Sorrowsworn

A sorrowsworn was a class of shadow creatures considered to be manifestations of the Shadowfell itself. Some were embodiments of the different kinds of emotional suffering caused by the plane's effects on those who entered it: the angry, manifesting anger and conflict; the hungry, representing the unsated; the lonely, reflecting isolation; the lost, for anxiety, confusion, and fear; and the the wretched for, well, wretchedness. Others were fragments of death incarnate that preyed upon feelings of grief and loss. Three kinds were known: soulrippers, the stealthy assassins; reapers, the brutal slayers; and deathlords, their dread leaders.While both 4 and 5 editions relate sorrowsworn to the Shadowfell, they are very different in nature, concept, and naming (both are also different from the sorrowsworn demons of 3.5 edition). This article attempts to cover and reconcile both versions, but the reader should consider the version they prefer. For conciseness and clarity, in this article, the three forms of 4-edition sorrowsworn are referred to as "death sorrowsworn" and the five forms of 5-edition sorrowsworn are referred to as "emotion sorrowsworn", but these are not canon names and do not reflect a known in-universe distinction. Nevertheless, being related to the emotion of grief, the earlier sorrowsworn may be regarded as an advanced sixth form of the later, which supports their inclusion here.
==Description==
Each of the emotion sorrowsworn had forms reflecting the feelings they embodied, however strangely. For example, the angry sorrowsworn had hooks in place of hands and two heads that argued with each other when not directing their ire at another; the hungry sorrowsworn had gaping jaws and grasping claws; the lonely sorrowsworn had harpoons for hands that it could launch at others in order to drag them closer; and the lost sorrowsworn appeared terrified and desperate and had five spiked arms with which to grab onto others, while the wretched sorrowsorn were simply small and pitable, but with many fangs.
Death sorrowsworn bore a resemblance to undead and demonic creatures, but in truth were neither. Sorrowsworn reapers and deathlords dressed in robes.
==Abilities==
Angry sorrowsworn drew their sustenance from aggression and violence. They grew stronger as their targets fought back and harmed them, and became confused when they did not. Their two heads gave them good senses and made them hard to blind, charm, deafen, scare, stun, or knock unconscious.
Hungry sorrowsworn, with their insatiable appetites, simply tried to consume all they could get their claws on to: flesh, life, energy, even the screams of their victims. They grew more savage and deadly when they witnessed someone heal or otherwise gain vitality.
Lonely sorrowsworn longed for companionship and interaction. This somehow manifested in launchable harpoon arms that could skewer and ensnare other creatures up to away and drag them closer into the lonely's sorrowful embrace. Creatures in close proximity, or worse, in such an embrace, suffered psychic harm. As misery loves company, the lonely had greater prowess when within of at least two other creatures.
Similarly, the lost sorrowsworn also just needed a hug, in a vain effort to find comfort. However, its five arm spikes were not so comfortable for those it grabbed. Worse still, their minds suffered a deluge of fear and psychic harm, and the more their allies fought to free them, the more intense this effect grew.
Finally, the wretched sorrowsworn, like the hungry, subsisted on the life energy of their victims and took it in the form of flesh and fear. When one bit a victim, it latched on and drained life energy until forced off. They hunted in great packs.
All the emotion sorrowsworn were more resistant to harm whilst in areas of shadow or darkness.
Death sorrowsworn had a bleak visage that instilled fear in their foes, making it harder for them to fight back.
==Combat==
The various emotion sorrowsworn fought with their innate weapons, whether fanged bites, clawed hands, or strange hooks or harpoon arms. The hungry would grab on in order to bite instead, while the lonely and lost would grapple and hug to death. The wretched fought in large packs, becoming more dangerous when they and an ally flanked a target.
Death sorrowsworn fought with their claws or their scythes. Such weapons crumbled to dust with the sorrowsworn's passing. Soulrippers were stealthy and stalked and ambushed their victims; with a flutter of their wings, they would teleport, surprise, and grievously strike their targets, or just rush in and claw them apart. Focusing on one at a time, reapers made devastating scythe attacks; if a foe was knocked out or slain, the reaper was healed. Meanwhile, deathlords went for hit-and-run attacks, teleporting and passing through walls to reach any foe; as soon as they attacked, they were gone again, turned insubstantial as a shadow as they teleported away. Their mournful whispers dazed any being beside them and their scythes weakened their foes.
