What do I want from D&D?

More Raven Queen.

Welcome to Corvuston. Once it was a fishing village where a young girl saw her family’s barrows erupt due to incarnations of death with no respect for eternal rest. To her credit, when she destroyed her first god of death, she took its black wings as her own and buried it in a nearby tomb befitting a deity deep beneath the sea.

It is built on a cliff above a violently restless ocean. Its buildings and walls are made of gray slate that turns black when it rains. It is always raining. The locals call the rain raven’s tears, also the name of a fine locally brewed whiskey.

Despite the city’s patron, Corvuston is a living place. Its walls are mausoleums where those who have served the queen the most faithfully are interred. Those who hunt undead and slay necromancers are in the highest spires and towers. The paladins who died weakening Orcus’ avatar in hand-to-hand combat have recently acquired their own white marble tombs. Faithful nuns and monks, death’s sons and daughters who prepare corpses for their journey are all resting in walls’ foundations of Corvuston’s tomb walls. Black winged angels take them to Her directly after the ceremonies are finished. Would they awaken if there was a siege? Would the Raven Queen shrug off her hatred of undead to save her capital city?

No one has found out yet but the Orcus cults and cabals of Vecna disciples strive to test the goddess’ will.

With holy dispensation, the dead can be petitioned if the petitioner is brave enough to walk into the depths of the labyrinthine tunnels, make an offering and see to it that the ghost rests well after the question is answered.

For hundreds of miles, rich merchants, well-landed knights and dukes employ embalmers in their homes, so that if anyone should perish they can be preserved for the journey to Corvuston so that the Queen’s Own can prepare them for their afterlife and the priests can help the mourners grieve properly. Mourners walk through the Kübler-Ross Pilgrimage, going through all of the proper rites so that, as the Raven Queen’s verse states, “spirits rest, the dead sleep in tombs forever so that the living might live for a while longer.”

What’s wrong in Corvuston?

Core of the Problem

1. Cabal of Vecna Disciples
2. Orcus Cult
3. Ghoul Plague
4. Rogue Death Angel
5. God of Death’s Restless Ghost
6. Eternal Life Church

Manifesting as

1. An army surrounding the walls
2. Cults that have infiltrated the highest posts of the city’s government
3. Monsters in the walls
4. Naval blockade
5. Beasts striking during the darkest hours
6. Raining Hell from a Sky Fortress

What the hell are they doing here?

1. Modrons
2. Red Dragon
3. Gryphon Queen
4. The Beast Princes
5. Feuding Demon Princes under a banner of truce
6. The Circle of Eight

 

Art

General Research Division, The New York Public Library. “Corvus carnivorus, Northern Raven.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1860. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-5743-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

These ideas developed, mutated and became Raven Queen vs. the Ghoul King