Church of Umberlee

The Church of Umberlee was disorganized, and different locales vary significantly in the way they practiced faith in the Bitch Queen. Following Umberlee's nature, inner disputes and questions of primacy and rank were usually resolved through dueling, and the strongest Umberlant prevailed, while the other was thrown aboard the next ship to leave port.

Clergy
Umberlant clerics could walk unmolested at almost every port and surrounding areas, and they were always welcomed aboard ships in hopes that their presence appeased their furious goddess. The clerics of the Both Queen often lived off the offerings by the fearful sailors and merchants. They collected the coin and food left at the shrines when no other was around and splashed the altars with buckets of cold sea water and seaweeds. This symbolized the goddess claiming what was rightfully hers. They prayed for spells at high tide (in the morning or the evening), while making offerings and self-anointing on the brow, hands and feet with sea water.

The clerics of Umberlee could rarely be found wearing uniform vestments, as a matter of fact the only thing they had in common was the easily detectible marine theme. They could be dressed in robes of the color of the seas, weaves, and storms, shark teeth necklaces, or in hotter regions, such as the Utter East, they could simply be draped in foul-smelling seaweed.

Ranks
The lowest on the Church's pecking order were the novice clerics called the Untaken. Once the goddess acknowledges them as her clergy they became entitled to collect offerings and donations to the Bitch Queen, lead prayer ceremonies, and dispense her blessings.

The next step in seniority could have many titles, regardless of the actual rank and the priestly powers. Those titles were: Flood Tide, Dark Breaker, Puissant Undertow, Wave of Fury, Savage Seawind, Wavemistress, Wavelord.

Waveservants or the True Servants of the Wave were the special clergy titles, they often combined any of the titles listed above with added word "Dread" in front.

Holy Objects
The priestesses of Umberlee considered preserved hands of the drowned people to be a precious and holy object, and some even used the as their holy symbols.

Some powerful priestesses sold special enchanted items called the prayer-tokens of Umberlee, an especially powerful but fickle item that could summon the Queen of the Depths' servants to aid the traveler (or on occasion if the goddess was bored, to destroy the supplicants). The prayer-token was known to raise ghost ships from the sea depths, filled with sea zombies, under the temperamental goddesses' control.

Abilities
Following the Time of Troubles, clerics of Umberlee did not have access to the turn undead ability, but could control the undead created from the creatures perished in the sea, or aquatic by nature. They were granted divine ability to breathe underwater, and the ability to swim.

The Umberlant priests' favorite weapon was a uniquely shaped hooked sickle-like knife. These knives represented Umberlee's reaping of the those killed at sea.

Magic
These were the divine magic spells granted to the clergy of Umberlee :
 * speak with the drowned dead • striking wave • oars to snakes • stormcloak • waterspout • maelstrom

Holy days and rituals

 * First Tide: celebrated when the ice broke up in a harbor, it consisted of a parade through town with a caged animal, which wass tied to a rock and then thrown into the sea. If it survived, it was treated as a sacred animal.
 * Stormcall: a mass prayer to send a storm away, and perhaps redirect it to another harbor, port or ship.

Waterdeep
In Waterdeep, at the end of Fleetswake, the Fair Seas Festival was held. It was a ceremony dedicated to placate the Bitch Queen, during which tithes were given by dropping coins, included those collected during Fleetswake by increasing the normal docking fee to 1 gp, into the deepest reaches of the harbor. Strong currents dragged this wealth into Umberlee's Cache.