Kelemvor

Kelemvor is the God of the Dead, Judge of the Damned and the Lord of Hell. He is the Master of the Crystal Spire in the Fugue Plane, Keeper of the Crystalline Gate, and the Patron of the Grand Mausoleum.  

Personal Background

  In his mortal days, Kelemvor was a skilled mercenary, with the heart of a paladin concealed under rude manners. Fair yet cold, Kelemvor was appointed posthumously as the most recent deity to hold his position, following in the footsteps of Jergal, Myrkul, and Cyric. Unlike these other deities, whose rule as gods of the dead made the afterlife an uncertain and fearful thing, Kelemvor promoted that death was a natural part of the natural cycle; that unbeing was a more natural resting state in creation than being, and that the expiry of one's body should not be feared as long as it is understood. As a result of his deep respect for life and death, he holds the undead in the utmost contempt.   In Oa, very little of the personal history of Kelemvor is known. The oral tradition passed down through the stewards of the Grand Mausoleum since the days of the High Elves has it that original lord of Hell, Jergal, tired of his duties and the tedium of awaiting the apocalypse. He voluntarily ceded his authority to the Dark Gods Myrkul, Baal and Bane and took up a less demanding role as seneschal to the underworld. Then, at some point, Myrkul was dead and Kelemvor had taken his place. His exploits in Faerûn and partial responsibility for Myrkul's demise are not known to the historians or religious authorities of this world.   When appearing in avatar form, Kelemvor often appears as himself, complete with the gravelly voice and dark, sombre demeanor he had in life. He is not known to have a sense of humour.

Assumption of Duties

  What is known on Oa is that Kelemvor was at first one of the most unwilling and conflicted of the "New Gods." Although he has a fierce revulsion for the undead, his hatred is reserved for "undead by choice" (such as liches). He has a measure of sympathy for haunts, apparitions, and revenants that exist because they died without being able to finish a task, mission, or achievement that dominated their lives at the time of death, or so violently and "unfairly" that revenge or at least public identification of their murderer leaves them unable to "rest." In such circumstances, Kelemvor can be persuaded to turn a blind eye to the existence of the undead if the abomination is temporary and in service of a greater justice, but he has no mercy for those who seek to cheat death and achieve undeath thereby.   Kelemvor is a taciturn deity, and his clergy had often respectfully speculated that his elevation to his new position many millennia ago had put him into an awkward situation with the Shinigami: the natural inhabitants of the neutral planes of the underworld. The previous lord of Hell, Myrkul, ruled through strength and fear, taking pleasure in annihilating Shinigami that spoke out against him or failed to pay him his due respect. Myrkul's conflicts with the resentful Lord Arcus, progenitor and Lord of the Shinigami are recorded in several holy scriptures across various civilizations and necromancy texts.   Myrkul also ensured that the afterlife was a land of atrocities and suffering, regardless of one's actions in life. The result was an inclination across all the worlds of the Prime Material Plane to seek immortality at all costs, leading to the founding of innumerable religions and in many cases a terrifying level of necromancy. When Kelemvor and his compatriots defeated Myrkul, he was acclaimed Lord of Hell and God of the Dead. According to legend, he took eight days to accept the acclamation.  He then had to set to work establishing justice as the primary principle of the afterlife, providing balance and comfort to the living and justification to the dead.   With Myrkul gone and a new deity in place, one may have expected a realignment of powers. So little is known of Lord Arcus that it is entirely unclear if he would be a match for his new lord if push ever came to shove, and it is unknown what arrangements Kelemvor may have come to with his new subjects upon taking the Black Throne.  

Death is the natural state of the living. One should neither fear nor evade it, nor think of it as an evil. Those who know it most intimately know it is as often kind as it is cruel, and that seeming paradox reveals the neutrality of its nature. Ease the passing of those who struggle. Do honor to the dead, and respect their strivings in life. To forget the dead is to forget who we are, and why we live.

Kelemvor Lyonsbane, Book of the Dead, X.vii.21

Servants: The Kindly Ones

  At this point in history, although there are many superstitions and fears surrounding Kelemvor's servants, the Kindly Ones, there is no longer any living memory of how terrible death cultists had been in millennia past. Sacrifices of intelligent life and extortionate fees were often demanded in exchange for funeral rites under Myrkul, and now the sobriquet is fitting. The sight of a cleric of Kelemvor is a bad omen in nearly every culture, but their professionalism, kindness and comfort with the process of dying is often welcomed by those who have accepted their own death, or that of a loved one, as an immediate certainty.  

Interaction with Vega Spritzer

  Shortly after dawn on 26th Winterfall, 866WA, Kelemvor appeared to Vega Spritzer in a dream. The place selected was one of comfort to the cleric, and one where she often came to meditate and think on life's greater mysteries. It took her a moment to recognize him, and true to form he was humourless and dumped a soliloquy on her in which he weighed whether or not he had an obligation to prevent the second Omnicide, having observed the first disinterestedly.   He indicated that he had achieved no greater wisdom than he had in life when he was elevated to godhood, and that he had had no luck seeking reliable counsel on the matter. Lord Arcus speaks in riddles and has his own motivations; the clergy were sycophantic and useless; the dead were jealous and wished ill to the living while at the same time pleading to return to life. He had even tried praying to Destiny for wisdom, and in a fit of extremity was admitted to his Garden, but he received no answers. He suggested Spritzer might have a fresh perspective for him, given that she was educated in his faith but chose to live exclusively among the living instead.   He was undecided as to whether it was his place to intervene in the Omnicide that he foresaw. Sylvanas created Oa an incredible distance from the rest of the stars as a personal plaything; was it not his to destroy? Were the mortals not giving affront to the gods in overcoming him? Here, of course, Kelemvor is susceptible to charges of hypocrisy, having himself killed and usurped a god as a mortal when he disagreed with divine intention in matters of life and death. Should he side with the mortals, then, and challenge Sylvanas if he permits an Omnicide to occur? Or, as Lord Arcus seemed to suggest, should he remain neutral and let matters fall as they may? All things at the end are swallowed up in death, and he is the last god that should intervene in that process.   Spritzer was backfooted by the request but suggested that justice required balance; that ultimate death was as impermissible as endless life. Implicit in her reasoning seemed to be an invocation of his own hatred of the undead. He will not suffer something to live when it has died; how can he allow something to die when it ought to have lived? Upon detecting a note of resentment for his position, she also suggested a time-share arrangement with another god (or perhaps herself?) so that he could take a vacation once in a while. At this, he got up to leave and complimented her new hair.