The Draconic Wizard Workshop

Conspiracy at the Workshop: Ravens in the DWW

By Medivh Aran Chromatath, assisted by Khadgar Chromatath, Valence Piceno, Rani “RC” Ranfeld, Goratrix bani Tremere, and Percival “P2” de Rolo

Originally written April 11, 2025.

We at the Draconic Wizard Workshop are known for four things: dragons, wizards, engineers, and vampires. (We would have put “vampire” in our name had we known how many we’d end up with when we named the system, but the name’s stuck and we all still like it, partly because most of our vampires are dragons, wizards, and/or engineers, themselves.) What isn’t clear is just how many ravens are in here, or at least, people intrinsically connected with ravens in some deep, meaningful way. At my time of writing this, there are six: myself (Medivh), Khadgar, Valence, Rani (RC), Goratrix, and P2. That isn’t to say other members of the system don’t like or appreciate ravens, or can’t turn into them, but it doesn’t seem to be a deeply intrinsic thing for them. Additionally, none of us approach “the raven thing” the same way—we’re all very, very different in how we look at and approach it, and it felt like a fitting thing to write an essay about.

Note that, for convenience’s sake, the essay will be written from my point of view. All references to “I” will be in reference to Medivh, while other headmates will be referred to by their names and pronouns. Despite that, they’ll be present for and actively helping write their own sections. We just decided to keep the speaker consistent for this essay because it makes it less confusing to read. We will also present ourselves in order of “most” to “least” “amount raven,” that is, how much each of us identifies strictly as a raven.

This is going to get very unusual very quickly, so buckle your seatbelts, but we’re starting with the easiest case to explain, which is mine.

Medivh

I, Medivh, am a raven therian. I am also a fictive of a (physically) human man. Back in source, I was a therian, as well, although I didn’t know the language for it and didn’t properly identify it as being “a thing.” I just thought I related more to ravens than to humans, and preferred to think of myself as a raven in a human body. This has held true even now—I’m a raven frequently in human form in headspace, in a human body. I identify as a raven rather than as a human—I am human only insomuch as I am in a physically human body. While there are therians out there that consider their body to be a raven’s body—”I am a raven and this is my body and thus it’s a raven body”—I find that confusing and not a framework that works for me. (All power to you. By all means, your identity is your own. It’s just not how I see myself.) You can’t separate the human from me, even though I don’t consider myself one in any way but physical—I grew up in a human society, raised by my human father, left with him by my human (albeit thousand-year-old) mother. To all outside observers, I was a deeply unusual and mentally ill human man, and internally, I was a raven trapped in human form, possessed by the greatest demon of all and forced to do things I never wanted to do.

But this essay isn’t about that. It’s about being a raven. I just mention it to give context: I was never like other people. I was given a responsibility and great power from birth, as well as, accidentally, the great burden of this demon I could never fight, because he’d been with me from before I was born. You can’t fight a corruption like that. As a result, it made me different from my peers. When I was fourteen, due to the demon, I went into a coma for sixteen years, and woke a thirty-year-old man. You don’t recover from that. You don’t fit back into society the way you should. You’re forever going to be different.

So I threw away all of my feeble attempts at fitting in and being human, moved to a wizard tower in the middle of the mountains, and raised a bunch of ravens. I considered myself a male raven in human form rather than a man, and I liked it that way. It was easier, having that intentional separation, not just what had been inflicted upon me. It was easier having something to call myself that didn’t imply that I was some kind of failure or something unclean.

I am a raven. I could shapeshift into one in source, once I learned the appropriate magic. I often shapeshift into one in headspace. It would be nice if our current body could, but I don’t ache for it. I’ve long accepted that I am the way that I am, with my limb complement the way it is, and I don’t tend to get phantom shifts or deep, overpowering desires or urges to fly or exhibit ravenlike behaviors in ways that my current body won’t allow. I am a raven in a human body, and I am content with that. I’ll let the dragons long for the sky—the thing I want most that I can’t do is to flutter around the room and annoy people on purpose. I’m sure I can find an equivalent that this form will allow.

Our nextmost raven is Rani, who we will be calling RC for the purposes of this essay to avoid confusion with our good friend Rani, who is a blue dragon and not a raven to any extent as far as I am aware. RC is a corax, or wereraven. She was born a human, but another corax chose her to become a wereraven, and when she was a teenager, she awoke to these powers, allowing her to transform into a raven or a raven-human hybrid form. She doesn’t necessarily consider this an alterhuman identity like I do—it fits into her being a fictive, of course, but it was a real, physical thing for her back in source. She simply was a wereraven, and there was no doubt about it. It was, to her, the same as having brown eyes, or being short. It’s an immutable part of who she is, and there’s not really any reason to think about it beyond what she has to do about it and how it makes her feel. Assessing whether or not it’s “really” what she is wasn’t helpful to her.

