I understand your points, but I disagree with you requiring struggle. Yes it requires effort, but struggle has negative connotations. As for character development that is also a matter for debate. I personally don't find any major issues with the Raven Queen. The only issue is the lack of in-depth lore.
Aren’t all goddesses Mary Sues???
They couldn't just say she was an interloper deity who came to Toril like the Mulhurandhi and Untherites? Or maybe she was a deity that got stuck on Abeir alongside the Primordials and manged to stay on the Toril side during the Second Sundering?
She has tons of potential. With good imagination, she can be all the greater. I still remember The Masked One's beef with her :) When the Warsor found out that getting rid of one of her followers was actually a good thing :)
After watching this I now realize why the Death god mantle goes to Kelemvor or the Raven Queen, but never both in the same setting
Orcus also began as a mortal and eventually achieved divinity, although he was downgraded afterwards.
Dawn War Nerull actually was also an ascended mortal who killed and usurped a god, so there's precedent there.
15:00 the lore simultaneously states that she ascended to godhood as a result of a ritual in which she sacrificed all of her followers - aside from the backstabber wizards who tried to mount a power grab. Well - in D&D celestial cosmology: when a deity has no followers - it dies. You literally just could not become a deity by sacrificing all of your followers that way. That whole scheme would quite literally just not work.
Hey, Esper! Could you make a video about how the original forgotten realms setting was? I'm really interested in DMing a campaign in this setting, however due to the giant amount of information and the whole "sandbox" style of the setting (at least nowadays, it seems), I'm having a lot of difficulty trying to make something relatively simple both for me and my friends regarding this setting. Also, I remember reading a comment on SuperGeekMike's video on the forgotten realms, telling that the original idea of the setting was that only the Sword Coast, Thay, Cormyr, Waterdeep and Icewind Dale were fixed/ known regions, while the rest of the realms were blank spaces for you to fill in in your campaigns. Is this true? If so, I would love to know, so I can be more confident in making a campaign in the realms with my friends.
Sound like she is, in my best Cartman voice, "But a chick in it, make it lame".
"Just depends on what edition of raven it is." I laughed out loud at work.
Your coworkers might think you're stark raven mad.
@@esperthebard how long have you been sitting on that one?
@@heathharris2545 Oh it just hatched suddenly when I read your comment.
i will defend Nentir Vale. the setting is pretty cool and got a lot of cool locations and lorebits IE: primordials, at least 4 apocalypses, a lot of really cool locations in the dugenon and dragon magazine articles. the problem is that it kept everything really barebones so the DM could fill the gaps but it was still really barebones.
one of the things really cool i the setting where some of the gods. specially Torog. Torog the crawling god of pain, in the past a vain god of hedonism who could not feel pain, fought a primordial in the underdark and defeated it. but he got injured really badly to the point of being left deformed and the primordial with the last of his breath , cursed torog to never heal from his wounds and never reach the surface again. so the underdark became this infinite labyrinthian demiplane where a god dwelled as a punishment. he also had the power to sometimes drag places into the underdark.
So I have since ported away from using any of the Dungeons & Dragons deities because of copyright reasons. And as such how to convert some of the gods and goddesses well actually almost all of them to our own mythological deities kind of Taking Liberties wherever I felt needed so the Raven Queen is called Nyx or nox depending on the region you are in. She is generally a central theme and almost all of my games because she is the goddess of death but again just a moment but because of that she is very widely regarded she does still fill that role of like kind of evil kind of knot generally a good God but yet not fully she has her own plans and you know none of the Gods obviously trusts her but they're not as openly hostile as they are in the Forgotten Realms / whatever that other one was but she is often there in the story one of my characters wanted to have his main character leave for a while to go do some stuff on his own and so he played a character that was a champion of the Raven Queen it's easier to refer to her the stat for this but yeah he was a Revenant who was brought back by her cuz he had garnered her fever in some way. One of the characters drew the actual like real interest of the Raven Queen and they kept noticing that a Raven constantly followed them follow them they even entered her Temple into a ancient tomb and that's what really got her interest because you know worshipers tune for a long time suddenly people start showing up inside you're like hey what's happening and they received her blessing just a really fun character to have in your repertoire
My headcanon for her is that she is the god of secrets/forbidden knowledge. I played a campaign with a warlock with her as her patron and she just had a Raven who encouraged the player to uncover and harness secret arcane knowledge. It was pretty fun and I think it fits her aesthetic
Great Video Esper! I really enjoyed the History lesson!! Very interesting!