==Behavior & Activities==
Emotion sorrowsworn were compelled to inflict the suffering they embodied on those they encountered, and they wandered until they found a target for their manifest feelings. The emotion each represented indicated both its strengths and its vulnerabilities: succumbing to these feelings made the sorrowsworn stronger, while resisting them made them weaker and even repelled them. Those who died in the Shadowfell in the associated frame of mind could be transformed into sorrowsworn.
Death sorrowsworn consumed the feelings of great loss or sorrow that might linger in an area. Thus, they often appeared in the midst of great conflicts and were attracted to places where countless people had died, such as past battlefields and around graveyards, for these were places of old grief. They would lurk here until ready to collect fresh souls. They made their lairs in close-by ruins where they could feed on the despair that still hung over such places. Their lairs were bleak places, such as dank caves and thorn-filled pits. Small cavities in these places housed gruesome trophies and body parts, each with a grim tale behind it. 
Death sorrowsworn, particularly those who dwelled in the Shadowfell, were servants of the Raven Queen. A few served other entities with power over death in a similar fashion. For the Raven Queen, they were guardians of the Shadowfell, custodians of decay, heralds of endings, and harbingers of doom. They were dispatched to kill great mortals who'd cheated death or her clutches and to take their souls. With innate knowledge of what their victims valued or regretted, they harassed them with whispers of previous failures and their coming fate. They also shielded the Raven Queen from the schemes of nightwalkers and fought against death giants who did not obey her. However, they were largely uninterested in this work and only rarely did they get involved in conflicts in the Shadowfell. While they did not look for foes, they were cruel and merciless in battle against nightwalkers, death giants, and others.
The Raven Queen created these death sorrowsworn from high-ranking shadar-kai and other servants by some means, granting them a form of the immortality they desired. A few of these sorrowsworn she appointed as her elite Raven Knights. Sorrowsworn were created at and guarded the Foundation of Loss in the Shadowfell.
Despite this, the majority of death sorrowsworn, even in the Shadowfell, were independent and worked to maintain the cycle of life, such as it was in the shadow. They dwelled in ruins, often those of defeated enemies like the death giants, and constructed no settlements or fortresses of their own, let alone cities.
==Relations==
Death sorrowsworn cooperated with one another, coming together in teams as needed to achieve their goals. They would ally with another creature if it was in their interest and did not set them back or cost them too much. Occasionally, they rode the shadowy fell wyverns.
Death sorrowsworn were served by shadowravens, ephemeral black birds of the Shadowfell, which they could command to gather in great flocks to harry their enemies with their razor-sharp necrotic talons. Scores of shadowravens guarded their lairs and some followed their masters to graveyards, battlefields, and other places of death wherein they could scavenge the dead. They served as ominous heralds of the sorrowsworn. Without sorrowsworn to command them, they behaved as simple crows.
==History==
In the Shadowfell, after the creation of the nightwalkers went against the natural order of things, the death sorrowsworn made war upon them. Their conflict left great swathes of the Shadowfell altered and damaged, but the sorrowsworn were implacable and the nightwalkers retreated into the deepest, darkest parts of the plane.
When Corellon battled Lolth, the Raven Queen joined his side. She lent her death sorrowsworn to the fight against Lolth's fallen elves and demons.
Some time after the Spellplague of the , a group of death sorrowsworn occupied a destroyed temple of Helm in a town that had fallen into a gorge in Chessenta, as it was a place where countless mortals had died in terror and pain. They considered it a sacred place and believed "something" conceived around 1439 DR sought to be born in the ruined temple and, as of 1479 DR, needed to gestate another 20 years more. But in that year the dracolich Alasklerbanbastos needed to perform a rite there, making use of the same power, and destroyed the shadowsworn. However, he found no trace of what they believed was growing there.
Members of the Dolindar family of wizards, who were trapped in the Shadowfell, rose after death as sorrowsworn within the Dolindar Tomb in the city of Evernight, by the 1490s DR. The family matriarch Kevetta became a lonely sorrowsworn due to her sense of isolation, while her children Evisha and Nolan became lost sorrowsworn.
==Appendix==
===Notes===
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Category:Creatures found in the Shadowfell