As a result, as opposed to me, RC is both human and raven, and ultimately, is corax. You can’t take one away from the other without changing her. They’re intrinsically bound together, and she’s equally both. She doesn’t consider herself a therian because she feels like that would be just like a human insisting that they’re a human therian—she’s physically (in source) a human, a raven—a corax. That’s just what she is. It’s baffling to her to try to attach an alterhuman label to it.

It does drive her crazy that we can’t shapeshift physically, though. It’s been such a key part of who she is and how she gets around (she saves on gas money just flying around town) that it frustrates her to be stuck in one form. But it’s not the human form specifically that bothers her—it’s just being stuck in any one form. She’d be just as, if not more, pissed being stuck as a raven all the time. At least as a human, you can still engage with culture, the internet, art, tools, cooking, all that good stuff.

Equally interesting is that she doesn’t identify with theriform ravens very much—which is to say, as a raven, she still retains her intelligence, human reasoning, and language skills. She’s never been a non-person animal (although some corax do start out as ravens and develop higher reasoning skills later when they learn how to transform into a human), so while she can communicate with and likes regular theriform ravens, she doesn’t entirely see herself as one. She is a raven, she’s just not one of those ravens. Her relationship with her human side is a little more complex, since she started out as a human and developed raven instincts and thought patterns on top of her human ones later. Still, she feels like she fits in better with humans than with ravens, even if she considers herself both.

Goratrix

We’re beginning to move into the more complicated relationships with ravens that aren’t quite so easily explained. This seems to be how things are with Goratrix, though—he’s a vampire because he turned himself into one (not because someone else Embraced him), he’s a dragon because he shaped his personality around a dragon (his partner) and the impressions that left on him have made him an archetypical dragon, and he “has a raven thing,” in his own words, because his mage familiar is a raven.

How to explain a familiar…

Where Goratrix is from, a familiar is, in essence, a spirit of the natural world summoned to serve as assistant, advisor, and companion. I’m a little unclear on whether or not you can select what sort of spirit you get, and from Goratrix’s vague answers, I think it depends on the way that you practice magic. (Those familiar with Mage: the Ascension are all nodding. “It depends” is the answer to all questions for mages.) A familiar is different from one’s Avatar, which is the actual Thing about you that lets you enact your will on the world, ie, magic. His Avatar manifests in his reflection, rather than as something physical, which is fairly typical. The Avatar is, in a way, a reflection of the soul, and with how he received his familiar, it kind of is, too.

My understanding is that Goratrix reached out to the world for the best familiar for him, and he got a raven back. Not just any raven, though—a pied raven, a now-extinct (but at-the-time-extant) color variation of a still-extant subspecies of common raven. He looked at this raven, who looked back at him, and shaped a significant portion of his personality around it. Look up an image of a pied raven if you’re so inclined—they were piebald little bastards, black and white, and if you know Goratrix, you know that’s his colorscheme. He wears all black and white, he perches on things, he transforms into a pied raven in source and headspace, and he keeps ravens around his tower in source because of how he adores them.

Now. Is Goratrix a raven? When asked, he thinks it’s a stupid question, because of course he’s not a raven, he’s a vampire. (When asked if he’s a dragon, he also thinks it’s a stupid question, because obviously.) He’s fairly disinterested in labeling what he calls his “raven thing,” but it isn’t just a deep love for them—taking ravens away from Goratrix is like taking his fangs. He’s intrinsically tied to them, but he isn’t one. I’d argue that he’s somewhere in the spectrum of having them as a hearttype, or an archetrope, like what’s going on with his draconity. I won’t label him directly, since he doesn’t want me to, but I’d say that his “raven thing” is somewhere in that neighborhood. He isn’t a raven, but he’s someone who should always be pictured with at least one raven present, and can count as a raven in the room if the situation demands it, just like he can be the dragon in the room when required.

From a semi-outside perspective, as someone who isn’t Goratrix but lives in his head with him, I think it’s very similar to his “dragon thing.” He assures me it’s different. I don’t see it, but I trust him to know better than I would.

We move further into the realm of uncertainty. P2 either is or should be a raven, but it’s absolutely, definitely in an archetypical way. He hasn’t spent much time thinking about this identity, but that’s because P2 hates thinking about himself and would prefer to think about absolutely anything else. As a result, most of what we know about its raven archetrope (for that’s what I am certain it is) comes from outside observance and asking it questions and getting it to either refute or agree with our observations. It’s fine with this, for the record, and prefers it to introspection.

P2 is an archetypical raven in the way of being an omen of death, and even more so, in the way of being a carrion bird. P2 appears when there is killing to be done and bodies to be had. There is no malice in the appearance of the black bird, only grim awareness that there will be death and that someone is going to have to clean up in the aftermath. When he appears on the scene, you know what will happen, but similarly, you know that it isn’t his fault.

