so the big thing here is i want to make sure all my lore is right, so it supports my character's motivations. i did a lot of homework trying to come up with this and i feel like the only bit of lore ive bent is the existence of his role in service to the Raven Queen prior to the adventure but it doesnt seem like something that would outright break lore, though im sure ill hear no shortage of "Well actually...". but please, if anything doesnt check out, id like to hear about it.

so to start, obviously Race/Class/Subclass are as stated above in the title

for those unknowing, Shadar-Kai are servants of the Raven Queen, a god-like being residing in the Shadowfell. she is generally neutral in alignment, and has an obsession with collecting memories. she is a strong advocate for the natural cycle of life and death, and has a strong distaste for necromancy that interferes with a souls ability to rest upon death. for any being that does perish, their soul passes through the Shadowfell, and the Raven Queen shepherds them to the plane best suited for the soul based on deeds in life. (probably a huge point of reference for the Matron of Ravens if you're familiar with the Critical Role series - honestly a lot of their stories are the same).

The Raven Queen's Shadar-Kai servants are the one point of her role i dont fully understand as while every other soul when it expires she sends out to their respective resting planes, the Shadar-Kai are reincarnated. The Raven Queen, regardless of where they die, draws their soul to her, she strips them of any memories that dont serve her will and has them reborn anew in the Shadowfell again. in this way, the Shadar-Kai are kind of anathema to the way she usually operates.

my idea is that my wizard is perhaps a memory keeper, charged with cleaving memory from soul as their souls pass through the Shadowfell. i remember catching a lore story about the Raven Queen that says her obsession with collecting memories is like collecting trinkets and baubles and as such i imagine hallways in her keep lined with endless shelves upon which sit crystal scrying orbs filled with the memories of the departed. my character experiences these memories as the souls pass through the Raven Queen's domain as he strips the souls of memory and places them within these crystals.

so the catch to all this is that the Shadowfell is an oppressive place to live. it is the polar opposite of the Feywild. Where the Feywild is full of vibrant, uncontrolled life and whimsy, the Shadowfell is a land of sorrow, death, and decay. it is a miserable place to exist. according to the 5th edition lore for Shadar-Kai, due to their existence within the Shadowfell, and the Raven Queen's collection of memories Shadar-Kai are represented almost like souless drones in my eyes. 4th edition lore kind of differed in this as they had very expressive representation, as because they were doomed to lose everything that made them who they were, they seemed almost to shine brighter. they still had harsh tendencies shaped by the difficulty of the realm they exist in but they also had kind of a YOLO sentiment in regards to how they dressed and lived life.

with my character i kind of blend these two ideas of Shadar-Kai lore. while yes typically a Shadar-Kai is a bit of a drone in service to the Raven Queen, my character "Tome" i call him as a nickname, experiences life vicariously from the souls of these departed in service to his duties to his lady. in doing so he sees the potential life could have and is unsettled in the sense that he now desires more and begins to fear being transformed into an empty husk when he passes. he begins construction of his Awakened Spellbook, storing copies of his memories into a crystal affixed to the cover of this book (our campaign starts at level 5 btw). the idea is that should he die, he can retrieve himself from this book if he is able to recover it. its a desperate last ditch effort to retain himself and all he can come up with in the moment but his manifest mind is a memory duplicate of himself, making his spellbook not just that, but also a diary of sorts. when Tome rests and enters his trance state, the crystal copies his experiences. i also figure that he never quite had an instructor for learning magic per say but he learned it from the memories of departed wizards as he performed his duties for the Raven Queen.

he leaves the raven queen's castle, and searches for a shadow crossing, and eventually finds himself in the campaign setting. Shadow Crossings are places of convergence between the shadowfell and material realm and typically manifest in places of death and/or suffering, which is definitely an occurance in the dungeon. Tome's motivations are to break the curse that binds his soul to the raven queen when he dies and as such seeks powerful magics to fulfill this end.

mostly unrelated but it felt clever so ill include it; his familiar is a raven named Quill. (Order of Scribes, so quill, also raven feathers, so quill) i also considered "Munin" (one of Odin's 2 ravens, associated with memory but i just didn't like the name as much. if you're curious, just to save you the time his other raven's name is Hunin and is associated with thought)

Sounds cool! I don't know the lore though.

Sounds like an interesting backstory... you'd have to establish more background, like there's xx of these scribes/memory culls so that your presence isn't missed for a period, and also that you're (lack of) importance, while noted, doesn't instigate an invasion or some high-level Shadar-Kai to retrieve you (until later as a plot point of course). Sounds do-able, but you might need to be more descriptive to the DM about what you're hunting for... and why a party would be accepting to include you... do you have any leverage to remain with them, or you have a cover story (and a good deception roll to maintain it)? How do you plan to find your book again after you die?

Yeah i don't think i considered the amount of time until others came looking for me. conceptually i know it will happen but not enough thought in that point. i honestly don't know where to begin as far as numbers of these memory keepers as no amount i say will make any logical sense as all dead pass through the Shadowfell. its inconceivable how many would be needed. really only a godlike power, logically speaking, would be capable of such a task. so, to that point, i just left that open ended

as to why a party would let me travel with them, the campaign is dungeon of the mad mage. there's a powerful crazed wizard Halaster at the bottom and a psychologically maddening knot in the weave below it all. my character is in pursuit of either Halaster or the Knot (potentially both) as a source of power to help him to that end. if the rest of the party is already trying to reach him, I'm kind of along for the journey at that point as interests are aligned. maybe some differences of opinion could occur at the end on how to deal with Halaster, but that would make for good RP i think

the spellbook, i think is just a desperate attempt at leverage. my character knows there's a low probability of finding the book again when he dies or even that if he retrieves it, he may still not be the same person when he gets his memories back. its just a gamble because in the moment he made it, its all hes got.

those are really good thoughts, i appreciate the feedback. particularly the how long do i have before people start looking for me. i hadn't considered that