Appearance

Facial Features

Bærie's face portrays his exhaustion. His sleepy nature is shown in the bags under his eyes, and his malnourishment is shown in his sunken cheeks. Though his skin is abnormally pale for a wood elf, the blotched dirt that coats his face gives a brief appearance of the typical copper-tint of wood elves. He has a wavy nose and long wood elf ears.

Identifying Characteristics

He doesn't bathe often, and he emanates an earthy smell.

Physical quirks

When he sleeps, his breathing is very shallow, and he looks like he's dead.

Apparel & Accessories

Bærie wears a dirty blanket as a cloak. He wears a lovely, though tattered, indigo scarf. He wraps his hands in cloth to protect from blisters from digging. He also paints his nails black. His clothes don't seem to fit him properly, his pants are a bit small and his shirt is too big for him, and shabby near his ankles; he ties a string for a belt. He carries his shovel, 5' long, with a white raven feather tied to it. He carries, or attaches to himself, his lantern. His ornate lantern is his prized possession, it was given to him by the Raven Queen to gather lost souls in. When Bærie casts spells, the bones, souls, blood, holy water, etc., in his lantern glow. Spell invocation symbols are etched onto his lantern. He has a broach of the Raven Queen's symbol, a white raven. All of his belongings and attire are coated with a layer of dirt.

Mentality

Personal history

Upbringing

 
Bærie was born to a gravedigger family in Aldain, an Elven settlement in the west, built at the edges of the Emburn Mountains and surrounded by farmland. It is made up of hundreds of middle sized wood and Whitestone buildings with green, purple, and deep blue rooftops. Aldain is home to the Festival of Dancing Roots in the springtime. It is one of the oldest surviving Elven settlements. Many Elvess left during the Scourge, and only the younger generation returned, so the elves there now were not part of the Scourge. Aldain is home to many subraces of Elves. It is an insular but upscale city with a steep divide between the high and low classes. His family was looked down on for their unseemly and grim line of work, and they were poorly paid for it.
 
Bærie’s mother and father were both wood elves. He resembled more his father, who had blond hair. His father created wooden gravemarkers for those whose families did not purchase their own gravestones or plots of land. He would also help dig. Both Bærie and his father would travel to other towns when their local cemeteries and gravediggers were overburdened with work. Bærie’s family was paid about 10 copper pieces per grave, 5 for a child’s grave, and half of their pay was withheld for their provided housing. His mother was in charge of maintaining the church grounds and gardens. She had the more typical copper wood elf skin color, as well as red hair. She would tend to the church gardens but also tended to a small plot of land where she would grow food for her family. She grew and prepared greenspears (asparagus), hotwhips (spring onions), and brownbuds (radishes). She made for her family blackbark stew and leek soup. They lived on the church grounds in a small hut where their equipment was also stored. It was crowded on account of the backfill boxes and other equipment. Bærie usually chose to rest in the graveyard, near where the oldest graves and mausoleums were, where no one would visit. A lonely childhood ensued for Bærie; aside from his sister Wilte, who married a nobleman from another city and was never heard from again, his family was notoriously cynical and browbeaten, never aspiring higher than their station. Bærie found solace in the statue of the Raven Queen which he found near a mausoleum as a child, and would often talk to it when he felt lonely. The other gravedigger told Bærie about the Raven Queen, but he didn’t know much; Doug wasn’t particularly religious himself and was often hired by the townspeople to dig graves on their own land instead of on the church land; he was the one that dug graves in the cemetery. He worshipped and left offerings for the Raven Queen in secret.
 
The church in their town housed statues for the devotion of Corellon. Bærie was not taught to read but learned of the majesty of elven religion from the stained glass and other decorations of the church. His parents were agnostic and disenfranchised with the church through a lifetime of poverty from working as gravediggers. Once he grew up and could help with gravedigging, Bærie did not consider his parents to be moral people. They would steal from graves, taking treasures left by people in mourning, and they would speak callously of death. He knew his parents loved him, but they had not taught him how to exist in their Elven society, how to make friends, read, or sing, probably fearing that Bærie would be rejected from their society. Bærie did not think himself moral either; he would find himself looking forward to periods of struggle within his community, knowing that more death would mean some financial relief for his family. He revered the clergy for their morality and their religious burial ceremonies. He hoped that when he died he would be given a burial ceremony.
Bærie really liked the ravens. He trained them to bring treasures that they found to the Raven Queen statue. They would bring broken shiny trinkets that he could pawn for a few copper for some bread. On rare occasions they would bring him a silver piece.
 
