Raven Queen

The Raven Queen was a mysterious entity from the Shadowfell who was revered as a deity by the shadar-kai.

Description
The Raven Queen did not possess or manifest a physical form, instead appearing as a miscellany of symbols, perceptions, and images.

Personality
It was believed that the Raven Queen's true intentions were only known to the Lady of Pain.

Divine Realm
One of the Raven Queen's divine realms in the Shadowfell was a castle known as the Fortress of Memories. It was a place of overwhelming sorrow, overflowing with memories taken from mortals and fragments of dead deities, material objects collected by the shadar-kai and brought to her as gifts, and apparitions of creatures and places associated with strongly emotional stories. Swarms of ravens occasionally flew out of the fortress, taking her cryptic messages to the far reaches of the multiverse and acting as the Queen's eyes and ears while away.

The Raven Queen was also said to claim a domain in the Shadowfell known as Letherna, a fortress of black ice within a frozen forest through which the souls of the deceased had to pass before reaching the afterlife, according to the World Axis cosmology.

Activities
The whole existence of the Raven Queen was focused on collecting memories and strong emotions, typically associated with loss and tragedy. To that end, she dispatched shadar-kai to the far confines of the multiverse to wait for such an event to unfold, as scouted by her ravens. Then they collected mementos, such as trinkets, memories from the living and sometimes the souls of the dead, and brought them back to her.

The Raven Queen also claimed domain of the souls of all shadar-kai, which always returned to her after their deaths.

Relationships
One of the Raven Queen's greatest enemies was the demon lord Orcus, who constantly sought control of the Shadowfell. He hoped to find a weakness in her domain by discovering her true name.

History
Although a complete account of the Raven Queen's motivations and origins was not generally known, it was believed that she was originally a much beloved elf queen from the Feywild who witnessed the conflict between Corellon and Lolth. Worried that the dispute might torn the Seldarine asunder, she rallied her followers to perform a powerful ritual in order to become a deity, so she could have the leverage to appeal to the deities' senses.

The ritual involved the offering of the queen's followers' souls and magic to accumulate onto her own power, enabling her to reach Arvandor. The followers, who called themselves shadar-kai, firmly believed that their queen was capable of reunifying the elven pantheon and the sundered elves.

However, evil wizards among the queen's followers attempted to divert some of the energy from the ritual to amplify their own powers. Moments before completing the ritual and reaching Arvandor, the queen reacted by punishing the wizards with a burst of divine fury. This curse corrupted the ritual into a siphon that dragged the queen and her followers into the Shadowfell, where she was instantly killed. However, drawing upon her recently acquired divine powers, the queen rose from the ashes and, in her growing madness and grief, transformed the wizards into wretched avian forms known as nagpas, and banished them forever to wander the planes.

The queen herself was still further transformed by the corrupted ritual, her form dissolving into disconnected sensory perceptions. Moreover, both Corellon and Lolth considered her actions to be treason, so they erased the memory of her existence from all elves. In order to prevent herself from disappearing entirely, she drew memories of her from the Shadowfell itself in order to sustain her identity. Over time, the subjective remains of the queen and the loose darkened memories gave rise to the entity known as the Raven Queen.

Another account of the Raven Queen's origin states that she was originally a sorcerer who led a rebellion against a former god of death in Pluton. In order to prevent her from becoming a tyrant in the same fashion as the defeated god, other deities elevated her to the status of goddess of death, but with no power over the dead themselves.