Umberlee

The Bitch Queen, Queen of the Deeps, the Sea Queen

Umberlee (Um-ber-LEE) the Bitch Queen rules from her watery lair in a flooded level of the Abyss. She is worshiped by most out of fear as opposed to adoration, though some few—such as most weresharks, who she created to try to undermine Selune—find her ethos to their liking. Ship crews toss her gems over the sides of their vessels to calm storm-tossed waters. She has a large number of shrines in coastal cities, and sailors often leave flowers, candles, small candies, or coins on her altars in hopes that Umberlee will spare them on the next voyage. Others who pay tribute to her include merchants sending goods by sea, port cities, and island nations and settlements who would be devastated by her wrath and have not a powerful patron deity to counter her menacing demands.
Umberlee continually contests with Selune, in whom navigators trust to guide their ships safely home. Of late, she has also felt the heavy presence of her own patron, Talos, who is trying to pick up violent nature in all its forms as his personal portfolio. Though Umberlee flirts with him on occasion, she would gladly end his existence and become sole deity of destruction herself if she had the power. Unfortunately, her ambitions are limited by her inability to directly affect the land, so she bides her time and plays the coquette.
Together Auril, Malar, Umberlee, and Talos are known as the Gods of Fury. Umberlee is just plain malicious, mean, and evil. She breaks agreements on a whim when she feels that she has not gotten the best part of a deal and takes great pleasure in both watching her sharks tear shipwreck victims to shreds and watching others die slowly of drowning. She is also vain and expects to be flattered. If she has any weakness, it is probably her incessant greed for power and her intoxication with exercising it.
Umberlee spent the Time of Troubles in the Sea of Fallen Stars, wreaking destruction on one pirate isle after another. The sea has remained stormy and troubled since that time, though it has calmed somewhat in the last two to three years after an organized effort to appease her promoted by certain allied merchant costers said to be part of or in league with the Iron Throne.

Divine Domains

Tempest

Divine Symbols & Sigils

Blue-green wave curling left and right

Tenets of Faith

The Umberlant faith has no set ethical outlook save that the sea is a savage place and those who travel it had best be willing to pay the price of challenging Umberlees domain. The doctrine of Umberlee declares that all should know Umberlee and fear her, for the wind and the wave can reach everywhere. Fair offerings bring fair winds to travelers over the waters, but for those who do not pay their respects, the sea is as cold as Umberlee's heart. All who travel the seas are warned that the dead serve Umberlee most faithfully. Umberlant novices are charged to: "Spread word of the might of holy Umberlee, and let no service be performed in her name without price. Make folk fear the wind and the waves, unless a priest of Umberlee be present to protect them. Finally, slay any who ascribe sea and shore storms to Talos."

Holidays

Umberlee is to be worshiped daily with offerings, prayer, and self-anointing on the brow, hands, and feet with sea water. In addition, the faith has a few special rituals, most notably the Drowning, First Tide, and Stormcall.
The Drowning is a private ritual, and only clergy members may witness it or take part. In the Drowning, an Untaken becomes a true priest of the goddess. The supplicant lies before an altar and is surrounded by candles lit to the goddess, each placed with an intoned prayer by a different Umberlant priest. The attending clergy then withdraw, and a senior priest casts a spell that causes sea water to flood the room in a huge breaking wave and then flow away. Supplicants who survive are confirmed in the service of Umberlee and warned that if they should ever betray the Queen of the Deeps, drowning is the fate that awaits them. They were spared during the Drowning and so can be taken by the Sea Queen at any time to come. (Clergy whom the Sea Queen feels have failed her go to sleep one night never to awaken, dying during the night of drowning, their lungs mysteriously filled with sea water.)
The public rituals of Umberlee include First Tide and the Stormcall. First Tide is celebrated by a flute-and-drum parade through the streets of a city by the clergy when the ice breaks up in a harbor. In a cold-hearted and brutal ritual, the clergy carry a live large animal down to the shore to be tied to a rock and hurled into the water. If the creature somehow washes or struggles ashore alive, it is freed, tended, and magically healed back to full health. It then becomes a sacred animal with the rank of an Umberlant. (This custom began in ancient times when Umberlee often selected her clergy from among human sacrifices by unbinding them beneath the water.)
Stormcall is a mass prayer in which worshipers call for Umberlee to send a storm to devastate a specific harbor or ship or to turn away an approaching storm or one that has already broken upon the worshipers. Worshipers kneel around pools in which lit candles float on fragments of driftwood that have been carefully collected and dried by Umberlant priests for this purpose. Sacrifices of precious goods are thrown into the pools, but the priests must carefully levitate the candles through the magic of the ceremony as this is done to keep them alight—for a candle doused is a sign of Umberlee's anger.

Divine Goals & Aspirations

Day-to-Day Activities

More folk fear Umberlee than revere her, but she cares not why they worship, only that they do so. She rarely comes to favor individual mortals, but she does do a little extra for those who faithfully make offerings. To gain favorable winds for a voyage or to deliver them alive from storms, sailors sacrifice valuable cargo to her by piping it overboard: playing tunes dedicated to Umberlee on mouthpipes while heaving the cargo over the side. They usually ensure that the cargo contains something alive if their peril is great. If a ship runs aground or founders and an Umberlant priest is aboard, the furious sailors usually try en masse to murder the priest before they are themselves drowned. Corpses of Umberlant priests have washed ashore transfixed by as many as 30 cutlasses.
Umberlant clergy are charged to spread respect for Umberlee by preaching of the doom she has wrought in the past and the storms to come in all coastal cities and settlements. Along the way, they seek to build up favor enough to be teleported ashore by the goddess if they are ever in danger on the seas and to enrich themselves by accepting offerings, selling the safety of their own presence on shipboard, or by casting certain spells. For a long voyage down the Sword Coast between Waterdeep and Calimport, an Umberlant priest may charge as much as 500 gold pieces to an average merchant vessel or up to three times that to a targe, new, well-armed cog or caravel carrying valuable cargo. If a priest on board has to use magic to defend or protect the ship, she or he charges by the spell and may well dicker over price on the spot!
Beyond the healing magics common folk hire priests of most faiths to perform, two spells used by Umberlants are the most popular: stormcloak and speak with the drowned dead. Pirates often hire Umberlant clergy to cast speak with the drowned dead because, by careful phrasing of a question, they can learn directions to a sunken ship or treasure.

Priestly Vestments

The ceremonial garb of the priests of Umberlee consists of a skin-tight blue or green body stocking worn with a voluminous cape of blue or green trimmed with white fur (to represent foaming breakers). A tall collar, similarly trimmed, rises from the back of the cape's neck. A popular badge of rank is the magically preserved skeletal hand of a drowning victim.

Adventuring Garb

All clergy members wear whatever they desire from day to day, so long as something of mottled blue and green is worn (usually as a sash or scarf). Most Umberlant clergy members carry a hooked dueling knife.

Symbol: Blue-green wave curling left and right
Home Plane: Fury's Heart
Alignment: Chaotic evil
Portfolio: Oceans, currents, waves, sea winds
Worshipers: Sailors, wersharks, sentient sea creatures, coastal dwellers
Cleric Alignments: CE, CN, NE
Domains: Tempest
Favored Weapon: “Drowning Death” [trident] or jellyfish (trident)
Allies: Auril, Malar, Talos
Enemies: Selune, Valkur the Mighty, Chauntea, Sune

Divine Classification

Power