In Aldain, cemeteries are reserved for the higher class, nobles; they are run by the city and more protected. Churches run the graveyards, patches of land not as protected, where lower classes are buried. The graveyard is split into sections, for higher and lower classes. There are sections in the graveyard that are very old, because Elves have a lot of history in Aldain, Elves were among the first to return to Tal’Dorei after the Scourge.
 
One of the most striking things about his hometown graveyard are burial mounds which are huge underground vaults. Whole families would be buried in them. Some of the gravestones have traditional elven imagery, including one known as the Soul Effigy. One of Bærie’s favorite gravestones was very old and had a beautiful carving. He cleaned it one day and it revealed a poem: “All you that read with little care, Who walk away and leave me here, Should not forget that you muft die, And be intomb’d as well as I.” Bærie learned that the carvings of these older gravestones were done by someone named Zaruba Bellcollens. There was a burial vault, for in the winter time whenever the ground was too frozen to dig into, and also during periods of pandemic, or massive wartime losses. It was built into the ground so that everything could be kept cool. There is a small shaft for ventilation to release gases that would build up from all the bodies. It was built of stone. Bærie was told that his great grandfather used to store milk in there to keep it cool. Another stone said: “In memory of Joseph Porter Baldwin, son of Silas and Sarah Baldwin, who died in the fourth month of 211POC, in the sixth year of his age. His death was occasioned by accidentally falling under the Pitman of a Sawmill which instantly terminated his existence.” It was pretty rare for Bærie to find the cause of death written on the stone. A lot of people that died in the wars were still commemorated in their hometowns, but their bodies were not buried there, or were never recovered.
Bærie’s perspective of death has been warped by the different ideas of death preserved on the headstones. Some stones warn of death, that it is inescapable; others preserve the legacy of the person buried; some focus on the loss experienced by their families; some have more than one symbolization, showing a transition in general religious symbolism and beliefs. These different perspectives were caused by the general view toward death by the church during the time period the person was buried. Similar symbols were used for different things throughout times, and even became symbols of organizations throughout Tal’Dorei after the gravestone had been carved. It was difficult for Bærie to understand this, and so the different time periods of religious understanding were flattened into one.
 
 

Dark Gift

 
 
Over time, the family’s burden became too difficult to bear, and they robbed the tomb of Ethera, resulting in accidentally destroying one of her monuments. They were caught, and faced public humiliation and execution for treason by firing squad. Bærie appealed to the Raven Queen to save them, and a raven appeared and helped him escape from his captors. He ran to her statue in the mausoleum, pleading again for her to save his family. He entered the mausoleum and found himself in what he imagined was the Shadowfell, in the presence of what he imagined the Raven Queen to look like. Bærie pledged his life to the Raven Queen if she would save his family from execution, but did so too late; his family had already been killed for their crimes. The Raven Queen instead offered to clear his family’s name and remove the memory of their crimes from the minds of the townspeople on one condition: Bærie must find the forgotten dead that walk the earth, preserve the memory of their names, and bring the story of their legacies to her for eternal preservation. For this task, she granted him the power to call on her to lay them to rest. When one thousand memories are preserved, his family’s legacy will be redeemed in the minds of the townspeople of Aldain. He agreed to the terms and was given a lantern to keep the remains of the undead he finds in until he can visit a shrine of the Raven Queen to deposit them at. Guards had been looking for him for many days now; Bærie left Aldain and set about the task he was given.
Side Effects of His Visit to The Shadowfell:

• He has no concept of time and has no idea how old he is anymore.


• He is in love with the Raven Queen


• His Dark Gift: Watchers (Carrion Eaters)

 

The Travelling Hermitage: A Short Story

 
As Bærie emerged from the mausoleum, malice-stricken by his encounter with the Raven Queen, and fearful of his own prosecution, a uniquely large and stark-white raven flew at him. It knocked him off his feet, and it perched on the ground before him. Bærie watched in shock as it spread its great wings. The white raven’s cry was silent, but a sense of longing echoed to Bærie throughout the graveyard.
 
 
The white raven led Bærie away from Aldain, his home. He was afraid of the large beast, but felt honored that the Raven Queen would guide him when he felt so lost. When its wings flapped the gust of wind resounded through the forests. He followed it faithfully into the Rimtara mountains, along paths made by dwarves and goats. As he travelled he feared the future. He was daunted by the aspiration of becoming a cleric for the Raven Queen; Bærie did not think that he could become like the clergy and clerics he revered.
 
After days of travel the white raven brought him to an old stone statue that was being consumed by moss and lichen. As Bærie approached he recognized it was a depiction of a raven. He was saddened that the lichen was destroying the statue’s integrity, so he cleaned the moss and dirt from the statue, then lied at its feet and rested.
 
