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

[QuentinGeorge]

The gods of FR don't explicitly embody anything. They have portfolios they have to maintain, political expectations that could get them fired if they don't do their job, and supernatural influences on their thought process that impact how they see the world (like filters), but they are not incarnations of virtue/vice. Torm was a mortal.

In fact, many of the gods of FR were once mortals. Kelemvor, Midnight, and Cyric are pretty well known. But so were Bane, Bhaal, Myrkul, Azuth, Finder, Gargauth, Gwaeron, Mask, Mystra (the middle one), Red Knight, Savras, Siamorphe, Uthgar, Velsharoon, Waukeen, Valkur, etc. They are also exceptionally killable as we have seen with Tyr, Bane, Bhaal, Myrkul, Mystra, etc. Every single one of them can get murdered by a party of high level mortals under the right circumstances

You can't do a lot of good when you're dead, the person who replaces you might not have your agenda, and AO outright forbids doing too much good in general. Even the gods have to pick their battles. Many of the gods are not even particularly powerful. Larloch outright avoids becoming a god because it would limit him too much, and he could beat most gods outright if he was ever so inclined.

And that's not even discussing the "good" gods who actually do terrible things.

So the wall was created by a mortal-turned-god but can't be removed by other gods because they are not powerful?

Glad I never took to Forgotten Realms - the cosmology sounds terrible.

 

[Iry]

So the wall was created by a mortal-turned-god but can't be removed by other gods because they are not powerful?

Glad I never took to Forgotten Realms - the cosmology sounds terrible.

It doesn't seem too hard to remove. Kelemvor certainly did it. I'm honestly not even sure why Kelemvor brought it back. He was told to remove the Mirror Wall, but that doesn't mean he needed to bring the moldy oblivion version back. He could have gone back to the Jergal method and just let them wander around. Or maybe that would be worse, because they wouldn't become non-sentient? Who knows. Maybe someone on the writing staff just really loved MotB.

 

[nevin]

Absolutely. It would mean that the "good" gods are not complicit in utter evil.

You assume they have any say kelemvors realm. Only him and AO get a say and neither of them are good. Its a pantheon you cant hold good gods responsible for what evil gods do, especially eit AO engircing balance.

Also its part of the story. Good people should be turned off by it they should go to good gods that don't do stuff like that.

What do we gain?

The Morality of the Gods of Good, Justice, and Mercy.

As it stands, with no clear answers on why the Wall exists, who opposed it, why, when, and why it continues to exist.

One thing I liked in the Wiki article I linked was a brief mention in a book, which seems to have been retconned, that Kelemvor changed the Wall, and made it a massive soul mirror to reflect a souls faults back on itself. That makes for not only a good story, but a legitimate reasoning behind the Wall.

Originally made by the Cruel Myrkul, who was God of the Dead, it was built as a torturous punishment for the False and the Faithless. Not because those things were crimes, but because the other gods could not lay claim to souls that rejected them, leaving them to Myrkul's cruel designs. Then, with the rise of Kelemvor, as the Judge of the Dead, he exercised his power over the Domain and remade the wall into not a tool of torture, but a tool of Judgement. Perhaps again it is mainly targeting the False and the Faithless, those who fall to no domain but Kelemvor's, to allow them to seek understanding and redemption, to face their faults and hopefully rise above them. Maybe it does still drag down and destroy those who are overwhelmed by their own darkness.

And why did no Wall exist before Myrkul? Because Jergal did not care what happened to the souls of the Dead. He sought no punishment nor judgement, only endless accounting.

That to me is a much tighter and coherent story. One that we almost got, but was instead tossed aside for continuing the mess we currently have.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


And you are also not a God whose entire existence is founded on not being complicit with Evil.

Torm is the god of Courage and Self-Sacrifice, of making that Last Stand, even if it will kill you. How can he embody that while at the same time standing by and watching injustice continue.

so he should be the lawful stupid paladin that charges in and gets vaporized by AO for trying to change kelemvors realm or he's complicit? Knowing something is wring and having the power to change it do not always go hand in hand. Also ince he dies that all his followers lose thier afterlife possibly all those whove attained thier afterlife. So your saying it's evil to not risk the oblivion of every LG soul he's saved to march too certain doom to save people who were faithless? Nothing in Torms portfolio would require that. not to mention the act would strengthen evil because he wouldnt be there to stand against it. These are greek style gods they arent all powerful they arent all knowing. They do the best they can with what they have.

 

[nevin]

So the wall was created by a mortal-turned-god but can't be removed by other gods because they are not powerful?

Glad I never took to Forgotten Realms - the cosmology sounds terrible.

I agree. They should have never brought in AO. Before that they fought and squabbled and argued, formed alliances and it was great story material. When i run FR its always 1st edition state. I pretend time of troubles never happened and AO doesnt exist

 

[Iry]

These are greek style gods they arent all powerful they arent all knowing.

Some of them are literally greek gods. I'm looking at you, Tyche, Poseidon, Hephaestus, and Priapus. Then you have the whole bucket of Norse, and cherry picks from a variety of other pantheons. Tyche and Tyr being the two biggest and most popular intruder deities in the Realms.

 

[Alzrius]

Tyche and Tyr being the two biggest and most popular intruder deities in the Realms.