P2 is a fictive of Percival de Rolo (middle names cut for length), and those familiar with him will understand immediately why he is what he is. He is something dark and broken, and he had to become something else to survive the horrors that befell him. He became an omen of death as he returned to kill those who sullied his homeland and slaughtered his family—but he doesn’t consider it his fault, or even his own actions, necessarily. He does what has to be done. He is just the harbinger. He has a certain dissociation from his actions in hunting down the people that turned his life into hell, because it’s so difficult to confront directly.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much more to say on the topic of P2. There is a lot of interesting stuff going on here, but it’s not done processing it or figuring it all out. I may update this essay (or bully P2 into writing its own) in the future once it has a better idea of what’s going on past “raven archetrope.”

Khadgar

And now we switch to perhaps the most opposite of experiences to P2, who is indisputably a raven and happy to call himself as such but has little idea of how to explain it. Khadgar is not a raven. Khadgar does not identify as a raven. Khadgar can transform into a raven in source and headspace through the same magic that allows me to do so, but sees it as a convenience. Khadgar does not consider aerself a raven.

And yet.

Ae’s connected to me, as my partner. Ae can’t escape that, to me, we are ravens together, because I can’t help but see aer as anything but, in some ways. It doesn’t mind this. So it is a raven to me, but not to itself, even if it does fuss over people like a raven would, and tries to straighten out my hair and clothes and feathers at every opportunity. To me, Khadgar is impossible to separate from ravens, because a raven will always see its mate as a raven, and ae’s happy to fill that role for me.

But it’s not just me that sees Khadgar as a raven. Somehow similar to P2 despite the experience being totally different, Khadgar is sometimes seen as a bad omen in source. So rarely is his presence casual—he usually shows up somewhere, staff in hand, if there is serious business to attend to, especially if he flies in on raven wings. Something is wrong, something dangerous is afoot, and he needs help, most of the time, if he appears to you on black-feathered wings and then appears, expression grim. Death follows him, or perhaps he follows it, his bleeding heart always trying to make things right. Ae can’t leave well enough alone—if ae can help, ae will try, and I am helpless to accompany aer, our little black shadows passing over people and making them flinch as they identify us as what we are: two ravens, two omens.

Left to its own devices, Khadgar would never consider itself a raven beyond being able to transform into one. It likes them, and it likes me, but it’s a perfectly regular sort of liking ravens. But to an outside observer, it’s almost impossible to determine which of us is the raven and which is the one who wears the mantle willingly but without personal investment in it. The raven is a cloak that Khadgar wears, an aura manifested around him, but something he can take off but never quite fully shed when he returns home. He and the raven are intertwined, overlaid, and it’s a presence he has that he doesn’t quite know what to do with. No matter what he does, a few stray feathers cling to him, and no one can ever forget it.

Valence

Finally, we come to Valence, who has a similar story to Khadgar, but less. No one sees him as a raven, but rather, as the tools of a raven, the talons of the raven he serves. His wife, Cassandra, has a similar cloak around her shoulders to Khadgar, metaphorically speaking, although it’s also literal in her case. In source, she took up the mantle of the Raven Heir, taking the armor of the historical and borderline mythological Raven King to win legitimacy in her claim for retaking her home county and, ultimately, rebuilding the empire that had once spanned her part of the world but had fallen apart due to ecological disaster. Additionally to that, speaking to the fictive that we know, she has identified herself as probably being ravenhearted, which gives her a great affinity for ravens even if she isn’t one other than in the way that Khadgar kind of is—an identity laid upon her, an archetypal or mythological set of expectations, an understanding of what her presence means—the omen, the carrion bird.

And Valence is her husband, her knight, and, in the words of an ancient dragon and prophet, the Raven’s Talons. He is her arm, her reach, her will made manifest in sword and shield and firearm. He is her wings and talons. He carries the weight of her presence wherever he goes, even if he goes there alone. People know who he is and who he serves. He is the harbinger of the harbinger, the shadow before the bird. Add to that that he is not just a paladin, but a rogue, one used to the darkness and sneaking through it, one able to be silent, and he becomes invaluable.

Of course that’s impossible to extricate from the rest of who he is. He takes great pride in being able to be this for his wife, in addition to, well, her husband, who loves and is loved very dearly. In private, they are affectionate, and, dare I say it, kind of stupid about each other. (It’s fantastic.) But when everything goes to hell and things get deathly serious, he once again becomes an extension of her, and he’s pleased to do so.

Does that make him a raven? No. Does that make him the servant of one? I don’t know. Cassandra herself does not, to my knowledge, identify as a raven. But she has the wings and presence of one, the implications all wrapped up in her, and Valence is her knight, her talons. And, yes, he loves a good raven. He’ll feed them or at least make kissy noises at them when he sees them. He wants to be friends with them. (They do not want to be friends with him.) He sees them and thinks immediately of Cassandra.

Is that alterhuman? Does it matter? It’s something. It’s meaningful. Does everything need a label? I don’t think so. I think that if something is important to you, that’s good enough.