Ritual of Seeding

Official art of the Raven Queen's ascension to godhood, by Jessica Nguyen from "Exandria: An Intimate History" (Sx61) at 3:24.

The Ritual of Seeding, also known as the Matron's Ritual or the Rite of Ascension, is a powerful and forbidden working of magic by which a mortal can ascend to godhood. During the Age of Arcanum, it was considered the pinnacle achievement of the arcane arts. The ritual itself was successfully used twice (although in slightly different ways) in the history of Exandria: by the mortal woman who would become the goddess of death, the Raven Queen, and later by the archlich Vecna, the Whispered One.

History

The original ritual was designed and famously used by a brilliant mortal woman who was a mage during the Age of Arcanum. This woman spent years with the God of Death, and since he sought peace and she desired godhood, they developed together the rites that would fulfill both of their wishes. The mortal ascended during an apogee solstice and took her divine partner's place in the pantheon to become the Raven Queen. At the moment of her ascension, the name and knowledge of the previous God of Death was sundered from reality and replaced by that of the Raven Queen, including in places of worship across all of Exandria, and even among the memories of others gods.

The Matron herself saw fit to erase her own research into how she created the ritual, and took measures to prevent people to replicate it. Moreover, the other gods forbade all knowledge of it to prevent any more ascensions; the goddess Ioun spearheaded the effort to seal away the knowledge, and the pantheon as a whole believed it was impossible for it to be completed.

Regardless, the Age of Arcanum was a time when many mortal mages were filled with hubris and viewed the gods with contempt. The success of the Matron's Ritual inspired others to try and recreate the same rites, but doing so would usually end with dire consequences for those who attempted it. During this time, the spell of protection created by the city of Avalir's travels across the planet, via the Arboreal Calix and the Tree of Names, acted as an additional complication to completion of another ritual, until its destruction.

The mortal archmage Vespin Chloras sought to be remembered by history, and desired to attempt the ritual to dethrone a Betrayer God for the betterment of mortal-kind. In his pursuit to that end, he was corrupted into a thrall for Asmodeus, and led to the freeing of the evil gods from their pre-Divergence imprisonment, which eventually caused the Calamity itself.

One hundred years before the Calamity, the archlich Vecna attempted his own Ritual of Seeding atop his tower of Entropis, but was interrupted by an assault of foes, and then betrayed to his demise by his lieutenant, Kas the Bloody-Handed. Being a lich, Vecna was inconvenienced by death and not wholly destroyed.

Vecna would become a lesser deity in his own right, his power growing through worship by the cult called the Remnants. Vecna's adherents attacked and corrupted several temples to Ioun, siphoning power using powerful artifacts, that restored their master to the Material Plane over 800 years after the Divergence. With no deities present beyond the Divine Gate, Vecna desired to see himself ascend as the only god on Exandria. He succeeded in completing the seed of his own version of the ritual, and began to ascend, but remained in a state of vulnerability long enough for Vox Machina to shunt him beyond the Divine Gate using the Rites of Prime Banishment.

Components

Little is known about how the ritual is performed or what is required. Sarenrae admitted the ritual takes time, including after a successful casting, the seeding process leaves one still vulnerable to attack. Vecna's "Avatar" form was still capable of being harmed, and even temporarily killed if enough damage was taken, before attaining complete godhood. This delay allowed Vox Machina to successfully eject Vecna from the Material Plane.

During the Age of Arcanum, the mortal woman who became the Raven Queen told a young Patia Por'co that during an apogee solstice, the thinning of the walls between planes and the aligning of ley lines could change what was considered possible, and that she would use this knowledge for something she was working on; moreover, many centuries after her ascension, the Matron of Death believed that she only survived a ritual she should not have through her loving bond with her divine partner.

The Ziggurat spheres scattered across Exandria were used by Vecna to siphon ley energies to his base of operations when it arrived in the Material Plane, not only to resurrect him, but also to power the ritual. Vecna's tower of Entropis contained proof of his research into creating his seed for the ritual. A combination of desecrating and sundering ancient and holy relics, as well as twisting and torturing flesh, allowed Vecna to extract information enough to create his "seed" for the start of the ritual. Given the measures taken by the Raven Queen and the fact that Vecna didn't took the place of another god in the pantheon, his ritual is considered a second version rather than an exact reproduction of the original Ritual of Seeding.

Trivia

• Unlike the Raven Queen, Vecna did not take the place of a god, but entered a new role in the Exandrian pantheon, becoming a god of necromancy and secrets, at odds with Ioun, the Raven Queen, and Sehanine. By the time of Campaign 1, Vecna was already seen as a demigod, which matches with earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Later editions would see Vecna sit among the core pantheon of gods.
• The Ritual of Seeding was possibly inspired by Karsus's Avatar, an epic (beyond 9th level) spell from 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons, whereby a mortal could become a god of their choosing, replacing a current god with themselves the moment the spell was completed. In truth, the spell could only transfer the power of a god temporarily to a mortal. The spell was only ever used once to great disaster, in the story for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting called Netheril: Empire of Magic. The goddess of magic sundered knowledge of the spell from the world.
• The Raven Queen is a figure introduced in 4e who, similar to her Exandria counterpart, was a mortal who later attains godhood as the goddess of death:
  • In 4e, the Raven Queen was once a powerful, mortal sorceress who, after dying, was renamed Nera by the then god of death, named Nerull, and forced to become his queen. Nera would eventually overthrow and take the place of Nerull, renaming herself the Raven Queen.
  • In 5e, the Raven Queen was a powerful elven sorceress who used a secret ritual to link the mortal and celestial realms, to ascend to godhood. The ritual was powered by her worshippers pledging their souls to her. Through treachery, the ritual was stopped midway, and she and her followers fell into the Shadowfell. Though dead, the elven sorceress would maintain some of her new divine power and eventually reform to become the entity known as the Raven Queen.
    • Other books in 5e published after Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (where this story about the Raven Queen was described), including but not limited to Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, would further explore the divine aspect of the entity, establishing her as a godly figure with an official worship, beyond her initial depiction as just a warlock patron.
• When she was a child, Prism Grimpoppy didn't like the Shadow Realm, and dreamed of reproducing the Raven Queen's ascension ritual for everyone to use, believing that if there were no more deaths, it would somehow improve the nature of her home plane. However, as she grew older, she learned more about the subject and discarded this childish idea.

References

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