"The Raven Queen is trapped by her fascination with the past. She sits in her fortress, amidst all the memories of the world, looking at the ones that please her most as though they were glittering jewels. Many great wizards have attempted to understand her motives, but like a raven she has always remained cryptic, keeping her cache of secrets just out of their reach."
-Alustriel Silverhand
Description
The Raven Queen did not possess or manifest a physical form, instead appearing as a miscellany of symbols, perceptions, and images.
Personality
The Raven Queen was obsessed with collecting and observing mementos and fragments of memories and essences. Many sages speculated that she was in fact insane, believing her methods and behaviour little more than aimless curiosity or a desperate attempt to prevent her fragile existence from fading into oblivion. Others maintained that there was a cosmological function that was performed by the Queen's actions, as she purified souls by forcing mortals to deal with their fears and pains. It was believed that her true intentions were only known to the Lady of Pain.
Divine Realm
One of the Raven Queen's divine realms in the Shadowfell was a castle known as the Fortress of Memories. It was a place of overwhelming sorrow, overflowing with memories taken from mortals and fragments of dead deities, material objects collected by the shadar-kai and brought to her as gifts, and apparitions of creatures and places associated with strongly emotional stories. Swarms of ravens occasionally flew out of the fortress, taking her cryptic messages to the far reaches of the multiverse and acting as the Queen's eyes and ears while away.
The Raven Queen was also said to claim a domain in the Shadowfell known as Letherna, a fortress of black ice within a frozen forest through which the souls of the deceased had to pass before reaching the afterlife, according to some versions of the World Axis cosmology.
Activities
The whole existence of the Raven Queen was focused on collecting memories and strong emotions, typically associated with loss and tragedy. To that end, she dispatched shadar-kai to the far confines of the multiverse to wait for such an event to unfold, as scouted by her ravens. Then they collected mementos, such as trinkets, memories from the living and sometimes the souls of the dead, and brought them back to her.
The Raven Queen also claimed domain of the souls of all shadar-kai, which always returned to her after their deaths.
She was said to have forged the first weapons infused with shadow magic. These sentient blades, such as the Blackrazor, were found in many locations throughout the multiverse and were capable of binding with their wielders. For that reason, the Raven Queen was a popular hexblade patron among warlocks.