Deities of Death

[SkidAce]

Funny, I've seen the neutral death goddess and her clergy as the people who perform death rites and comfort the grieving relatives. Neutral, but decent people in the big scheme.

Mind, this started back when she was called Wee Jas and wasn't nearly as fleashed out in the core books as the Raven Queen is.

I concur, and she is still called Wee Jas. (with a black panther motif)

 

[ScorpiusRisk]

I use Yama, named after the Hindu god he is based, as my death god. Not evil.

I think this feeling is defiantly extended by her her flavor text.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Death could be perceived as the most neutral god of all... ok righteus neutral actually

IIRC Jergal of the forgotten realms was god of death for a while with priests of him transforming to undead to serve on toril after their deaths... .

 

[I'm A Banana]

Saturday Morning Cartoon Syndrome strikes again.

"It's bad when people die, therefore, gods of death must be bad!"

Evil becoming a synonym for "not nice"

There's no middle ground, you're either a Good Guy or a Bad Guy.

A bit of modern mythology that supercedes D&D's rules: Death is Always Chaotic Evil.

 

[GAAAHHH]

We know this much

Death is an evil;
we have the gods'
word for it; they too
would die if death
were a good thing.
-Sappho, Translated by Mary Barnard

 

[Punnuendo]

I treat all death deities like Death from the Discworld novels.

 

[wayne62682]

In Divine Power, it states that the Raven Queen was a powerful sorceress who died and went to the realm of the then-death god, Nerull. She basically schemed to overthrow him and did some stuff where she released souls he had that were powring him, which weakened him to the point where she could kill him and usurp his portfolio as god of death.

It also states how she became the goddess of winter; by helping the other gods destroy the traitorous goddess of winter, Khala (Kord's mother and Zehir's wife) in exchange for getting control over winter.

 

[Klaus]

I got my own Raven Queen mythology, which I proposed to Dragon as a Deities & Demigods article. No reply, though. It paints her as Unaligned, and offers three sects devoted to her three aspects: Death, Winter and Fate.

 

[Dragonhelm]

So where did the Wee Jas/Raven Queen connection come from?

If they are one and the same, then kudos to WotC on that. It totally reinvented the character and made her relevant for a modern audience.

 

[Voadam]

So where did the Wee Jas/Raven Queen connection come from?

If they are one and the same, then kudos to WotC on that. It totally reinvented the character and made her relevant for a modern audience.

Not so evil core 3e death goddess and not so evil core 4e death goddess. And apparently in Complete Divine they gave the RQ a history as a sorceress while Wee Jass was a Suel goddess of death and magic.

I don't think WotC has made them the same being, just a lot of parallels.