The content is fun and informative, keep it up. I love watching!
Thank you!
I prefer Wee Jas. She's established since the days of Greyhawk. and has a MUCH more interesting history.
The reven queen was made for us homebrewers, I've use her all the time. She fights with Orcus and become the patron for many of my adventurers.
I remembered one time that my dead PC Paladin named 'Jundis Jonstar' gets visited by the Raven Queen in the afterlife who offers me a position that I cannot refused since according to my former DM friend as he quotes in woman's voice *"Swear fealty to me or else you'll become an Oathbreaker!"* I packed all my belongings and left his House, never to return playing Dungeons and Dragons in 2022. Now? I'm inclined to go back and play in a new group next year.
In the Salvatore books Lloth transitioned to being an actual deity and not just a super powerful demon, didn't she? I think the Demon web pits aren't even in the abyss anymore.
Well, she used to be a deity. Then became a demon... but still kind of god-ish, sort of...I think. But I think she went back to being a full god at some point. Yeah, I think it was in the Salvatore books, like when she went silent for a while then transformed back into to a god. Somehow. WotC just wanted to classify her as a god to make it simpler. Just go with it.
@@PyrelaI personally like her as a non demon Goddess and demon lord. We see from giant lore that some giants are so badass that they vacation and conquer layers of the abyss becoming demon generals/lords despite not originally being demons themselves and they of course become corrupted over time.
Lloth is similar in my head canon she rules regions of the abyss through her power as a lesser goddess
I’ve kept Lolth as a demon queen as she was in 1sr edition.
Thank God I'm into Warhammer lore instead of D&D lore, at least GW can keep it somewhat consistent (and of decent quality)
That's what I've been hearing about Warhammer lore for a while now.
A conceit of Warhammer lore is that most of it is of the "what everybody believes" variety. So most of it probably isn`t true in-universe.
and the best deviance comes from the memes, and the following thought of "I wonder..."
@@esperthebard it's the tits
Interesting watching this video. I've read a lot of Forgetten Relams novels (more so in the early 00's) and just nowish getting into its lore. I've got the 3.5 edition of forgetten Realms setting book that I read a lot back int he day.
I thought Raven Queen was some other plane diety since she's in the popular Critical Role campiagn world setting (and has a major story arc in the first campaign). And when you were talking about her being in Forgetten Realms I was like WTF.
I love how you talk about lack of creative cohearent vision invading all these "multiverse" story arcs and how its to the detriment of the storys.
As messy and contrived as she is, I think we can all agree that the Raven Queen is a baddie 😏
Raven Queen was first introduced to D&D during 3.5 via Dragon Magazine. As a deity you could drop into any setting but aimed mainly at Oerth in the Greyhawk Setting.
Easy way to deal with the Raven Queen: Throw your shinies in the ground.
She was cool in 4ed. I mean if you keep the lore brief you cant ruin it. Her 5th edition version added a bunch of words and names but took much more character and mystery. And mystery is cool for a character that pretty much embodies the y2k goth era.
So part of the Raven Queen’s origin is the “…we do not grant you the rank of Master.” meme.
I do kinda like the idea of someone that Lolth and Corellon both struck down. But the timing was just wrong. Would’ve been cool if she attempted ascension while Lolth was still playing the part of Wife. And they struck her down instead for her hubris, and it served as a bonding moment between the two gods that Lolth could exploit for her own treachery. Makes more sense for Lolth to be angry at someone else’ pride rather than Treachery. And gives the Raven Queen a more realized goal (Because realistically, no one could of come between Corellon and Lolth during their battle with how abrupt her betrayal was)
Inconsistency is why I created my own home brew world.
Very vaguely related. There's an animator with some stuff posted on YT, one of their shows had the protagonist faced with an apparently insurmountable problem, and they solved it by thinking "maybe if I just BELIEVE IN MYSELF," which was of course the solution. Your description of the Raven Queen's origins reminded me of that.
