Umberlee
Overview Malicious, mean and evil, Umberlee is the terror of sailors and coastal dwellers everywhere. She breaks agreements on a whim and takes great pleasure in watching mortals die by drowning or in the jaws of ocean predators.
Overview
Malicious, mean and evil, Umberlee is the terror of sailors and coastal dwellers everywhere. She breaks agreements on a whim and takes great pleasure in watching mortals die by drowning or in the jaws of ocean predators. Vain and greedy for power, she is considered capricious and cruel with no firm ethical outlook; the sea is a savage place, and those who travel it had best be willing to pay the price of challenging her domain. Although she is mercurial in temperament, she can be generous to those who do her honor. Umberlee is worshiped out of fear instead of adoration, and ship crews offer her gems, tossed over the side, to calm storm-ravaged waters.
Description
Umberlee appears as an enormous female blue-green torso towering over the waves, wearing shell jewellery and a cape made up of millions of mauve jellyfish. She has taloned hands, elbow fins, eyes of pale pearly death and hair of kelp. Her voice hisses and booms like ocean breakers, and she laughs cruelly as she rains watery death and destruction on doomed vessels and their crew. She is often accompanied by a school of sharks, giant sharks, or even water elementals.
Holy symbol
Umberlee's symbol is a blue-green wave, curling into breakers to the left and right, on a black background streaked with white.
Favored weapon
Umberlee wields a trident known as Drowning Death, which has all the abilities of a trident of submission and a trident of fish command.
Realm
World Tree cosmology
In the World Tree cosmology of Realmspace, Umberlee resides within her planar realm, known as the Blood Sea, which forms part of the outer plane of Fury's Heart, which she shares with her superior, Talos the Storm Lord, and her fellow Gods of Fury, Auril, the Frostmaiden, and Malar, the Beastlord. Fury's Heart is a desolate landscape ravaged by storms, howling winds, crashing waves, biting blizzards, and wild beasts. The Blood Sea is an expanse of reddish saltwater constantly beaten by storms. Gale force winds sweep across foam-capped waves, as torrential rain pours down from a blackened sky and lightning strikes anything that breaks the surface of the Sea. Umberlee swims through the reddish water of her realm, accompanied by fiendish squid, myrmixicus demons and weresharks, as well as her petitioners who have been transformed into sharks or similar creatures.
Great Wheel cosmology
In the Great Wheel cosmology, Umberlee resides within her planar realm, known as the Blood Tor, which is located on the 13th of the Infinite Layers of the Abyss.
Worship
Umberlee's priests are charged with spreading her influence and enhancing her reputation by roaming coastal cities, warning of doom and reminding those communities of the destruction she has wrought in the past. They also attempt to enrich themselves by accepting offerings, charging fees to ensure a ships safety by serving on board, and casting certain spells. Weresharks are Umberlee's creations, and they are one of the few races to worship her out of admiration rather than fear.
In Spelljammer
Umberlee is a member of the Faerûnian pantheon and as such is considered native to Realmspace. Priests of Umberlee who travel into wildspace are unable to recover their spells until they land on a planetary body within Realmspace.
Appendix
External Links
- Umberlee article at the Forgotten Realms Wiki, a wiki for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
- Umberlee article at the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Wiki, a wiki for official Dungeons & Dragons content from 2nd edition AD&D.