Sheol, the Raven King

There was a time when all gods existed in the same place under an even greater being legends call the Cosmigod. But in a period known as the Great Divergence, these gods dispersed to fulfill their own agendas, exiled to the chaotic space outside their home. Here, gods looked at what extremities existed, elements brighter than stars, facets of life darker than a void. Their power was enough to withstand it, but for the mortals they brought into the new worlds, they were far less fortunate.   At the time, the gods cared little for the mortals, but the Cosmigod cared more. These pieces, by his hand, were separated from the material plane, grouped together and discarded to realms all their own. The darkest and most repugnant were cast off to a small corner of the material universe, in hopes this realm would be forever forgotten. No god ever came near this place. It was here that the Shadowfell was born, in the memories of no one.   The darkness here hated its isolation, but most of all, a hunger never sated swelled deep inside it. The hunger for death as darkness always craved. So great were these feelings that it came together, raising a being made up of the purest elements of the Shadowfell. It called himself Sheol.   This creature was always alone and he constantly gazed upon all the other well populated realms with malice and jealousy. For even mortals, after death, lived on in the memories of others, while Sheol was, at birth, a forgotten entity. He was plagued by this unfortunate comparison of a mortal's worth to his own, and reached out to dismantle this philosophy.    

Twisted Hands

First, his deathly hand invaded the realm which his was derived from, the material plane. Here, he brought corrosive influence against the mortal denizens. Turned to embrace death in the Shadowfell, the following cultures were born. The duergar, dwarves whose skin were turned gray, drawn away from their constructive and mason-like lifestyle to a more destructive one. And the ocoline, gray-skinned humans who now sought to practice the necromancy that reality opposed.   He followed after with the realm that mirrored his own, the Feywild. He twisted the minds of these eladrin and fey people, causing many to fall to the darkness of the Shadowfell, bringing forth the creation of more cultures. The drow, dark-skinned elves who chose to dwell deep underground, in the likeness of the Shadowfell. And the gnovishar, once pip and resolute gnomes now turned to an evil much darker than any of the other cultures. Absolute death began to take its toll, and for each mortal who passed into the arms of Sheol, a dark raven was added to the god's realm.   With this festering trouble yanking the worldly people of these gods away from them, they, for once in millennia, turned towards the Shadowfell, acknowledging its existence only as long as Sheol continued to be a threat. In the material plane, the gods repelled Sheol's hand from acting further, and in the feywild, its gate keeper shut him out.   Though he was left to the Shadowfell now, his influence was still laid out. In time, that influence would continue to spread and he would bring about a person's moment of absolute death, when they cease to have existed at all, brought about by not only physical death, but the death of all themselves in the memories of everyone else.   Left with nothing, the spirit would spend all eternity in the deep, entropic gluttony of the Shadowfell's darkness for the rest of eternity. Every victim who suffers absolute death is destined to suffer this fate exactly. For this is precisely what Sheol, the Raven King was formed in. Inexistence.