Bærie was awoken the next day by a human dressed in plain robes. He told Bærie his name, though Bærie has forgotten it now, and shared food with him. The young man admitted to Bærie that he felt lost, that he had just lost someone very important to him, and that he had wandered away from his company to sort his emotions alone. He appeared heartbroken and forlorn. His face was swollen and tear stained. Bærie listened to his troubles.
 
An elder and high ranking monk, a mentor to him, had passed away. He was troubled by the last advice he had given him the day before, that he should leave this congregation and marry this troubled young woman from Jeffro that he had come to know and love, and have a family. What’s worse was that, at hearing of this elder monk’s passing, other wandering members of this congregation gathered back together to pay respects, apparently putting their trust in the healing power which, they believed, would manifest itself soon. He thought that it was unbecoming and shallow for people of their faiths to have this anxious wish for something momentous to happen. But he admitted to Bærie that, deep down in his heart of hearts, he wished for almost the very same thing. His very pious mentor, whose piety was apparent to all, had died; and what’s even worse, simply unimaginable, was that from his humble coffin, naturally, as from all corpses, emanated an ‘odour of putrefaction’. This was dissimilar to other pious monks and clerics that had passed, whose bodies had not seemed to undergo decay, producing instead a soothing and mysterious effect upon the whole community, and survived in their memories as an example of something magnificent and holy; some had even claimed to remember that these bodies had exuded a distinctly sweet odor of sanctity. So he could not explain why such a senseless, grotesque, and unholy phenomenon should have occurred around the coffin of his mentor. Other monks and clerics would say: ‘After all, his body was only small, shrivelled, nothing but skin and bone, where could the smell have come from? In that case, it is a deliberate sign from our gods.’
Bærie did not know how to respond or comfort this young man, but he thanked him for the bread, and for trusting him with these confessions.
 
The young man brought Bærie back to the congregation, which seemed crowded, though he didn’t notice an ‘odour of putrefaction’, and it seemed that many of the clerics here did not seem to know of this ‘scandal’. He was intimidated by people so righteous, and some even of divine magick, but he stayed by the young man he’d met and tried to comfort him as he wept. Bærie overheard others begin to talk about the fallen monk, who had been so pious, but his piety was being questioned. He heard allegations that the monk had not followed the fasting rituals demanded by his deity, and that he had denied the existence of devils, and so his devotion was being doubted.
 
A low bell tolled, and the gathered members of this traveling hermitage all began to walk toward a clearing with a small building, for what Bærie guessed was the burial. But the young man was walking the other way. As Bærie began to follow him he felt the watchful eyes of the white raven looming, and he looked to see it perched on branches overhead. It raised its wings in warding, and appeared to cry out to him. His heart drew him back toward the hermitage, though he felt innately that the young man would not return, and he gazed after him in sad wonderment.
 
It was with this traveling hermitage of clerics and monks that Bærie learned of his devotion to the Raven Queen and of clerical traditions. Harnessing that divine magick didn’t rely on study or training, though the clerics helped him learn to read better and to write. They taught him formulaic prayers and ancient rites, but most importantly taught him that harnessing that magick relies on devotion and an intuitive sense of a deity’s wishes. Through this inward realization Bærie understood that his place was not ultimately with this traveling hermitage but instead that he should find his own way and fulfill his promises to the Raven Queen. Because of help from these monks and clerics, he understood her commandments:

• Death is the natural end of life. There is no pity for those who have fallen.


• The path of Fate is sacrosanct. Those who pridefully attempt to cast off their destiny must be punished.


• Undeath is an atrocity. Those who would pervert the transition of the soul must be brought down.

During his time with the traveling hermitage, he traded with dwarves in the Rimtara mountains, they gave him a broach with the Raven Queen’s emblem to keep as his holy symbol, and he proudly donned it, and they taught him which places were safest for magick users and which places to avoid.

Now

Bærie has preserved one hundred and fifty names and legacies so far. He makes sure to befriend the gravekeepers of whichever town he visits to find any undead or forgotten or nameless dead to lay to rest for the Raven Queen. He has developed a bit of a reputation himself for wandering from town to town and is the subject of many rumors and ghost stories in places he visits for prolonged periods of time. Among children, he is known as the Reaper who will tell stories in exchange for coins to those brave enough to go talk to him.
 
When Bærie performs rituals to lay the dead and the undead to rest in the grave, the spells he invokes are Abjurations, Enchantments, Evocations, and Necromancy. He uses Enchantments and Necromancy to lay the undead and death-ridden to rest, and he uses Evocations and Abjurations to gather their souls to deliver to the Raven Queen and contain their souls within the lantern and their bodies within the grave. He finds any undead or forgotten or nameless dead to lay to rest for the Raven Queen. These rituals involve candles and recitation, and sometimes alms and incense if the body is long dead or long undead.
 
