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The Raven Queen

Page history last edited by Clark411 15 years, 8 months ago

Description

The Raven Queen is the goddess of death, fate, and winter. Her followers honor the dead, strike down those who would live beyond a mortal life, and oppose the cult of Orcus wherever it is found.

 

Clerical Orders

The Silent Watchers

The Ebon Astrolabe

 

Paladin Orders

The Knights of Winter

 

The Priesthood

As with most faiths, only a small set of devout worshippers are granted relatively limitless access to the Raven Queen's divine power.  Although clerics and paladins walk as juggernauts when held against the multitudinous members of the priesthood, only very rarely does access to divine power equate to a deeper understanding of the teachings of a god.  This was not always so, as in the age of the theocratic monarchs of the early first dynasty.

 

The objective of the priesthood of the Raven Queen differs from many others in the additional duties that can be associated with a goddess of death. 

 

The duties of the priesthood of the Raven Queen are:

 

1. Performing renewing rituals that hallow graveyards. 

Traveling priests of the Raven Queen who are committed to this task wear black robes that end in a three inch white border, symbolizing the purity of the graveyard that resides beneath the respectful sorrow of the setting.  People tend to refer to these travelers as "black friars."

 

2. Attachment to active military units. 

When a battle concludes, priests of many faiths from both camps move across the battlefield.  The priests of the Raven Queen pray for the dead and for the battleground itself.  In places of great suffering and death, the Shadowfell often grows closer, touching the world and changing it.

 

3. Performing last rites and funeral ceremonies. 

Last rites consist of a final purification of the mortal soul through the dying person's participation in a practice called Last Story.  Typically this equates to a dying man discussing with a priest, in private, the good and bad of his life--it is acknowledged that the faithful often glaze over events they are not proud of or which may be cause for legal action against their survivors.  Greater individuals may have a scribe present as well to catelogue these deeds- though often this recording is best done well before the final stages of a lengthy convalescense.  After this, the priest describes the Raven Queen's great castle of Letherna, and process through which the person's unchained psyche will lose all memory of itself before returning to the mortal world anew.

 

The poor are buried in long sacks, tied tight by rope at the knees, stomach, and neck.  Those who can afford a coffin receive a simple affair, with the person's good deeds and blessing of the priests carved upon it.  Nobles have great mausoleums and catecombs deep within their holds, but even there the residing priest of the Raven Queen is considered to be in his domain.  Regardless of the wealth of the individual or the number in attendance, a single priest of the Raven Queen is present to perform, at the very least, a pragmatic ritual against undeath.  More opulent ceremonies can consist of a ekphora through the streets of a holding which can last for hours, as mourners march ahead and behind a grand coffin held as though on a palanquin.  Women from the family of the deceased, often supplimented by paid professional lamenters, express their sorrow in loud fashion.

 

4. Performing Sanctioned Resurrections.

The Churches of the Imperial Pantheon were nearly fractured as an organization early in the first dynasty era when the Raven Edict was pronounced by Heirophant Kehros Malindres.  Currently, while the spirit of the Raven Edict is upheld by the dogma of the Raven Queen's priesthood, the more aggressive wording of the original document is not acted upon.  The Raven Edict, a simple single folio of considerable consequence, states with no uncertain terms that the use of the rituals known commonly as Speak with the Dead and Raise Dead go beyond the purview of all churches save the Church of the Raven Queen.  According to Malindres, the Raven Queen took a serious toll from those souls who were taken from Letherna without the knowledge and practice of the Raven Queen's priesthood.

 

Both the accusation that other priesthoods were not sufficiently competent enough to use this ritual correctly, and the potential for a loss in donations from the nobles that sometimes need these services, momentarily caused the Heirophants of other Churches to name Malindres a dogmatic heretic.  A meeting between the Heirophants the next year resulted in an uneasy agreement which has only grown more comfortable as time has distanced it.  At this meeting, it was agreed upon that death was the domain of the Raven Queen, and that the use of the raise dead ritual was a violation of Her tenet which stated that a person's fate should not be unaltered.  It was also agreed upon, however, that the powers granted by rituals are an aspect of that fate--fate is not time alone, but rather time passing through the circumstances of the actual, resulting in consequence.  The ability of the Churches to save lives was a circular proof which suggested that the use of the ritual was an element of anyone's fate were they able to receive such a blessing.

 

As a result of these acknowledgments, every Church is now able to perform the raise dead ritual, but the Church of the Raven Queen is able to refer to theirs as "sanctioned," as the agreements of mortals does not alter the fact that the Raven Queen may truly find displeasure in the encroaching hands of other faiths into her domain.

 

Link: Death and Undeath

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