The Raven Queen In Dungeons & Dragons

Todd Kenreck: Out of so many entities and gods in the D&D multiverse the Raven Queen may be the most shrouded in mystery. That's why I'm talking to Mike Mearls about her and what she means for the D&D multiverse.

Mike Mearls: The Raven Queen is a character who's in some ways ... She is what the tin says she is. She's the queen of ravens. But more usefully, she rules the Shadowfell right now. There have been other rulers of the Shadowfell, there are other people challenging her for dominion over that realm, but that's where she sits right now, where she perches.

And she is essentially ... Depending on how you look at her you could think of her as a goddess or you could think of her as a cosmic entity who is meddling with forces and elements best left alone.

So in the world Nentir Veil she's regarded as a goddess. And there's myths of how she arose. She slew the god Nerull, the god of death. Though Nerull cultist on Oerth the world of Greyhawk would find that strange because they worship Nerull and he's still around and answering their pleas.

So it's not quite clear in a lot of worlds where she came from. But she does have a powerful influence over the cosmos.

And as the queen of ravens she essentially sits on her perch, her throne, in the Shadowfell, and watches over every soul that departs the material plane and heads out to the outer planes. And she can, if a soul looks particularly interesting to her, she can bid her ravens to flap out across the cosmic firmament and pluck souls out that heading out toward her plains and bring them to her.

And she might do this because a soul is particular interesting to her, and she takes an interest in souls for a variety of reasons. She might feel the soul is bound for greater things than its death and so she might want to return it to the world. She might find that the elements of the soul's life are fascinating and she wants to watch them and study them, and maybe send that soul back on an endless cycle of reliving the tragedy of its life again and again. To what end who can I say? She's fairly inscrutable.

From her castle ... It overlooks a small city. So a lot of people ... If you're in the material plane and you're familiar with the lore of the Raven Queen, being the sort of gatekeeper over the Gate of Death, or at least watcher over it. She doesn't keep it because she messed with it. She doesn't let souls go in where they're supposed to go. And that's why a lot of gods don't like her, because they see her as meddling. "Just let the souls go," and she's plucking them out if they interest her. Because it also feels very capricious. No one's really quite sure why she takes a soul and why lets other souls go.

So you will have mortals go to the Shadowfell and try to seek her out and to see if they can restore someone to life, if whether magic, whatever, or the gods aren't allowing it or the spell isn't the working, or Raise Dead's not available to you, or there's a curse, or something. So she does have petitioners who seek an audience with her.

And the shadar-kai serve her. So in the city, this sort of ramshackle city that's grown up around her castle, there are the shadar-kai, who are her mortal agents. They serve her bidding.

And then you have mortals who also show up and try to ... They're desperate, right? "If somehow I could get an audience with the Raven Queen ..." But an audience with the Raven Queen might be one of those things where, like, "Be careful what you wish for," because she doesn't sit on the throne and you walk in and pay your respect and have a conversation with her. She has never been known to speak to anyone, and occasionally can be glimpsed through the windows and through the parapets or balconies of her castle.

But otherwise, as far as anyone knows, it's just her and the ravens. She sends ravens to the shadar-kai if she has a mission for them, something she wants them to do. The shadar-kai obey her, they follow her. They're very faithful to her. And they're about as old she is.

How she actually came to be there's a lot of different stories. It's not exactly clear what may have created her. But it's clear the shadar-kai are somehow attached to it. And they serve her will. They are tied to her.

The shadar-kai were once elves and so the Raven Queen may have once been an elf herself. It's not exactly clear right now what her relationship might be. You do have this idea that Corellon Larethian, you know, and the elves springing from his divine blood. And the elf pantheon essentially being the most powerful of the elves. They rise into godhood, because they have that, the divine element in their blood. And so there's some suspicion that she's somehow tied to that, that that may be how she obtained this cosmic position.

There's also some ... I mean there's some sort of cosmic tragedy that she actually didn't intend to become the Raven Queen, she intended to become something else and then something went wrong, and now she's trapped in the Shadowfell and all of these weird ... Her weird obsession with souls and plucking souls and bringing them to her and commanding the shadar-kai might all actually be in some strange way her trying to escape her predicament, that she doesn't actually want to be watching over these souls, that she's trying to escape, that her soul in some way is trapped in the Shadowfell.

But the shadar-kai are elves ... On the Shadowfell they appear incredibly ancient and old. But when they leave they regain their vigor. And so if you meet a shadar-kai in the material plane they look like a robust young elf. If you meet one on the Shadowfell ... They typically like to wear masks on the Shadowfell because they're incredibly withered and old. Still vital. You don't want to pick a fight with one. They look old but they're not slowed down. But there is definitely some element of when they are close to their mistress they look different. You can see the toll of years on them.

And so she's a very mysterious and strange figure, sort of straddling the line between life and death. And in some worlds, like the world of Nentir Vale she's worshiped as a god. She has clerics, or paladins, and everything. She is very powerful and can impart power to others. But she's not quite a deity. She's somewhere in between.

And in some ways in the universe of D&D it's very orderly, right? The universe of D&D is the struggle between law and chaos. And she represents neither. She's something else.

Todd Kenreck: Thank you, Mike Mearls for talking about the Raven Queen.

We'll have Jeremy Crawford on soon to talk more about the Raven Queen as well as her elves that live in the Shadowfell as it relates to new book Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

You can pre-order that book right now on D&DBeyond.com. Thank you for watching. 

 

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