Well, not so much Tyche anymore, what with having been split into Tymora and Beshaba and all. There was even a novel about trying to bring her back (spoiler alert: it didn't work).

 

[nevin]

Yes and if you go south there are egyptian gods. There used to be a supplement explaining why they ended up FR in 1st ed i think

 

[Eltab]

Yes and if you go south there are egyptian gods. There used to be a supplement explaining why they ended up FR in 1st ed i think

Also Babylonian / Chaldean gods in Unther.

If you cannot find that supplement, Grand History of the Realms (book) offers a bare-bones explanation embedded in its chronology.

 

[Voadam]

Its interesting that the Waterdeep novel introduces the Wall, I did not remember that.

2e Forgotten Realms Adventures which is post Avatar trilogy/Time of Troubles does not mention the wall. Cyric is God of the Dead, pre Kelemvor.

The first sourcebook I know of that mentions the wall is the 2e Faith & Avatars.

Most folk have a handful of powers that they regularly venerate, only appeasing an unpleasant power when they are entering or engaged in a situation where that deity holds sway. Most people in the Realms also eventually settle on a sort of patron deity who they are most comfortable venerating and who they hold in the greatest reverence. A person’s patron deity is the power that eventually escorts that person’s spirit from the Fugue Plain, the place where spirits go right after people die, to its afterlife as a petitioner in the Outer Planes in the realm (or at least the plane) of its patron deity. (Those who firmly deny any faith or have only given lip service most of their lives and never truly believed are known as the Faithless after death. They are formed into a living wall around the City of Strife—Kelemvor, the new lord of the dead, may soon rename it—in the realm of the dead in Oinos in the Gray Waste and left there until they dissolve. The unearthly greenish mold that holds the wall together eventually destroys them. The False, those who intentionally betrayed a faith they believed in and to which they made a personal commitment, are relegated to eternal punishment in the City of Strife after their case is ruled upon by Kelemvor in the Crystal Spire (Kelemvor’s abode in the City of Strife).
Some folk of Faerûn choose to devote their lives to a particular god. Most often these people are priests; others belong to other classes, such as paladins or mages. These folk are expected to he loyal to their faith because of the commitment they have personally sworn to a power, although they may respect the faiths of other deities who their deity serves or is allied to.

Interesting that it is a specifically living wall and that it is the wall mold that destroys them.

A patron deity relationship is less than the personal commitment of a relationship of devotion to a particular god, the false only come from betraying that higher commitment.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My point is that the gods are finite and fallible. They are incapable of addressing all evils all of the time. It's literally not something they could do even if they wanted to. Some gods have certainly tried and made a good show of it, like Tyr, but even he ended up dead for his trouble and had to mellow out for a while. How a cleric reacts to their god being finite and fallible is a pretty personal thing.

And since we don't know how important the Wall is, we don't even know how big of a "sin" putting the Faithless in there is. Even when Kelemvor was forced to put the Wall back, that was about the distribution of souls, and not about the feelings of the Faithless.

But again, I think you bury the lead.

We don't know how important the Wall is.
We don't know why it is there.

What we know is that those who do not worship the gods, are, under the explicit power of the Gods, put into this wall and destroyed. It was created by the God Myrkul as far as we know. It was taken down by Kelemvor... and then forced to be put back up as part of his rollback against all his policies.

Remember, Kelemvor did more than taken down the Wall. He changed the entire system, but the Gods had him put back the entire system. So, this was not an evil they have not the power or time to deal with. It is an evil they specifically re-established... and considering we don't know anything else, all we can assume is that it is because they wanted to continue holding that threat over the heads of mortals who did not worship them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You assume they have any say kelemvors realm. Only him and AO get a say and neither of them are good. Its a pantheon you cant hold good gods responsible for what evil gods do, especially eit AO engircing balance.

Also its part of the story. Good people should be turned off by it they should go to good gods that don't do stuff like that.

so he should be the lawful stupid paladin that charges in and gets vaporized by AO for trying to change kelemvors realm or he's complicit? Knowing something is wring and having the power to change it do not always go hand in hand. Also ince he dies that all his followers lose thier afterlife possibly all those whove attained thier afterlife. So your saying it's evil to not risk the oblivion of every LG soul he's saved to march too certain doom to save people who were faithless? Nothing in Torms portfolio would require that. not to mention the act would strengthen evil because he wouldnt be there to stand against it. These are greek style gods they arent all powerful they arent all knowing. They do the best they can with what they have.

So, I know you are newer to this conversation, so you might not see how absurd your position is in the larger context of this thread.

Early on people were asking "Why does Kelemvor, who cares about Justice, still keep the wall."

And we were told that he had no choice. That the other gods of Evil would step in and prevent him from destroying it.

Now, when being asked why do the Gods of good not step in, what is your position?

This is Kelemvor's realm, and no other god can interfere with it?



So, back to the beginning. Why does Kelemvor, who clearly did care about Justice early on, and whose symbol is a scale to represent that he still does act as a Judge, continue to allow what is clearly an unfair torture device? One he specifically in the chapter piece posted a few pages ago, he is willing to send the insane into, even if their madness is caused by other Gods.

The system of Justice recognizes that the mentally ill cannot be held to the same standards as the rest. Yet, Kelemvor seems to think that is just fine.