Dragonlance [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defenders?

[jayoungr]

So... This begs the question (in the informal sense) of what happens to the souls of the peoples outside of Faerun? In Kara-Tur, for instance, there are religions and philosophies without proper gods (or gods at all). What happens to them?

Wouldn't their souls just be claimed by deities who felt like they fit the profile, like souls in Faerun?

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 seems like a lot of this argument is hinging on whether being in the wall is torture or not. Can someone please explain why the answer to this question is not clear?

ETA, for clarity: I mean, what source material there is that says it's torture versus not torture? Why is the source that says it's torture described as non-canon?

 

[Dire Bare]

Wouldn't their souls just be claimed by deities who felt like they fit the profile, like souls in Faerun?


It seems like a lot of this argument is hinging on whether being in the wall is torture or not. Can someone please explain why the answer to this question is not clear?

Getting mortared into a wall, slowly getting crushed by the weight above you, for millennia, slowly losing your identity . . . sounds like fun! Why would anyone consider that a torturous punishment?

 

[Azzy]

Wouldn't their souls just be claimed by deities who felt like they fit the profile, like souls in Faerun?

Then why wouldn't that happen to the souls of those that chose no patron diety or reject worshipping the gods? Why can't the gods claim the souls of such folk whose ethos, ideals, values, and alignment most closely match their own?

 

[jayoungr]

Getting mortared into a wall, slowly getting crushed by the weight above you, for millennia, slowly losing your identity . . . sounds like fun! Why would anyone consider that a torturous punishment?

But you're a soul. Do souls even feel weight? I'm still confused.

As for slowly losing your identity, how would you even know it's happening?

But what I'm really asking (in case it's not clear) is what source material there is that says it's torture versus not torture, and why the source that says it's torture was described as non-canon.

Then why wouldn't that happen to the souls of those that chose no patron diety or reject worshipping the gods?

Based on this thread, I thought that's what did happen to the ones who don't reject the gods entirely but also don't choose a specific patron? I dunno, I'm not a Forgotten Realms expert.

And it doesn't seem illogical to say that gods can choose people who just haven't explicitly chosen them, but they can't choose people who have explicitly rejected them. I mean, to the degree that fantasy religious stuff follows logic at all.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We should remember this is a TTRPG, and we are totally free to change the canon lore. For example if I don't like things from "7Th Sea" then I alter it, and I say Castilla is the nation of the nice people who discovered and conquered the new world (with the help of the natives who rebelled against their previous tyrants), build universities, and Avalon is the evil empire rule by an reptilian alien queen, Diana, and her secret vampires lodges.

My opinion is the Faerunian souls of the people who respected the Natural Law shouldn't be punished with the faithless wall, at least not for always. And we could bet most of mortals will choose a god, or at least a local god, a demigod or quasi-deity as the fan with his favorite sport or music star. How is that saying? "Atheists until the airplane starts to fall". In Faerun it's very difficult to reject all divine blessing against possible supernatural menaces. For them an atheist is like here somebody rejecting vaccines against infectious diseases (other different matter is if a new vaccine is enough safe).

 

[Dire Bare]

But you're a soul. Do souls even feel weight? I'm still confused.

As for slowly losing your identity, how would you even know it's happening?

But what I'm really asking (in case it's not clear) is what source material there is that says it's torture versus not torture, and why the source that says it's torture was described as non-canon.


Based on this thread, I thought that's what did happen to the ones who don't reject the gods entirely but also don't choose a specific patron? I dunno, I'm not a Forgotten Realms expert.

And it doesn't seem illogical to say that gods can choose people who just haven't explicitly chosen them, but they can't choose people who have explicitly rejected them. I mean, to the degree that fantasy religious stuff follows logic at all.

If you are a soul that doesn't feel anything . . . then what's the point of any of this? Real-world religions often portray the afterlife as a place of reward or punishment, including the physical, and D&D certainly models this. I think arguing that, "It's not torture because you don't have a physical body anymore" is just ridiculous. It's pretty well established in D&D lore that your "spiritual body" works just like your physical body back on the material pain, at least when it come to feeling pain, pleasure, and other physical sensations.

 

[jayoungr]

I think arguing that, "It's not torture because you don't have a physical body anymore" is just ridiculous.

Okay, you think it's ridiculous. But is there any source material that actually says it's torture? That's what I really want to know.

 

[Alzrius]

Okay, you think it's ridiculous. But is there any source material that actually says it's torture? That's what I really want to know.

James Lowder's novel Prince of Lies, chapter 4 "Soul Searching," includes the following passage:

After passing thirty rows of souls, Af reached the spot where they had left Gwydion the Quick. Like the Faithless stacked around him, the sell-sword twisted and cried out. Some of his agony was caused by the greenish mold that held the souls in place. The living mortar grew between the shades, sending painful rhizoids into any of the unfortunates that stopped moving.

 

[jayoungr]

James Lowder's novel Prince of Lies, chapter 4 "Soul Searching," includes the following passage:

Okay, so, next question, why is that referred to as non-canon?

 

[PsyzhranV2]

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?

I feel like this needs a lot more attention.

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.

I thiiiiiiink this might have been from the Avatar Crisis novels?