Raven

Raven

Also known as	The Legendary Hero
Race	Human
Raised	The northern monastery of the goddess Kali
Famed for	Ending the war of Ismareldor, the Crimson Knight and a second fiend flood
Status	Survived the great confrontation; lost to history thereafter

Raven is among the most celebrated heroes of modern history - a justice-warrior whose name is known to every child and elder across the world.

The Legend

By the stories, Raven grew up a devout follower of the Old Gods and became a champion of the downtrodden. She slew fiends and monsters, toppled kingdoms ruled by corrupt tyrants, and saved common folk from werewolves and giant serpents. She climbed the tallest mountain in the world to meet the Phoenix at its peak, punched the mighty dragon Globrax down with her bare hands, and faced the dreaded lich Mordal in single combat. Best known of all is the tale of her war with Ismareldor, the Crimson Knight - the battle in which she stopped him from unleashing a second fiend flood upon the world, at the cost of both their lives.

A Critical Look

The scholar Najin Delinqa separates the legend from the truth in *Raven: A Critical Look*, and the truth is darker and more human.

Raven was orphaned at nine when her wandering-scholar parents died in an avalanche, and was raised in the northern monastery of Kali around the year 900. She proved a combat prodigy - reckoned the greatest potential the monastery had seen, second only to its head and to its Chakra. But her early years are bound up with a dark chapter: the Blood Offerings, the mass ritual killings by which Kali’s monks sought to wake their goddess. Raven was the spearhead of her monastery’s part in them, and her victims numbered, by careful estimate, in the hundreds.

Her turning came with an order to assassinate a Clairnian noble, Bonias Dyne. The attempt failed - and instead of a killing, a bond, likely romantic, grew between them. That entanglement drew Raven out of monastery life; the monastery’s Chakra was sent after her, and for a long while she vanishes from its records, wandering the world.

She re-entered history by chance, saving a doomed man from the dragon Globrax - the man being Ismareldor himself. The two travelled together for a time (she climbed Mount Crown, fought Mordal, and toppled the corrupt Saranid rule at his side) before parting as friends. Returning at last to her monastery and learning the true, demonic source of the Blood Offerings, she set out to end them - and then, with Bonias Dyne beside her as noble and mage, to stop Ismareldor’s ruinous plan. Their pursuit took them to the oracle of Difloa, the great Flard in the Hills of Sutch, the trackers of Marindar, and the druids of the deep forest, and to alliances with the knightly orders (the White Wardens among them) and Kali’s monks.

At the plains of Pelgarath, on the border of the Republic and the Theocracy, came the great confrontation. The legends credit Raven with striking Ismareldor down - but in truth it was Bonias Dyne who disrupted Ismareldor’s ritual and gave his own life to do it, opening the gate through which the demons of Mictlan dragged the Crimson Knight away. Raven survived, but no certain record of her remains afterward. Faint evidence suggests she bore Bonias Dyne’s child; the second half of the famous children’s book Raven Tale may hold further hints, which Najin Delinqa means to chase in a later work.

Appendix

See Also

• Ismareldor, the Crimson Knight · Bonias Dyne · The Blood Offerings · The Crimson Ravens · Kali and the Old Gods · Najin Delinqa

Sources & Attribution

• Primary lore: content/Books/Raven A Critical Look (English).md (Najin Delinqa, GUNAM), author TrueMichato.