Your bones cant be cracked in the wall. They're buried in a grave on the Material plane. It's your Soul that goes into the wall, and Im not seeing any references to any agony involved at all (barring one non canon depiction).
It's not permanent soul death either. It's 'non existence', which (as an Atheist) is the precise afterlife you expected.
You don't exist. You're born. You die. You cease existing.
Or you can follow a Deity and instead on your death become a petitioner servant of that Deity (with no memories of your former life) on that Deities plane, until the end times.
Personally, a lot of people would prefer 'non existing' over the latter fate of permanent servitude, particularly if your Deity was evil.
Followers of Bane for example get a permanent existence as a Larvae on the Barrens of Doom and Despair, where you're pretty pre-occupied with dodging Night Hags trying to collect you and use you as a spell component while you wait to get promoted to a lesser Yugoloth in what is basically Hell.
Give me 'nothing' over that fate any day of the week.
So a few notes, since I went and did some research. I pulled up the wiki, then dug around for various sources within that wiki. And I've come away with some interesting observations.
You are correct that in the... two other sources that ever seem to mention the wall they do not say it is painful. They mention being mortared into the wall, it being a punishment, them being destroyed and the green mold that the video clip talked about. But, they don't mention it being a painful transition per se.
It also isn't permanent per se, since Demons attack the wall and drag out souls for them to consume or make into other demons.
However, one thing I did find is that the False are not made part of the wall. They are instead relegated to "eternal servitude" in the City of the Dead, with only occasional torture by Devils.
So, no non-existance for the False, just eternal slavery and brightened up with bouts of torture. And the Faithless are, at best, bound and unmoving until they are either consumed by demons or finally fade into Oblivion.
And again, the Gods and Goddesses of Mercy and Forgiveness... do nothing. I can see it for the False, but the Faithless?
Oh, and side note, saying they can't experience their bones cracking, because they are a spirit seems to miss how some of the DnD realms portray such shades. Many are "souls" that basically just exist as their bodies would, not some ectoplasm floating in nothingness.
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It makes sense because of that. These entities are not allowed to claim those souls by the rivaling entities who do not want them to gain this power.
That's why they need to have some sort of claim based on the souls behaviour in life.
In Crucible there was actually a scene where Torm appears before Kelemvor and tries to claim a faithless only for Cyric appearing too and challenging Torm's reasoning.
Cyric wanted to prevent Torm from gaining the power of one more soul and to cause Torm and Kelemvor the anguish of having one more soul going into the wall.
Kelemvor had to weight there cases and then settled on declaring that soul a false rather than faithless at least.
Note that the afterlife, whether with a deity or as a petitioner is not eternal. In the end all souls are merely batteries to power their deity or plane.
You exist for a while as an servant without memory of xour former live and all the while getting slowly purified until you're a true exemplar of your deity/plane.
At that point you're ripe for absorbtion and that's the end of you as an individual.
I think this misses though that the Wall was created by Myrkul as a punishment. So, those Faithless were Myrkul's souls to begin with and he decided to what.... burn them into ash instead of using them?
And, I always love how we say that the bad things must happen because the Evil gods act to prevent the good gods from fixing it. Maybe the scene is handled well, but why does Cyric get to act to stop Torm, but no God or goddes ever acted to stop Myrkul?
I mean, does it not make sense that a Goddess of Mercy would act to stop pointless torture and cruelty perpetuated by Myrkul? But, him making the wall is never challenged. All the sources I read simply say "Myrkul created the wall" No gods went to stop his Evil, no one interfered.
But, when Torm goes to prevent someone from being put into the wall, we are told that the reason he can't prevent it is because evil gods like Cyric will interfere and prevent such a good and noble act from happening? Why?
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You assume that Kelemvor would LET them take those souls.
The current system, of the Wall of the Faithless and The False, was set up long before Kelemvor became the God of the Dead, it was first created by Myrkul when he was God of the Dead.
Kelemvor inherited the position of God of Death during the Time of Troubles, but moved the wall and its realm from the Grey Wastes to a demiplane he created, that became known as the Fugue Plane, and changed the realm from a castle of bones to a crystal tower to symbolize transparency in the judgment process as Kelemvor emphasized being a fair and impartial judge of souls.
He inherited the system with the Faithless and the False. That Kelemvor didn't change the system implies one of two things.
1. Kelemvor, being of Lawful Neutral alignment, felt no strong need to change the system, provided everyone is judged fairly as to their status with that regard.
2. He couldn't change the system, it may have been a directive from Ao, or it could have been a part of other divine pacts behind the scenes, but that part of the system had to stay.
As for other deities like Ilmater just taking everyone who would be put to the wall otherwise, presumably Kelemvor doesn't allow that because either.
1. It breaks the rules that existed prior about Faithless and False. OR
2. Ilmater or Kelemvor are unable to implement this under other divine rules that mortals don't or can't know about, like a directive from Ao.
As I said in the above post though, this just kicks the can. Saying Kelemvor can't change it because Myrkul created the system and he just inherited it has multiple problems. Like, saying that Myrkul was more powerful, because his work can't be undone. Or raising the legitimate question of why Myrkul was not opposed in creating the wall.
I mean, we have to remember that Myrkul wasn't even the first God of the Dead. Jergal was. Myrkul was an ascended mortal. He supposedly lived during the Netherese Empire, so about -3,800 DR at the earliest? He was likely an established god no earlier than -3,700? The oldest date I can find is in the "Days of Thunder" at -35,000 DR. So, easily 31,000 years of history went by without the Wall of the Faithless.
Corellon literally helped rip apart the continent in -17,600 to provide a home for his people. He is incredibly old, and the leader of the Pantheon in charge of all Elvish souls, he didn't decide that some upstart mortal nearly 14,000 years later could shove it when he tried to make a way to destroy elven souls?
I mean, most of the gods of the Pantheon are far far far older than Myrkul, and operated for millenia under a completely different system, did they just... not notice him altering the rules to siphon souls away from them?
And what purpose does Ao (who doesn't even care about mortals) have in decreeing this? We have no evidence he did, he isn't even part of this story. Bringing him in to decree it is just the only way we can make sense that these gods were inactive and stood by.
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IIRC, it was in fact expressly a directive from Ao. When Kelemvor took over, he started sending the Faithless to the realms of those who best matched their personalities and actions in life (so dutiful people were sent to Torm's realm etc). Ao told him to knock it off or else.
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glass.
But why, when that was likely the system for Millenia? Over 30,000 years of history passed by without a Wall of the Faithless. What changed?
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