Raven is possibly one of the more 'normal' seeming members of the Convocation, until you look a little closer. Though she is clearly talented in many ways - a singer of some quality like her mother, fashionable, and a skilled conversationalist - the fact that she is a remarkably powerful psionic might come as a surprise.

Her story truly began in 1956, or at least it would have, had her mother Rhea not balked at Keenan Lane's proposal of marriage. In the submerged city of Rapture, built to enable science and art without the constraints of the 'surface world's morality', Rhea Mercer was able to utilize her scientific talents and help build a system of isolating genetics that was subsequently used for the creation of 'Plasmids' - artificially enhancing their user's mental powers or physical prowess. But in her down time, Rhea was known as 'The Raven at the Peacock', a torch singer that captivated audiences with her deep, sultry voice. It was at the Peacock night club that Lane first met her, and though most others were also quite smitten with her looks and voice, Lane was also interested in her day-job. Since his interests in the location directly involved that work, he saw it all as a win-win situation.

Unfortunately other events and interruptions on the surface world as well as within Rapture began to cause its inevitable - and terrible - downfall. Amid the madness that was starting even at that time, with Splicers growing addicted to the Plasmids, murder and kidnapping becoming the norm, and the ideals of the scientifically minded community twisted in on itself, it was clear that Rhea was still, somehow, above it all. Not above fear, however, and the fear of returning to the surface world with Lane provoked her to decline his offer of marriage and support. Somewhat shocked, dismayed at the least, and worried what the woman might go through after he left Rapture, Keenan Lane took Rhea Vortally aside and preserved her in one of his 'storage' rooms. Just in time: by the end of 1958, Rapture was nothing but a deep-sea abattoir.

And in that stasis unit, Rhea slept for nearly 80 years. Obviously, things on the surface world changed dramatically while she was gone. So dramatically that when she was finally reawakened she yet again declined any offers of companionship and aid, and it was only at that point - with Melissa on hand to confirm it - that she admitted she carried Lane's 'first' child. Had she carried it to term in Rapture, the girl that came to be known as Raven would likely have been stolen and turned into one of the mockeries of Humanity: a 'Little Sister', ghoulish creatures that sucked the Vortal essences out of Humans in order to feed the Plasmid addiction. (It was painfully clear what would have happened had the child been male, as well...) Rhea and Keenan reached a careful, difficult compromise: she would carry the baby, but leave it with him - and she would then have her memories removed, and be sent to another post-Ulathoi community to live out a 'normal' life.

While others were dealing with rebuilding, Kallah-vahh was raising his daughter, and would be something that he enjoyed tremendously, even without Rhea. He seemed to treasure her as though she was a reward for 'not having been erased from reality' when his kind, the Convocation, came to judge him. And though he still dislikes the process itself, the Mystery approved of Melissa's idea to have Raven given the Icarus treatments. After all, his own clone benefitted from it - and this child had been conceived before he began mixing his Vortessence into things. Raven's young body responded immediately to the treatments, and it became very clear that she would be strongly talented, in specific ways. Since she grew up amid the rebuilding world, and also in the middle of a pack of children belonging to both first and second generation Pantheon individuals, her powers were hardly anything out of the ordinary. She also had access to training and guidance for those powers, not only from Lane but from his own extended family.

It was easy to see even early on that Raven was going to be able to perform a fairly specific type of power, perhaps because she'd been in stasis along with her mother all that time. Her abilities to sense through and manipulate 'time itself' allow her to heal and protect as well as hold enemies in their tracks. Raven's sharp psionics take care of the rest - if something manages to get through those 'pockets of slow' it won't live long enough to regret it. Of course, she doesn't kill Humans, at least not in Paragon, but woe to any animal or less-natural beasts that attack!

It is very clear that Raven looks a lot like her mother. Since Rhea was a mixed-race woman, lighter skinned than her mother, much darker than her father, she had had little recourse but to be privately schooled. Raven is still a bit baffled about all of that, given that she herself grew up in a world where not only 'mixed race' Humans were all cooperating to rebuild their cities, but where nonHumans were accepted as 'part of the family' on a daily basis. She is, however, privy to things that her father hadn't specifically told her: how he met her mother, why they parted. Whenever he is asked about that situation, he goes cold, and hardly responds. Rhea's departure is still a very sore - and reasonably recent - wound for him. Raven knows that he's still a bit shocked that he didn't realize he was 'in love' with her mother until so many years later.

But her Vortal talents are hardly her only ones. Raven does have a singing voice similar to Rhea's, though perhaps not with the same range, and with slightly less professional training to perfect it. Some of Raven's skills come from old Armacham training downloads, and thus she is able to keep up with most 'modern Paragon' ideas; locations and concepts that are completely gone in her home world, that are spoken of frequently in Primal Earth.

Though she seems to be in her early 20s, Raven hasn't much bothered to age in a while. She is said to be mortal, but whether that means she will eventually age and die, or merely that she was 'born into a body', is unclear. She doesn't even care - she's having too much fun ridding another world of their problems.