His ornate lantern is his prized possession, it was given to him by the Raven Queen to gather lost souls in. When Bærie casts spells, the bones, souls, blood, holy water, etc., in his lantern glow. Spell invocation symbols are etched onto his lantern.
 
Since magick has become legal, and he has become a more practiced cleric, he has been able to hunt and bury undead on the Raven Queen's behalf.

Education

Bærie was not taught much reading or writing from his parents. He learned of the Elven religion for Corellon from the stained glass in the church he worked for. When he joined the Travelling Hermitage, they taught him to read and write better.
 
It was with this traveling hermitage of clerics and monks that Bærie learned of his devotion to the Raven Queen and of clerical traditions. Harnessing that divine magick didn’t rely on study or training, though the clerics helped him learn to read better and to write. They taught him formulaic prayers and ancient rites, but most importantly taught him that harnessing that magick relies on devotion and an intuitive sense of a deity’s wishes. Through this inward realization Bærie understood that his place was not ultimately with this traveling hermitage but instead that he should find his own way and fulfill his promises to the Raven Queen.

Employment

In Aldain, Bærie was a gravedigger for the Corellon church grave yard. Now he is a grave cleric for the Raven Queen. He funds his magick through helping any overwhelmed gravediggers he comes across; by telling ghost stories for spare change; and by fulfilling quests.

Accomplishments & Achievements

Bærie's proudest accomplishment was becoming a grave cleric to the Raven Queen. He believes he got to meet her.

Morality & Philosophy

Lawful Good. He follows the Raven Queen's commandments

• Death is the natural end of life. There is no pity for those who have fallen.


• The path of Fate is sacrosanct. Those who pridefully attempt to cast off their destiny must be punished.


• Undeath is an atrocity. Those who would pervert the transition of the soul must be brought down.

He reveres the clergy from his hometown and strives to be good like them. He never thought he could become a cleric.

person.sexuality

Asexual

person.gender_identity

Male

Personality

Motivation

Why does your character go out on adventures or hunt monsters?

He puts himself in harms way and goes on adventures to become a stronger and smarter cleric for his Queen. He tries to become someone more worthy of her magick. Since magick has become legal, he tries to practice his magick and spells more so that he can better carry out her general commandments; but he does not forget his ultimate promise for the Raven Queen. He is lawful good, wanting to become more moral like the clergy he revered and the clerics and monks that taught him how to harness his magick.

Quotes & Catchphrases

My Goddess, show me sympathy for all the spirits lost. I pray for salvation and peace for ages.

Savvies & Ineptitudes

He can't read very fast. He is a bit slow-witted. He is not very charming.

Likes & Dislikes

• His favorite weather is fog.


• He fears authority.


• He is afraid of most any animal larger than a typical raven (which is pretty big tbh).


• He dislikes the undead.


• He likes the nighttime and the moon.


• He lantern is his prized possession.


• He likes leek soup and blackbark stew, like how his mom would make for him.


• He likes religious figures, but is intimidated by them.


• He loves the Raven Queen.


• He likes his shovel.


• He likes to sleep a long rest.


• He dislikes being in public, and crowds.


• He dislikes too much attention.


• He dislikes being watched.

Vices & Personality flaws

He is scared of a lot. He is easily flustered.

Personality Quirks

Tired, despite getting a long rest.
 
Morose, grave; socially awkward but makes up for it in downtrodden earnestness

Hygiene

poor. He views bathing as a waste of time since he will just get dirty again, and he smells like dirt.

Social

Birthplace

Aldain

Current Residence

Center North

Contacts & Relations

He has traded with Dwarves in the mountains, and his family has, for all his life; so he has trade relations with Dwarves and speaks their language. He also has good relations with the Travelling Hermitage of clerics and monks that move along the Rimtara Mountains.

Honorary & Occupational Titles

The Reaper

Wealth & Financial state

dirt poor

Religious Views

He is grave cleric to the Raven Queen. He has preserved 150 names and legacies for her so far. He tries to hunt and bury undead in her name now that magick is legal. Bærie tries to be a stronger, smarter cleric for the Raven Queen. He wants to be good and moral like the clergy and clerics, though he believes he is very far off from that.

Social Aptitude

Not very good at all, but he has adapted enough to survive going through towns without breaking any laws or anything.

Mannerisms

Morose, grave; socially awkward but makes up for it in downtrodden earnestness

Hobbies & Pets

The Watchers (Carrion Eaters)

Speech

Scouse accent