JERGAL
Cleric Alignments: LE, LG, LN

Symbol: Jawless skull and writing quill on scroll
Home Plane: The Fugue Plane
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Portfolio: Fatalism, proper burial, guardian of tombs
Worshipers: Monks, necromancers, paladins
Cleric Alignments: LE, LG, LN
Domains: Fate, Law, Repose, Rune, Suffering

Favored Weapon: A white glove (scythe)

ergal (jer-gull) is the fatalistic seneschal of the Lord of the Dead who keeps records on the final disposition of all the spirits of the dead. Both bland and excessively formal, he never angers and always speaks with a disembodied, chilling voice that echos with the dry whisper of a long forsaken crypt. The Lord of the End of Everything strives only for an orderly accounting of the fate of the world as it slowly sinks into death.

The church of Jergal is small and secretive, a rigidly organized, almost monastic order of scribes known as the Scriveners of Doom. Based largely in lifeless stone mausoleums and dry, dusty crypts, its members spend their days maintaining and extending vast archives of scrolls listing how sentients under their purview passed away and their destination in the afterlife. Only in Thay, where death is a daily fact of life, has Jergal's church undergone a small renaissance. A handful of Jergal's followers still follow the old ways of the Companions of the Pallid Mask, an order whose members specialized in combating or commanding the undead whose existence was not sanctioned by the church or who had proven to be troublesome.

Clerics of Jergal pray for their spells at dusk, a time of day represenatative of the end of life. On the last night of the year, Jergal's clergy cease their endless toil for a full night. On this holy night, known as the Night of Another Year, the clerics read every name whose death they have recorded from the scrolls they have carefully inscribed over the past year. With a cry of "One Year Closer!", all the scrolls are then filed, and work begins the next day. The only ritual Jergal's clerics are required to perform is called the Sealing. After recording each and every creature's demise, form of death, and destination in the afterlife, Scriveners of Doom are required to sprinkle a light dusting of ash and powdered bone over their inscribed words to blot the ink and mark another small step toward the world's end. Some seek church-sponsored undeath to allow them to continue their archiving careers. Some clerics multiclass as monks or necromancers.

HISTORY/RELATIONSHIPS: Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul inherited most of the portfolios of Jergal when he wearily stepped down from his position and then faded into near-obscurity. The death of those deities left Jergal in the service to Cyric and then Kelemvor. Although his nature is that he must be loyal to the office of death, he can subtly undermine the holder of that office if he or she is not true to the office's responsibilities. Jergal works well with Kelemvor, but retains his scorn for Cyric and spends much of his efforts combating Velsharoon's efforts to prolong life into undeath.

DOGMA: Each being has an eternal resting place that is chosen for him or her at the moment of creation. Life is a process of seeking that place and eternal rest. Existence is but a brief aberation in an eternity of death. Power, Success, and joy are as transitory as weakness, failure, and misery. Only death is absolute, and then only at its appointed hour. Seek to bring order to the chaos of life, for in death there is finality and a fixedness of state. Be ready for death for it is at hand and uncompromising. Life should be prolonged only when it serves the greater cause of the death of the world.