In 2e, Gruumsh was LE and lived in Acheron, fighting goblinoids. In 3e, they moved to CE but no one told the people who wrote the Manual of the Planes for 3e so he still appears in Acheron.
Eberron is explicitly frozen in the year 998YK to avoid some of these problems. $e tried to graft on other setting bits w/o care of the damage it did to 4e eberron but 5e ditched that mistake & added depth to 998YK eberron in ways that fit eberron without retcons & such
How did the Raven Queen essentially erase her former self from both memory and record exactly? I don't think that ability comes with the death god booster pack.
I think all Deities no matter their spheres of influence have that ability...
Only Jergal would remember who she was, given that he's literally the archivist of deities, and gave the dead three their deification.
Look up "Wee Jas" and "Raven Queen" if you can- the original idea was supposedly that the Raven Queen was Wee Jas, the Greyhawk deity of magic and death, and "Nera" was more like an avatar or an aspect that tricked and manipulated Nerull so she could steal his power (or will- there might be some time-disparity involved). Wee Jas is Lawful Evil / Lawful Neutral bordering LE, but leaning "Lawful" and is more a mostly dutiful goddess who happens to be a bit selfish and vain.
Lolth was always a fallen goddess turned demon who regained some of her godly power, so her origin checks out.
The 4e original lore for the Raven Queen is soooo most likely lifted from the character of Queen Narasen in Tanith Lee's Death's Master, a queen who battled plague and became basically Death's consort after Death.
The Raven Queen was just built different. That's how she became a Goddess. She was the protagonist of her own anime.
This is by far my favorite god. Just give me a cool name and some background/backgrounds so I can disregard and do whatever I want with it. The Raven Queen is wonderful at this point ... so many variants, so many stories ... those mysteries helped me develop a god that nobody knows nothing about. Thank you Forgotten Realms.
My personal depiction of the raven queen is that she’s the goddess of reincarnation. That’s why she had life and death. She’s an Elvin goddess who is responsible for the elves reincarnation and the shadow Kai are drow to abandoned lolth, but can’t reincarnate due to the betrayal, so instead of going to the spider queen upon death, are scent to the raven queen as the shadow Kai instead of elves.
She was also the first elf to ever die on the mortal plane, and as such was given the god status by the elven god to be responsible for all future dead elves to return to life as a new elf. Her bloodline became the drow, this is why she finds sympathy towards them and found away to accept them if they were ever able to escape lolth.
There's an old anecdote.
Plane crashes in the ocean, only two pilots and a stewardess survive... If you font know it, I do not risk to write it here (in the years of total tolerance), but the final words of this anecdote are: "Enough lechery, bury the stewardess."
Bury the raven queen😅
5e lore starts making a lot of sense when you realize that the fundamental idea behind the writing is that whoever is writing that stuff is assuming that no one reads the official lore and people will just make stuff up, so they just throw words at paper for five minutes in an afternoon and call it a day.
With that said, I think the Raven Queen lore for 4e seems mostly alright. I'd try to isolate her from the regular pantheon as much as possible and leave her a single weird Shadowfell deity, whose backstory is a vague legend that reads like a fairy tale about an Elven Princess who died and somehow tricked the original god of death and now she reigns in his stead. It's strange, it's ambiguous, it works the most the less details you add to the story, and in that way you have a cool ambiguous goddess of a dark realm who can be good or bad depending on the circumstances and her whims, which is a good addition to the Shadowfell feel I think.
Maybe in this version she wants to escape the Shadowfell herself. Maybe she made the Shadowfell. You could have conflicting stories existing at the same time to enhance the feeling of ambiguity around her.
It really does, when you come at it as they basically just put loose threads so you can come up with your own stuff (unless it's an official setting books like Rising form the Last War, or Mythic Odysseys) instead of deepest lore. It's even more true when said thing is basically from 4e where the "default" "world" was pretty much the old Gygax-Arneson TSR era of put this module wherever as long as it's near (this generic area you can put on your map). I think that's become a stumbling point for a lot of D&D loretubers that don't get specific (say TMG and his almost laser focus on Faerun) or Rhexx after he kinda learned that he needs to focus because something like 2e' Guide to Hell is going to be a major stumbling block because it's not tied to any real lore. It's especially true since they stopped selling the novels (or slowed it down immensely) where a LOT of lore happened.
God of death and life, sounds like a God of vampires.
I don’t understand why WotC doesn’t just put all the setting stuff in the PHB. For a different setting, they can just publish a different player’s handbook. Then each setting gets its own gods, classes, species, languages, map, & spells, & a few monsters at the back. But the DMG & MM would be common to all settings.
even if you plan things out, you eventually reintegrate stuff from older editions because you want to reimagine some old character of the IP or turn the old one into something new and fresh and then you eventually get to a point where nothing makes sense.
The bigger your IP becomes the more it turns into Rick and Morty.
This just gives me more evidence that Vecna is the good guy in his conflict with her.
Reason why she has life inn her domain now; you die when your time comes; not before it.
Which is why in my setting shes also seen as a goddess of health care; and her high priest is a doctor and surgen who sees himself in competition with her; knowning she will always win in the end.
I think the moral of the story is: don’t be simpin or pretty girl will take you for all you got.
She's a mini mi version of Shar the Real Queen of Darkness
Exactly, no one tells great stories anymore because no one just sits and plans it out.
thanks. Played a warlock of cursed blade that worshiped the Raven Queen. Very complicated backstory of this goddess
In my Forgotten Realms the Raven Queen is Shar posing as a less horrible figure than she really is. She already has a history of posing as Selune and a healer when she hates the light and tortures the sick and wounded to death rather than healing them. Why wouldn't she hand out evil Dark Razor and other weapons to every warlock who asks for them? Easy win. And she gets their souls after they die.
I’m just waiting for raistlin and the towers of sorcery and lunitary, solinar, and nuitari to be pulled into the realm. Forgotten realms seems to absorb everything
My Swords bard, Majora, is a huge free will advocate. He never touches mind control magic, including charms, and will happily counter charm anyone who suffers under that crap. He interferes in his team mates charms, too, helping enemies escape them. He _despises_ the concept of fate, and the Raven Queen, and will happily, and cheerfully, gut any of her worshippers stupid enough to think that’s it’s remotely possible, or acceptable to enforce such nonsense on him.
What was again the greatest session of D&D ever recorder? Ambershar Manor? How can find more about it?
You didn't even get into the part about her being based on Wee Jass back when the Greyhawk gods were based on a fair amount of research into religious history. Proto-indoeuropean reconstruction suggests that the prototype for this ambivalent goddes of death was Kolyo the Coverer which became Hel in Norse mythology, "Hell" in the bible, and many other fun historical and linguistic connections between beliefs of ancient peoples related to the inspirations that became Wee Jass and then the many versions of the Raven Queen.
I've had a whole campaign rolling around in my head for years that explores the Raven Queen, her overthrow of Nerull, and the ethical questions around her continuing the status quo of gods greedily hoarding mortal souls for power.
Or rather, I have the epic level end of a campaign in my head, but none of the steps to get there. Perhaps that's all it will ever be. :P
That end rant actually reminded me of a complaint I hear a lot about real world mythology. Gods changing through time. Being syncretized into new cultures. The Greek and Roman pantheon looks much the same from our perspective today.
CONTAINS: "Old man yells at clouds"
The origin story could of been cleaned up with the intervention of AO. Seems legit easier to say AO stepped in and made the Raven Queen a god.
This could also play into a Hexblade Warlock's story where the Raven Queen lends out the shadowy essence of warriors past to hunt down those who become lich, made immortal or raised by the wish spell (using wish instead of a divine spell directly implies no permission to be raised is sought from a god) or using forbidden magic related to time.
If I think about it... She could be an agent of AO to prevent mortals from becoming gods without his express authorisation. A potential failsafe to avoid another Karsus's Folly without directly stepping in.
She wants to punish people who want to escape fate but has not punished the writers of her origin for messing with her continuity so much.
There are a number of reasons to have preexisting lore. Firstly for people that aren't creative enough to come up with their own setting (no judgement!), but secondly so people don't have to read up on a bunch of lore every time they want to play with someone. That second reason is why I actually agree with lore being kept light and easily digestible for these settings, with depth for the people that really care but isn't essential if you just want to go smash some skeletons and orcs. Not being able to keep your own deities straight is a huge obstacle to that. It isn't a big deal having more than one Raven queen origin story, different religions might have different interpretations of the same event, but FFS